‘I Have Lost All Faith’: Veteran Israeli Journo Urges Netanyahu to Explain ‘What The Hell’ The Strategy Is

Veteran military analyst and Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur joined the Free Press’s Rafaela Siewert on Friday to discuss Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest moves in the Israel-Gaza war – a planned occupation of Gaza City and eventually the rest of the territory.

Gur, the Times of Israel’s senior analyst, has long been a prominent voice covering Israel’s military operations in Gaza and, in sign of the times, expressed his frustration with Netanyahu’s apparent lack of plan for long-term occupation, echoing much of the international criticism at the moment. He also added that inside Israel, even pro-Netanyahu and right-wing journalists are urging Netanyahu to get in front of cameras and “explain what the hell is going on.”

“I believed all along the way that smart people are in charge, and some incredibly smart people have been in charge: Netanyahu and Gallant and the former Chief of Staff and the current Chief of Staff and strategic planners and Mossad and Shabak. And we’ve seen Israeli capabilities in other arenas—they’re astonishing,” Gur began his analysis, adding:

Smart, talented, competent people are in charge. And then the delays of Rafah back in the spring of twenty twenty-four, and then the grind, and then talking to good friends and family members of mine coming out of Gaza, talking about just the military disorganization, and then the inability of the government to articulate to the world what the hell it’s doing.

I do think that Israel faces a lot of, you know, obsession about this conflict that is related to anti-Semitism and projecting onto Israel everything that certain ideologies in the West hate about themselves, about the West? All kinds of weird psychology is underway, and that’s why 40,000 children being enslaved to the cobalt mines of Congo in a conflict where millions are dying doesn’t make the headlines on CNN while Gaza does.

None of that is relevant to Gazans. None of that is relevant to the fact that some of Israel’s best friends have turned on it because they’ve just given up on understanding what the hell the strategy is.

Why is everybody suffering? America demolished Germany in World War II, but it said, and Americans knew, that there would be a day after in which it would be rebuilt. It was a war on Nazism, not a war to destroy Germanness and the German people. The destruction in Gaza makes sense militarily, unless there’s no strategy, and Israel will refuse to articulate the day after. So Israel should articulate the day after.

“Do you think there’s been sufficient day-after planning? I guess my question is like, is it an issue of articulation that they’re just not communicating well, or is it an issue of there’s no plan?” pressed Siewert.

“So after the hunger took hold in Gaza, beginning in May, becoming very serious in July—which is something that The Free Press has written about a great deal in the last month—I have lost all faith that smart people are running the thing,” Gur replied, adding:

And it’s not because they’re not smart. It’s because a lot of the planning and strategy is trapped in politics. Netanyahu—conservative journalists in Israel, pro-Netanyahu journalists—are writing angrily that Netanyahu has to speak and explain what the hell is going on.

The cabinet leaks about their debates. Well, you know, if we’re only going to do it as pressure on Hamas, then we’re going to lose a hundred soldiers to get ten hostages. And the answer is, well, you can’t leave the hostages behind. That’s a debate that is essential. It’s not a moral debate. It is not a serious debate. It’s certainly not a strategic debate.

It’s a debate about politics. It’s about how bad we will look to different constituencies. It matters that the religious Zionist minister said, “We can’t lose 100 soldiers to rescue 10 hostages.” His community has sent the highest percentage of soldiers to the war. And the person who said, “We have to rescue the hostages,” Aryeh Deri, from the ultra-Orthodox community—his community has sent almost no soldiers to war. And so it’s a political sectarian kind of argument.

I want the Israelis to stand up and explain to us that they are competent and know what they’re doing and have a vision and a strategy. It doesn’t have to be my suggestion, but it has to articulate how you separate Hamas from the civilian population, and it has to articulate how you then execute the actual military effort in a way that’s going to be effective and end things.

Watch the clip above via The Free Press.

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