Netanyahu Promises Full Inquiry Into Gaza Failure Once He Retires

“A sober reckoning can take place after enough time has passed for immediate emotions not to distort our perceptions. Say, in about fifteen years.”

Jerusalem, October 23 – The incumbent prime minister of Israel vowed to conduct a thorough investigation of the numerous failures that allowed a Palestinian invasion of Israel’s south that took more than a thousand lives, captured hundreds of civilians including women and children, and involved the rape, torture, and mutilation of Israelis – after he has stepped out of political life.

Binyamin Netanyahu addressed a gathering of mayors from the affected region of the country. “This is just like after the Yom Kippur War” of 1973, he asserted, when a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria made unprecedented advances into Israeli-held territory and threatened the very existence of the Jewish State, or so many feared at the time. A subsequent inquiry detailed the intelligence, operational, and political missteps that led to the debacle.

“For now we must prosecute this campaign to its only reasonable conclusion,” he assured those assembled. “We must crush Hamas, eliminate its capacity to wage war, perhaps its very existence as a cohesive group, and make arrangements never to allow such circumstances again. Then, I guarantee, there will be a complete, comprehensive, non-partisan study of the leadup to, and the initial conduct of, this war – provided that, at that point, I have already retired from political life.”

“For now, we are focused on the present and the immediate future,” he added, when, presumably, he and his coalition might manage to salvage some credibility and popularity by presiding over a decisive, permanent solution to Hamas. “Our attention at the moment must focus exclusively on the task at hand: defeating Hamas.”

Ministers in Bibi’s government sounded a similar note. “The talk of investigations and debacles is premature,” insisted Minister of Defense Yoav Galant. “We’ll have plenty of time for all of that later, once the security of the south is achieved and Hamas done with. We must all direct our energies toward extracting the country from its current predicament, regardless of how we got here. I’m not open to discussion of recriminations or anything that can only hamper the proper fulfillment of the mission. A sober, measured reckoning, free of suspicious political overtones, can take place after enough time has passed for immediate emotions not to distort our perceptions. Say, in about fifteen years.”

Opposition figures, as well, have discouraged immediate direct discussion of fault for the unreadiness, saving that line of rhetoric for after they have had the chance to make patriotic political hay out of the war itself.

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