The shock Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas gunmen has rallied Israelis to one another. But there is little love shown for a government being widely accused of dropping the country’s guard and engulfing it in a Gaza war that is rattling the region.

Whatever ensues, a day of judgment looms for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after a record-long career of political comebacks.

Public fury over some 1,300 Israeli fatalities has been further fuelled by Netanyahu’s signature self-styling as a Churchillian strategist who foresaw national-security threats.

Another backdrop is social polarisation this year over his religious-nationalist coalition’s judicial overhaul drive, which triggered walkouts by some military reservists and raised doubts - now borne out in blood, some argue - about combat-readiness.

“October 2023 Debacle” read a headline in top-selling daily Yedioth Ahronoth, language meant to recall Israel’s failure to anticipate a twin Egyptian and Syrian offensive in October 1973, which eventually led then-Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Frontline did an episode on it. They’re even trying to breed red cows:

    As Lott read the Bible that day, he realized that the Second Coming and the fate of humankind now depended on the red heifer. In order for the Jews to rebuild the Temple and prepare the way for the return of the Messiah they must be purified with the ashes of a red heifer.