‘Replace him’: Thousands Rally Against Netanyahu’s Government in Tel Aviv
It was one of the largest demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government since the start of the war in October.By The New York Times
- March 31, 2024Updated 12:16 p.m. ET
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday night in one of the largest demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government since October, when the Hamas-led attack on Israel ignited a war.
Tel Aviv has been the scene of weekly demonstrations calling on the government to strike a cease-fire deal to free the hostages who have been held in Gaza since October. Those protests have
been growing in size as the war has dragged on and anger at Mr. Netanyahu’s government has mounted.
It was one of the largest demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government since the start of the war in October.
www.nytimes.com
Huh, so Israelis, in their own Middle Eastern country, can openly protest against the government. Kind of a novel concept for that armpit of the planet.
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Jerusalem on Sunday against Benjamin Netanyahu's government and against exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from military service, in scenes reminiscent of mass street protests last year.
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Prior to Oct. 7, there were roughly two million Arab citizens of Israel but no Jewish citizens in Gaza. Gazans in 2006 voted in Hamas to rule them. It summarily executed its Palestinian Authority rivals. Hamas cancelled all future scheduled elections. It established a dictatorship and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid to build a vast underground labyrinth of military installations.
Prior to Oct. 7, there was a de facto three-state solution, given that Israel, the West Bank and Gaza were all separate states ruled by their own governments, two of which were illegitimate without scheduled elections.
It was not Israel, but the people of Gaza and the West Bank who institutionalized the “from river to the sea” agenda of destroying its neighbour.
Israel would have been content to live next to an autonomous Arab Gaza and West Bank that did not seek to destroy Israel in their multigenerational efforts to form their own “one-state solution.”
The “international” community is demanding Israel agree to a “ceasefire.” But there was already a ceasefire before Oct. 7. Hamas broke it by massacring 1,200 Jews and taking over 250 hostages.
Hamas violated that peace because it thought it could gain leverage over Israel by murdering Jews.
Hamas now demands another ceasefire because it thinks it is no longer able to murder more unarmed Jews. Instead, it now fears Israel will destroy Hamas in the way Hamas sought but failed to destroy Israel.
President Joe Biden believes the Muslim religious holiday of Ramadan required Israel to agree to a ceasefire.
But did either Hamas or any other Arab military ever respect Jewish — or even its own — religious holidays?
“Occupied Gaza” Prior to Oct. 7, there were roughly two million Arab citizens of Israel but no Jewish citizens in Gaza. Gazans in 2006 voted in Hamas to rule them. It summarily executed its Palestinian Authority rivals. Hamas cancelled all future scheduled elections. It established a...
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The Oct. 7 massacre was timed to catch Israelis unaware while celebrating the Jewish religious holidays of Simchat Torah, Shemini Torah and Shemini Atzeret on Shabbat.
Moreover, Hamas’s surprise attack was deliberately timed to commemorate the earlier sneak Arab attack on Israel some 50 years earlier.
(On Oct. 6, 1973, the Israelis were the target of a surprise attack when celebrating the religious holiday of Yom Kippur. Arab armies also assumed they would achieve greater surprise when attacking during their own religious holiday of Ramadan)
So, Arab militaries fight opportunistically both during Jewish and their own Islamic holidays. Egyptians and Syrians still boast of their 1973 surprise attack on Israel as the “Ramadan War.” Only Westerners, not Arabs, believe there should be no war during Ramadan.