Given the horrifying events that occurred in southern Israel this past Simchat Torah and the incomprehensible incompetence that our government and military high command exhibited at the time, it's not surprising that polls have indicated a surge in support for opposition parties.
However understandable this political reaction has been, our electorate must remember that it wasn't just the current government responsible for this debacle. Instead, the blame for the massacre of our innocents extends to other organizations and individuals in the opposition. Indeed, the categorical refusal of groups like the Kaplan Force and Brothers-in-Arms to accept their share of the blame for having inadvertently encouraged Hamas' assault on our border communities is almost as shocking as the government's total failure to prevent the surprise attack in the first place.
As the months of anti-judicial reform protests took place, I observed the reactions of our enemies to these events.
Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah concluded that our society was disintegrating and that the IDF, in particular, was either unprepared or unwilling to fight effectively. The latter misperception was caused by those reservists, who were threatening not to report for duty unless the government's judicial reform program was dropped.
This rank insubordination was referenced by various Hamas spokesmen, who gloated over their belief that this revolt by our best soldiers proved that the days of the IDF's "invincibility" were over.
'Appreciate the incalculable damage'
In this regard, it's essential to appreciate the incalculable damage done to our perceived military capabilities by such former generals as National Unity Head Benny Gantz, MK Gadi Eisenkot, former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and former prime minister Ehud Barak, former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo and former Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman. All these individuals helped spread the false image of an IDF that was splintering over the government's judicial reform agenda to one degree or another.
Unfortunately, our enemies were listening and reached what they thought were the appropriate conclusions. And while it's true that Hamas had been planning their cross-border assault for approximately two years, its timing was driven, to a large degree, by the opposition's utterly irresponsible behavior. This is why some commentators are accusing the opposition of suffering from a case of criminal blindness bordering on treason.
One would think that generals like Gantz and Eisenkot, in particular, should have known better than to encourage the soldiers' refusal movement, which could only have undermined the army's need for discipline and separation from politics. We'll never know whether it was arrogance, stupidity or political calculation that motivated them to do so. What we do know, however, is that their actions inadvertently played a part in the subsequent massacre of our people in the south.
'Misery loves company'
That Prime Minister Benjamin agreed to include them in his war cabinet is not hard to understand. Misery, after all, loves company.
But the electoral support they seem to be garnering now is not only unjustified, it is sickening. Neither of these former generals has the right to sit in any government that has to clean up a bloody mess they and Bibi created.
Like the prime minister, they should be obliged to spend the rest of their days begging forgiveness from all our abandoned civilians and brave soldiers they betrayed. They don't have the right to lead us anymore. They all must go.
The fact that they've surrendered to American pressure to turn on the water in southern Gaza for the same Palestinians, who just days before were spitting on our hostages and reveling in the beheading of our babies, just goes to show that we don't have a national unity government.
We simply have a ship of fools steering our country onto the rocks.