“Hamas needs to know that we will not hesitate to move in and take all the necessary steps,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on March 26, responding to the rocket fired from Gaza on March 25 that destroyed a home in Mishmeret and injured seven Israelis. In an unmistakable reference to the April 9 elections, Netanyahu added, “This is not connected to anything, to any date, only to the needs of Israel’s security.” 

Really, sir? You want us to believe that there is not an opinion poll on your desk measuring public support for a military ground operation in Gaza? Are you not taking into consideration that photos of dozens of soldiers’ funerals and hundreds of thousands of civilians cowering in shelters might cost you your comfortable leather armchair in the Prime Minister’s Office and send you in the direction of the defendant’s bench in district court?

Netanyahu promised that Israel would retaliate “forcefully” for the rockets fired from Gaza at the Israeli heartland in recent weeks. His rival for the premiership in the April 9 elections, Lt. Gen. (res.) Benny Gantz of the Blue and White party, had called for a “significant tough response” after the March 14 launch of two rockets toward Tel Aviv. One of the Blue and White’s campaign videos features footage of explosions and Israelis fleeing to shelters as sirens wail and captioning that reads, “We will not pay protection money to Hamas,” a reference to the Qatari aid money entering Gaza under Israeli auspices. “We will not abandon residents of the south.”

What, then, do Netanyahu and Gantz propose that Israel has not done to date in its war against Hamas, which already includes aerial bombardments of residential neighborhoods, siege, naval blockade, ground incursions, assassinations of Hamas leaders, cash infusions, deadly sniper fire at children, journalists and paramedics.