Ln the evening of Monday, April 22, the streets of Israel were empty. No, the Israelis did not spend the evening in the shelters as they have done so often since October 7, 2023 and, most recently, on April 13, when the sirens tore the silence to warn of the attack Iranian on the country. They celebrated the exit from Egypt, the passage from servitude to freedom.
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This year, the atmosphere was heavy and restrained, the polar opposite of the cacophony of ordinary Passover evenings. In many homes, an empty chair was placed around the Easter table as a sign of solidarity with the 133 hostages still held by Hamas, with nothing filtering out about their fate.
This is, to date, the most heated subject of discord: the morality of the social contract versus that of reasons of state. Under the first, Benjamin Netanyahu violated an unwritten rule of the state’s duty towards its citizens by refusing to make the release of the hostages a priority; under the second, to achieve the war objective, the Israeli president may have concerns other than negotiating an agreement with Hamas.
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And the Iranian attack in all this? Forgotten. A week and a half after the sleepless night lit by the Israeli interception of Iranian drones and missiles, the attack, which began as the chronicle of a predicted tragedy, ended in a game of chess in which everyone is came out a winner.
Resilience, second nature
April 13 initially appeared as the anti-October 7. The army demonstrated its capabilities to perfection. If only it had acted with the same mastery two hundred days ago… Devoid of an air or sea force, Hamas entered Israeli territory and staged an unrivaled theater of cruelty there. On the Israeli side, know-how, technology, intelligence, training, everything collapsed like a house of cards for two or three days, two or three days too long.
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Since then, the army in Gaza has stalled while advancing; she strives to bring back a victory, she does not succeed. Hamas bends but does not surrender. Palestinian human losses are considerable. To support Israel’s legitimacy to lead an expedition, its allies struggle to understand the conduct of operations. The UN condemns, militant passions are inflamed, the International Court of Justice reprimands. THE “risk of genocide” is perceived as an unacceptable offense by the people who have experienced it and who know in their flesh what the word means.
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