The message is clear: Only victory over Hamas will make it possible to realize Trump’s vision for peace in the Middle East.

1.In remarks at the International Tanach Quiz last week, even as the Jerusalem hills blazed, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made his war priorities clear for the first time, voicing a sentiment previously heard only from rightist ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“We have many goals in this war,” Netanyahu said. “We want to return all our hostages.... This is a very important goal. But in war there is a supreme goal… victory over our enemies. And that is what we will achieve.”

Since any Israeli plan is contingent on White House approval, one can only assume that Netanyahu’s remarks, which appeased the right flank of his government, don’t run counter to the president’s views.

Netanyahu was backed up by Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, who spoke of intensifying the fighting in his first official speech last week. A source in Netanyahu’s office explained to me that Bibi is pushing a hawkish agenda to the Trump administration. The message is clear: Only victory over Hamas will make it possible to realize Trump’s vision for peace in the Middle East.

According to the source, Netanyahu feels he’s exhausted every alternative avenue for bringing the hostages back, and only two options remain — accepting another ceasefire, effectively an Israeli surrender; or resuming high-intensity warfare. A year and a half after October 7, Israel is seemingly back to square one on the Gaza front.

2.If there’s one person Netanyahu trusts unreservedly in legal matters, it’s his cabinet secretary, attorney Yossi Fuchs. Fuchs already functions as his de facto legal advisor, and Netanyahu would be all too happy to install him in the office of attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara, whom he considers the leader of the opposition.

I mention Fuchs to distinguish between issues Netanyahu takes seriously — and those he doesn’t. Netanyahu dispatched his cabinet secretary on two separate missions: managing the legal battle with Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, and preparing a draft law acceptable to the chareidim as well as to the chair of the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee.

When it came to the first mission, Fuchs was up to the task. The devastating affidavit submitted by Netanyahu, which we covered extensively last week, prompted Ronen Bar to recalibrate and announce his resignation effective June 15, a little more than a month away. In a brilliant move suggested by Fuchs, Netanyahu immediately responded by canceling Bar’s dismissal, rendering the High Court deliberation moot.

Netanyahu left no stone unturned in dismantling Bar’s affidavit, and even his media critics were forced to admit that Netanyahu had emerged from the battle on top. Netanyahu’s willingness to sign the affidavit drafted for him by Fuchs shows how much trust he places in the cabinet secretary. And it’s this that has prompted the chareidim to wonder why the cabinet secretary who was able to produce a detailed affidavit fully supported by documentary evidence in less than a week hasn’t shown the same facility when it comes to the chareidi draft issue.

This question became more pressing this week in light of the High Court’s conditional order requiring the government to explain by June 24 why no additional draft orders will be issued to eligible yeshivah students, and why personal sanctions aren’t being imposed on yeshivah students who have failed to respond to their draft orders.

As the summer session of the Knesset approaches, chareidi MKs are threatening to buck coalition discipline until the matter is resolved, but Netanyahu doesn’t seem overly troubled.

As for whether Netanyahu is doing everything in his power to reach a solution, you just have to compare the resources he dedicated to the two issues: the draft issue, which troubles only the chareidim, versus the Ronen Bar crisis, which disturbed his rest like a drone knocking at the window of his home.

3.Shimon Elkabetz is an Israeli media personality and the former commander of Army Radio. Against his will, Elkabetz has become a prominent voice of late, with a perspective that blurs the traditional divides between left and right.

On the morning of Simchas Torah 2023, he was at his home in Kfar Azah, while his daughter Sivan was in her own apartment in the kibbutz’s young neighborhood. At a time when practically everyone is speaking from a positzya (a partisan position), I sat down with Elkabetz, who bridges between the Ashkenazi kibbutz spirit and Mizrachi traditionalism, to hear a voice that’s both clear and unique.

A week after Yom Hashoah, I asked Elkabetz whether, as a bereaved father, he would make the obvious comparison.

“The question on everyone’s lips that Shabbos when we barricaded ourselves in our homes wasn’t: ‘Where’s Bibi?’ It was: ‘Where’s the army? Where’s the army? Where’s the army?’ ” Elkabetz says, responding to those who point the finger only at Netanyahu.

“The army wasn’t there, just as there was no Jewish defensive force during the Holocaust,” he says. “Anne Frank was dragged out of the attic by the Nazi monsters. And my daughter and her friend were dragged out from under the bed. They hid under the bed, and those monsters dragged them out and murdered them. No one could have told her in those moments of terror, and no one can tell me now, that what we experienced on October 7 wasn’t a massacre, a holocaust.”

Shimon Elkabetz is a warm traditional Jew, someone who chooses his words carefully. When I ask him about Ronen Bar’s responsibility, I’m surprised by his response — an impassioned j’accuse.

“Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor at Eichmann’s trial, opened his remarks with the chilling sentence: ‘I don’t stand here alone. Six million prosecutors stand here beside me.’ And I, Shimon, father of Sivan Hy”d, say now as a bereaved father: Beside me stand not only the murdered Sivan and Naor, but 1,200 victims as well as 800 soldiers who gave their lives in defense of their land, all due to the failures of Shin Bet head Ronen Bar.

“I stand here and cry out, in the words of Yechezkel Hanavi [33:6]: ‘V’hatzofeh ki yir’eh es hacherev ba v’lo taka es hashofar v’ha’am lo nizhar v’tavo cherev v’tikach mei’hem nefesh… damo miyad hatzofeh edrosh [But a watcher who sees the sword coming and doesn’t blow the shofar and the people isn’t warned… I will demand his blood from the watcher].’ The watcher refers to Ronen Bar.

“Yirmiyahu Hanavi used the words ‘bushah v’chlimah [shame and disgrace],’ and I say to Ronen Bar: ‘bosh v’hikalem.’ His conduct is a shame and a disgrace. Shame, for what he did on the night of Simchas Torah, and disgrace, for his actions since then. Of people like it him it was written: ‘haratzachta v’gam yarashta [you murdered and then inherited].’ In my eyes, as a bereaved father, Ronen Bar has clung to the horns of the mizbeiach on which — because of his failure — my daughter Sivan was sacrificed, and I’m glad he’s going home. Better late than never.” —