Blood for Immunity: How Netanyahu Is Holding Our National Grief Hostage

To the horror of many, it appears that Benjamin Netanyahu is utilizing the catastrophe of October 7th as leverage to extricate himself from his personal legal entanglements.

While I personally do not believe the criminal cases against him are particularly ironclad, and the trial itself is of little interest to me, something far darker is at play here.

The debacle of October 7th was not merely a military and diplomatic failure cultivated over Netanyahu's fifteen years in power; it was a profound systemic collapse. In the terrifying weeks following the massacre, the state was virtually absent. It was the citizens who stepped into the void, holding up essential systems and rehabilitating national function while the government remained paralyzed.

In the wake of such a breakdown, there is a clear, absolute public imperative to establish a State Commission of Inquiry. However, Netanyahu is weaponizing this necessity. He is signaling a chilling ultimatum: there will be no investigation exposing the depth of the failure so long as his criminal trial continues. This is akin to a criminal claiming he will reveal the location of a ticking bomb only if his sentence is commuted.

Netanyahu is effectively holding the truth about October 7th as a hostage. The implicit message is clear: if the public wishes to understand how this nightmare happened, it must first surrender the legal proceedings against him. National responsibility has been debased into currency for personal trade.

But the extortion does not end there. Netanyahu is employing a similar tactic regarding the investigations currently facing the Military Advocate General (the Patzarit) and the Attorney General.

He is rolling out an implied offer: he will ease the political pressure and pending investigations on these legal gatekeepers if they, in turn, provide leniency in his own cases.

This creates a system of mutual pressure, a "balance of terror", that conflates command responsibility, legal liability, and political survival needs.

It is a toxic mix that endangers whatever remains of public trust in state institutions.

Tragically, a public that has undergone years of extreme polarization fails to see the reality: the "mafia" exists on both sides. Both camps (The Likud, and the judiciary) are controlled by corrupt elements willing to sacrifice the rule of law, the public interest, and national security, and who actually are staging this beef for years now, all while maintaining an artificial balance of power.

We are trapped in false dichotomies created over the last decades. The incited mobs on both sides refuse to believe that "their team" is guilty. Alternatively, they admit their side is flawed but simply do not care, reasoning that the other side is worse. These delusions allow the elites on both sides to trample the citizens and suppress the truth.

The fact that there are those willing to accept such a mechanism indicates a profound crisis of values.

It is clear today to everyone that the "Judicial Reform" was merely a gun placed on the table by Netanyahu, a plastic toy gun, empty of bullets, meant only to threaten. Just as it has always been clear to me that the slogans regarding the "Rule of Law" chanted by the legal elite, an elite that grew and thrived under the auspices of the Likud, are equally hollow.

We must take this moment of public extortion, which both the State Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General seem all too ready to entertain, and flip the script.

We must use this crisis to generate a total revolution in the country’s legal order.

We must reject the deal. It is better to endure a short period of political discomfort than to allow a precedent where a national disaster is used as an escape hatch from public and criminal responsibility. Trading the investigation of the truth for one man's personal survival is a fatal blow to the justice system, national leadership, and public trust.

The conclusion must be uncompromising:

The justice system requires radical reform, we must not waive this demand.

Benjamin Netanyahu must stand and face justice, we must not waive this demand.

If state institutions surrender to this mechanism of bidirectional extortion, we will face a total collapse of legitimacy. In such a scenario, a moral ground for civil disobedience will be established, strictly in accordance with the tradition of political thought outlined by John Locke. When the sovereign breaks the social contract to protect himself and the elites at the expense of the people, obedience is no longer a duty, it is a choice.