Hebrew → English transcript

The hero of the film Forrest Gump was present at the great events of history,

but he is always a passive observer,

someone who stumbled into the event by mistake and is not really connected to it.

The document of quotations

that Netanyahu published presents Benjamin Netanyahu as the Israeli Forrest Gump.

He is supposed to be a prime minister,

but in his own view he is a nebech, a poor,

helpless man who found himself in an event almost unrelated to him.

He is not a leader but led. He is not a commander but a subordinate.

Chiefs of Staff, Mossad heads, and Shin Bet heads over

the generations control this incapable man who is supposed to control the state.

Netanyahu set out to praise himself in the document, but ends up cursing.

The document he drafted and published is the harshest possible

indictment against a prime minister in Israel.

Here and there the man mumbles some statement for the record about how maybe we

should attack and maybe we should eliminate. But he does not do it.

He does not bring the IDF into line.

He does not shape or implement an activist policy. In the fifty- six pages of this

document we see a weak man, who let the Hezbollah monster grow before our eyes

in the north,

and the Hamas monster grow in the south to enormous proportions,

and he does nothing.

Netanyahu has criticism of the security establishment. I do too.

But when I was a minister in the cabinet during Operation Protective Edge,

and when I saw that the army was not aggressive enough, I acted, I pressed, I did.

I did not look for a political alibi, I changed the reality on the ground.

For twenty straight days I challenged and pushed the system. And I caused the

IDF to move to an offensive,

for the IDF to operate in the Strip and actually destroy thirty deadly

attack tunnels.

It is all written in the state comptroller’s investigative committee report on

Protective Edge.

Look, Netanyahu is not a minister in the cabinet.

He was the prime minister of Israel and the commander

in chief of the State of Israel for twelve and a half

out of the fourteen years that preceded the greatest disaster in Israel’s history.

But Netanyahu did nothing except build walls, fences, and concrete barriers here.

He became addicted to containment.

He became addicted to sending cash suitcases to Sinwar to buy momentary quiet.

It is called protection. Netanyahu eroded deterrence.

And he did not prepare the IDF for the day of reckoning.

His three most senior advisers

received a salary from the Qatari enemy during the war. But he did not

know anything.

Everyone attacks Netanyahu’s excuse document as selective and false,

and they are right.

But I actually suggest you all read it,

look at your children and read the document.

Because what emerges from it is that Netanyahu did not lead,

did not manage and did not govern. And what it

proves above all is that after thirty years of Netanyahu,

we must part from him with respect. This nation deserves a strong leader,

a true national leader.