Abdel Raouf Arnaout<\/p>\n
21 April 2026\u2022Update: 21 April 2026<\/p>\n
Three former Israeli senior officials sharply criticized the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, saying it has \u201chijacked\u201d the country and failed in its war against Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the eve of the 78th anniversary of Israel\u2019s independence (according to the Hebrew calendar), we are forced to say with bitterness: Israel has been hijacked by a regime that views the state\u2019s resources as its own private property,\u201d former army chiefs of staff Dan Halutz and Moshe Yaalon wrote in an article in the Haaretz newspaper.<\/p>\n
They described the government as \u201ccompletely detached from the reality of its citizens, acting as if the country were the personal property of Netanyahu, his wife (Sara), and Miri Regev (transport minister).\u201d<\/p>\n
Referring to expected general elections in October, they added, \u201cWe call on the public to take back control of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yaalon, in addition to serving as chief of staff, previously held the post of defense minister.<\/p>\n
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote in a separate article in Haaretz that \u201cthe enemies suffered painful blows, which weakened them all.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, however, that \u201cnone of the war\u2019s objectives were achieved. Hamas is still in Gaza, and Hezbollah remains in Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe regime in Tehran survived the joint Israeli-U.S. attack, and the nuclear and ballistic missile threats were not eliminated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Barak described it as \u201ca severe strategic and political failure when looking at the balance of power, as Israel and the United States were supposed to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said Israel has become \u201ca state subordinate to the United States, which imposed decisive operational and diplomatic decisions on it through harsh \u2014 and sometimes humiliating \u2014 directives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel has carried out multiple military campaigns in the region. Since March 2, its attacks on Lebanon have killed 2,294 people, wounded 7,544 and displaced more than 1 million, before US President Donald Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire last Thursday.<\/p>\n
Israel also launched a war on Iran, alongside the United States, on Feb. 28 that killed more than 3,000 people, before Washington and Tehran announced a two-week truce on April 8 with mediation by Pakistan, in hopes of reaching a deal to end that war.<\/p>\n
*Writing by Mohammad Sio in Istanbul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Abdel Raouf Arnaout 21 April 2026\u2022Update: 21 April 2026 Three former Israeli senior officials sharply criticized the government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":{"0":"post-403624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-sitekeywords"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}