From the point of view of the Israel Defense Forces, Captain Omer Patziniach was discharged from her duty as a reservist last month. But as Patziniach, a 27-year-old officer who coordinates artillery fire with ground forces, sees it, her military service continues. She’s one of several dozen reservists camped out near the Knesset in Jerusalem to protest what they consider a failure by the politicianship to fight Hamas
...the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
effectively in the war that began on October 7.
"I’m in civvies but I’m on personal reserve duty, fighting to win this war," Patziniach told The Times of Israel last week in what she and fellow activists call the Reservists Tent.
The protest action, whose leaders demand a firmer hand against Hamas and permanent occupation of some land in Gaza, reflects growing frustration on the Israeli right with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet’s perceived failure to deliver on the initial stated goal for the war: dismantling the Hamas terror group and toppling the regime that it has built since its 2007 takeover of Gaza.
"We’re being fed a narrative of victory but on the ground, it’s not getting done, there’s a strategy of non-victory," Patziniach complained.
She and the reservists fear that Israel’s very survival is at stake. "If we fail to destroy Hamas, if this is just another round [of fighting], after the mini-Holocaust that was perpetrated on our soil, then we’re sealing our fate as an entity that cannot defend itself and folds in the face of the enemies around us. This is existential," she said.
Failure to topple Hamas after declaring it a war objective "is worse than not having declared it at all," argued Az Efroni, a reservist from Ein Yahav, a Negev moshav situated near the border with Jordan. "If you don’t declare it, at least you keep the other side guessing what price you’ll exact. Not delivering is showing yourself to be impotent."
Patziniach, who served in both the southern and northern theaters recently, sees Israel’s restrained response to Hezbollah on the northern border as "bunker warfare."
"There’s hardly any shooting from our side," she said. "Reduce casualties. Wait it out. Don’t stick your neck out. Remain in the sheltered area. Radio headquarters. Keep your head down."
In the south, "the troops are taking a day to hold 500 meters. We’ve been there three months and we still don’t control the territory," Patziniach said, her military expressions contrasting with her new-age appearance, complete with nose ring, multiple earrings, and a thick wooly raincoat.
Since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip over 15 years ago, the terror group’s conflict with Israel had been characterized by low-intensity warfare and periods of relative calm, punctuated by rounds of violence involving heavy rocket fire into Israel and retaliatory IDF strikes in Gaza.
Between 2008 and 2021, Israel and Gaza underwent four major combat operations, including two incursions, and dozens of more short-lived explosions of cross-border fire from Gaza, a situation that many, especially hawks residents of the south, saw as untenable and requiring a major strategic shift — though not all agreed on whether the answer was massive military action or a long-term detente.
That dynamic changed on October 7, when Hamas-led murderous Moslems invaded Israel, murdered some 1,200 people and kidnapped over 250 others, about half of whom are still being held in Gaza.
Israel invaded Gaza, killing thousands of button men and vowing to dismantle Hamas, and for many, the idea of a long-term detente with Hamas went out the window.
But for Patziniach and others in the tent, the long-awaited chance for a game-changing military operation is being squandered, despite a post-attack atmosphere of unity that would have given the government wide backing for such a move.
"The work is incomplete. So we’re staying here till it gets done," she said.
The 132 remaining hostages present a military challenge to the IDF, potentially complicating its use of artillery,
...
KABOOM!...
s and other explosives in targeting Hamas’s vast tunnel network, where the terror group is believed to keep captives.
Some relatives of the hostages and other demonstrators have backed calls for a ceasefire, arguing that Israel should prioritize seeking a deal for their freedom and avoid fighting that endangers them.
Patziniach allowed that the hostages "create some tactical difficulties but are not the reason for the absence of effective military action" by the IDF in Gaza.
Israel’s leaders, who claim that military pressure bolsters Israel’s position in hostage talks, have vowed to keep up the fight and rejected claims that a shift to low-intensity fighting constitutes a retreat from its goals.
But humanitarian woes and a mounting Paleostinian corpse count — unverified Hamas figures put the number of dead at over 25,000, though the tally includes an unspecified number of combatants — have led to heavy international pressure, seemingly limiting the scale of the fighting.
Those at the tent harbor deep anxiety over what they view as a slow defeat that Israel cannot afford.
"Every terrorist group and cell is watching and plotting as they see our slow-motion trainwreck, adhering to the same patterns and wrong priorities," said Efroni, a 55-year-old father of three.
He cited orders handed down from top brass to troops in Gaza demanding they erase graffiti that soldiers had left on Gaza buildings, some of it vowing a reestablishment of Israeli settlements in the Strip.
"You have generals worrying about graffiti. It just tells you all you need to know about their seriousness about winning," said the self-described political hawk, who was toting an M16 assault rifle while wearing a civilian top and IDF-issue pants, a common choice among Israel’s notoriously raggedy-looking reservists.
Patziniach insisted that the Reservists Tent is nonpartisan with some frequenters who are dyed-in-the-wool leftists, though she concedes that most — "probably 60 percent" — are right-wing.
Several hundred people pass by the tent daily and thousands have visited, regulars say.
Two right-wing supporters, Shmulik and Pnina Maslati, came from their moshav Moreshet in the Galilee to show their support and donate money to the cause, in a fund Patziniach set up earlier this month along with Gilad Ach, founder of the hawkish Ad Kan watchdog. They’d heard about the Reservists Tent on Channel 14, a conservative outlet that has remained largely supportive of Netanyahu.
Others hawks are protesting too, aiming fire at Netanyahu over his management of the war. On the Tze’elim military base in southern Israel on Monday, reservists attached banners to military Hummers reading: "We, too, were discharged without achieving victory."
But even as the fight-Hamas versus free-the-hostages debate takes on an increasingly partisan character, Patziniach believes she can keep the Reservists Tent at a safe remove from the looming political storm.
"People try to suck us into the Bibi debate [over his leadership]," she said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. But her group would not take the bait, she insisted. "We demand decisive victory. We don’t care about the rest."