When Hamas’ barbaric execution of six Israeli hostages was announced on the news, it sent immediate shock waves throughout Israel. It evoked the deepest of Jewish traumas—that of helplessness. After the shock came the rage. But the targets of that rage were not the same for everyone. The Israeli X feed was neatly divided. The right-wing feed was outraged at Hamas. The left-wing feed was outraged at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

I browsed left-wing tweets throughout that first day and astonishingly, the overwhelming majority did not even contain the word “Hamas.” If you had only those tweets to go by, you might have reached the conclusion that Netanyahu murdered the hostages and that Hamas had nothing to do with it.

Here’s a tiny sample:

“Sorry Hersh,” tweeted Haaretz journalist Chaim Levinson. “Sorry that we failed to convince the narcissistic psychopath that leads us that your life is worth something.”

A guy named Yossi Zabari tweeted, “Every citizen in the world needs to recite [these] words this morning: Netanyahu is a murderer.”

“The government of destruction … has decided to pass a death sentence on the hostages,” wrote Knesset member Yair Golan, the current head of the Labor Party’s new incarnation (now known as the Democrats).

Opposition head Yair Lapid tweeted, “Instead of doing everything to bring them back home Netanyahu is doing everything to remain in power.”

Here’s one of a handful that did mention Hamas, albeit in passing. This is the former head of the Labor Party, Shelly Yachimovich:

“Hersh, Eden, Uri, Carmel, Almog and Alex were murdered by Hamas, but the blood is on Netanyahu’s hands. He erased all the sacred values that made the Zionist enterprise worthwhile and just. We are trapped in the clutches of a heartless distorted man, who lives in his own skull without a lobe of empathy [sic], despising the lives of others. They could have been here. May their memory be blessed.”

And so it went, on and on.

Right-leaning tweets were very different. Apart from directing their anger at Hamas, posters made many suggestions on how to hold it accountable, how to retaliate and how to deter Hamas from ever raising a hand on a hostage again. Suggestion ranged from the impossible to the sensible to the mild.

One X user said Israel should start executing scores of terrorists held in its jails, and especially those that Hamas wants to free in a ceasefire deal. Others said it was high time that Israel enact capital punishment for terrorists. Still others said that no “humanitarian aid” should enter Gaza until the hostages are in our hands. This last idea felt especially poignant since one of the murdered hostages, 24-year-old Eden Yerushalmi, was starved by Hamas. Her body weighed 79 pounds when it was found.

There were some X users with creative ideas. Law professor Eugene Kontorovich suggested to the Biden administration a formula to get the hostages back and end the war very quickly: “For every day Hamas does not give up the hostages, America will recognize 100 square dunams [roughly 25 acres] of Gaza as a permanent Israeli buffer zone. For every murdered hostage, 1,000 square dunams [250 acres],” he wrote, adding that the war “would be over in days.”

The idea was picked up by Ben Shapiro in his show on The Daily Wire, but to no one’s surprise not by the Biden administration. Nor by Israel’s left-wing feed.

Why not? The left feed has been insisting that the hostage issue ought to be at the top of our agenda, overriding all other issues. And so it begs the question—why are these same people so consistently uninterested in any idea designed to pressure Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to give the hostages up? Why, if the safe return of the hostages is their all-consuming concern, are they not searching for ways to deter Hamas from hurting hostages again?

The answer is, I think, obvious: The hostages are an excuse. The protesters’ real interest is toppling Netanyahu’s coalition, which is why that is all their tweets talk about. And what is more chilling, they continue their war on the coalition even when it is clearly at the expense of the hostages, as many of them no doubt understand. One must be very naïve not to see that demonstrating for concessions from our own government in response to the execution of hostages only tells Sinwar that this atrocious strategy is working. Why would that cold-blooded terrorist not do it again and wait for the protesters to do his work for him?

To those still unable to see that the demonstrators and their accomplices in the press are Sinwar’s useful idiots, fulfilling his plan to pit us against each other and weaken our position, Netanyahu’s September 2 press conference offered some help. Netanyahu presented a translation of an Arabic, hand-written note found in a tunnel earlier in the war. The note laid out Hamas’ strategy to manipulate Israelis into fighting each other instead of uniting against Hamas.

The note contained these bullet points:

• Increase the dissemination of pictures and videos of the hostages because of the psychological pressure they create.
• Do everything to increase the psychological pressure on [Defense Minister] Gallant.
• Continue the line [of argument] that Netanyahu is responsible for what has happened.
• Sabotage the narrative that a ground operation serves the returning of the hostages.

Every Israeli watching the premier’s presentation must have had the same thought: Aren’t Hamas and the “Never-Bibi” demonstrators literally working from the same operating manual? Aren’t the demonstrators playing the part Sinwar has written for them?

All this has become even more obvious now that a detailed document on Hamas’ strategic planning has surfaced in the German Bild newspaper. The plan specifies that blame for the failure of any deal should be shifted to Israel, and that Hamas should “continue to exert psychological pressure through the hostages’ families—so as to increase through them the public pressure on the enemy government.”

The mainstream media, itself a major player in the Never-Bibi info op, was not eager to emphasize the way the demonstrators are following Sinwar’s playbook. Predictably, the usual suspects rushed to blame Netanyahu for everything, as they always do. Prominent columnists such as Haaretz’s Yossi Verter, Maariv’s Ben Caspit, Yedioth Ahronoth’s Nadav Eyal, Channel 12’s Amnon Abramowitz and Channel 13’s Raviv Druker unfurled the party line: It’s all on Netanyahu. Netanyahu has deliberately thrown in new demands (this time it was the Philadelphi Corridor, we were told) because staying in power is more important to him than saving the hostages.

Since this is what the Israeli media keeps repeating in both Hebrew and English, much of the foreign press assumes it’s true, and that Israelis generally believe it to be true.

But, alas, that’s wrong on both counts. Netanyahu could not have saved the hostages by giving up the Philadelphi Corridor even if he was so inclined. The corridor was never the only bone of contention. Giving it up (which Israel should not do) would not have brought about a deal.

As Khalil al-Hayya, Sinwar’s deputy for negotiations, recently reiterated, Hamas’ demands for a deal have not changed. They are tantamount to an Israeli surrender:

1. A permanent ceasefire.
2. A complete withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from all of the Gaza Strip, including the security parameter along the border, the Philadelphi Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor (which cuts the north of the strip from the south just below Gaza city).
3. Rebuilding the whole of Gaza.
4. An exchange of 50 terrorists for every female IDF soldier and 30 for every civilian in the first stage, then 500 terrorists for every male soldier in the second.

These terms will eliminate all Israel’s gains in this war and ensure that Hamas remains in power, able to rebuild its military capabilities with Iran’s help, and its front-line cadres fresh from Israel’s jails (where courtesy of our Supreme Court they get a well-balanced diet, diverse and certain to include enough fresh fruit). No prime minister of Israel can accept these terms because Israel’s public won’t.

The media has been trumpeting polls saying most Israelis support a hostage deal. This is a crucial part of the narrative. But then, these polls do not specify what deal, or else present a deal that would never be accepted by Hamas. Of course, most Israelis want some deal—but not the one Hamas is offering.

One Telegram channel owner got tired of the media’s game. That person is, most probably, a former intelligence officer. He calls his channel, tongue in cheek, Abu Ali Express. But he is a serious professional and a reliable source of news from the Arab world, one many in Israel rely on. Over 400,000 Hebrew speakers subscribe to this channel. Abu Ali decided to run an opinion poll of his own. He first presented the Hamas terms for a deal, then asked his followers if they would have accepted it. 51,000 users responded in the space of two hours. Eighty-one percent said they would not accept such a deal, 10% said they would, 9% said they don’t know. Granted, this is not a representative sample, nor a proper survey. Still, it is indicative of something. And it gives you an idea about how the mainstream media is misleading you.

This public mood was also demonstrated by the collapse of last week’s (illegal) attempt at a general strike. The Histadrut (the umbrella organization of Israeli labor unions) declared it—under pressure from demonstration organizers insisting they are the sole legitimate representatives of the families of hostages—only to fold it all at 2 p.m. the next day following a labor court ruling. The Never-Bibi activists found they don’t really have enough troops.

Still, in the immediate aftermath of the shocking news of the executions the protests drew more people than usual. Predictably, the media inflated the numbers. And then, mistaking the press coverage for reality, the Biden administration seems to have felt that perhaps the wave of anger that will topple Netanyahu has finally arrived. The president therefore chipped in, reversing earlier statements that put the blame on Hamas. He did it with a single word. Asked whether he thought Netanyahu was doing enough to conclude a hostage deal, the president simply said “no.” But that too had little impact.

It now seems that the protesters’ attempt to harness the tragedy of the six hostages for their permanent political project may have just backfired. More people now see them more clearly as Sinwar’s useful idiots.

But the wrong turn the permanent anti-Netanyahu protesters took long preceded these recent events. It began soon after the war broke out. From the start, their arguments, focused as they were on Netanyahu’s responsibility for October 7, were not only controversial but also in the wrong conversation. For most Israelis, the question now is not who is responsible for the disaster, but who can lead us to victory. And the answer to that question cannot possibly be a Chamberlain in the guise of Benny Gantz, Yoav Gallant or Yair Lapid, all of whom are willing to cave in to Hamas’ demands and leave it on its feet at the end of this war.

Netanyahu owes his recovery in the polls to one thing above all. He never wavered on this one issue: The Gaza campaign must end with the clear defeat of Hamas. Nothing less. In this, he represents the majority in Israel. And it is that majority that has—and will—sustain him so long as he stays on this course.

Gadi Taub is a senior lecturer at Hebrew University’s Federmann School of Public Policy.