This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s press conference on Tuesday evening featured many elements familiar from previous such appearances.

Even as he claimed central credit for the return of the final hostage Ran Gvili — the police officer who heroically went to war with a broken shoulder on October 7, 2023 and was killed defending Kibbutz Alumim, and whose body was located by the IDF in a Muslim cemetery in Gaza City on Monday — he characteristically refused to acknowledge any direct responsibility for the original sin, the failure to prevent Hamas’s invasion, massacre and mass abductions.

He hailed the fulfillment of one of the war’s prime and sacred goals, the return of all the hostages — saying repeatedly that, in the face of skepticism and defeatism, he always believed this was a mission possible — but made no mention of the 40-plus hostages who were killed in captivity, those whose return alive he proved unable to secure.

He batted aside concerns that Hamas-backing Qatar and Turkey are heading for influential roles in Gaza.

He derided the notion of establishing a state commission of inquiry into the disaster, instead promoting his planned politically appointed and mandated panel — “a real commission of inquiry,” he claimed, “that will reveal to you – to everyone – the truth of what really happened.”

He castigated the media for ostensibly peddling falsehoods about him.

He misrepresented legislation he is pushing through the Knesset as designed to ensure a massive increase in military conscription by ultra-Orthodox males, thereby meeting the IDF’s urgent manpower needs and reducing the intolerable strain on the army’s........

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