Israel's Madness
A wise rabbi had once said that even if all the water in the world was turned into ink, and all the trees were turned into pens, it would not be enough to document the daily madness that occurs in Israel.
Time and again, Israel does the same thing and expects different results. We don’t finish wars then pretend to be shocked when there’s no peace. It should be obvious to everyone by now that peace is the result of finishing wars rather than stopping them but somehow it isn’t.
Or maybe Israelis doesn’t expect anything at all in this point?
Maybe we’ve lost the ability to dream and just keep going through the motions like the immune system of a braindead patient. “Mowing the grass,” some politician called it. I could look up his name but towards what purpose? They’re all the same.
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of endless wars and I’m tired of peace processes that end up being bloodier than the wars they’re supposed to prevent. I’m tired of my brothers and sisters dying in yet another “round” and I’m tired of hearing about “the victims of peace” on the news.
I want peace. Real peace. The kind where the only reason people serve in the military is because they’re too stupid to get a better job.
This isn’t fantasy, it’s possible. It happened. In fact, for most of history, this was the default. Nations fought until one side either surrendered or was destroyed. Often, this led to a population exchange that removed the cause for violence, such as in the case of Greece and Turkey. It’s not nice, but hey, it’s better than genocide, right?
It is a testament to the perversity of our time that the historical default sounds like a fantasy to us now. Tell this to 100 Israelis and 90 of them will tell you, “you can’t do that,” without offering any kind of rational explanation.
You can’t do it because you can’t do it.
Herzl wrote, “If you will it, it is no dream.” Less than 50 years after, there was a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.
We need to go back to this mode of thinking.
Now, let me pull the rug from under you. The reason Israel never ends wars is not because “the world won’t let it.”
If you paid attention in Bible class, surely you remember even Joshua son of Nun didn’t destroy the enemy as commanded by God. He literally had the mandate of heaven, he was a dictator who didn’t need to worry about public opinion, the UN, Biden, Trump, or the ICC, yet he didn’t finish the job.
Even our mythology acknowledges we have a flaw in our character. Can’t blame the world for that. This is what losers do. Winners look within.
Let’s look within.
In many ways Bibi is the ultimate Israeli. They say every nation has the leader it deserves and Bibi seems to be the very embodiment of the Israeli soul. Truth be told, you could do worse than this government, but I’m not here to make you feel good.
That’s what my Twitter is for.
Bibi is a brilliant manager but a terrible leader. He’s a master of neither winning nor losing wars.
The reason he always manages to snatch defeat from the Jews of victory is that he has no vision whatsoever. The only thing he’s fighting for is to restore the status quo.
However, the status quo sucks. It has always sucked.
At best, what Israel can achieve under his leadership is going back to the old suck which lead to the current suck. His goal is to prevent the Arabs from destroying Israel, but the idea of making them stop trying to destroy Israel is alien to his mode of thinking.
After all, this is the status quo.
It’s easy to blame his lack of leadership for this state of affairs, but in truth, he’s just a mirror of Israeli society. Ask a 100 Israelis what should be done about an issue and you’ll get 110 replies. How can we expect our government to be decisive if we don’t know what we want? How can we have effective propaganda if we don’t know what point we’re trying to make?
If the Arabs were less belligerent they could ask us in good faith, “what do you want from us?” and we’d have no answer. In fact, do you have an answer? An actual answer and not just, “please stop trying to kill us?”
To the Arabs, we must appear like a nation that has gone insane.
We devastate their cities, yet send them trucks full of candies. We conquer their territory, then retreat for no apparent reason. We are shooting and crying and crying and shooting.
So we end up having “rounds” and dealing “painful blows” to the enemy. We pull out brilliant operations, we assassinate their leaders in the most creative ways, we degrade their abilities, we destroy their weapons, we flatten their cities, we invent amazing new defensive technology.
However, in the end of the day, even a boy with a knife can kill a soldier.
No matter how much you “mow the grass” there will always be boys with knives.
Why does a nation with the most advanced military on the planet can’t handle a bunch of bronze age barbarians? Why can Israel rescue 100 people thousands of miles away, make pagers explode, but can’t handle a bunch of angry baboons with sharp rocks?
The first problem is Israeli arrogance.
Even after 1973, even after October 7, Israelis refuse to see the Arabs as an existential threat.
Allow me to illustrate: if you have a minor problem like a squeaky chair, you can wait for weeks or even years before you take care of it. However, if your kitchen is on fire, you must deal with this instantly. It’s a matter of life and death, not just comfort. It’s not something you can compromise on. Either your home is on fire, or it isn’t. It can’t be a little on fire.
Israelis treat Gaza like a squeaky chair, not like a burning house. They do not see it as an existential threat, merely a nuisance. Otherwise, they would not have accepted (even supported!) a Hamas statelet existing at their side, but demanded its destruction, just like they wouldn’t have accepted a fire inside their home but demanded it was put out.
The same goes for Lebanon and Iran. No matter how many speeches Israel makes at the UN, both are treated as a nuisance, not a mortal danger.
Every Israeli war can be compared to putting out 99% of the fire and then waiting for the fire to spread again before starting to put it out. Oh, and occasionally throwing some twigs to the poor little flame because it wouldn’t be fair otherwise.
The second problem is that we’ve forgotten what victory is.
The winner in a war is not whoever inflicted more damage on the enemy, but whoever managed to impose his will on the enemy. Germany inflicted a lot more damage on the Soviet Union than the other way around yet everyone agrees the Russians won the war. America killed millions of Vietnamese while losing tens of thousands itself yet no one claims America won the Vietnam war.
The enemy understands this better than most. Islamists don’t win by killing their enemy. They win by making their enemy tired of killing them.
Because we’ve forgotten what victory is, we accepted the woke mind virus demand that wars be fought with one hand tied behind our back to minimize harm to the enemy. After all, if you don’t know what you’re fighting for, you might as well cause as little damage as possible.
It’s the decent thing to do, isn’t it?
As a result, no war ever ends in victory, only “mowing the grass” and “painful blows.” There is no chance for peace, only endless rounds of war with increasingly confusing rules of engagement that fail to either usher in victory or minimize casualties.
This ends up killing more people than a war fought with no rules except “win as quickly as possible.” If in the past killing was the method by which peace was achieved, today peace is the method by which killing is achieved.
Wars have no real goal except to kill people, but never enough to actually end the killing.
This is pure insanity. This is Israel’s madness.
I am tired of this crap.
I want the same kind of peace my grandfathers had won in Europe and East Asia. They went to war, they won, and they had peace for the rest of their lives. They never wore uniform again. They had real peace, not a piece of paper.
If you will it, it is not a dream.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider dropping a tip down my digital jar.
This article cuts through the noise and goes straight to the heart of the matter. This line particularly captures the thesis in a clever and poignant way:
"If in the past killing was the method by which peace was achieved, today peace is the method by which killing is achieved."
I also liked the play on words, "snatching defeat from the Jews of victory."
I wouldn't completely dismiss international pressure, especially U.S. pressure. I think that does impede Israel's ability to win because Israel relies (too much) on U.S. military aid. But I think two things can be true at once, and it's true that ripping off the bandaid quickly is what we needed to do from the beginning. I thought then and I still think now that if Israel had invaded Gaza after Oct. 7 and completely taken over, establishing military rule while uprooting Hamas, the war would have ended quickly and decisively with fewer deaths.
I don’t understand how you can win and forever have peace when you are a tiny country surrounded by enemies sworn to kill you wherever you are, wherever you go and you need the help of a powerful other country to help end this war. To “ make them not want to kill uou,” you must completely destroy them. Besides that you must destroy any people among them who might think as you do. It is hard enough to win when you are a big, powerful country since you have enemies everywhere and every choice you make has unforeseen consequences.