Bodyguard of Lies

The Bitter Medicine of Truth

I wrote this in response to an overture from Ehud Neor and put it in the draft folder because I wanted to wait for further information before making a fool of myself. I decided this morning that I’d make a fool of myself. I might be wrong. So what? I apologize for the repetitiveness but not for the anger.

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I hate writing this.

We are in a war, and in a war you watch your words. I prefer never to lie outright, but keeping your mouth shut is 100% kosher. There are many things I haven’t said and won’t say because it would do no good.

That said, there’s a bizarre story going around in Israel now. Briefly: a spy inserted himself into high-level security meetings while the massacre was ongoing and took sensitive info. This info was then used… well, I’m not exactly sure how, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself and for the full story, read Ehud Neor’s series, which describes the entire story in detail. The story is causing massive eruptions in Israel.

I put some skeptical comments on Ehud’s site in response to these posts and he kindly offered me the opportunity of cross-posting. That’s what this is.

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I first heard this story a month or two after October 7. It became yet another shocking datum in the surreal atmosphere following the debacle and was quickly swept away by the avalanche of events and emotions. We were fighting so many wars that this one weird thing fell to the wayside and I forgot about it until I read Ehud’s series.

My first reaction (then and now) was that the idea that someone with credentials and who looked the part of an Israeli military/security guy crashed meetings isn’t insane.

Why? Because I actually wandered into a supposedly secure room at the Kirya once in the 1980s. I was totally innocent of any malign intentions and when I realized what I did I hurriedly left the room — and the Kyria. (I couldn’t leave fast enough, in fact.) How did I do this? Israeli carelessness.

So, kernels of the story are plausible. Stranger things have happened, such as an American tourist wandering into a locked room in Israel’s central military HQ.

But this?

a certain Israeli individual, a reserve officer not called-up, donned his uniform and insinuated himself into the most sensitive command posts of the Southern Command, and weaseled his way into top-secret mission-critical staff meetings where plans were being made with verified intelligence for commando raids to rescue hostages. This individual, who cannot be named by court order, took extensive notes and recorded meetings and photographed top secret documents with his smartphone, and then proceeded to share this information with unauthorized recipients. Only a sharp-eyed female officer who refused to be brow-beaten by the imposter and insisted on verifying his credentials, brought to his immediate arrest. (emphasis added)

My BS detector began ticking wildly.

Let’s analyze what I bolded in order.

What meetings and when? Was he teleported into concurrent meetings?

To whom did he transmit this info? The Americans? Hamas? The Russians? The Iranians?

Let’s say he gave the info to the Americans. So what? Every minute of those security meetings was transmitted to the Americans by the people who were in them. Maybe the Americans were even on Zoom calls while the Israelis were monitoring the massacre on Telegram.¹ I think the US has better info than the Israelis on Gaza. I think that our satellites can detect when Sinwar is taking a dump. (Which opens up a whole other massive can of worms — what did the Americans know about the tunnels and when did we know it — but that’s another story for another day.)

He gave the info to Hamas. This is painful but I have to say this. I have heard that Israelis in positions of authority have been attempting to beg negotiate with Hamas behind Bibi’s back. Unfortunately I can’t dismiss this out of hand.

I hate when people compare this war to WW2, but I’m going to do it now. If anyone had been discovered negotiating with the Germans or the Japanese behind Roosevelt or Truman’s back, he would have been hung for treason. But the idea that members of Israel’s milsec establishment decided to do a little freelancing isn’t crazy. It’s a combination of Bibi-hate and something strange about Israelis that I don’t want to go into right now.

In the hours just past 6:30 AM the Israeli leadership was still sunk in the delusion that Hamas was an entity that could be, if not trusted, negotiated with rationally. Hamas wasn’t ISIS. They wanted to survive, make a living. Of course they would love it if Israel were to disappear but they were practical, hard-headed men who knew this wouldn’t happen.

And the people streaming through the Erez crossing and over the border? They were the shabaab. Not Hamas.²

In short: for hours following the breach, they conferred with the Americans about what to do with the shabaab, and communicated with Hamas about reigning in the rabble. The top-level of Israel’s military establishment didn’t know what was happening and reverted to a subordinate mode with respect to the US.

Interesting that the hero of this story is a heroine. The milsec establishment is sick with guilt over the fact that they were warned by female soldier-observers of the attack and they told the young women, “Don’t worry your pretty little heads about it. Go back to painting your nails and making TikTok videos.” I exaggerate only slightly.

And why is the story gaining traction now? Is something happening that the government of Israel wants to distract people from?

Further:

Let’s say there was a spy who came in from the where-ever, crashing meetings and photographing things with his special super-duper spy camera the size of a mosquito drone.

This doesn’t explain why Netanyahu didn’t immediately order 10 transport helicopters down to the Gaza district, full of infantrymen, to hunt down the scum, one by one.

This doesn’t explain why they were asking their colonial masters for permission to defend themselves, and conferring with their counterparts in the psycho death cult that they had convinced themselves were practical men.

They are ashamed of themselves, as they should be, and have made up a massive lie to cover up their outrageous dereliction of duty, a dereliction so mind-boggling that it defies description.

I’ve said this several times but I’ll say it again. If I called the NYPD and told them that a bunch of guys with automatic weapons wearing bandannas with Arabic writing was roaming around my neighborhood, I’d at least expect a couple of beat cops to respond.

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The only good reason to refrain from telling the truth is that truth is like medicine — the cure is in the dose and so is the poison. But now is the time to speak about this because they are trying to lie to you AGAIN.

This story about a spy who came in from the desert is nonsense on stilts.

As a commenter wrote in a post of mine, The Hostages:

I've been in the military, in 'Nam. We had helicopters in 1968. You could put about fifteen men, a squad, on a helicopter. The Hueys (1968 vintage) flew tops at about 175 mph. Todays Helos can fly much faster. Apache helicopters fly at about the same speed, but can travel about 1150 miles on a tank of fuel.

Why weren't fifty helos with infantry squads aboard at the site of the massacre within an hour of so. Attack helos can fly much faster. And we have VTOL aircraft that can go faster and land anywhere.³

This is something that has NEVER been satisfactorily explained as far as I know.

Why, why, why? Why weren't the military leaders who were napping/partying/sleeping, whatever, tried in military courts? Why weren't people fired. Vilified in the papers? I just don't understand.

I don't mean to get off topic, but I believe there are dozens of questions that must be answered and there seems to not be much interest in answering them. The government of Israel and its military... What the hell is wrong?

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I have another conjecture, even worse than everything I’ve said.

Maybe Tomer Bar gave an order and it was ignored. Didn’t the Kaplan Street Gang threaten insubordination? Because Tomer Bar spoke for… Bibi, the hated man, as bad as Hitler.

Didn’t Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel’s FBI, who OK’d the disastrous Shalit deal, urge reservists to disobey orders at an anti-Bibi demonstration?

Didn’t he say that they would be “heroic” to do so?⁴

I find timidity, confusion, and insubordination far more believable than A Spy Who Came In From the Desert.

Again, I hate writing this. But sorry not sorry, when I think of the little boy whose eyes were gouged out and the little girl whose hand was chopped off, I go into a rage beyond words. Their goddamned fucking reputations aren’t worth shit a toss to me.

I could go further but I won’t.

“What the hell is wrong?”

That’s another story for another day and for now I’ve spoken enough truth medicine.

The poison is in the dose.

1. I got the info that Israel’s mil-sec leaders were learning about the massacre from HAMAS’S TELEGRAM CHANNEL from an article by Ronen Bergman. I can’t find it now but I distinctly remember reading that. In other words, Israel’s leadership was so bereft of information that they were going anywhere to find out what was happening. Might they not have also been communicating with the Americans? Just asking.

2. Shabaab in this sense is not the Somali group, it’s the Arabic word meaning the guys from the street, the gang, the boys, the fellas.

3. The Israelis have a bunch of Black Hawks for just this purpose.

4. Diskin should have his Israeli citizenship revoked. I don’t care where he goes. Just leave Israel.