“Technium” is a word I made up as to entitle books I wrote that no one read, so out with the old, in with the new. I may change it back, but for now Going Orthogonal is the name.
I mean the word “orthogonal” in the sense of independence. I disagree with everybody and I don’t want to argue about it.
In A Failure of Imagination, I rejected categorically the #BibiKnew smear. But something has occurred to me that I didn’t want to elaborate on. Now I’ll say it:
He knew that an attack was possible, he just didn’t think it would be this bad.
I honestly don’t think there’s any other conclusion.
Forget about the fact that he was warned, that Hamas rehearsed right in front of Israel’s nose, that he moved two divisions from the Gaza area to the West Bank. All true but at the end of the day: look at a fucking map. They had army bases in that area. There was a security fence. Why? Because of the probability of an attack—not the possibility, probability.
This was as far from a Black Swan event as you can get. It was a White Swan event.
Israel’s been though a lot of terrorist attacks. The aftereffect is a hardening of attitudes and a strengthening of the right sector—Netanyahu’s base. I absolutely do not put past him that he would think a small incursion that killed a few leftist hippies during this time of terrible division in Israel would be a winner.
Leaving that area virtually unguarded doesn’t make sense otherwise. It’s almost as if Israel’s security establishment said, “Here, Hamas, please come on, it’s on us.” Again—I don’t go that far, but Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard core settler fanatic base wouldn’t have been too ruffled about a Ma’alot in the Gaza area, especially if it killed a few hippie peacenik types.
And: Adults in that area being virtually unarmed was crazy. This is partly also the fault of the establishment—they have a duty to warn people. But not totally. The people themselves were fatally unconcerned. I’ve linked to a NY Post article about a peace activist who was killed. Sometimes the Post allows comments. A commenter compared this unconcern to Timothy Treadwell, the guy who lived with grizzly bears until he ended up in a bear’s stomach. (I’ve linked to the article below but they removed the comments so you’ll have to trust my memory.)
Everyone lulled themselves into a false sense of security, right to left, and look what happened.
Martin Van Creveld finally posted something. I was a bit disappointed in the quality. Well, he’s human. I think he’s still in a state of shock, sick, anxious, fears the worst, and doesn’t think it helps matters any to say to in public.
I wonder the same myself. I wonder what good saying any of this does. Truth is like medicine: you have to give it in the right doses at the right time, otherwise the patient dies. But here I am.
Benny Morris wrote one of the core texts about the birth of the Palestinian refugee issue. He wrote it in the spirit of peacemaking. He thought that if he could demonstrate his good faith the other side would reciprocate. When they did not, he expressed chagrin. He revisited and somewhat revised his first book. Too late, the damage was done. He then wrote a book about the ethnic cleansing of Turkey, as if somehow that would change the left’s opinion about Israel. It did not. No one gives a shit.
Then he did another pivot and began calling Israel an apartheid state.
I honestly do not understand these people.
Maybe he forgot Israel is at war, 365 days a year, 24/7. As Churchill said, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
Personally, I dislike lies. I guess that means I could never be a great wartime leader.
But you don’t have to tell the world every bad thing you’ve done with a megaphone. The truth comes out when it comes out.
Israelis don’t do that. They just love to scream out to the world theatrically what a bunch of shits they’ve been. There’s even a veteran group that gets money for doing this, Breaking The Silence.
I looked on their website and found this. Pardon me, I laughed:
The Medal of Honor is a sacred decoration in the US. Only the best of the best get it.
The Medal is authorized for any military service member who “distinguishes himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” 1
You earn the Medal of Honor for the following:
While engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States;
While engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force; or
While serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party."
On December 29, 1890, in what’s now North Dakota, something happened which you can either call the Wounded Knee Massacre or the Pine Ridge Campaign, depending on your perspective. But there’s zero question that dozens of noncombatants, many of them women and children, were killed while fleeing. Indian lives didn’t matter then.
The US still has a website dedicated to Medal of Honor winners of the Indian War Campaigns. Included in that roll is Wounded Knee. Twenty of them. Now and again there are calls to revoke the medals and take down the Indian War Campaigns site. This is the United States of America we’re talking about. We’re not about to fall apart because of a bunch of hard-leftists screeching about “Turtle Island.”2
Compare and contrast this to Israel, with its never-ending confessions of sin.
The vast majority of anti-Zionist propaganda comes straight from Haaretz, or B’Tselem, or Breaking the Silence, or… guys like Benny Morris. And Morris is actually quite moderate in comparison to many of the Israeli anti-Zionist historians and activists.
So what am I saying? That Morris should have lied, that Breaking the Silence shouldn’t exist? No. They’re telling the truth, or part of it.
I am simply saying that there’s a choice.
Be a Benny Morris, or a Breaking The Silence veteran but accept the consequences. Self-flagellate while living next door to millions of people who are absolutely convinced of their righteousness, and who hate your very presence and bring on demoralization and collapse.
Or be a tight-lipped, stoic garrison state and don’t expect the world to love you.
You can’t have both.
As for the notion that the Breaking The Silence guys help Israel—they’re trying to stop their country from doing things that are ruinous and self-defeating, I don’t agree. All they do is disgust the perplexed, skeptical middle and whip up the opposition into even more irrational behavior. Run for office if you think that the situation is so bad. They never do that. Their whole shtick is photo ops and American campus tours. They’re exhibitionistic prima donnas. I believe the word nowadays is “performative.” They perform opposition. They accomplish zilch.
Morris wrote an article, “What Comes Next for Israel?” in which he lays out the grim scenario, concluding that everything “bodes ill for Israel.”
He didn’t mention a third factor: the masses of Muslim immigrants that have sunk roots in Europe in numbers every Western government must take into account.
All of these governments publicly backed Israel in the wake of the massacre, and surprisingly, have not rescinded their support despite massive demonstrations in support of Hamas. But that’s now. These governments are unpopular for reasons that have nothing to do with Israel and would need only a good shove to be displaced. What then?
I see horrors ahead. What good does it do to say that? I ask myself. I don’t know.
LINKS:
Hamas practiced in plain sight
Two Battalions to the West Bank
Cellist who lived through Ma’alot massacre. I’m putting this here as a placeholder. It’s full of Israeli leftist illusions but I can’t deal with that now.
This is War! Martin Van Creveld
New Historians and the Defection of Benny Morris | Micah Ben David Naziri | The Blogs (timesofisrael.com) [Note: the author is one of the many self-promoting nuts who’ve found sinecures working for Israel’s English-language press, which is read by very few Israelis, but the article is an excellent delineation of the “New Historians” and their fractures.]
Benny Morris - Righteous Victims (revisited) - I really don’t know how this differs from the 1st version.
Benny Morris on the ethnic cleansing of Turkey
Benny Morris signs letter calling Israel an apartheid state (Note: his name is missing from the October 7 letter the same organization put out, text link here. Maybe he’s made another pivot. We should call him “Gyroscope” Morris.)
What Comes Next For Israel? (quillette.com)
Wounded Knee Massacre or Pine Ridge Campaign?
Wounded Knee Massacre ‘Tarnishes’ Integrity of Medal of Honor
Indian War Campaigns Medal of Honor recipients
List of Medal of Honor recipients for the Wounded Knee Massacre | Military Wiki | Fandom
Yes, they still use the male pronoun. Only one woman, a civilian surgeon during the Civil War, has ever won it.
Googling “Turtle Island” is an indication as to how crappy that search engine has become. It takes maybe half a brain cell to figure out that pre-Columbian people (why do we still call them that?) had no idea what the land mass of what would become North America looked like.
Another very fine piece.
Diana, I simply cannot bring myself to write three coherent sentences. I've tried but for now, I've given up.
I'm trying to gather as much info as I can from my former buddies in the IAF (Air Force) Not sure how much they'll be able to reveal
Keep writing. I still can't
Btw I've blocked Glen Greenwald and a few other "notables" who keep offering unwanted advice to the IDF as to how Israel should defend itself while labeling Israel "genocidal". The Libertarians have gone off the deep end