The Arrogance Of The Nimrods

Never Again?

“On the other hand, it’s possible that something far worse happened. Specifically, that the attack on Simchat Torah represented another chapter in Israel’s ongoing civil war.”

I’ve been loath to write this. It says a lot of terrible things about who runs Israel. I might end up deleting this. But I decided to put it up.

These are just my feelings. They are not facts.

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I want to talk about why October 7th happened.

But before I do please indulge two tangents: one about “Bibi” (I refer to him that way because his surname is so long) and one about the phrase “never again.”

As I was writing this, I got involved in an argument with a Nimrod about Bibi’s responsibility for October 7. In the wake of the atrocity I was in his corner—I mean, the Nimrod’s, not Bibi’s. I tweeted at least a dozen times that Bibi should resign. I still think he should have. The buck stops somewhere, etc. But he didn’t, so that’s that.

Life went on, and I learned a few things, among them, that Bibi Derangement Syndrome is real (BDS, for short, lol) and that it’s no different from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). Clinically the two DS’s are identical and the sufferers, Venn diagrammed would almost intersect.

He’s the reason why everything sucks. And even when He isn’t the reason, He’s the reason. He’s the reason when He’s in power. He’s the reason when He’s out of power. Everything He says or does is evil.

He’s literally Hitler! ¹

The fact that a majority of your fellow citizens vote for Him feeds into your arrogant rage, because it convinces you how much better You are than They—the Deplorables. The Bad People, as opposed to Us, the Good People. You never need to look within and make amends because it’s all His—Their—fault.

And: You never ever work with Him, even if it means that you’re screwing your own country.

It’s deranged.

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Tangent two. Baruch “HaSofer” Kogan writes a Substack entitled Postkahanism. He and I were mutuals on Twitter before his account was suspended.

Meir Kahane, for those of you who don’t know, was an American-born rabbi who advocated expelling Arabs from Israel. The situation of Arabs in Israel is massively sensitive and advocating this was and is a big no no. He was outlawed, shunned by all the good and right people, and his assassination at the hands of an Egyptian terrorist in Brooklyn was greeted with relief among all the good and right people in Israel.

I saw him speak in Arad in 1984 or 1985. I showed up with my fellow students to denounce him. I would still denounce him, but not with the same fervor.

Not since I read about the riots of 2021. You don’t know about this? I don’t blame you, neither did I until recently. There was a war between Israel and Hamas in May 2021, which set off rioting in Israel [emphasis added—this was written before October 7]:

The May 2021 Arab riots may be a historical turning point in the relations between Israeli Jews and the Arab minority. Throughout the country, thousands of Israel’s Arab citizens violently attacked Jewish institutions and property, symbols of Israeli sovereignty and Jewish civilians. This violent uprising happened as Israel fought an external war against the Hamas terrorist organisation in Gaza.

Some grim numbers:

In little more than a week in May 2021, Arab rioters set ablaze 10 synagogues and 112 Jewish residences, looted 386 Jewish homes and damaged another 673, and set 849 Jewish cars on fire. There were also 5,018 recorded instances of Jews being stoned. Three Jews were murdered and more than 600 were hurt. Over 300 police officers were injured in disturbances in over 90 locations across the country.

The violence in Acre (Akko) was particularly bad.

An Arab Israeli man was sentenced to 17 years behind bars on Monday for his role in the mob assault of a Jewish resident of Acre during the May 2021 riots that left the victim, Mor Ganashvili, with life-threatening and permanent injuries.

Ganashvili was beaten with iron bars and other blunt instruments that rendered him unconscious and left him with two brain hemorrhages and internal bleeding, among numerous other injuries.

Ganashvili, holding a large Israeli flag, expressed satisfaction with the sentence, “which conveys the message that Jewish blood isn’t cheap.”

Jesus. Sorry not sorry, but I think the sentence conveys the exact opposite message. But I’m a troglodyte American, what do I know?

This:

Avi Har-Even was hospitalized after suffering burns and smoke inhalation when an Arab mob torched the hotel he was staying at last month in the northern Israeli town of Acre.

He died.

The riots were put down but the rage smoldered on. Ten months later:

Almost a year after the May 2021 Arab riots Israeli-Arab terrorists radicalised by ISIS have murdered six Israeli citizens in two separate attacks in Beer Sheva and Hadera in one week. Last Tuesday, a Bedouin Israeli stabbed, rammed and murdered four Israeli citizens in Beer Sheva. Yesterday, two Arab citizens from Um al-Fahm opened fire on Border Police officers in Hadera. These attacks and the growing radicalization of Israel’s Arab population should come as no surprise to anyone who looks at May 2021’s Arab uprising.

These riots were related to the 2021 Israel/Hamas war.

This time the exchange led to riots in Arab-Jewish mixed cities inside Israel. Also significant was that Hamas’s ordinance reached deeper into Israel and in greater numbers, placing the population of relatively large Israeli metropolitan areas—notably Ashkelon and Ashdod—under greater and more frequent threat of rocket fire.²

This is the background for Kahanism. The taboo against facing the internal threat is massive, and it took an American blunderbuss to push against it. Even now, Israelis are desperate to avoid it.

It’s true that Hamas et al³ murdered and abducted a few Bedouin during their rampage and it’s also true that one or two Bedouin behaved admirably while the savages were marauding. But on the whole their communal life is based on opposition to the state.

Recently I’ve been reading the phrase “Never Again” a lot. I was curious to find out where it came from. Originally coined in a 1927 poem, it was displayed by the liberated survivors of Buchenwald. But it achieved popular, general currency because of a book—written by Meir Kahane.

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I credit Baruch for originating a crucial insight. It’s the type of insight that’s so key to understanding a problem that it creates an organizing principle and forces competing facts into focus. It explains why October 7th happened:

On the other hand, it’s possible that something far worse happened. Specifically, that the attack on Simchat Torah represented another chapter in Israel’s ongoing civil war.

As soon as I read that I let out a big sigh.

“Yes, exactly. This.”

It’s an insight that’s beyond the ken of your average Israeli Nimrod secular, which I just learned in an exchange on “Notes,” because Bibi Derangement Syndrome. The concept of “civil war” means that there are two sides with at least some legitimacy. To Nimrods, there’s no civil war: there’s a right side (theirs) and a wrong side (them).⁴

I’m not going to settle that issue here. Just for the sake of argument, let’s concede that the Nimrods are right about judicial reform and he’s wrong.

I don’t care—the way they framed their opposition is ruinous to Israel and unacceptable to any orderly society.

It is wrong to block highways.

It is wrong to mob public spaces.

It was wrong to wave Palestinian flags in Israel.

It is wrong to boast and brag that you’re the “best people” and anyone who disagrees with you is dirt.

It was wrong to entangle this with “LGBT rights.”

If you have a cause, fight like hell to achieve your goals, but do it legally. If you don’t want to be called a banana republic, stop acting like one.

This was not about judicial reform, and it wasn’t about replacing a Prime Minister in a legal, democratic way.

It was thuggish arm-flexing. It was hate in action.

I thought that from the start, but before I read Baruch’s posts I wasn’t aware as to how far up the food chain the organizers of these massive demonstrations were: they were stage-managed by the most elite echelons of Israel’s military-security establishment (or “siloviki” as he calls them), as Baruch describes in the link above, here, and here.

Last but not least, the organizers encouraged outright treason:

…. members of elite IDF units-special operations, intelligence and pilots-refusing to perform their reserve duty.

Don’t believe him?

Yuval Diskin, former head of Shabak (Israel’s FBI) said on 22 July 2023:

Ex-Shin Bet chief Diskin: Suspending voluntary reserve service now ‘is a heroic step’

Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin tells the Tel Aviv Kaplan Street rally that IDF reservists are “heroic” in declaring that they will not report for volunteer reserve duty.

“My brothers and sisters… who have saved our state on the battlefield from our enemies,” he says, “the battle today is for the nature of the state, against those who are seeking to destroy its foundations and its values.”

Diskin continues: “Suspending voluntary reserve service is certainly an irregular step — but it is a legal, democratic and non-violent step. And above ,all, it is a heroic step.”

Yep, a former head of Israel’s FBI addressed a crowd of insurrectionists and told them that it was OK for them to disobey orders. (As for “legal,” if a kid disobeys orders because he disagrees with occupation duties, he gets thrown in jail.)

This is the true heart of Nimrodism. Thick-headed arrogance. Pride in one’s arrogance. You can say anything. You can call the duly elected PM of your country Hitler. You can, while your country is being encircled by two psycho death cults, say that disobeying orders is “heroic.”

Anyone from a normal country would be aghast. But not in Israel, the country founded and dominated by Nimrods.

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The name Yuval Diskin cropped up in this article in Tablet Magazine about the relationship between Yahyah Sinwar and Israel. Giving Sinwar a life-saving brain tumor operation is enough to make me scream (they should have dumped his body in Ammann) but that’s another story for another time. What’s relevant is this:

Having spent hours listening to Sinwar, Bitton had vigorously opposed his release, he disclosed. “I knew he was trouble, and that he would create even more trouble for us outside,” he told me. But he, too, was overruled by higher authorities—in this case, the Shabak, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, then headed by Yuval Diskin. “I wasn’t the head of Shabak,” he said somewhat ruefully. “I was just the head of intelligence in a prison.

Many times on Twitter I called for Netanyahu’s resignation after October 8. I held him solely responsible for the debacle. I don’t apologize for that, but at that point I didn’t have all the facts about the civil war.

The truth is that by October 7, 2023, Bibi Netanyahu had lost control of his country. There was no one in control.

Circling back to Baruch’s insight, as he describes that awful day:

During the attack, the IDF remained paralyzed for half the day; no senior officer took command, no organized units launched counterattacks. The massacre took place 15 minutes’ flight away from Israel’s largest air bases, but survivors reported hearing no IAF planes or helicopters overhead for 6 hours. Battalion-sized ground forces units were an hour’s drive away, yet did not react for quite some time. Other survivors reported company-size IDF formations standing by outside a kibbutz where Hamas terrorists were conducting massacres, refusing to enter. In short, complete tactical, operational and strategic disarray and paralysis were the order of the day.

He then goes on to conjecture:

could it be that the establishment wished to allow a limited Hamas attack to succeed?

I emphasize that Baruch is not claiming that the siloviki wanted what happened. He conjectures that they were OK with a limited attack, whose purpose would be to topple the Netanyahu government.

I’m not going to point and splutter at Baruch because I thought the same thing—about Netanyahu. Recall that the IDF moved two battalions moved to the West Bank, to protect settlers:

IDF sends 2 more battalions to West Bank after series of settler attacks

In all, 25 battalions will be deployed to region, a sharp increase from the typical 13

But I rejected the idea, precisely because of what Baruch suggested: a Ma’alot style attack would have been the end of his government. A limited attack would have destroyed his rep as Mr. Security but Israelis would have felt confident enough to change horses. So that was out.

But…

I don’t accept Baruch’s reasoning because it contains a logical flaw: it requires too much intentionality and control. If the “IDF was paralyzed” that would have required a team of traitors directing the paralysis. You would have had more than one guy doing this. And where there’s more than one guy the truth slips out.

I also think Israel’s ruling class would never have consciously invited an attack on Israelis. I just won’t go there. That’s really a bridge too far for me.

However…

I have an even more dismaying suggestion than conscious intentional betrayal.

Reservists were called and they disobeyed orders.

How dare I say that?

I do dare. Once you accept the concept that before October 7, Israel was in a state of civil war in which the highest echelons of Bibi’s political opponents were calling him “Hitler” and saying non-compliance was “heroic,” it is plausible.

I’ve heard inklings that this is indeed what happened. Rumors aren’t proof but let’s look at this coldly. For the first few hours hardly anyone knew what the fuck was going on.

Israel’s commanders were following the action on the Hamas Telegram channel.

We’ve heard stories about a few heroes who upon learning about what was happening from friends, grabbed guns and ammo and high-tailed it to the Gaza envelope. But very few.⁵ Why?

I don’t know but the most logical answer is that nobody knew what was going on. Those guys who did grab guns and go south heard from friends.

I hold Netanyahu responsible for leaving the Gaza envelope practically unguarded. I hold the siloviki responsible for all the rest. Once you tell reserve officers that it’s OK to disobey orders…

I admit that my conjecture is unprovable but I can’t think of any other explanation. This was more than paralysis. It was insubordination. Which the top echelons of Israeli society encouraged.

Before the enormity of the attack dawned on Israel, some reservists disobeyed orders.

If this is true, then before October 7, Israel was a failed state.

I hope and pray that they—we—can learn from failure.

1. This lovely image wasn’t created by a member of the other BDS (Boycott Divest Sanction) group, it was created by Sadi Ben Shitrit, a Tel Aviv “activist.” The imagery was condemned by Benny Gantz but the former IDF Chief of Staff MK Yair Golan not only didn’t condemn it, he mocked Netanyahu: “Netanyahu's delicate soul was hurt and everyone hurries and runs to protect the helpless…” (Netanyahu said nothing about it, as far as I know.) Golan did pretty well in the IDF that Bibi is now held responsible for destroying…

In other words, a top-ranked Israeli silovik said it was OK to compare Bibi to the worst person in human history, the man who exterminated six million Jews, who helped to set off a conflagration that consumed 60 million souls. Oh, the rage that I feel when I think of these bastards!

2. It is true that some Bedouin were murdered and abducted on October 7, but none to my knowledge were tortured or raped. Recent shows of solidarity as a result of October 7 are in my cynical opinion, entirely for show. I no longer have the URL but a Jewish Israeli who lives in Haifa wrote an article with photos that Arabs in that supposedly mixed utopia painted “48” on store windows after October 7. “48” means 1948.

3. My phrase for the lot of savages. The UN report stated that the first wave was made up of Hamas, the 2nd of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the third civilians.

4. Bibi, you see, tried to enact a “judicial coup” by ramming through reforms that would conveniently exculpate him of corruption charges. But permit me to be a little cynical about these charges, not only in the light of Trump’s legal woes, but with respect to this former Israeli PM. Maybe Olmert really was guilty, I don’t know, but it strikes me that corruption charges are the way Israeli opposition parties (or maybe the turncoats in your own party?) stick the shiv in your guts. Practically anybody who reaches a certain level in any society can be found guilty of something. And then there’s the curious case of this former PM whose after-hours shenanigans seem not to have besmirched his reputation in Israel’s “dovish” circles.

5. The one silver lining in this is that when Hamas had to fight actual armed men, they didn’t do so well. They were great at surprising girls in their underwear and slaughtering civilians.