Go Vote: On Policy and Reactivity (Column 185)
With God’s help
I cannot restrain myself in light of the events of the past day in Gaza, so here is another current-events column for you (written in anger).
In column 149 I already discussed the wretchedness of the government and the army in their treatment of the Palestinians and their terrorism. The events of the past twenty-four hours opposite Gaza are prompting me to return to this subject once again. I will begin by saying that what has been happening here in recent years should, in any normal country, have led to the prime minister, the defense minister, and the chief of staff having their heads publicly chopped off in the town square. If they do not resign over this, I do not know what these fellows are supposed to resign over. A state with the strongest army in the Middle East, with sophisticated weapons and “smart” people managing them, which controls all the supplies (including electricity and fuel) and the money that pass into the Strip, stands helpless before a gang of rabble equipped mainly with flying metal stakes and incendiary kites. That same gang decides whether and when there will be fire, what kind of fire, what our response will be and whether there will even be one, whether money and supplies will be transferred to them or not, and so on.
Make no mistake: they determine everything, including all our responses. Every last one. They decide whether to fire or not. They determine the intensity of our response (through threats that deter our decision-makers, who are interested only in short-term quiet—see column 149), and of course whether a war or a large-scale operation will break out or not. And they also determine the outcome—which is always their victory. Their violence works fantastically well from their point of view, and it is no wonder they have no real incentive to refrain from it.
A few days ago I found myself wondering why they still are not firing missiles at Tel Aviv. (They have missiles—flying metal stakes—that reach even farther.) People told me that this is because they are afraid of our response (because Sderot and the surrounding communities are not really important to anyone, so long as they do not touch the apple of all our eye—Tel Aviv). But in my view that is not the whole truth. I assume they are not firing in order to keep the cards in their own hands and continue determining what will happen here. Today the government and the IDF know that if they cross the line in their response, there will be fire on Tel Aviv, and therefore they go on bombing empty houses as “our severe response” to the situation that has arisen (“We will do whatever is necessary, at the place and time of our choosing”). This is also the reason that we generally respond by bombing empty houses.[1] Frozen by fear and dread of losing the quiet, we stand equipped with nuclear weapons and the finest stealth aircraft, yet are unable to cope with flying metal stakes and kites. We have become a byword and a mockery, and rightly so.
One more point for thought. At least twice already I have heard about a tunnel being bombed in response to rocket fire. And again I wonder: if they knew there was a tunnel, why did they not bomb it at the time they had decided to? Why wait for rocket fire to justify a response? Again, of course, the paralyzing fear. We are incapable of doing anything as policy. Our “policy” is pure reactivity.
If all this does not make heads roll here, I do not know what a prime minister or chief of staff should be removed for. In any case, I take comfort in the fact that at least there are a few intelligent people in our region, though it is a shame that they are not on our side. On our side there are only Bibi, Liberman, and Eisenkot, the three helpless men, who suit us well and whom we suit well.
Yes, yes, Eisenkot too, and perhaps him above all. They say he is a responsible and intelligent man, and I, in my smallness, cannot manage to see it. In my opinion he (and of course the Southern Command chiefs throughout the generations) has failed in one of the gravest failures in the history of the IDF. And this is not a local failure, but one spanning his entire tenure. If indeed the political echelon is tying his hands, as the fools who worship the IDF keep saying, then let him resign. But as is well known, it is the army that calls for the responses to be moderated (in column 149 I explained why: the desire for short-term quiet at the price of perpetuating the violence for the stages after our own tenure). If he himself had forcefully proposed a clear path and policy that could lead to a solution or to improvement, I assume the government would have approved it (and if not—let him resign, as I said). But clearly he has no such path. One must understand that this is his mandate and his main task, and he is not fulfilling it. He—and the government with him—hide behind principles of “purity of arms,” when behind them there is really disgraceful intellectual and professional wretchedness.
For many years now Uri Milstein has been repeating that we have a pathetic and terrible army. No one listens, because it is convenient for us to entrench ourselves in baseless myths about heroic victories over fools even bigger than we are (the Arab armies). But reality proves it again and again. It is worth noticing that we have not experienced a military victory since the Yom Kippur War. In every conflict we have had since then, we have suffered bitter defeat, and it only continues and intensifies. Is it any wonder that our deterrence is in tatters?!
So what are our demands?
You are surely asking yourselves what I am proposing. I propose that we have a policy. Ahmad Tibi’s or Rabbi Kahane’s, but let there be a policy and a goal. Make no mistake. I am not demanding that the response be intensified. Not at all. Nor am I angry about the restraint. Not at all. On the contrary, the restraint might have pointed to welcome judgment, and to a refusal to surrender to populist public moods. All this—if I were convinced that there really is a policy and a plan. As far as I am concerned, it could be anything from recognizing Hamas and shutting down the state, to destroying Gaza. Any plan whatsoever would satisfy me in principle (even those with which I disagree), so long as there is a plan. My problem is that it is obvious there is none. This government, like all its predecessors, still has not decided what it wants. They do not have the faintest clue what their goals are, what they want, or what the policy is supposed to achieve. Therefore there is no policy either. There are only sporadic responses, devoid of sense or purpose. Such reactivity does not justify victims on their side, and still less on ours.
On Reactivity
A few weeks ago a rocket fell on Beersheba. There was a heroic mother there who saved her three small children by quickly moving them, while they were asleep, from their rooms to the shelter, thereby saving their lives. Afterwards absolutely everyone repeated the mantra that she had in fact saved the State of Israel from war with her own hands (literally!). You probably do not believe it, but this was said in complete seriousness, and even with the pathos of Memorial Day and Independence Day in honor of the heroic Hebrew mother. It seemed that no one even noticed the appalling subtext of these statements. It was obvious to everyone that if the children had been harmed there would have been a war. But because we had a heroic mother in the right place at the right time, we were spared a war. How wonderful! A real miracle!
The government’s decision whether to act and how to act is a Pavlovian reflex to results. There is no policy and no substantive judgment. The Pavlovian reflex of response that has replaced policy is this: if it hurts, we get angry and hit back (of course in the appropriate proportions. Not that we should actually achieve anything, God forbid). The meaning of this is that, in effect, the ones who determine what will happen—beyond the Palestinians, of course—are the public and the media and their protests. When there are actual casualties, the public shouts and protests, and then the government and the army are forced to take “meaningful” action, which of course has not produced and will not produce anything in the future either. But there is nothing to be done; one has to show the public that we are doing something. And for this soldiers will die, money will be wasted, and of course Palestinians too will die and suffer.
By the way, the other mothers in the south are no less heroic. Every night they do the same thing, even though they are not mentioned anywhere and are not considered heroines. Why? Because in their case we did not see the outcome. She was a heroine by virtue of those very same acts simply because it happened to her. Everything here is determined by the result and by appearances, not by the matter itself.
Five hundred years ago Machiavelli understood and said that war is the continuation of policy by other means. Wars and military actions are supposed to be undertaken in order to achieve some goal. It seems that here they still have not arrived at that profound insight. That is not what happens here (unless public quiet for the next two days is a policy goal). As I wrote, wars do not break out here out of any policy, or in order to achieve this or that goal, but as a Pavlovian response to some more or less cruel incident. They tell us that there will never again be another Holocaust. That finally we have a marvelous army and political and security independence. That we have taken our fate into our own hands. And therefore… now we are at the mercy of blind fate. I am not sure that a situation in which my fate is entrusted to a blind lottery is preferable to my being handed over to one Gentile ruler or another (the question is whether the percentage of wicked Gentile rulers exceeds 50%).
Someone should update the people up above that a state is supposed to be run according to a policy determined by its interests and by the optimal way to achieve them, not according to the public’s agitation and protests. If a missile was fired and a response is needed, then respond. What difference does it make whether the missile hit or not? The next missile may hit. And if there is no need to respond—then do not respond. If you ask my humble opinion, there is no need to respond to anything. The root of the evil is our reactivity. One must decide what one wants and try to move toward those goals.
Both in the diplomatic sphere and in the security sphere, no one here has ever decided what he really wants. As I wrote in column 149, it is no wonder that the world blames us. Entirely justly. We really are to blame for everything. Simply shooting and rampaging without purpose and without goal is not justified legally, morally, or rationally. If we had a clear goal, I assume the accusations would also be fewer, and certainly we would have more confidence in facing them even if they came. But in the current situation there really is no justification for it. This is really not written ironically.
On Refusal to Serve
Bottom line: I cannot discern any reason for a soldier to agree to carry out an order in an army as ridiculous as ours. Does it make sense to agree to go to war and risk his health and his life, or to harm innocent people and make them miserable, merely so that Bibi will not absorb public criticism, or so that it will look as if he is doing something? That does not sound to me like a goal for which I am prepared to sacrifice my life, to kill or be killed. So long as no one convinces me that there is some point to these wars and operations, and that somewhere someone has thought about why and how to conduct them, there is no reason not to refuse orders. That is the most rational course.
In such a situation, here I am entirely with the leftists, morally too. There is no justification for any war, operation, or bombing in Gaza if no attainable purpose and goal underlie it. A soldier is not supposed to give his life except for the defense of the state’s citizens, not for the foolishness of its leaders. I am really not writing this ironically. It is completely sincere.
A Prediction in Closing
Allow me to say here what every child today knows with certainty. I have no idea what the cabinet will decide and what the government will do, but for some reason I know exactly what will happen. There will be some response or other; probably not much will happen either to us or to them (unless a large-scale operation is decided upon, which will bring more losses and suffering, but no other result). Apart from a few people and soldiers who will lose their lives, and apart from a few more gestures that will be given in order to obtain the next period of quiet, everything will continue as usual. This is not an apocalyptic forecast. It is what every beginner commentator and every citizen knows and says. Except that we do not notice the depth of the scandal, and we go on as before, choosing Bibi as Mr. Security and Liberman as the strongman, hating leftists/rightists and loving rightists/leftists. Creating deep disputes over peace agreements and negotiations with the Palestinians, when every last person knows that no one here has a policy and that nothing will happen here. And then people tell me that security considerations are the reasons one has to go vote in elections. Don’t make me laugh.
To conclude, I cannot help but bring here in full a column by Nir Yahav that was published today on Walla, following the events in Gaza:
Good evening to you, we are in a special broadcast against the backdrop of the rocket attack on the south. All the reporters and commentators are already deployed in the field. Over to you, Danny Kushmaro, reporting from the Gaza border region. Thank you, Yonit, the situation is very tense. An unceasing barrage of rockets throughout the day. Beside me are Ohad Hemo and Nir Dvori with the full analysis. This is heading toward escalation. No doubt about it—escalation. Thank you, Ohad, thank you, Nir, thank you, Danny. Over to you, Tamir Steinman in Sderot. Thank you, Yonit, Sderot has taken the heaviest fire, a rocket scored a direct hit on a house in Ashkelon, an anti-tank missile hit a bus. Roni Daniel, what is your analysis? We exercised restraint and held back, our aim was an arrangement, but the time has come to try something else. We can no longer hold back. Thank you, Roni, thank you, Yonit.
Tzvi Yehezkeli, what are you hearing? The terrorist organizations in Gaza are threatening to extend the range of fire toward Israel. Thank you, Tzvi, thank you, Tamar. Barak Ravid, the meeting at the Kirya of the prime minister and the defense minister with the heads of the security establishment has just ended. What do you know? A political source clarifies that several operational decisions were made; the practical meaning of the decision is, practically speaking, that we are going to see strikes. With us in the studio is Yesh Atid chairman MK Yair Lapid. Hello, Tamar. When needed, I give the prime minister my full backing. Israel must restore targeted killings from the air. MK Lapid, is that what will bring calm? Israel must restore its deterrent power, and that is the only way. There will be no arrangement without deterrence. I support an arrangement, and I also support a broad attack. Thank you, Yair, thank you, Tamar.
A high price must be exacted from Hamas, this is a tragedy primarily for the civilians, the cabinet will convene tomorrow and discuss the full range of possible responses, several buildings in Gaza were attacked from the air by Air Force jets, this is what happens when there is no real policy regarding the Gaza Strip, Israel must restore its deterrent power, Egypt is working ceaselessly to calm tensions, according to sources in Gaza a ceasefire announcement is expected in the morning hours, sources in Israel deny the reports of an emerging ceasefire, what was will be. Thank you, Geula, thank you, Tamar, thank you, Yonit. Good morning, good night, thank you to the broadcast crews deployed in the field. And now to our first interview with Yuval Shemla, the grand winner of Ninja Israel.
Make no mistake. This column is not about the media. It is about us. About all of us. Fools like us deserve exactly the leadership we got. No more and no less. Go vote…
[1] Only now did I receive on WhatsApp the following message: 140 strikes and only 3 Palestinians killed. In the construction industry they do that in two days and with less money.
Discussion
🙂
I would appreciate it if the words "in column 149" that appear in this post linked to the relevant column.
I'm not convinced there is a solution to the problem.
I have never heard anyone propose any sensible policy—brilliant ideas in the style of "destroy them all" obviously don't count.
Bibi is building on the hope that something will change—like in Judea and Samaria.
That can't be done. You can get to column 149 in two clicks.
There's no problem. He just has to move with his family and government to the Gaza envelope.
Beyond that, in column 149 I proposed a direction that has not yet been tried.
Does every soldier have to decide, regarding every operational plan or response, whether it is stupid or not? The question, in my view, that every recruit should ask himself is whether the army is essential in its current form, and the answer is undoubtedly yes, and therefore one should enlist.
In extreme cases, where a soldier feels he is endangering himself or others because of a foolish policy, let him decide according to the situation what is right to do.
With God's help, 6 Kislev 5779
The cabinet's decision after a seven-hour meeting and a situation briefing by the Chief of Staff, the head of the Shin Bet, etc. (hold on tight):
"The IDF will continue to strike as necessary."
To RMDA—greetings,
A diplomatic solution in the style of 'land for peace' was proposed at Oslo. Territory was given, and we received increased terror. A solution of unilateral withdrawal was tried in the disengagement, and we got terror with a tailwind.
And this is not surprising. The terror organizations—Fatah, Hamas, and the others alike—will settle for nothing less than the destruction of the 'Zionist entity.' The difference between them is only tactical: whether to go by the 'phased strategy,' in the PLO's method—take in an agreement whatever can be obtained and continue terror over the rest—or to proceed with uncompromising terror.
The options from which we must choose are one of three: either leave the country, or destroy the terror organizations, or remain in a state of perpetual war.
The first option does not exist; we have no other country. The second option is not practical, both because we fear diplomatic isolation and because we fear that eliminating the existing terror organizations will lead to anarchy that will produce forces worse than they are, without a central leadership that can, when it wishes, bring about a temporary calming of the struggle and on which pressure can be applied in that direction.
Neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor his government created the situation in which terror organizations control broad parts of our land. International pressure and the peace dreams of the Left brought us to this grim state, and we must cope with it, with no chance of a fundamental solution.
What can be done is to bring the terror organizations to a point where it will not be worthwhile for them to escalate the situation. The effective solution is targeted killings of senior figures in the organizations, which will lead their leadership to lower the flames and return to the routine of 'low-intensity conflict.' And clearly, a harsh response on our part also brings a counter-response until a ceasefire that will bring relative quiet for a number of months or years.
We are all now on the front line against those who seek our lives. They are the enemy—not our government and not our army, who toil day and night in the struggle. It is not against those who work night and day in defending the state's security and in the struggle on the diplomatic front that we should pounce. Whoever has practical suggestions for improvement and streamlining is invited to offer them, but empty nonsense with no purpose—silence becomes it!
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
You wrote that you complain that there is no policy, whatever it may be (Tibi or Kahane, etc.). Why do you necessarily identify this as a lack of policy? If Bibi thinks there is no chance of achieving peace with Gaza (justified or not), and that taking over Gaza would bring thousands of casualties over time (security-zone style…) and so on, then a policy of "managing the conflict" is definitely a policy: trying to minimize damage and walk the tightrope anew each time—that is entirely a policy. No response would mean the fire won't stop, and a ground incursion would bring deaths. A serious round of strikes ends the current round.
Again, I'm not saying the policy is correct, but it is also a kind of policy.
Your explanation…
Unfortunately, on most things you are right, except for attributing the saying to Machiavelli. As someone above me noted, the saying is Clausewitz's. (Prof. Harkabi, of blessed memory, once told me that Clausewitz is one of the least-read and most-quoted thinkers… Well, the fellow left behind a shelf packed to exhaustion; who has the energy?…).
And one more thing in which you are probably not right. We are not dealing with fools, but with cynics (politicians in the vernacular, including those in uniform). Imagine that a missile falls on a kindergarten, God forbid, and the IDF enters the Strip, conquers it, eliminates all the terrorists, expels the rest, the state annexes the territory, and rebuilds the communities from their ruins, etc., etc. A vision of the end of days.
But here's the thing: on the day that happens, a civil war will probably break out in Israel. The people will demand from the leaders a satisfactory answer as to why they supported the "disengagement" so enthusiastically if, some 15 years later, blood must again be shed in order to reconquer territory that was in our hands, and whether it was worth destroying 26 flourishing communities in order to get four wars, "operations," and rockets over the whole country. What will Netanyahu answer (he voted no fewer than four times in favor of the disengagement)? I would not be surprised if we again see guillotines in Habima Square—except that this time they will not be made of cardboard.
Therefore, as long as someone who was responsible for that crime sits in power, there will be no policy, because the supreme goal is, as HaGashash once said, to postpone it by three or four months until perhaps they decide again to postpone by five or six months the decision whether to postpone by nineteen months, etc., etc. ("That's what I heard"). In other words, it is not that there is no policy. That is the policy!
A few years ago I wrote (with a colleague) a detailed game-theoretic model whose dynamic equilibrium is exactly this. The article was rejected on the grounds that it was "not realistic"….
I recommend the book "The Fourteenth Century" by Barbara Tuchman, which largely deals with the Hundred Years' War between the English and the French, in order to gain patience.
One should be careful with words. We had a prime minister who died because of such words. Even if you do not regard yourself as an authority, you are a rabbi and people listen to you differently. And especially those who are not drugged. And it doesn't seem to me that you are in favor of anarchy.
For patience, it is also recommended to read in the Passover Haggadah: 'For in every generation they rise against us to destroy us.' The war for the existence of the people of Israel against those who seek our lives has been going on for thousands of years, and thank God today we are fighting from a position of strength! The prouder we are of our mission, and the more we try to shape our personal, social, and national lives in the direction the Torah has designated for us—the greater our staying power will be.
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Thank you!
That is the argument that always comes up against such positions. According to it, the army and the government may always do anything. Incidentally, that was the defense argument at the Nuremberg trials (mutatis mutandis). In my view, when it is clear to a soldier that this is the situation, and especially when by all opinions there is no existential danger to anyone in the country, it makes no sense to sacrifice his life merely because of the conjecture that perhaps there is some hidden policy that nobody knows about.
In the Second Lebanon War, several dozen soldiers were sent to die without achieving anything by it (I am speaking of the day of ground fighting). They were simply thrown to the dogs out of sheer caprice. The same happened in Protective Edge.
Incidentally, I did not write not to enlist, but not to endanger oneself.
Precisely when the cannons roar, the muses must speak. Precisely now one must try to prevent unnecessary and harmful actions.
If I thought Bibi and Eisenkot were doing what you describe, I would not protest. I am also not speaking about a fundamental and final solution, but about policy. That is something else. I illustrated this further in column 149.
My remarks were written before the meeting. Even afterward I did not listen to the news (if only because in my opinion there is no such thing. Nothing is new), and I am sad to see that this is exactly what came out of it.
It isn't. I explained in column 149 what policy should be even on the assumption that the extreme solutions are not relevant. That is not being carried out. I repeat again that I did not complain here about the absence of a final solution to the problem. I do not know whether there is one. Policy is not necessarily a final solution.
Here, precisely, I'm not sure I agree. The people sitting today in the government (and in the army) are not motivated by a desire to defend the disengagement. Some of them criticize it themselves. Nor do I think this is cynicism, or a lack of intelligence (IQ), but conservatism, lack of imagination, and a misconception (they do not understand that we are not dealing with children and private individuals but with a kind of war).
And again I ask forgiveness from Mr. Clausewitz. In my sins, these things were written in anger, and in my sins I did not check their source.
As for the model you mentioned, that is indeed what would be expected even from the analysis of someone who is not a professional. It seems simple to me. Incidentally, Aumann also comes back to this under every green tree.
I am not in favor of anarchy, and precisely because of that I wrote what I wrote. Absolute subordination to the authorities leads to anarchy in which the authorities do whatever they want without needing to justify themselves.
I have already mentioned here that once I spoke with students before they went out to officers' training and told them that a soldier who never refuses an order is a bad soldier who leads to bad decisions by the commander. The same is true of a citizen and the authorities. And the last thing that interests me in this context is the murder of a prime minister. That is the usual gagging tactic, and I am sick of it.
I did not understand the rabbi's preference for any action that comes out of a plan—even if you do not agree with the plan—over policy without a plan. Why are actions that you perceive as negative preferable to semi-random actions?
It is not necessarily a preference in terms of results. Just as a person who chooses, even if not always for the good, is preferable to a lamb that does good by virtue of its nature.
In the long run there will probably also be a preference in terms of results. One tries a policy and corrects it until reaching the best. If there is no policy, we are condemned to continue wallowing in the mud. In principle, one could let a random generator be prime minister. If one thinks it is preferable for a person to be there, then the assumption is that policy is preferable.
The role of the government is to strive to realize the will of the voter. Lotteries do not do that.
A. Reality shows that rulers tend to stick with an agenda even when reality smacks them in the face (see Venezuela), so with a fully ordered plan that is also completely distorted, I am much more afraid (the Nazis too had an orderly plan with a fairly ordered worldview behind it).
B. Most of the people I know choose Bibi not because of his blessed activity but because of his lack of destructive activity. In my sense, his impotence is the trait that has caused him to be elected so many times.
With God's help, 6 Kislev 5779
To R. Moshe = greetings,
Perhaps our prime minister learned from Jacob. Jacob too conducts himself with Esau cautiously. He prepares himself for war, but also tries the path of peace, gives gifts to Esau, and greets him with submission that melts Esau's anger.
On the other hand, Jacob also knows how to set limits on closeness with Esau, and when Esau offers him the generous proposal to be his guest in Seir, Jacob fulfills in him the dictum 'Honor him and suspect him.' Jacob does not reject the generous offer, but delays its implementation and explains to his brother that he must proceed slowly and that it will take him a long time until the longed-for visit to Seir is realized.
Jacob does not confront Esau head-on, neither in the outburst of his anger nor in the outburst of his affection. He waits patiently until the eruption of his brother's emotions subsides, nods his head to him but stalls for time and continues on his own path. He does not confront his loving-hating brother head-on, but neither does he connect with him.
Hesitation and stalling for time enable Jacob to continue on his way, to raise his sons and educate them in his spirit, and to establish himself in the promised land. Jacob avoids confrontations that at this stage he cannot win, and thus Jacob retains 'staying power' to strive for long-term goals. And 'under the radar' his power grows and becomes established until he reaches Seir as the victor: 'And saviors shall ascend Mount Zion to judge Mount Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord's.'
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Perhaps "cynicism" is not the appropriate word. The intention is a tendency to postpone dealing with the problem again and again, onto the next ruler. That is, a short-term planning horizon, a prominent characteristic of rulers in democratic regimes, as opposed to totalitarian rulers whose planning horizon is generally much farther away (since they do not plan to vacate their throne for the next in line during their lifetimes).
In the matter before us, the short planning horizon is expressed in the desire to achieve "quiet" and pass the problem on to the next prime minister. I used to illustrate this to my students with the help of the "filth parable": suppose there are tenants in a high-rise building. When a blockage forms in the sewage system, causing an apartment on a certain floor to flood, the tenant can call a plumber to open the blockage and bear the full cost. A more available and cheaper option is to "push" the filth one floor down. Thus the filth passes from floor to floor and grows thicker and thicker until it reaches the miserable tenant who can no longer push it onward (because it is too heavy and thick), and then he has no choice but to call a plumber at his own expense, lift tiles, open pipes, and solve the problem fundamentally. (That is one reason why nowadays I do not live in a shared building, and when I underwent catheterization the cardiologist explained to me that I had behaved the same way with respect to my arteries…).
I am not claiming that the people today are motivated by the need to defend the disengagement. Indeed, the prime minister frequently criticizes it and even claims he opposed it (which is not factually correct—he voted for it at least four times). But he and his colleagues fear that if we are forced to reconquer Gaza, the public will call them to account. In my opinion the fear is justified, and therefore they do everything they can to postpone dealing with the problem as explained above. That is, they are striving to push the filth onto the government that will rule when they are no longer on the scene.
I know Aumann's analysis and agree with it, but our model deals with another aspect of the matter. We describe the filth parable above as a kind of game whose dynamic equilibrium can be drawn on a graph resembling sawteeth. Presumably even someone who is not a game theorist can arrive at this description intuitively, but it turns out that proving the existence of a perfect equilibrium in the model and calculating it are far less trivial than seems at first. As stated, the reason for rejection was not an allegation of mathematical error but that the model was "not realistic." I think the claim stems from the fact that several readers feared that the operative conclusion arising from the model contradicted their political agenda (some of them almost said so explicitly), and this connects to the problem of agenda in research, etc.
An army in which every single individual has a public opinion will not function. And I am not talking about orders that are obviously immoral (shooting children, etc.), but an order such as going out to war. If the senior officers think there is no point, they should express their position to the government, but an ordinary soldier in the field does not have that same right. Otherwise, an effective army is simply impossible.
The rabbi is mistaken. Bibi and the government are not the problem. They are the symptom. Does it seem to the rabbi that from Gabbay, Lapid, Livni, and Herzog there would emerge Torah (policy)? Someone else? This is a characteristic of the entire people at this time. No one has national responsibility. There are all kinds of identities and parties and groups competing with one another for budgets and influence, as though the state were the English football league.
I do not understand why the rabbi mentions the concept of "innocents" here at all. That is the core of our national problem. There are no "criminals" and no "innocents" here. There is simply an enemy, period. The Gazan people are our enemy. An evil enemy. Like the Nazis. Indeed, I too would refuse an order (and I have done so) to enter Gaza as a soldier so long as they had not rained fire and brimstone on it as much as possible. For every one of their rockets, 10,000 of ours. Which also cost 40 dollars a missile. Incendiary bombs that would set fires there like in the bombing of Dresden. This is the simple truth and common sense. There is a people here, one organism fighting us. Would we not have fired missiles back at Saddam Hussein and Iraq (oops, that is indeed what happened) because he imposed terror on his own state? Perhaps the German women and children were also innocent? The point is that this language does not belong here. We are at the resolution of peoples and not of individuals, and if an individual wants not to belong to the evil collective, he must withdraw from it actively, and not remain passive and say that it is not his concern and he does not care (especially if he is being used as a human shield). If he does not care about me, why should I care about him? (Especially when I am trying to eliminate only the one who used him as a human shield.)
The problem with the Jews (including the rabbi, unfortunately—let the rabbi remember his words about the Nuremberg trials, and forgive me, rabbi, and his words (ridiculous and not merely mistaken) about intervention in the war in Syria (even though he tried to explain it to me in good taste. He only forgot that they too are evil enemies). In a few years the rabbi will strike his own head and say to himself: "How foolish I was") is that they are constantly trying to be sophisticated where there is no sophistication. It is simply people's ego, wanting to play at being "moral" over the heads of their more primitive brothers. If the people were united around this understanding (which I do not understand why I even have to speak about), the protests and howling from the rest of the hypocritical world would either be weak, or in any case would not move us at all (what matters is not what the gentiles say but what the Jews do). So there would be an economic boycott for some period and we would all have to tighten our belts. But what is that compared to tens (if not hundreds and thousands) of dead and crippled over all these years?
The weakness simply stems from an internal war within the people, between people who adopt opinions like suits just to feel special, even at the expense of common sense and to the point of madness. We really do need the Messiah.
That is interesting.
Incidentally, it seems to me that if one works by standards of the realism of models, one could almost shut down research in game theory. The myth of usefulness sold to the masses does not have much coverage. Usually what is complicated is not useful, and what is simple does not require research. My impression is that only in very rare cases is there a useful result. Among the papers that are published, I assume that is far below one percent.
I would be happy to receive a copy of the article by email (or if you want and can, upload it here).
I understood that this is your position. As stated, I disagree with you completely. In my opinion, an army whose soldiers do not refuse is a non-functioning army.
With God's help, 6 Kislev 5779
To RMDA—greetings,
Since the root of the problem is not in our policy or lack of policy, but in the unwillingness of the Arabs to accept our existence out of religious or nationalist fanaticism. They do not mind conducting a struggle to the last drop of blood for erasing the 'Zionist entity'—there cannot be a solution without a change in the Arabs' value system.
Perhaps you should translate your book 'Truth and Not Stable' into Arabic and Persian, and establish a website in Arabic and Persian through which you would reach millions of Muslim readers in order to arouse among them a moderate Islamic movement. When they adopt a 'thin and non-fundamentalist Muslim theology'—then they will also agree to recognize our existence!
Go in this your strength, and save Israel and Ishmael!
Regards, Shams Razal, Qubbat al-Najma
S.Z.L.,
What gives an answer to every question gives an answer to no question. I intentionally referred to the Hundred Years' War in order to point to various perplexities arising from difficulties of national organization and clear understanding of reality. The Passover Haggadah gives us a general answer. A general answer is not a specific answer to our national perplexities. Therefore I do not agree with your answer and again recommend Barbara Tuchman's book.
Very good, S.Z.L. That, for example, is a kind of policy.
And seriously, you keep returning again and again to the same misunderstanding. I did not say there is a solution to the problem. But even if there is no solution, one still needs a policy in order to manage it. There is no such thing. Today we heard this from a firsthand source—the defense minister.
I am glad on this occasion to see the blessed influence of this site. Only yesterday I wrote an article saying that the defense minister, the prime minister, and the chief of staff should resign, and already the very next day the defense minister drew the necessary conclusion. Perhaps he did read Truth and Not Stable and my column after all.
https://news.walla.co.il/item/3200536
Hamas is celebrating: Lieberman's resignation is an admission of defeat.
Every word is true. One hundred percent correct. But even so, Lieberman has one advantage: he at least admits that we were defeated. Bibi, by contrast, lives in la-la land (and actually thinks we live there. And perhaps he is right).
With God's help, 6 Kislev 5779
To RMDA—greetings,
In my humble cynical opinion, it seems that Lieberman resigned in order to bring the elections forward, in the hope that a 'security-minded' pretext would help him get past the electoral threshold.
But beyond the political maneuvering, Lieberman does have the ability to think 'outside the box,' and it is possible that you would find a common language with him in various areas, both in matters of society and economics and in matters of foreign affairs and security. And it is possible that he would adopt some of your ideas. Maybe it would be worthwhile to make contact?
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Hello Michi, ostensibly many, if not most, of the things you write are fairly understandable characteristics of democratic rule, even if there may perhaps have been exceptions here and there in history.
Trump is ostensibly such an exception, but ostensibly in the U.S. the president has much more power than the prime minister here, so there is less to expect
And as I now see that you wrote in column 149, "When a government and army officers are elected and serve for a fixed span of a few years, the horizon they see before their eyes is the end of the term. Therefore I have no trust at all in the wisdom of their decisions and assessments."
Rabbi, why did you write: "the wretchedness of the government and the army in the face of terror"? How is the army connected to this whole matter? The army is obligated to stand by orders that come from above, mainly from the prime minister.
I explained this in my remarks. If the army has a clear position, the government usually approves it. Moreover, if it does not approve it, the Chief of Staff can resign. And as is well known, in our case the army is the father of inaction, and usually it is the one that restrains the government.
The story of the heroic mother from Beersheba is simply another private instance of "moral luck."
Of course, when this occurs on the national level the absurdity suddenly juts out more explicitly, but in fact there is no legal system that does not take into account the results of the act in its sentencing considerations.
Indeed true. I already wrote about this here in the past. But we are not dealing with punishment but with deterrence.
In my opinion, a lack of policy is preferable to a policy like Rabin's, for example, which quite clearly led to extreme escalation the likes of which had not been seen before. Or the return of Gush Katif, where not only were thousands uprooted from their homes for no benefit whatsoever, it only brought the range closer to massacre… Or perhaps this is the right policy? An extreme response in either direction, or no response at all, could lead to permanent and unceasing war and the killing of thousands, and therefore what is decreed for now is one campaign every few years with some quiet. How do you know there is no thought behind everything? Did you sit with Eisenkot over a cup of coffee, or is that simply how it feels to you? Be that as it may, we fools lacking sense who still trouble ourselves to march to the polling station on election day do so, among other things, so that there will not be a one-sided policy toward the other side; that is preferable in our view.
With God's help, on the eve of the holy Sabbath, 'And Reuben heard and rescued him,' 5779
Faithful to his approach that one should proceed with caution and moderation, Jacob criticizes Reuben and takes the birthright from him, on the grounds that 'unstable as water, you shall not excel'; and in showing what this impetuousness can lead to, to the sin of violating his father's bed. Jacob likewise condemns Simeon and Levi for 'their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel.' As for the very argument of Simeon and Levi, 'Should he treat our sister like a harlot?' Jacob does not argue, for there is some justice in their words, but at action springing from a storm of emotions—his wrath goes out.
There are also good sides to Reuben's quickness of decision. Reuben is always the first to react in situations of surprise. When the brothers seek to kill Joseph, Reuben jumps up and protests, 'Let us not strike him mortally,' and he proposes throwing him into the pit in order to save him. Reuben uses his quality of quick reaction in order to correct the rashness of his brothers' decision.
As the days go by, Reuben's criticism of himself and his brothers deepens: 'Indeed, we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we did not listen.' The decision to sell Joseph itself he still does not criticize, but rather the failure to listen to his pleas. One cannot pass judgment on a person without trying at least to understand his soul.
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Von Clausewitz, not Machiavelli. But surely Machiavelli understood it too.