The Loop That Stalls Us (Column 710)

Hello, the main and infuriating problem with all the prettified verbiage of the logical and ideological analysts is the attempt to balance the rivals at any cost, and to sling mud and filth at both sides. Thus, for example, in such a position there appears that despicable man true to his name, the partner and crony of the corrupt scoundrel Ehud Barak, with whom he stole horses together, and they both exercised the right to remain silent. And to my mind this is like comparing, say, the murderers of the Fogel family, or of the baby Paz, or all the other slaughtered and butchered victims in the bloody events whose horrors no words suffice to describe, with the balancing of that against the offenses of the lady from south Tel Aviv who ‘defaced’ real estate (good heavens, ‘defaced’—how terrible and awful, when all she did was dirty a few stones …!). All these comparisons and balances are abominable lies and a feeble attempt to create some sort of equivalence between the sins of the two sides.
I am very astonished at you. From the very fibers of your writing it is clear that you know the truth, and yet you rebel against it and do not dare to stand behind it courageously and explicitly. (By the way, I recall that on this matter the great genius whom you admire, Y. Leibowitz, erred when he said there is no such midrash about Nimrod, that he ‘knows his Master and rebels against Him,’ but in truth there are explicit sources for it.)
In view of the exploits of the law-enforcement system and the judicial system, including the prosecution and various courts—their brazenness and audacity to deceive, lie, frame people, and throw them in prison for nothing for a long time. And the ‘enlightened’ public is silent, down to the Attorney General committing adultery under her helpless husband’s nose before all Israel and even putting her adulterous lover forward as a prosecution witness … against the prime minister, heavens above—and everyone is silent; they pounce on little children and destroy their world, and what are they guilty of … and they look for balance, balance, and call on both sides to act with restraint. Ugh.

Hello, our rabbi.
I am amazed at a gentleman who errs in the ABCs of reading comprehension. I did not compare anyone to anyone. What I wrote is that both sides suffer from a lack of listening and do not take the other side’s arguments into account. Do you think that is not true? The question of who is better/more moral and who less so, and whose worldview is more correct, is not the issue here. My views are here in plain sight for all to see, and you can form the impression that on matters of security and policy I am much closer to the coalition than to its opponents, while on matters of religion and state, corruption, and sharing the burden I have harsh criticism of them. Likewise, I do not know whether the Attorney General’s adultery (I do not know whether this is true, and it seems that from your perspective the accusation itself is enough to seal her fate. Did you come to prove my claims?!) is worse than Bibi’s collection of corruptions. But all that is really irrelevant to our issue. The post was not meant to argue who is pure and who is not, and to compare. It was meant to describe a failure in our discourse and an ignoring of arguments in favor of dealing with the people making them, exactly as can unfortunately be seen in your words here. Hurling accusations (prettified, logical analysts, etc.) instead of addressing the matter substantively is part of the problem I described, and it is a shame that you demonstrated it here so immediately.
By the way, Leibowitz is by no means admired by me. Far from it. He has several correct points that I feel close to, and therefore I quote him from time to time. I also oppose ostracizing him because of his views. In your opinion, should one not quote something in the name of the one who said it if he is not from the right church?!

In the 1990s, all opponents of Oslo were defined as “messianic lunatics, enemies of peace,” “friends of Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” and on the other side anyone who tried to argue (my humble self, for example) that the Oslo Accords were not abandonment and betrayal was accused of post-Zionism and being a useful idiot.
In my opinion, it was the same in the days of the First Lebanon War as well (though I was too young really to remember), and according to the stories, also before the establishment of the state.

Maybe it’s a human bug (or a Jewish one), but the fact is that despite the phenomenon we’ve been getting along with one another for decades, so one can be optimistic.

Goodman wrote an excellent book about this, The Attention Revolution. How social-media technology has produced sharp polarization all over the world in the past decade and generated political and psychological crises. At the end of the book he offers several ways to defend ourselves from the prison of consciousness that polarization creates (not only private solutions, but also regulatory ones).

So, with all due respect to Mr. Goodman, polarization has always existed; it’s just that each side was exposed mainly to opinions from its own side and didn’t see the symmetry on the other side.
Social media exposes us to both sides, so rational people understand the problem and can also genuinely get to know the sensible opinions on the other side.
Social media is not the problem; it’s part of the solution.

You’re ignoring the “algorithm,” whose sole purpose is to make money through its ability to show you content that will keep you in the app as long as possible. The most effective way to do that is to create tribalism, hatred, and threat toward the other side. The other side revealed to you on social media is always ridiculous, evil, and stupid.

This post is very interesting, precisely because usually the analysis here is one level above what goes on in the public sphere, and here it is one level below.

Take “Qatargate” as an example—supposedly Israel’s prime minister conducted contacts with a non-friendly Muslim-Arab state, aimed at advancing bilateral interests (a hostage deal, international prestige, etc.). Clearly, if we look at this on the Peres–Sharon left-right axis, this is a wonderful left-wing move in the direction of a new Middle East.

But of course this time the “left” is dramatizing the event and presenting it as negative, while the “right” is doing the opposite. Why?

The real reason is simple: there are no real arguments and no real positions. If Netanyahu were in favor of a deal-at-any-price (incidentally: empirically, his achievements in the left-wing value of returning hostages far exceed his achievements in the right-wing value of destroying Hamas), then Kaplan would be on the other side. If conservative right-wingers sat on the High Court and prevented the government from advancing liberal agendas—then attitudes toward the reform would reverse.

In short: the questions on the table are very simple and very easy.
The gap lies in the tribal question, because in Israel there are 2 tribes competing for primacy (or for the girl, if we liken the state to one), and all the concrete disputes are merely ways for that to manifest.

Which is the same human “algorithm” called ratings, and it fills the studios with panels that do exactly the same thing—tribalism, hatred, and threat, for exactly the same reason (money).

Hello,

There are apparently more than two churches, and they are expressed in sectors that over the years have gained legitimacy; right and left do not seem relevant to me. Churches: the church of Religious Zionism (with internal sects), the Sephardi Shas church (with internal sects), the Hardali church, the Ashkenazi Haredi church (with internal sects), the church of secular statist Jews, traditionalists to one degree or another, “modern” people to one degree or another (here there are 4 or 5 sects), and of course there are churches of Muslim Arabs, Christians, Druze, Circassians, and churches of Bedouin (southern and northern). But the struggle is an inter-sectarian one among the ‘Jewish brothers.’ Without going into depth or being overly precise, the legitimacy of the religious establishment alongside the institution of the state is doubtful: special privileges, bribery and funding for crazy matters from the public purse, anarchy, terror, violence, criminality, draconian control over the sect and the individual, a pyramid economy, and everything that characterizes organized religion (not necessarily only Jewish) – criminality. The Jewish religious sects and the other minorities, some of them armed, have churches/brainwashing centers for the younger generation from birth. The conduct of the sectarian religious establishment over the years, and especially in wartime, attests to the problematic nature of its existence; its goals are not pure, and its vision is problematic, at times detached from reality and dangerous to the rest. The horror felt by the secular majority/the citizens, most of whom make up the reservists and conscripts, work for a living, educate their children in the state system, and carry the economy, security… on their backs and in their faces, is justified. Anyone who studies Jewish history and the Bible, at least from Josiah’s reform until today, 77 years since independence, 80 years since the Holocaust, ought to shudder and fear the sectarian religious establishment—its scheming, its intervention in politics, the anarchy, the terror, the problematic system of beliefs and vision. In my opinion, the essential problem is ‘religion and state,’ and it should be examined in two aspects: internal social and political/security. I believe a dramatic change is required here, an external disruption in order to break out of the loop. The required disruption is a technocratic, centrist, Zionist national emergency government that will impose a constitution, a Basic Law on Legislation, separate religion from state, create an equation of rights versus duties of citizenship, and impose an economic and infrastructural dismantling (hard and soft) of the religious establishment. For the majority there is a historical problem with the religious establishment and also with religion and ritual—too many internal conflicts on a religious background, many victims in internal conflicts; this is not why we established a state 1,955 years after the previous destruction.

An interesting column.

Regarding “to sit at a meal or in judgment” — I am reminded of Ambassador Herzog tearing up the resolution that Zionism is racism, but Israel did agree to sit in the assembly, and did not withdraw from the UN because it was unwilling to sit with fools and wicked people. You do not always have enough power to be among the “clear-minded.”
And on the same matter: a litigant too has the right not to be judged by fools and wicked people and accept their ruling. For me, that is the foundational principle of liberal democracy: if the social contract has been broken, majority rule has no significance. That is what they shout in Kaplan: “Democracy or rebellion.”

I think you are right about Boogie’s statement. I do not think his statement is baseless: war crimes are ostensibly being committed (for example, the shooting at ambulances on March 23), the IDF Spokesperson has been caught in lies, and in any case you and I do not have information that could decide and say whether his statement is correct or baseless. But I agree that many of Ya’alon’s statements in recent years indicate hatred for Bibi, mainly because he was always a clear hawk, and he departs from that line only when Bibi is involved.

Regarding the reform, I heard Micah Goodman quote a poll according to which 60% want a slow, cautious reform with broad agreement. That is why the masses came to Kaplan and not only the Balfour people: first there was a need to stop the regime coup, and only afterward to begin reform by agreement. Here there is no symmetry between “a small step toward the government or toward the protesters,” because every step toward the government facilitates its next steps, which is not true of steps toward the protesters.

“The government must not have full control over court compositions, and as far as I know there is no proposal that gives the government such control” — but that was Levin’s original proposal! I quote Wikipedia: “The Judicial Selection Committee would be expanded from nine members to eleven; seven from the coalition, one from the opposition, and three judges. Two of the judges would be appointed by the President of the Supreme Court subject to the justice minister’s veto right.”

Regarding the hostages: the remark that “a hostage deal should be carried out at any price” is a straw man that you yourself describe in the next sentence: no one would be willing to evacuate the Gaza-envelope communities for the hostages. No one thinks that “at any price” is literally “at any price.” The price is known — ending the war, Hamas remains in Gaza, and the mass release of terrorists. I support this because in my opinion, continuing the war endangers the state’s security more than ending the war does, and it is strange to me that by now you have not heard arguments that justify such a position.

“When I tell them that I too, as someone they know, agree with the basic policy of Bibi and Smotrich, although I do care about the hostages, they agree. But not in Bibi’s case” — and it is not clear to you why? Bibi clearly has interests that make every action or statement of his suspect as aimed at saving himself from prison. You have no such interests. Nor do Shikma Bressler and Yair Golan.

It seems to me that, like many intellectuals, you fall into the trap of symmetry, as though the two churches are similar. But in fact you know only your own loop. In this entire column there is not one argument that departs from your church’s line, and there is no evidence that you yourself listen to anyone from the other side.

There is no real symmetry in the world. Only we, as creatures with brains, seek symmetry.

Hello and blessings.
In most hesder yeshivot there is often a presentation of both sides’ arguments and a genuine attempt to discuss them objectively, unlike academic institutions where there is none.
Also in advanced yeshivot there is often proper discourse among the students.
Indeed, on every side there are people who cannot listen. But it is not comparable in quality or quantity. “Intellectuals” on the left are not willing to listen at all, unlike intellectuals on the right who generally are.

Therefore, in my humble opinion, the comparison is inaccurate.

Your attempt to place the blame for this dialogue of the deaf on both sides, that is, fifty-fifty (more or less—and that is the plain meaning any person can understand, and the reactions here also prove the point), reminds one of the well-known Jewish joke about the maker of premium sausage:
“I make the finest horse-meat sausage,” boasts the sausage maker, “I add to it no less than half fine goose meat.”
– “How do you know how to add exactly half?” the sausage maker is asked.
“Very simply,” he answered, “for every horse, I put in one goose.”
So too with you. A wrongdoing that cries out to heaven on the part of the left, and you balance it with some minor pea-sized wrongdoing on the part of the right.

I join the previous commenter’s words about the attempt to establish symmetry here between the right and the left — which really is the conflict here after all. Only in the deeper sense of right versus left. That is, the conflict between the synthetic and the analytic (in your language. And I include the dogmatists in the synthetic camp as well). Because today the right barely has a church, whereas the left is led by a fanatical church many times worse, one that does not believe at all in the existence of objective truth (namely, the postmodernist-progressive church). The church of the right is composed at least of people who still believe in objective truth and in the existence of collectives.
This attempt to establish such symmetry infuriates me greatly. Right-wingers generally listen to arguments, if only so they can deal with them. Leftists simply do not listen, period. Completely sealed off (and I say this as someone whose father belongs to the psychotic leftist camp). As became clear in the demonstrations against the reform (which was completely justified, and in the first place there should never have been a situation that required it, because the system was built on the assumption that criticism of the government is carried out by the Knesset, and this is meant to stand before the choice of the public every four years, and it is the public that is ultimately supposed to judge the government). The demonstrations simply exposed a public of completely psychotic people. Is a psychotic person evil? I don’t know. But he is definitely stupid. More than stupid. I only know that one cannot cooperate with psychotics. And there are no such psychotics on the right. Even among the extremists among the Haredim. Everyone on the right is life-loving. I could not access the link to Reichert’s column, but nobody thinks the courts are trying to cooperate with Hamas (rather that they are simply power-hungry without the accompanying responsibility), and he is an example that does not represent the right one bit. If he did represent the right, and the right were as psychotic as the left, you can be sure the state would no longer exist today, but would have been destroyed by civil war and external annihilation. It is only thanks to the sanity of the right that the state still exists.

There is no problem of discourse here. The problem is that in the world of the left (apparently unconsciously) there is no concept of discourse at all, only forceful verbal confrontations, and that the right either does not understand this and tries to play with the left on its own field, or alternatively lacks faith in itself that it can somehow manage on its own without the left and with faith in the Holy One, blessed be He, who will help it, and tries to perform verbal manipulations on leftists instead of understanding that the Holy One, blessed be He, probably does not want us to cooperate with them, but rather to trust in Him and act alone, period. It is quite similar to the situation the Jews of Europe were in before the Holocaust, when they did not understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted them to unite and defend themselves without relying on the gentiles to defend them (and even to assist them in defending themselves).

And sometimes nothing happens. Decades pass, even centuries, and we remain stuck in the tangle. I recommend reading Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, which describes a tangle the French were caught in for almost 100 years (the Hundred Years’ War) and how in the end they got out of it.

Contrary to what you wrote, I do not think there is a church-like character in the right-wing mainstream. One can see this in the changes that Levin-Rothman’s reform proposal underwent — even before the massacre and the war; in the listening that clearly right-wing political figures (Rothman) gave to professionals from the clearly left-wing side (google panels and debates of the Israeli Forum for Law and Liberty; I heard dozens of them, one of them with Rothman and Yaniv Roznai); and finally — there is a diversity of opinions regarding each of the reform’s clauses among its supporters, and very little among its opponents. Try asking opponents of the reform for three concrete clauses (and not a vague statement that there is no doubt reform is needed, but not this reform) that they agree are necessary — anyone who passes that test and is a public figure has probably reached an agreed compromise with Rothman or Levin at one stage or another.
As a side note, you wrote that it is obvious one should not give the government/coalition control over the appointment of judges — are you familiar with the comparative study by the Kohelet Forum on the appointment of judges to upper constitutional courts? If not — highly recommended reading; it gives an excellent perspective on the issue. For reinforcement, you can read the parallel study by the Israel Democracy Institute just to see how much less they address the point compared to Kohelet’s researchers.

Attaching the above-mentioned study
https://www.kohelet.org.il/article/%D7%91%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%AA-%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%98%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9C%D7%91%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A4%D7%98-%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A7%D7%A8-%D7%94%D7%A9/

Listen, brother, I really don’t know what world you live in… Have you ever even met a religious person? “Anarchy, terror, violence, criminality, draconian control over the sect and the individual, a pyramid economy, and everything that characterizes organized religion.” What are you talking about? “Anyone who studies Jewish history” knows that you do not really know Judaism or the people who adhere to its principles. Really, a sincere suggestion: go get to know the people you’re smearing. Yes, yes, those with the kippah, the long nose, and the “system of beliefs and vision.” Not secondhand, please. Because when one lives dealing with terrorist and criminal demons, it really is hard. Allow yourself to stop imagining the horns and the red eyes. Maybe go visit a nearby yeshiva. In those “brainwashing centers” that somehow dared to think differently from you. We understand that you “believe a dramatic change is required here.” I hope you understand that we are allowed not to agree with the changes you want. “Impose an economic and infrastructural dismantling of the religious establishment.” (Sigh.) Why do you want to dismantle an establishment you do not even know? I hope that if someone ever tells me that I’m babbling nonsense and am completely detached from reality, I will at least stop to consider my arguments and examine, if only for a moment, my sources. I hope you will too.

It’s amazing how almost every response proves Michi’s point.

As an aside — in my view one should be very careful when dealing with positive feedback loops. After all, the above analysis describes a process of disintegration with no end. The question therefore arises — why, then, has not all human society already been completely broken apart since time immemorial, with no group willing to sit at table with any other group? And yet groups unite with others all the time. The answer is that alongside those positive feedback loops there are other, opposing processes, and it is worth researching and understanding them. In this context I recommend the book Margin of Error by Prof. Eran Halperin. It is not free of ideology, but his analysis there is, in my view, illuminating.

Indeed. I will only note that by my abundant holy spirit I foresaw this point and even wrote it in the column (at the beginning of the section “Two Churches”). I will note that there was at least one other response that was deleted (it was from a chronic obsessive who keeps returning here again and again with his church dogmas), because it proved my thesis too well. I see no point in replying to such people, because it is evident that they are not dialogue partners. They are stuck deep inside the church (although some of their arguments are of course correct, as I wrote. But the one-sidedness neutralizes the possibility of discourse).
I completely agree that alongside the process I described there are other components and influences. I never think that one theoretical principle can explain reality. The whole point of analyzing reality (as in science) is to isolate one process, put it in focus, and describe it. For that purpose one ignores other influences (as is done in a laboratory, whose purpose is to neutralize the complications of reality and create a Platonic reality in which one can investigate a single principle in isolation. I discussed this in my article on ukimtot.
One of the diseases of theoreticians and thinkers is to take their theory (sometimes a correct one) and apply it as-is to reality. That never works, and then the forcing begins. The right way is to use the theoretical analysis as a conceptual framework that describes one of the influences. To try to isolate all the others one by one, and finally, after we have understood each one separately, to try to think what will happen when we are in reality itself with all the influences combined.

“An argument between two churches” is an excellent title. There is still a substantive difference in my view. Members of the “right-wing” church are usually not the smartest stratum. The educated on the right — will be far more measured and attentive.
By contrast, members of the “left-wing” church are the elite itself, and there really is no one to talk to.

Don’t be amazed. The responses prove nothing. These responses were reasoned in the highest degree. With Michi it seems that symmetry is sacred, and therefore he distorts reality for the sake of symmetry, as if the truth lies in the middle. Well, no. It is not in the middle. Here there are (generally speaking) good guys and bad guys. As in the war between us and the Palestinians.

Do you realize that what you’ve just said means that your thesis is unfalsifiable? After all, what you are basically saying here is that anyone who disagrees with you in the comments and argues that indeed there is no discourse, but not because both sides are unwilling to listen, rather because one side is unwilling to listen (and I argue that this is built into its very worldview, as you nicely described in the book Two Wagons. I have argued with leftists thousands of times, and whenever the moment of truth came when they had to address basic claims, they answered me: “I know that claim” or “I don’t want to hear” or “fascist,” and were unable to address it substantively, such as whether the claim is correct or not), he thereby proves your claim that both sides are trapped in an inability to listen….

Thank you very much for the wonderful article. I just wanted to note that in my opinion the main problematic point is that for substantive discussion you need openness from both sides, because one-sided openness (Beit Hillel) may help you be right, but it will contribute nothing to dissolving the dispute in the direction of discussion.

Every word is true.
Political views and opinions sit much more on identity and belonging than on sound thinking, and as the years pass, identity around those views only grows stronger.
A process of deep investigation of one’s personal opinions and views undermines many “truths” and can unsettle a person’s identity.
A painful process, but one of enormous value. From personal experience.

Thank you for the integrity and radical honesty,
you are one of the exceptional few of this generation.

Well written, Rabbi Michi, but I wonder at you why you do not use the same logic regarding the Haredi public. You are accustomed to calling them every possible derogatory name, accusing them of lies, corruption, and exploitation, and presenting them as a public that is evil and corrupt to the core.
Is it impossible to understand their logic? Is there not some justice to their claims? Is the entire discussion with them black and white?

Definitely not. I listened carefully to their arguments, so I treat them in exactly the same way. And my conclusion is
that their arguments are stupid and that this is clearly a brainwashed and parasitic sect. Obviously, as individuals there are better and worse people there, but as a society it is an evil society, and they are children captured by their own hands.
By the way, my conclusion regarding the arguments of those who support a deal is also unequivocal.

The beginning of the vicious circle seems to me somewhat different from what is stated in the (instructive) article. In my opinion, it does not “begin with the feeling that they might still persuade us if we listen to them. So … we declare that anyone who thinks as they do is wicked and/or stupid.”
In my opinion, the reason for members of the Jewish tribes perceiving members of other tribes as wicked, and sometimes also as stupid, is xenophobia—hatred of strangers—which is an innate trait, as research shows (though one can educate oneself to control this emotion, as is customary with the innate emotion of aggression). This innate xenophobia is fueled by propaganda.
The perception of Jews from other tribes as strangers is caused, in my view, by the walls between the tribes (which are here to stay), as Martin Luther King said, that separation itself between groups causes hatred between them. In my opinion, separation causes estrangement, which causes lack of trust, which causes certain suspicions, and when these accumulate over the years, xenophobia is produced.

Unwittingly, you yourself belong to the church that opposes releasing hostages and opposes ending the war, even though there is no sufficiently good reason to continue it; all the rational arguments voiced to you are not enough in your eyes.

All this even though in hindsight almost every forecast or basic assumption of yours has been disproved by reality.
I saw this very clearly when you wrote about the call to release the hostages and end the war—mass psychosis / hostage carnival / surrender to emotion, just like all the “rational right-wingers” (right wing in double quotation marks, of course). Before the second deal, and during it, there were many opinion pieces by “rationalists” opposing it and classifying everyone else as emotional. Already in real time I wrote to you that releasing hostages is דווקא the rational thing, and opposition stems from unjustified emotionalism (irrational fear of terror) or from a desire to settle Gaza (albeit a minority), and not from rational considerations.

You made an explicit prediction that after the second hostage deal it would not be possible to return to fighting — and that was completely disproved, yet even so you do not conduct a renewed examination of your basic assumptions. You had a basic assumption that Hamas would not return all the hostages — but that too was disproved when Hamas announced that it was willing to return all of them in exchange for ending the war — and Netanyahu addressed the proposal in a video and announced that he was not accepting it because he does not surrender to terror. And yes, I know you will say that “total victory” overrides returning the hostages.

And finally, this government says of itself that it is “full-on right wing,” and yet after more than a year and a half of fighting they still have not declared Hamas toppled… So at first they excused it with “Gallant is a mole,” afterward “the chief of staff is not aggressive enough,” then “Biden is preventing us,” and now Ronen Bar is to blame for the lack of progress in the fighting, and yesterday I saw MK Amit Halevi (Likud) blaming the Attorney General (I promise) for why we are not winning in Gaza. Considering that Israel changed the Middle East (in Netanyahu’s own words), perhaps total victory in Gaza is simply an illusion being sold to the public at the expense of the hostages’ release? (Of course, another explanation could be that the people in the government are simply incompetents…)

As for total victory, toppling Hamas is not a goal worth fighting for — and that is usually what is meant when people talk about total victory. After all, most of Hamas’s military capabilities were already lost a year ago; Hamas does not pose a threat to Israel as it did on 10/7; and Hamas’s governing capabilities will not disappear unless someone else is found to rule there as long as there are Palestinians there. And even if, hypothetically, everyone who has Hamas written on his forehead were exiled to Indonesia, another terror organization would simply take control (just for general knowledge, *before* 10/7 there were more than 10 terrorist factions in the Strip; Hamas was simply the largest), so all the intensive work of IDF soldiers is not worth the benefit. Israeli military rule would indeed significantly reduce terrorism, but it would have its costs — I assume this is the government’s ultimate intention — and there needs to be a public discussion of those costs, and certainly the 10/7 government cannot decide such a thing.

In short, you too belong to one of the churches, and instead of presenting serious discussion and serious arguments against a deal / ending the war, you classify people as a church / as mass psychosis and other nice expressions..

P.S. And all this without even discussing the morality of the fighting, with the war crimes that are occasionally revealed even to the Israeli public, and without discussing the fact that we have destroyed 2.5% of the population (according to the more conservative estimates)…

I don’t know whether my previous comment was deleted or simply didn’t go up, so I posted it again…

Someone from the other side listened to you and is responding to you

1. I think the “social contract” argument is not understood at all.
What is this contract, and who signed it?
It sounds like just another slogan like “democracy.”
Michi’s whole argument is that in Kaplan they decided in advance that there are fools or wicked people, regardless of the facts.

2. Boogie’s statement is about the system, about the General Staff.
The argument is that he too has no such information, and it is absurd to think he would.

3. The historical facts are that Kaplan continued and continues even after the reform was halted.
Not a single Kaplanist was seen supporting the very moderate change in the composition of the committee this year.
They are not in the discussion at all; all their arguments were scare tactics.
And that is indeed Michi’s argument: that the story begins with scare tactics, not with a discussion of justice, such as who is sovereign — the government or the High Court.

4. Regarding Levin’s proposal, you are right in principle,
but it is not accurate to say that three MKs from the coalition are under the government’s control.
Sometimes it is the other way around; the government is under the Knesset’s control.

5. If continuing the war is not good for security, then there is no “price” being paid by ending it.
Michi’s discussion is with someone who claims that it is a price, but a legitimate price.
And in that he is indeed gravely mistaken, and it rather contradicts his whole column
— because this dispute is indeed rooted very, very deeply in matters of right and left.
There is almost no one who seriously says it will be possible to return to fighting, and actually means and wants to return to ground fighting, certainly not to pay the prices that would be required for that after signing an agreement.

6. Think for a moment logically,
suppose Netanyahu really wants only to rule, but Smotrich’s arguments are fair.
Who cares what Netanyahu wants?
Address the arguments.
But all of Kaplan’s discussion goes straight to the extreme, all under the framing of the last 50 years:
Smotrich = messianic = doesn’t want security = only wants settlement
Bibi = corrupt = afraid of prison = only power will save him from there (why?)
Try for a moment to think about these conventions and you will see salvations.
Quite apart from the stupidity from a logical standpoint:
A. Bibi explicitly declared there would be no settlements in Gaza, so how
B. If it will be possible to fight Hamas afterward, why should Smotrich care? Let him fight and settle afterward???

You’re funny.
Michi does indeed argue that the government is incompetent in this context.
I rather disagree, but that is not relevant.
But eliminating Hamas was a goal the whole people agreed on a year and a half ago.
They now want to try again, without Herzi and without Gallant,
and they really do have a rather different strategy, which those two explicitly opposed.

And does it have no significance that the people closest to him had a substantial financial gain as a result of those contacts?

I read Or Reichert’s column and it is excellent, and I sign every word of it. How depressing that even the liberal national-religious people (whom I too used to be part of) cannot be relied upon, and that in the end they too have no loyalty like their brothers on the left.

Either you do not know such people on the right, or you are among those people yourselves. Unfortunately, I know such people on both sides.

Whether one thinks they are incompetents or not, the facts show that Hezbollah collapsed even though objectively it is stronger than Hamas — so apparently the government’s incompetence is not supposed to affect victory/defeat all that much.
Not everyone agreed to the “elimination of Hamas”; as far as I know, the goal of the war was to dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities, and even if everyone agreed — they did not necessarily agree that this would continue for two/three years or more…
Gallant was dismissed six months ago and Herzi two months ago — how long will people be willing for the war to continue for the sake of the “new strategy”?

If I may sum up your arguments: there is symmetry between the two sides in lack of substance and lack of listening.
Now we are trapped: anyone who comes to argue that there is no symmetry because one side is right, you will simply say is blind to his own side, which exactly proves your position, and that exactly such a response could be written by the other side as well, which is also sure that only it is right and that there is no comparison between it and the first side.

Leave Israeli society and our specific issues aside for a moment: in some other situation with two such sides, and I as a curious observer from the side who decided to study the issues came to the conclusion that one side is right and the other side is wrong — how can your claim be refuted at all? After all, no matter how substantively I write and how much I address the matter itself regarding the side I think is wrong, the symmetry-people (I haven’t heard this from you, correct me if I’m wrong) dismiss my arguments with contempt in the style of “you’re proving what I’m writing” and “they also think they’re right.”

In the end, I think there is no avoiding getting dirty, going down to the details and detailed arguments, and deciding in each case who is right and why…

Sometimes I feel that I am writing to the wall, until I remember that there are readers beyond those who comment. Then I gather my utmost patience and explain again to the commenters, even if the matters really do not require explanation (“it is not the same to review one’s chapter a hundred times”…). So I will do here as well.
I will begin by saying that there are many failures in your words (many, meaning in percentage terms. All your words—100% of them—are failures):
1. You are not summarizing my arguments but my conclusions. The arguments are those that establish those conclusions.
2. Even if you are right in summarizing my conclusions, the trap you described is not a conclusion that follows from them. How did you infer that anyone who argues there is no symmetry (that is, anyone who has a position) is church-like in my eyes? I said this about several specific disputes (and showed it by means of arguments), and you decide that I say it in all cases (also without arguments). To test this empirically, you need not go far. You can check this site, or even the comments on this very post, to see whether everyone who thinks differently from me I accuse of church-like thinking and refuse to address his arguments.
After all, even in this very post I addressed the writer’s arguments in great detail one by one, and, astonishingly enough, I even agreed with some of them. Is that church-like thinking? Perhaps by your definition, but not by mine. My conclusion that the writer is church-like derived from the fact that I showed that his thinking is tendentious, that he does not address the other side’s arguments but a straw man, and that he interprets the words of his opponents in a tendentious way. That is a conclusion I demonstrated on the basis of arguments. Is that church-like thinking in your view? Fine, from your perspective anyone who has a position is church-like. But then you should have presented a position of your own, rather than presenting this as though you were attacking mine. You are not.
3. Your claim regarding the observer from the side is incorrect. But that is not an additional failure; it is the result of the previous ones. An observer from the side should indeed enter into the arguments and decide accordingly. And if he is not capable of that — then let him remain in doubt. That is legitimate.
4. Your conclusion that one must “get dirty” and go down to the details is precisely my claim. So here you have a substantial failure of reading comprehension.
But your failure of reading comprehension is even more basic. You did not understand my words at all. I will try to spell them out beyond what is necessary so as not to leave room for further failures of reading comprehension:
A. I defined church-like thinking as thinking that does not take opposing arguments into account and barricades itself in its a priori positions. It is unwilling to listen.
B. When I described a certain position as church-like, it was not because I disagreed with it (for I argued that even those with whom I agree suffer from church-like thinking), but because I showed that it is not properly formed. It does not address opposing positions and does not take them into account.
C. Conclusion: not everyone who has a position and disagrees with those who hold other positions is church-like by my definition. That is true only if he does not listen to their arguments and does not address them seriously. In other words: saying that someone is church-like is not, for me, an argument but a conclusion. After I have raised arguments and shown that he ignores the opposing arguments, I conclude that he is church-like. Whereas you understood that, in my view, everyone who disagrees with me (or actually everyone who has a position, including myself?) is church-like.
D. Conclusion: the fact that I have a position does not mean that I will not seriously address opposing positions. I will address them, and then decide for or against. Whether I decide this way or that way, that is not church-like thinking.
E. Further conclusion: even if I decide against, that does not mean I did not address the arguments (that is, that I am church-like). To know whether I addressed them or not, one must examine my words and see how I formed my position.
F. Since your declarations have no connection whatsoever to my claims and arguments, I have before me one of two possibilities: 1. To think you are incapable of understanding my words. Unlikely, because I think they are not complicated and I explained them well. 2. You are church-barricaded in your position and unwilling to address arguments.

In conclusion, it seems to me that your message is a good example from which you can learn the meaning of the church-like thinking I was talking about. When someone raises a claim or presents a position without considering opposing positions (but not when he holds a reasoned position), he is church-like. And if someone raises criticism of a certain position without even taking the trouble to understand what it says (like you), that is already a full-fledged pope.

1. The social contract is of course what Hobbes and Locke spoke about from two different angles. There is no room for misunderstanding here.
2. Not an argument but a claim that Boogie does not know what we do not know. I am not sure that claim is correct.
3. The reform was not stopped, but slowed down. Therefore Kaplan continued. Even when Kaplan stopped after October 7, the regime coup continued.
4. To say that the government is under the Knesset’s control is to say that I haven’t been in the country for at least a decade.
5. The principle is to assume that whoever claims something agrees with his own claim. Whoever claims it is possible to return to fighting indeed thinks it is possible to return to fighting. We returned to fighting after the previous prisoner deals.

6. The argument is that Smotrich is messianic, and in his eyes security (and also the economy) come from God, and if we do God’s will everything will work out. This is not a conspiracy because he said it explicitly.
Bibi is corrupt (do you doubt it?) afraid of prison (do you doubt it?) and only power will save him (do you doubt it?) Does that mean this is his primary consideration? No. But he is in a huge conflict of interest.

A. Bibi explicitly declared it, but there is no reason to believe he means it.
B. Smotrich indeed does not think it will be possible to fight afterward. I do not understand the contradiction.

This is common among intellectuals: the desire for the theory to be beautiful and symmetrical clashes with reality, which is never beautiful or symmetrical.

Hello and blessings, honorable Rabbi Dr. Michi.
Indeed, my column was childish and tendentious; I deleted it a day later, and I will rewrite it, God willing.

And to our matter:
Your entire column laments the lack of proper discourse, the lack of substance, the absence of arguments.
That each side entrenches itself in its own opinion. Two churches with no ability to communicate.
And yet you did not answer any of the arguments I raised.
You did not bring a single claim, fact, understanding, ability.
You poured out your bitterness over the very existence of the argument, something people without the ability to answer facts do. Meta-analysis of nothing.

***Moreover, you called me a “creature,” which is exactly what you were railing against throughout this entire column.***

Where we come from, that is called hypocrisy, a hump, or anything else that shows the writer sins with the very same sin he denounces.

“And in the moral, neither of the two sects is willing to accept the rules of democracy and our legal mechanisms, and therefore there is no way to make joint decisions. This is because, in their view, their opponents are not legitimate. They are not willing to make decisions together with them because, in their opinion, they are wicked and/or stupid.”

I believe the clear-minded of Jerusalem would not have agreed to join a court panel on which you serve.
You dug a pit and fell into it.

I happened to listen to several of your discussions and debates with the other side. A master class in grinding water, to perfection.
I understand that you enjoy the philosophical discussion itself, and that is wonderful. Where are you going with all this ground water? Who is the target audience? The talking itself? Because you met with the other side that disagrees with you, and when you part it is as though you never met?

Do not flatter yourself.

A wise man does not enter a pit that a clever man knows how to get out of.

But a wise man does not know how to get out of the pit if he falls into it. A wise man is found in academia and the study hall, chattering himself to death. Like the Haredim, who study and study, but in practice only studied. Wise, but for themselves.

I prefer to be a clever creature rather than a wise grinder of water who thinks everything is symmetrical, thirsty for everyone’s love and without real faith in the justice of his path, sinning with the sins he warns against and falling into pits he does not know how to get out of.

If you need branding for ground water, talk to me.

Much success.

You have a basic error in logic. The fact that one should listen to the other person’s arguments does not necessarily mean that one will always find merit in them. If after listening you arrive at the conclusion that this is demagogic nonsense, there is no need or value in denying that.
Good luck.