This is two separate articles, uneasily joined in the middle. The basic problem is that the writer thinks tactics and strategy are one and the same.
Others can respond to the strategic, ‘imperial overstretch’ second half. I’ll comment on the first.
Essentially, the Israelis made the same mistake as the French, with the Maginot Line. Or, for that matter, as the Israelis with the Bar-Lev Line in the 1970s. If you hide behind fortifications, you cede the initiative to your enemy.
Worse, the Gaza defences were (apparently) unmanned and undefended. An undefended obstacle is no obstacle at all. Armies the world over have learned this repeatedly- and usually the hard way.
Tactics and strategy and complexity (“Oh My!”). A simpler “strategy” (or tactic) was Trump’s approach – make them think you are crazy enough to engage them and wipe the ‘em out. Yes, he was and is a vulgar, self-defeating jerk, But Putin thought he was nuts, and Israel was doing an “end-around” (of “Palestine”) directly with Arab countries that feared Iran’s craziness.
The “complex” way (Obama writ large) is to give Iran free money, let them develop nuclear weapons freely (instead of covertly) after 10 years, snarl the Economy with green handouts and keep “plausible deniability “ in your back pocket. And here we are.
It seems to me quite grotesque to attribute the failure to the strategy or to the tactic when if the intelligence services would have not failed the terrorist attack plan would have been reduced to nothing and would not have even been treated in the media. Thus, there is no parallel with the Maginot Line, and the sole resemblance with an historic event is the intelligence failure during the Kippur War in 1973, during which the IDF was so deeply convinced that the Egypt would not attack that they have been blinded, at the point they didn’t see the preparations for the assault as such but as an exercise. The same overwhelming self confidence that skewed in 1973 the analysis of mere explicit facts caused now again the same dramatic consequences.
Alex Carnegie
6 months ago
Perhaps the strongest argument over the last thirty years for Israel to seek peace (with more commitment than the Israeli political establishment proved able to muster) was the probability that its military superiority would end sooner or later. Israeli military superiority has been associated with tanks whose dominance of the battlefield appears – judging by events in the Ukraine – to be ending. A possible parallel is the last attempt to establish a western state in the area, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, which lost most of its territory seventy years after its establishment when the Muslims worked out how to defeat its armoured cavalry.
In the current crisis, as the Israelis move from the phase of pure outrage, hatred and a desire for revenge to thinking more cooly and strategically, it would be preferable if they consider designing their military operations with a view to creating the preconditions for a sustainable peace. They may not have many years left of being able to rely on military strength. Ejecting or eliminating Hamas from Gaza is a sensible and achievable aim but if it is achieved by means which alienate and embitter again the rest of the Muslim world it will be a Pyrrhic victory.
The 1973 Yom Kippur War ended up having a positive result; optimists may hope the current conflict will have a similar long term outcome. Unfortunately, the PR electoral system in Israel gives one little confidence that it will ever again be able to pursue peace in a coherent fashion. Rabin and Barak tried sincerely but since then, amongst other factors, the settlers have gained a political veto on progress, political leaders have seen little profit in arguing for the necessary compromises and all parties have considered it prudent to allow Gaza to fester. The Israelis continue to rely disproportionately on military strength. They may win this war but perhaps not the next.
This prospect is especially disappointing because the last five years have seen more diplomatic movement than for thirty years. The possibility that the Saudis and Gulf States would come to see Israel as a potential ally in containing the threat from Iran and its Shiite allies in Iraq and Syria was tangible. It is this possible reordering of Sunni Arab priorities that one assumes the Hamas raid was designed to block. It is the hope of reviving this possibility before it is too late that should influence Israeli strategy.
The bottom line is that Israel should resist the temptation to flatten Gaza but instead use the threat of doing so to negotiate with the Saudis and Gulf States. The removal of Hamas and the relocation of perhaps two thirds of the current population of Gaza might be key features of the deal. Given the Muslim Brotherhood origins of Hamas, they are unlikely to be welcome in Egypt, Jordan or Syria but might find a home in Saudi Arabia. MBS is hoping to establish a new city of Neom opposite Sharm El Sheik. Perhaps the Gazans can provide the core population.
The Israelis need to recognise that in the long run the military balance will inexorably shift against them and work out how to get on with their neighbours … or face the the prospect of going the way of the Crusaders.
“The bottom line is that Israel should resist the temptation to flatten Gaza but instead use the threat of doing so to negotiate with the Saudis and Gulf States” – For the Saudis this is not a threat, it is a gift
Arab elites are more rational than you: a dead Palestinian in Gaza is more profitable than a living Palestinian in Saudi Arabia (martyrs are more convenient than troublemakers)
I see your logic but I think you are assuming that SA and the Gulf States are focussed exclusively on the Israel / Palestine issue. Prior to the Hamas raid, my impression was that they were far more worried about the threat from Iran and more intrigued by the opportunities presented by the US / China tensions. Framed either way, live Palestinians would have more attractions than martyrs. My hope is that the current crisis does not lead to a Saudi reversion to 1970s levels of hostility to Israel and its supporters – in which case your perspective will make sense. Regrettably.
Moving the Gazans to Neom is the best bit of lateral thinking I’ve seen in the last two weeks. Chapeau!
Do you have a blog or substack, Alex? You’ve made some interesting comments in the last few days.
I am afraid not. Maybe I should; it’s very fashionable. On current trends, however, there will soon be more Substack writers than readers – which might be rather demoralising.
In 1990 Arafat came out in support of S Hussein in his invasion of Kuwait. Palestinians were then arrested in Gulf Cooperation Countries and expelled. In the 1950s the Palestinians tried to take over Kuwait. How much do the GCC countries trust the Palestinians let alone Iranian funded Muslim Bretheren ? I would suggest it is the lack of trust by Arab countries for the Palestinians which is a major obstacle to achieving a reasonable situation.
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
How can a people that was stripped of its arms and led to the gas chamber let itself be stripped of its arms again? Unlike the Swiss, who are all armed, Israelis, who must also serve in their military, apparently docilely turn in their weapons upon completion of their service. How many Jews would have been saved if the rampaging Hamas slaughterers faced a well-armed populace? Would they have even dared to attack if there was a chance the Jews would fire back?
“Would they have even dared to attack if there was a chance the Jews would fire back?”
I suspect they would. This is a classic example of the truism that you can repel terrorists 1,000 times but they only have to get through once.
On the wider point, recent events are yet more evidence of failure of imagination and greed for land. Both sides want all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. These desires are fundamentally incompatible, as neither side will give an inch, indeed Israeli settlers have been taking land steadily and piecemeal on the West Bank ever since the 1967 war.
The cliché that Israel can be a Zionist state or a democracy where all are treated equally, but it cannot be both, is becoming more and more a reality.
I despair.
They may try once. But against an armed populace they’d be unlikely to succeed. Against an unarmed populace it was like shooting fish in a barrel. That’s the point. And if there’s “hundreds of volunteers to take their place” they would reach the same fate. Not one of the Hamas had any fear attacking civilians. It’s easy to be brave when no one fights back.
“But against an armed populace they’d be unlikely to succeed.”
I’d like to think that was the case, but the evidence tends to disagree with that. The more people are armed, the more they are killed. Arming civilians does not deter terrorists, especially those who are not afraid of death.
And you can’t realistically arm everyone or give everyone an armed guard.
Getting off-topic, but
USA 20,958 homicides using firearms in 2021.
UK 28 homicides using firearms in 2022.
The evidence shows that restricting ownerships of firearms saves lives, as if you don’t have one you can’t kill your family or friends with it. And both sides are more likely to die in a shooting war.
The circumstances in Israel, Gaza and the West bank are different, of course, and I don’t want to argue over false equivalence, but the general point is true. You argued that if Israeli citizens had all been armed Hamas would not have attacked and I doubted if that was justified by reality. But we will have to agree to differ.
I expect this to be down-voted…
I think a great idea would be for all unelected Socialists to get together an organize a plan to eliminate risk from life. Maybe first you could start with defining and eliminating “hate speech.” Then you could move toward banning automobiles and fossil fuels. Then you could require everybody to maintain a digital passport before leaving their homes with a social credit/debt system then rewards people for helpful social behavior like mask wearing and punishes them for harmful behaviors like gun purchases. Then maybe you could join Canada in their plans for Humane Euthanasia while abolishing all forms of religion.
“USA 20,958 homicides using firearms in 2021.”
Further off topic, take inner cities out of the United State’s homicide statistics and it’s homicide rate compares very favorably with those of Europe.
What about Switzerland, heavily armed often with military automatic weapons , even machine guns but little violence from guns? I suggest it is emotional maturity producing self- control.
Alas, if the Swiss keep keeping their machine gun at home, they now have to surrender their ammunition to the military depots at the end of their annual 3-week training period….
I thought this immediately when this happened. If there is any country in the world where the whole country should be armed, it is Israel.
Nik Jewell
6 months ago
Alongside the article by the Malmgrens, this is the second article to give a cogent account of the failure of the fence. We also know how forces normally in the area were deployed elsewhere.
The fence and the deployment are only two prongs of the conspiratorial account, though. The third is the repeated warnings from Egyptian intelligence. The fourth is that it was over 5 hours (allegedly) until al-Qassam was engaged, and it took 8-26 hours (allegedly) to rescue people from the attack (people were on social media asking for help within minutes). The fifth is claims from Israeli pilots that they were in the air in the affected areas within 45 minutes when people on the ground have said there was nothing in the air for hours.
Most of that could be decided with satellite data. But Israel and the US don’t want to reveal satellite data for some reason. Satellite data would put the disputed accounts of the truck bombing and the hospital bombing to bed, too.
As long as there is obfuscation, there will be conspiratorial accounts; the longer it takes to reveal data to prove otherwise, the greater the suspicion that the data has been fabricated.
People sit up cameras in advance to record the planes hitting the buildings, this does suggest an inside job
Avro Lanc
6 months ago
Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man – General George S. Patton
Martin Smith
6 months ago
An enjoyable piece. This reliance on tech for ‘easy’ solutions over work by humans is mirrored in health care where good diet, exercise, fresh air and relaxation are jetisoned for ‘miracle’ cures in the form of pills and injections to support the unatural modern life style.
Last edited 6 months ago by Martin Smith
Jacques Rossat
6 months ago
“The fence creates an illusion and gives a false sense of security (…)These are (…) classic military mistakes, warned against repeatedly by strategists from Carl von Clausewitz to Sun Tzu” and spectacularly examplified by the Chinese Great Wall, the Ligne Maginot, the Gustav Line and many other useless fortifications. But, as in finance, it seems more and more évident that one never learns from former mistakes….
Good article. Answers a lot of questions I’ve had since the awful events of 7/10.
D Walsh
6 months ago
The war with Hamas will be over by Christmas
Alan Gore
6 months ago
Most fundamentally, Israel will never be safe so long as its bitterest enemy is right next door. May Natanyahu chuck the Palestinians out into the desert, so that their rich jihadist friends can buy them viable land somewhere in Central Asia, as far from everyone else as possible.
Betsy Warrior
6 months ago
Why does no one ever mention the documentary crew of Dominick Suter, Paul Kurzberg, his brother and the others of the Urban Moving Systems who filmed 9/11/01 with great celebration? Their counterparts who most likely filmed the October 7th Hamas incursion could give us the real picture of what happened that day. Do we need to be reminded that Pegasus NSO could even track Khashoggi and his killer’s movements or that in Guatemala (or Azerbaijan) the ex- President had everyone they wanted covered? The Suter’s Urban Moving Systems was well covered in the press at the time (including their confirmation that they were documenting for Mossad) though most of that reporting has been scrubbed from the internet there are still some remnants extant. Such a film could clear up many questions about the Hamas attack on Israel. Eight thousand dead… (both sides)…and still counting….
Katalin Kish
6 months ago
Tech 101: the more complex the tech, the more delicate is the balance required for things to work as expected. If you have ever cared for toddlers, you know how easy it is to sabotage tech, how easily tech becomes a source of harm. Look up my name to see how tech is weaponised with devastating consequences, yet without any risk of punishment in a leafy suburb of million $ homes in Melbourne, Australia.
David Lindsay
6 months ago
The truth of Hamas’s attack would have been bad enough to have elicited a strong response. But not the response on which Benjamin Netanyahu was hellbent. Netanyahu did not get lucky. The bests spies in the world did not all miss this. And now, he has co-opted his opponents, he has marginalised and neutralised his rivals on the Right, he has silenced the judges, and he has usefully exposed the Western elites as cheerleaders for collective punishment and for genocide. At last, he will rank with his brother. A lot of the most effective politicians are psychopaths. They would get far less done if they were not.
This is two separate articles, uneasily joined in the middle. The basic problem is that the writer thinks tactics and strategy are one and the same.
Others can respond to the strategic, ‘imperial overstretch’ second half. I’ll comment on the first.
Essentially, the Israelis made the same mistake as the French, with the Maginot Line. Or, for that matter, as the Israelis with the Bar-Lev Line in the 1970s. If you hide behind fortifications, you cede the initiative to your enemy.
Worse, the Gaza defences were (apparently) unmanned and undefended. An undefended obstacle is no obstacle at all. Armies the world over have learned this repeatedly- and usually the hard way.
Tactics and strategy and complexity (“Oh My!”). A simpler “strategy” (or tactic) was Trump’s approach – make them think you are crazy enough to engage them and wipe the ‘em out. Yes, he was and is a vulgar, self-defeating jerk, But Putin thought he was nuts, and Israel was doing an “end-around” (of “Palestine”) directly with Arab countries that feared Iran’s craziness.
The “complex” way (Obama writ large) is to give Iran free money, let them develop nuclear weapons freely (instead of covertly) after 10 years, snarl the Economy with green handouts and keep “plausible deniability “ in your back pocket. And here we are.
It seems to me quite grotesque to attribute the failure to the strategy or to the tactic when if the intelligence services would have not failed the terrorist attack plan would have been reduced to nothing and would not have even been treated in the media. Thus, there is no parallel with the Maginot Line, and the sole resemblance with an historic event is the intelligence failure during the Kippur War in 1973, during which the IDF was so deeply convinced that the Egypt would not attack that they have been blinded, at the point they didn’t see the preparations for the assault as such but as an exercise. The same overwhelming self confidence that skewed in 1973 the analysis of mere explicit facts caused now again the same dramatic consequences.
Perhaps the strongest argument over the last thirty years for Israel to seek peace (with more commitment than the Israeli political establishment proved able to muster) was the probability that its military superiority would end sooner or later. Israeli military superiority has been associated with tanks whose dominance of the battlefield appears – judging by events in the Ukraine – to be ending. A possible parallel is the last attempt to establish a western state in the area, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, which lost most of its territory seventy years after its establishment when the Muslims worked out how to defeat its armoured cavalry.
In the current crisis, as the Israelis move from the phase of pure outrage, hatred and a desire for revenge to thinking more cooly and strategically, it would be preferable if they consider designing their military operations with a view to creating the preconditions for a sustainable peace. They may not have many years left of being able to rely on military strength. Ejecting or eliminating Hamas from Gaza is a sensible and achievable aim but if it is achieved by means which alienate and embitter again the rest of the Muslim world it will be a Pyrrhic victory.
The 1973 Yom Kippur War ended up having a positive result; optimists may hope the current conflict will have a similar long term outcome. Unfortunately, the PR electoral system in Israel gives one little confidence that it will ever again be able to pursue peace in a coherent fashion. Rabin and Barak tried sincerely but since then, amongst other factors, the settlers have gained a political veto on progress, political leaders have seen little profit in arguing for the necessary compromises and all parties have considered it prudent to allow Gaza to fester. The Israelis continue to rely disproportionately on military strength. They may win this war but perhaps not the next.
This prospect is especially disappointing because the last five years have seen more diplomatic movement than for thirty years. The possibility that the Saudis and Gulf States would come to see Israel as a potential ally in containing the threat from Iran and its Shiite allies in Iraq and Syria was tangible. It is this possible reordering of Sunni Arab priorities that one assumes the Hamas raid was designed to block. It is the hope of reviving this possibility before it is too late that should influence Israeli strategy.
The bottom line is that Israel should resist the temptation to flatten Gaza but instead use the threat of doing so to negotiate with the Saudis and Gulf States. The removal of Hamas and the relocation of perhaps two thirds of the current population of Gaza might be key features of the deal. Given the Muslim Brotherhood origins of Hamas, they are unlikely to be welcome in Egypt, Jordan or Syria but might find a home in Saudi Arabia. MBS is hoping to establish a new city of Neom opposite Sharm El Sheik. Perhaps the Gazans can provide the core population.
The Israelis need to recognise that in the long run the military balance will inexorably shift against them and work out how to get on with their neighbours … or face the the prospect of going the way of the Crusaders.
“The bottom line is that Israel should resist the temptation to flatten Gaza but instead use the threat of doing so to negotiate with the Saudis and Gulf States” – For the Saudis this is not a threat, it is a gift
Why do you think this? Expand?
Arab elites are more rational than you: a dead Palestinian in Gaza is more profitable than a living Palestinian in Saudi Arabia (martyrs are more convenient than troublemakers)
I see your logic but I think you are assuming that SA and the Gulf States are focussed exclusively on the Israel / Palestine issue. Prior to the Hamas raid, my impression was that they were far more worried about the threat from Iran and more intrigued by the opportunities presented by the US / China tensions. Framed either way, live Palestinians would have more attractions than martyrs. My hope is that the current crisis does not lead to a Saudi reversion to 1970s levels of hostility to Israel and its supporters – in which case your perspective will make sense. Regrettably.
Sorry
Moving the Gazans to Neom is the best bit of lateral thinking I’ve seen in the last two weeks. Chapeau!
Do you have a blog or substack, Alex? You’ve made some interesting comments in the last few days.
I am afraid not. Maybe I should; it’s very fashionable. On current trends, however, there will soon be more Substack writers than readers – which might be rather demoralising.
Well, yes, there is that!
In 1990 Arafat came out in support of S Hussein in his invasion of Kuwait. Palestinians were then arrested in Gulf Cooperation Countries and expelled. In the 1950s the Palestinians tried to take over Kuwait. How much do the GCC countries trust the Palestinians let alone Iranian funded Muslim Bretheren ? I would suggest it is the lack of trust by Arab countries for the Palestinians which is a major obstacle to achieving a reasonable situation.
How can a people that was stripped of its arms and led to the gas chamber let itself be stripped of its arms again? Unlike the Swiss, who are all armed, Israelis, who must also serve in their military, apparently docilely turn in their weapons upon completion of their service. How many Jews would have been saved if the rampaging Hamas slaughterers faced a well-armed populace? Would they have even dared to attack if there was a chance the Jews would fire back?
“Would they have even dared to attack if there was a chance the Jews would fire back?”
I suspect they would. This is a classic example of the truism that you can repel terrorists 1,000 times but they only have to get through once.
On the wider point, recent events are yet more evidence of failure of imagination and greed for land. Both sides want all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. These desires are fundamentally incompatible, as neither side will give an inch, indeed Israeli settlers have been taking land steadily and piecemeal on the West Bank ever since the 1967 war.
The cliché that Israel can be a Zionist state or a democracy where all are treated equally, but it cannot be both, is becoming more and more a reality.
I despair.
“I suspect they would”.
Well, maybe once.
That’s the point. They only have to succeed once. And there will be hundreds of volunteers to take their place.
They may try once. But against an armed populace they’d be unlikely to succeed. Against an unarmed populace it was like shooting fish in a barrel. That’s the point. And if there’s “hundreds of volunteers to take their place” they would reach the same fate. Not one of the Hamas had any fear attacking civilians. It’s easy to be brave when no one fights back.
“But against an armed populace they’d be unlikely to succeed.”
I’d like to think that was the case, but the evidence tends to disagree with that. The more people are armed, the more they are killed. Arming civilians does not deter terrorists, especially those who are not afraid of death.
And you can’t realistically arm everyone or give everyone an armed guard.
If only they had made Israel a gun-free zone.
Getting off-topic, but
USA 20,958 homicides using firearms in 2021.
UK 28 homicides using firearms in 2022.
The evidence shows that restricting ownerships of firearms saves lives, as if you don’t have one you can’t kill your family or friends with it. And both sides are more likely to die in a shooting war.
The circumstances in Israel, Gaza and the West bank are different, of course, and I don’t want to argue over false equivalence, but the general point is true. You argued that if Israeli citizens had all been armed Hamas would not have attacked and I doubted if that was justified by reality. But we will have to agree to differ.
I expect this to be down-voted…
I think a great idea would be for all unelected Socialists to get together an organize a plan to eliminate risk from life. Maybe first you could start with defining and eliminating “hate speech.” Then you could move toward banning automobiles and fossil fuels. Then you could require everybody to maintain a digital passport before leaving their homes with a social credit/debt system then rewards people for helpful social behavior like mask wearing and punishes them for harmful behaviors like gun purchases. Then maybe you could join Canada in their plans for Humane Euthanasia while abolishing all forms of religion.
“USA 20,958 homicides using firearms in 2021.”
Further off topic, take inner cities out of the United State’s homicide statistics and it’s homicide rate compares very favorably with those of Europe.
What about Switzerland, heavily armed often with military automatic weapons , even machine guns but little violence from guns? I suggest it is emotional maturity producing self- control.
Alas, if the Swiss keep keeping their machine gun at home, they now have to surrender their ammunition to the military depots at the end of their annual 3-week training period….
Gun sales have increased greatly in Israel
I thought this immediately when this happened. If there is any country in the world where the whole country should be armed, it is Israel.
Alongside the article by the Malmgrens, this is the second article to give a cogent account of the failure of the fence. We also know how forces normally in the area were deployed elsewhere.
The fence and the deployment are only two prongs of the conspiratorial account, though. The third is the repeated warnings from Egyptian intelligence. The fourth is that it was over 5 hours (allegedly) until al-Qassam was engaged, and it took 8-26 hours (allegedly) to rescue people from the attack (people were on social media asking for help within minutes). The fifth is claims from Israeli pilots that they were in the air in the affected areas within 45 minutes when people on the ground have said there was nothing in the air for hours.
Most of that could be decided with satellite data. But Israel and the US don’t want to reveal satellite data for some reason. Satellite data would put the disputed accounts of the truck bombing and the hospital bombing to bed, too.
As long as there is obfuscation, there will be conspiratorial accounts; the longer it takes to reveal data to prove otherwise, the greater the suspicion that the data has been fabricated.
Business as usual, 9/11 was an inside job…
People sit up cameras in advance to record the planes hitting the buildings, this does suggest an inside job
Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man – General George S. Patton
An enjoyable piece. This reliance on tech for ‘easy’ solutions over work by humans is mirrored in health care where good diet, exercise, fresh air and relaxation are jetisoned for ‘miracle’ cures in the form of pills and injections to support the unatural modern life style.
“The fence creates an illusion and gives a false sense of security (…)These are (…) classic military mistakes, warned against repeatedly by strategists from Carl von Clausewitz to Sun Tzu” and spectacularly examplified by the Chinese Great Wall, the Ligne Maginot, the Gustav Line and many other useless fortifications. But, as in finance, it seems more and more évident that one never learns from former mistakes….
A Spartan king was asked why no walls surrounded the city:he pointed to his warriors.
Technology IS the idol of this age!
Perhaps modern armies have forgotten the military skills taught by LT Col Peter Walter MC and Bar . He was hard man who taught hard men for war.
Lt Col Peter Walter, highly decorated soldier with the SAS, nicknamed ‘the Rat’ for his grit and resourcefulness – obituary (telegraph.co.uk)
Good article. Answers a lot of questions I’ve had since the awful events of 7/10.
The war with Hamas will be over by Christmas
Most fundamentally, Israel will never be safe so long as its bitterest enemy is right next door. May Natanyahu chuck the Palestinians out into the desert, so that their rich jihadist friends can buy them viable land somewhere in Central Asia, as far from everyone else as possible.
Why does no one ever mention the documentary crew of Dominick Suter, Paul Kurzberg, his brother and the others of the Urban Moving Systems who filmed 9/11/01 with great celebration? Their counterparts who most likely filmed the October 7th Hamas incursion could give us the real picture of what happened that day. Do we need to be reminded that Pegasus NSO could even track Khashoggi and his killer’s movements or that in Guatemala (or Azerbaijan) the ex- President had everyone they wanted covered? The Suter’s Urban Moving Systems was well covered in the press at the time (including their confirmation that they were documenting for Mossad) though most of that reporting has been scrubbed from the internet there are still some remnants extant. Such a film could clear up many questions about the Hamas attack on Israel. Eight thousand dead… (both sides)…and still counting….
Tech 101: the more complex the tech, the more delicate is the balance required for things to work as expected. If you have ever cared for toddlers, you know how easy it is to sabotage tech, how easily tech becomes a source of harm. Look up my name to see how tech is weaponised with devastating consequences, yet without any risk of punishment in a leafy suburb of million $ homes in Melbourne, Australia.
The truth of Hamas’s attack would have been bad enough to have elicited a strong response. But not the response on which Benjamin Netanyahu was hellbent. Netanyahu did not get lucky. The bests spies in the world did not all miss this. And now, he has co-opted his opponents, he has marginalised and neutralised his rivals on the Right, he has silenced the judges, and he has usefully exposed the Western elites as cheerleaders for collective punishment and for genocide. At last, he will rank with his brother. A lot of the most effective politicians are psychopaths. They would get far less done if they were not.