I think whatever the merits of the kicking the can down the road bibi-ism there was, Bibi can no longer execute it. Kicking the can down the road requires you to sell the idea that you're small c conservative about changing the status quo but that you're theoretically open to changing thing in the direction your interlocuturs want.
But right now he is too dependent on Ben Gvir and Smotrich and the settler movement in general that he can't credibly sell even preserving the status quo to, say, Western allies or the Saudis. Every time he tries saying the war is against Hamas and we're not going back to settle, senior ministers in his government will say things like "this is the first step to transferring the Palestinians out of Gaza and resettling it" or "Mwa ha ha ha this new subdivision will kill the two state solution for good mwa ha ha ha" or "not a single ounce of baby formula should go into Gaza" and he can't even tell them to shut up or directly contradict them.
Could you also place a lot of blame for the current shiteness on the monomaniacal hatred of Bibi by left and center. If they had agreed to sit with Bibi he wouldn't have needed the crazies ergo no judiical reform and all the other costs of letting crazies in government
>Bibi seems to have hit on the strategy of isolating and destroying anyone in his vicinity who isn’t complete s**t, and promoting those who have nothing to offer but their loyalty, by a sort of instinct, but, bit by bit, it grew from a tactic into an ethos, and then a constitution
Agreed.
Trump has also done this - the big difference between Trump I and Trump II is that in Trump I, Trump felt he had to accept people onto his team that were competent party establishment types, and nominate judges and officials approved by the movement. Howver, those people burned him (either by refusing to lie or commit crimes for him) and so in Trump II all of the jobs go to cranks who have no ideological common ground except for being good at defending Trump on TV (e.g.(the sheer number of Fox TV hosts and guests, and the number of his former telegenic defense attorneys who now staff the senior positions at the Department of Justice).
Are the Bibi-ists similarly skilled at defending Bibi on TV to Hebrew audiences?
3. The surprise regarding Hezbollah’s “nature reserve” military infrastructure, and more broadly, Israel’s lack of understanding of the full situation in Lebanon in 2006.
Of course, October 7th was far more significant than the three examples above. But even the worst-case scenario of October 7th was not existential for Israel. By contrast—and this has been almost completely memory-holed because of Israel’s astounding military success in 2024—Hezbollah in 2023 posed a genuine, existential threat to Israel’s functioning. The IDF truly didn't know if they would be successful against Hezbollah.
The reason I raise this is because, when measured purely against Israel’s strategic interests, the failures in the conduct of the Gaza war have been orders of magnitude more severe than the intelligence lapses that allowed October 7th to happen in the first place.
---
With all that said, your ultimate point is important and, sadly, likely true: Israel’s demographics and current insanity make it improbable for the state to have both genuinely representative government and one that is liberal and functional.
Good comment, but is it really true they lacked intelligence about the extent of the tunnel network? Isn't that the reason they didn't want to go in in the first place?
If I recall, the tunnel network was more than four to five times larger than the high-end estimate of what was possible.
This was significant for three reasons:
1. Knowledge of this would have made it clear that Hamas was heavily investing in its capabilities and was not complacent as understood.
2. The tunnel infrastructure made it much harder to track Hamas activity, as so much of it happened below ground. The IDF confused its lack of knowledge with there being nothing significant happening.
3. If it had been known about, given the threat the tunnels pose to Israel, Israel would have been much more likely to invade Gaza earlier (which would have changed the whole dynamic).
>>>The centre to centre-left upper echelon of the IDF that were running things on October 7th were obviously not competent. The man to go to for a detailed rundown of just how incompetent they were is Itzhak Brik,
Itzhak Brik??? He is a guy to go to for military analysis? See here for what he predicted war with Hezbollah would be like when they were shooting missiles into Israel daily and compare it to the reality...
Sure, he's kind of a doomer, but, more importantly, he simply wasn't privy to the plans that Israel had in store. Minus those plans, he was correct, though maybe a bit excessively pessimistic.
IOW He just talks without knowing what he is talking about. He wasn't privy to how and why things were being done on October 7th either. As the old saying goes "those who have no children raise them very well..."
Since independence the 'nationalist' leadership has dedicated itself to dismantling the indigenous culture (Catholicism), and replacing the population with foreigners.
Yeah, I was curious what you meant by "fake and gay" precisely, but "Brits out, everyone else in" is exactly what happened, and Sinn Fein were all in favour of it. (Possibly because it was a demographic weapon against northern protestants?)
With that said, I think the provos' bombing campaign from the 90s onward was a textbook example of "do maximum damage to your opponent with minimum damage to PR", and can be instructively compared with what Hamas, the PLO etc. were doing.
This was a fully 21st-century phenomenon. I don’t know if accidental or strategic but the loose premise was that non-white immigrants would be more likely to oppose union of NI with GB.
Sinn Féin’s membership and support base is still >98% Irish Catholic (cultural or practicing).
I mean, maybe Bibi was kicking the Palestine can down the road because the only thing he believes in is bombing Iran. That's the Yossi Klein Halevi theory, right? That Bibi believes in the Rabin framing of an "inner ring" of neighbors who had been reduced below existential threat and an "outer ring" who hadn't yet. And naturally if you want to focus on neutralizing the outer ring - Iran - you want your other problems to go away. So then you ask if you make peace with the Palestinians (Rabin) or contain them (Bibi) while you deal with the existential threat.
It was tough to see that perspective in, say, summer of 2023. But it sure seems believable in summer of 2025. It also dovetails with Bibi's "Mr. Security" persona; you need to be a world-class hater to believe that nobody else hates the threat of the Ayatollahs enough to get the job done, and then spend thirty years making that case.
I'm curious about the meaning of whatever the word for "flood" in Arabic is because on the face of it, these seem like comically mixed metaphors:
>The Flood was a spark, but sparks must be preserved if they are to become the light of liberation.
>The Flood came like a thunderbolt, tearing down the illusion of invulnerability.
>From the dawn of the Flood, the world shook. It was not a skirmish on the border, not a passing clash; it was an earthquake.
>Among Palestinians, the Flood lit a flame.
The Flood is a spark, the flood is a thunderbolt, the flood is an earthquake, the flood lights a flame, the flood has a dawn.
I think whatever the merits of the kicking the can down the road bibi-ism there was, Bibi can no longer execute it. Kicking the can down the road requires you to sell the idea that you're small c conservative about changing the status quo but that you're theoretically open to changing thing in the direction your interlocuturs want.
But right now he is too dependent on Ben Gvir and Smotrich and the settler movement in general that he can't credibly sell even preserving the status quo to, say, Western allies or the Saudis. Every time he tries saying the war is against Hamas and we're not going back to settle, senior ministers in his government will say things like "this is the first step to transferring the Palestinians out of Gaza and resettling it" or "Mwa ha ha ha this new subdivision will kill the two state solution for good mwa ha ha ha" or "not a single ounce of baby formula should go into Gaza" and he can't even tell them to shut up or directly contradict them.
Sure, esoteric Bibi-ism find its exoteric form today in other avatars. Yair Golan if we get improbably lucky.
Could you also place a lot of blame for the current shiteness on the monomaniacal hatred of Bibi by left and center. If they had agreed to sit with Bibi he wouldn't have needed the crazies ergo no judiical reform and all the other costs of letting crazies in government
Yes. In the typical toxic relationship, both sides are to blame.
>Bibi seems to have hit on the strategy of isolating and destroying anyone in his vicinity who isn’t complete s**t, and promoting those who have nothing to offer but their loyalty, by a sort of instinct, but, bit by bit, it grew from a tactic into an ethos, and then a constitution
Agreed.
Trump has also done this - the big difference between Trump I and Trump II is that in Trump I, Trump felt he had to accept people onto his team that were competent party establishment types, and nominate judges and officials approved by the movement. Howver, those people burned him (either by refusing to lie or commit crimes for him) and so in Trump II all of the jobs go to cranks who have no ideological common ground except for being good at defending Trump on TV (e.g.(the sheer number of Fox TV hosts and guests, and the number of his former telegenic defense attorneys who now staff the senior positions at the Department of Justice).
Are the Bibi-ists similarly skilled at defending Bibi on TV to Hebrew audiences?
I don't think so, but most of the media I see is to Bibi's right.
> Attack by a Hamas mujahadin
'Mujahadin' is plural. The singular is 'mujahid.'
No judgement, of course. You already said:
>I speak absolutely no Arabic at all
The word is found in a famous later hadith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdF5ANBSjpI.
I do actually know enough Arabic to know *in* is a plural ending. Just careless. Or maybe I'm lying.
When discussing Gaza, I think the konzeptzia argument misses two important points.
The real failure was not simply a misunderstanding of whether Hamas was deterred, but rather:
1. A misplaced confidence in the effectiveness of the “smart fence.”
2. A complete lack of intelligence regarding the extent of Gaza’s tunnel network.
There are clear precedents of similarly dumb errors in recent Israeli military history:
1. Ansariya ambush (1997) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansariya_ambush
2. INS Hanit incident (2006) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Hanit
3. The surprise regarding Hezbollah’s “nature reserve” military infrastructure, and more broadly, Israel’s lack of understanding of the full situation in Lebanon in 2006.
Of course, October 7th was far more significant than the three examples above. But even the worst-case scenario of October 7th was not existential for Israel. By contrast—and this has been almost completely memory-holed because of Israel’s astounding military success in 2024—Hezbollah in 2023 posed a genuine, existential threat to Israel’s functioning. The IDF truly didn't know if they would be successful against Hezbollah.
The reason I raise this is because, when measured purely against Israel’s strategic interests, the failures in the conduct of the Gaza war have been orders of magnitude more severe than the intelligence lapses that allowed October 7th to happen in the first place.
---
With all that said, your ultimate point is important and, sadly, likely true: Israel’s demographics and current insanity make it improbable for the state to have both genuinely representative government and one that is liberal and functional.
Good comment, but is it really true they lacked intelligence about the extent of the tunnel network? Isn't that the reason they didn't want to go in in the first place?
If I recall, the tunnel network was more than four to five times larger than the high-end estimate of what was possible.
This was significant for three reasons:
1. Knowledge of this would have made it clear that Hamas was heavily investing in its capabilities and was not complacent as understood.
2. The tunnel infrastructure made it much harder to track Hamas activity, as so much of it happened below ground. The IDF confused its lack of knowledge with there being nothing significant happening.
3. If it had been known about, given the threat the tunnels pose to Israel, Israel would have been much more likely to invade Gaza earlier (which would have changed the whole dynamic).
Gaza in 2023 really was like Lebanon in 2006.
>>>The centre to centre-left upper echelon of the IDF that were running things on October 7th were obviously not competent. The man to go to for a detailed rundown of just how incompetent they were is Itzhak Brik,
Itzhak Brik??? He is a guy to go to for military analysis? See here for what he predicted war with Hezbollah would be like when they were shooting missiles into Israel daily and compare it to the reality...
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-807326
Sure, he's kind of a doomer, but, more importantly, he simply wasn't privy to the plans that Israel had in store. Minus those plans, he was correct, though maybe a bit excessively pessimistic.
IOW He just talks without knowing what he is talking about. He wasn't privy to how and why things were being done on October 7th either. As the old saying goes "those who have no children raise them very well..."
Alex Stein’s blog? Are we suddenly back in the 2000s?!?
As a general question to what extent is Irish nationalism fake and gay in a way different from any other nationalism?
Since independence the 'nationalist' leadership has dedicated itself to dismantling the indigenous culture (Catholicism), and replacing the population with foreigners.
Independent Ireland became *more* Catholic at least for its first 75 years.
That's fair, but I'm talking about the IRA in 1984.
Non-white immigration to any part of Ireland was virtually zero in 1984 and remained so for another decade.
I don’t know what the IRA’s position on the topic was but it hardly mattered.
Why not? Sinn Fein were enthusiastic supporters of replacement immigration until they u-turned in 2024.
Yeah, I was curious what you meant by "fake and gay" precisely, but "Brits out, everyone else in" is exactly what happened, and Sinn Fein were all in favour of it. (Possibly because it was a demographic weapon against northern protestants?)
With that said, I think the provos' bombing campaign from the 90s onward was a textbook example of "do maximum damage to your opponent with minimum damage to PR", and can be instructively compared with what Hamas, the PLO etc. were doing.
This was a fully 21st-century phenomenon. I don’t know if accidental or strategic but the loose premise was that non-white immigrants would be more likely to oppose union of NI with GB.
Sinn Féin’s membership and support base is still >98% Irish Catholic (cultural or practicing).
https://www.amazon.com/TRUE-REVOLUTION-ESCAPING-RECLAIMING-WORLD-ebook/dp/B0FLW9757R/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3QSQHY3LC8Z4F&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.S57e0fJ5IrTD54sWRl9p_A.qVwdDkyrdr-gdLEFQbMXQqutQ1YOzVf7k1aWJlzsjwY&dib_tag=se&keywords=Joshua+Shalet&qid=1755682248&sprefix=joshua+shalet+%2Caps%2C1149&sr=8-1
I mean, maybe Bibi was kicking the Palestine can down the road because the only thing he believes in is bombing Iran. That's the Yossi Klein Halevi theory, right? That Bibi believes in the Rabin framing of an "inner ring" of neighbors who had been reduced below existential threat and an "outer ring" who hadn't yet. And naturally if you want to focus on neutralizing the outer ring - Iran - you want your other problems to go away. So then you ask if you make peace with the Palestinians (Rabin) or contain them (Bibi) while you deal with the existential threat.
It was tough to see that perspective in, say, summer of 2023. But it sure seems believable in summer of 2025. It also dovetails with Bibi's "Mr. Security" persona; you need to be a world-class hater to believe that nobody else hates the threat of the Ayatollahs enough to get the job done, and then spend thirty years making that case.