I lived in Israel for three years when Rabin/Peres/Meretz were in full control with no one telling them what to do and the Oslo Accords were in full force. The Left-Wing secular establishment/deep state got to run things themselves without interference back then. The results were an absolute disaster. I used to be and in theory still am so far left that I would agree to Israel becoming to a majority Arab country (by extension an actual Arab country) if the Jews living there would more or less have status quo minus any conflict with the Palestinians in their own affairs, Rabin and co with their total control over Israel turned me into someone who can only foresee disaster if the left take over.
There is no compassion between the wars fought before the mid 1970s when the left was in control to the wars being fought today. When the left was in control back then they were fighting against sovereign countries who to a limited degree respected the rules of war, were not using asymmetrical warfare and were not suicidal for their cause. The right is fighting such groups. The left certainly has not done better against the latter group. Had they done such a good deal dealing with the intifada, that started when they were in power, or the surge in suicide bombings and other terrorism after the Oslo Accords they would still be in power today.
I need to write about the Oslo process, what it actually was, and why it failed, but big picture you are correct.
Against, Hamas, the least bad approach that doesn't requite massive change to the basic nature of the state is that Sharon/Bibi approach, and it would have continued to work OKish were it not for the election of this government.
It worked until it didn’t. It was like taking a loan from the gray market: it seems worthwhile in the short term, but the real cost comes due later.
In practice, nothing substantive in Netanyahu’s policy toward Gaza changed between December 2022 and October 2023. In any case, Hamas had already been planning an attack during the Bennett–Lapid government, but postponed it because Hezbollah was unwilling to join.
Ultimately, it became clear that you cannot allow a jihadist entity to exist west of the Jordan River and expect your intelligence to always be focused in the right place, especially when a surprise could also emerge from other arenas such as the West Bank or Lebanon.
You cannot rely solely on a border line, relinquish internal security control and on-the-ground intelligence, and at the same time allow a suicide cult to arm an entire urban environment.
And the historical comparison is stark: the number of Israeli and Palestinian casualties from 1967 to Oslo was smaller by orders of magnitude than what followed the Oslo process and the disengagement.
Such a reality ensures that when conflict erupts, it exacts a heavy price: a very high Palestinian civilian toll, severe friction with the international community, and hundreds of soldiers killed.
I know very little about Chabad other than controversy surrounding Tucker Carlsons segment on them and the meme they allegedly believe gentiles have no souls.
Are they as bad as these other vulgar fundamentalist groups in your view?
What exactly did the left have to offer during the Gaza war? The hostage cult? Going out into the streets and shouting “deal now” in service of Hamas and Qatar? Today’s Zionist left has completely lost the fighting spirit of Mapai and replaced it with humanitarian falsehoods, defeatism, impatience, and a lack of willingness to sacrifice. The reality is that, in this situation, it is דווקא the other camp, despite having lower human capital, that is keeping the country on a rational course.
I dont know what Israeli Libtards would actually do but clearing a confined urban environment of irregulars is pretty trivial, even Arab armies can do it.
Just flood the tunnels, like the Saudis did at the Grand Mosque in '79, then clear the entire strip, block by block, street by street, room by room. The US lost 1% of the force it sent into Fallujah doing that. And unlike levelling apartment buildings because insurgents might be inside this would actually succeed in destroying them as a fighting force
I think techically speaking, this would have been much more difficult than in Faulljah, but the main reason for this is the hostility of 95% of the population, which is is the fundamental problem.
Fallujah was a Sunni city where some American contractors had been lynched by an angry mob in middle of the day shortly before the Marines went in simply for being in the city. The locals while probably annoyed with AQ had no love for us.
What I mean is the Americans were working with the Iraqi government which was, even in Fallujah, more popular than ISIS, and offering a political solution that wasn't just 'we take your land and you leave'
Going house to house and sustaining losses of 1% of the force would be deeply demoralizing, especially after the losses of October 7. Israeli society would struggle to withstand it . The right would ask why not rely on airstrikes instead, while the left would slide into a culture of mourning.
Israelis have a low tolerance for casualties, which is normal for a modern democracy, but extremely abnormal for a miltiaristic and expansionist country, perhaps even unique in history. Despite its large and well equipped army, its low tolerance for casualties creates structural limitations, which means plenty of things that are technically possible are not possible for it to do. So it shouldn't do them. Israelis think because they have a low tolerance for casualties, they can just flatten Gaza and make the population live in tents, but the world disagrees. I wrote more about this here. https://nonzionism.com/p/could-israel-have-done-something
Well the IDF lost hundreds of soldiers in the strip doing something that totally failed to destroy Hamas or get the hostages back so you might as well lose soldiers doing something that actually works at least one of those goals.
I know everyone will yell at me but a useful thought exercise would be to imagine the state of affairs Israel would now be in if it had just accepted the Hamas proposal for a ceasefire in May 2024 and gotten more hostages back, had fewer of its own soldiers killed, killed fewer Palestinians, suffered less of a hit to its global reputation, normalized relations with Saudi Arabia, etc.
Had they accepted that deal, Hamas would have (correctly) gloated about the Israeli surrender. By now Israel would be at war with them again anyhow. Or ignoring their occasional missiles being shot into Israel to the degree they can.
There was no deal in 2024, only media-driven narratives and delusions amplified by the Biden administration. Hamas had no incentive to release the hostages while it still retained key leverage: a unified front with Hezbollah, sustained U.S. pressure on Israel, and a relatively safe haven in Rafah.
In any case, accepting the proposed deal at the time would have been a disaster. You don’t surrender strategic objectives or grant the enemy de facto immunity simply because it holds hostages. Doing so would amount to strategic suicide.
The Biden administration certainly thought there was a deal. And it ended up being basically the same deal that Israel accepted later. All this stuff about Hamas having no incentive to release the hostages was also confidently predicted before the January and October 2025 ceasefires but they did.
>In any case, accepting the proposed deal at the time would have been a disaster. You don’t surrender strategic objectives or grant the enemy de facto immunity simply because it holds hostages. Doing so would amount to strategic suicide.
the point of the thought exercise is to try and actually quantify *why* it would be a disaster, rather than just simply say it would be a disaster, "strategic suicide" or a loss of deterrence. What do you think would have happened in my hypothetical?
This is not the same deal. The “fictional deal” from May 2024 was, in every sense, a surrender agreement: a full withdrawal from all of Gaza, including the crossings, and strong guarantees for a five-year ceasefire, with no credible obligation for Hamas to disarm and no solid backing for resuming fighting if it failed to comply. It also included the immediate injection of billions into Gaza’s reconstruction effectively rebuilding Hamas itself.
By contrast, the deal reached in January was only achieved after Hamas had lost Hezbollah, much of its leadership, witnessed Rafah being destroyed, and, importantly, lost the Biden administration’s backing. Unlike the May proposal, the final agreement includes control over 60% of Gaza and the crossings, while the remaining 40% leaves Hamas exposed as a sitting target for our drones.
This is a strategic disaster, because Palestinians, Hezbollah, and other adversaries will learn that they can embark on the most extreme and ambitious military adventures, and as long as they hold hostages and benefit from a sympathetic administration in the White House alongside a well-oiled Qatari propaganda machine, Israel will eventually be forced to its knees within a few months.
From that point on, their imagination will be permanently ignited, and the next massacre attempt becomes only a matter of time. Second, granting Hamas such a major victory and allowing it to survive afterward effectively turns it into a Saladin-like figure and a heroic symbol across the Islamic world.
Any possibility of even partial de-radicalization within Palestinian society is thereby eliminated.
But in our universe, Hamas is still around, still in control of the Gaza strip, and Israel is constructing a buffer zone to surround them anyway which is going to require a permanent heavily staffed force there. The difference is in our universe, more Israeli soldiers died, more hostages died, and tens of thousands more Palestinian died.
The fact that the buffer zone will be inside Gaza is better than it being outside Gaza but was it worth the price paid for it?
The fact that Israel killed more of Hamas's leadership is something but I'm unsure how much killing leadership matters. Leaders are just replaced.
Once you know at the beginning that Hamas is going to be in charge at the end of the war anyway, a lot of the value of contuing the war goes away.
He does not control what enters Gaza, and our drones are flying overhead freely, striking whenever we choose, while he has no rockets capable of punishing our home front for that. The only flaw in the situation is that Trump will not always be there, and a future president could pressure us to withdraw. Because of this, as long as there is support in the White House, we need to finish the job but this time without the constraints of the hostage issue.
After years of war, the likes of which the population of the Gaza Strip lived through for the past few years, I doubt there is any chance at de-radicalization, whether or not there’s a good deal
If you are going to take mussar from hashgacha, especially on behalf of other people, rather basic to just pin it on whatever happens to bother you most. At least make some effort to read it midda kineged midda. As you note, rain is meant to teach total dependence on Hashem, so times of draught should make us suspect kochi ve-otzem yadi. Indeed, rather a michshol for those who see our biggest sin in failing to drop enough bombs. Almost as egregious as saying that the secular Zionists do a great job and should run the country and keep us safe, unlike the dumb frummies.
You might get more mileage from the end of Avos 5:8, but you would have to convince those who see continual war on all fronts as a sign of divine favor that cherev baa la-'olam is actually the opposite.
But please, Daas Yochid's argument was that the fact that the US cooperated so closely with Israel was Providence. I didn't see you address that at all.
That was his argument. I don't think he called it an outright nes, just like the story of the Megillah wasn't an outright nes. But that Netanyahu finally got his way after all the years, at a time when is most hated, through Trump winning in an unprecedented manner and then defying much of his base...
That Iranian AD is very very bad is not a surprise to anyone knowledgeable on these topics. The only thing unexpected in my view was was low Israeli causalities from Iranian missiles but that's largely downstream of them conserving their stockpiles for a long war and attacking neutral gulf countries. That the USAF and Israelis can blow things up and kill people should not be a surprise, it has been almost a century since America has fought a war without total control of the air.
The first doesn't really prove anything. Maybe it means it's an under-estimate, but maybe it means it's an over-estimate.
The second is actually a very strong point. If Farsis have a significantly higher average it would change things a lot, and perhaps they do, because if they didn't the whole thing would probably have collapsed by now.
I lived in Israel for three years when Rabin/Peres/Meretz were in full control with no one telling them what to do and the Oslo Accords were in full force. The Left-Wing secular establishment/deep state got to run things themselves without interference back then. The results were an absolute disaster. I used to be and in theory still am so far left that I would agree to Israel becoming to a majority Arab country (by extension an actual Arab country) if the Jews living there would more or less have status quo minus any conflict with the Palestinians in their own affairs, Rabin and co with their total control over Israel turned me into someone who can only foresee disaster if the left take over.
There is no compassion between the wars fought before the mid 1970s when the left was in control to the wars being fought today. When the left was in control back then they were fighting against sovereign countries who to a limited degree respected the rules of war, were not using asymmetrical warfare and were not suicidal for their cause. The right is fighting such groups. The left certainly has not done better against the latter group. Had they done such a good deal dealing with the intifada, that started when they were in power, or the surge in suicide bombings and other terrorism after the Oslo Accords they would still be in power today.
I need to write about the Oslo process, what it actually was, and why it failed, but big picture you are correct.
Against, Hamas, the least bad approach that doesn't requite massive change to the basic nature of the state is that Sharon/Bibi approach, and it would have continued to work OKish were it not for the election of this government.
It worked until it didn’t. It was like taking a loan from the gray market: it seems worthwhile in the short term, but the real cost comes due later.
In practice, nothing substantive in Netanyahu’s policy toward Gaza changed between December 2022 and October 2023. In any case, Hamas had already been planning an attack during the Bennett–Lapid government, but postponed it because Hezbollah was unwilling to join.
Ultimately, it became clear that you cannot allow a jihadist entity to exist west of the Jordan River and expect your intelligence to always be focused in the right place, especially when a surprise could also emerge from other arenas such as the West Bank or Lebanon.
You cannot rely solely on a border line, relinquish internal security control and on-the-ground intelligence, and at the same time allow a suicide cult to arm an entire urban environment.
And the historical comparison is stark: the number of Israeli and Palestinian casualties from 1967 to Oslo was smaller by orders of magnitude than what followed the Oslo process and the disengagement.
Such a reality ensures that when conflict erupts, it exacts a heavy price: a very high Palestinian civilian toll, severe friction with the international community, and hundreds of soldiers killed.
Shut it fag
Most intelligent Baruch reader.
I know very little about Chabad other than controversy surrounding Tucker Carlsons segment on them and the meme they allegedly believe gentiles have no souls.
Are they as bad as these other vulgar fundamentalist groups in your view?
What exactly did the left have to offer during the Gaza war? The hostage cult? Going out into the streets and shouting “deal now” in service of Hamas and Qatar? Today’s Zionist left has completely lost the fighting spirit of Mapai and replaced it with humanitarian falsehoods, defeatism, impatience, and a lack of willingness to sacrifice. The reality is that, in this situation, it is דווקא the other camp, despite having lower human capital, that is keeping the country on a rational course.
I dont know what Israeli Libtards would actually do but clearing a confined urban environment of irregulars is pretty trivial, even Arab armies can do it.
Just flood the tunnels, like the Saudis did at the Grand Mosque in '79, then clear the entire strip, block by block, street by street, room by room. The US lost 1% of the force it sent into Fallujah doing that. And unlike levelling apartment buildings because insurgents might be inside this would actually succeed in destroying them as a fighting force
I think techically speaking, this would have been much more difficult than in Faulljah, but the main reason for this is the hostility of 95% of the population, which is is the fundamental problem.
Fallujah was a Sunni city where some American contractors had been lynched by an angry mob in middle of the day shortly before the Marines went in simply for being in the city. The locals while probably annoyed with AQ had no love for us.
What I mean is the Americans were working with the Iraqi government which was, even in Fallujah, more popular than ISIS, and offering a political solution that wasn't just 'we take your land and you leave'
Going house to house and sustaining losses of 1% of the force would be deeply demoralizing, especially after the losses of October 7. Israeli society would struggle to withstand it . The right would ask why not rely on airstrikes instead, while the left would slide into a culture of mourning.
Israelis have a low tolerance for casualties, which is normal for a modern democracy, but extremely abnormal for a miltiaristic and expansionist country, perhaps even unique in history. Despite its large and well equipped army, its low tolerance for casualties creates structural limitations, which means plenty of things that are technically possible are not possible for it to do. So it shouldn't do them. Israelis think because they have a low tolerance for casualties, they can just flatten Gaza and make the population live in tents, but the world disagrees. I wrote more about this here. https://nonzionism.com/p/could-israel-have-done-something
Well the IDF lost hundreds of soldiers in the strip doing something that totally failed to destroy Hamas or get the hostages back so you might as well lose soldiers doing something that actually works at least one of those goals.
I know everyone will yell at me but a useful thought exercise would be to imagine the state of affairs Israel would now be in if it had just accepted the Hamas proposal for a ceasefire in May 2024 and gotten more hostages back, had fewer of its own soldiers killed, killed fewer Palestinians, suffered less of a hit to its global reputation, normalized relations with Saudi Arabia, etc.
Had they accepted that deal, Hamas would have (correctly) gloated about the Israeli surrender. By now Israel would be at war with them again anyhow. Or ignoring their occasional missiles being shot into Israel to the degree they can.
Hamas isn't gloating now? Israel's not still fighting Hamas now?
Is the point of this exercise to make me depressed? It’s doing a good job.
We must redouble our efforts to promote pure worship of the true God so he forgives us and has mercy on us.
How is this done on a national scale?
There was no deal in 2024, only media-driven narratives and delusions amplified by the Biden administration. Hamas had no incentive to release the hostages while it still retained key leverage: a unified front with Hezbollah, sustained U.S. pressure on Israel, and a relatively safe haven in Rafah.
In any case, accepting the proposed deal at the time would have been a disaster. You don’t surrender strategic objectives or grant the enemy de facto immunity simply because it holds hostages. Doing so would amount to strategic suicide.
The Biden administration certainly thought there was a deal. And it ended up being basically the same deal that Israel accepted later. All this stuff about Hamas having no incentive to release the hostages was also confidently predicted before the January and October 2025 ceasefires but they did.
>In any case, accepting the proposed deal at the time would have been a disaster. You don’t surrender strategic objectives or grant the enemy de facto immunity simply because it holds hostages. Doing so would amount to strategic suicide.
the point of the thought exercise is to try and actually quantify *why* it would be a disaster, rather than just simply say it would be a disaster, "strategic suicide" or a loss of deterrence. What do you think would have happened in my hypothetical?
This is not the same deal. The “fictional deal” from May 2024 was, in every sense, a surrender agreement: a full withdrawal from all of Gaza, including the crossings, and strong guarantees for a five-year ceasefire, with no credible obligation for Hamas to disarm and no solid backing for resuming fighting if it failed to comply. It also included the immediate injection of billions into Gaza’s reconstruction effectively rebuilding Hamas itself.
By contrast, the deal reached in January was only achieved after Hamas had lost Hezbollah, much of its leadership, witnessed Rafah being destroyed, and, importantly, lost the Biden administration’s backing. Unlike the May proposal, the final agreement includes control over 60% of Gaza and the crossings, while the remaining 40% leaves Hamas exposed as a sitting target for our drones.
This is a strategic disaster, because Palestinians, Hezbollah, and other adversaries will learn that they can embark on the most extreme and ambitious military adventures, and as long as they hold hostages and benefit from a sympathetic administration in the White House alongside a well-oiled Qatari propaganda machine, Israel will eventually be forced to its knees within a few months.
From that point on, their imagination will be permanently ignited, and the next massacre attempt becomes only a matter of time. Second, granting Hamas such a major victory and allowing it to survive afterward effectively turns it into a Saladin-like figure and a heroic symbol across the Islamic world.
Any possibility of even partial de-radicalization within Palestinian society is thereby eliminated.
But in our universe, Hamas is still around, still in control of the Gaza strip, and Israel is constructing a buffer zone to surround them anyway which is going to require a permanent heavily staffed force there. The difference is in our universe, more Israeli soldiers died, more hostages died, and tens of thousands more Palestinian died.
The fact that the buffer zone will be inside Gaza is better than it being outside Gaza but was it worth the price paid for it?
The fact that Israel killed more of Hamas's leadership is something but I'm unsure how much killing leadership matters. Leaders are just replaced.
Once you know at the beginning that Hamas is going to be in charge at the end of the war anyway, a lot of the value of contuing the war goes away.
He does not control what enters Gaza, and our drones are flying overhead freely, striking whenever we choose, while he has no rockets capable of punishing our home front for that. The only flaw in the situation is that Trump will not always be there, and a future president could pressure us to withdraw. Because of this, as long as there is support in the White House, we need to finish the job but this time without the constraints of the hostage issue.
After years of war, the likes of which the population of the Gaza Strip lived through for the past few years, I doubt there is any chance at de-radicalization, whether or not there’s a good deal
If you are going to take mussar from hashgacha, especially on behalf of other people, rather basic to just pin it on whatever happens to bother you most. At least make some effort to read it midda kineged midda. As you note, rain is meant to teach total dependence on Hashem, so times of draught should make us suspect kochi ve-otzem yadi. Indeed, rather a michshol for those who see our biggest sin in failing to drop enough bombs. Almost as egregious as saying that the secular Zionists do a great job and should run the country and keep us safe, unlike the dumb frummies.
You might get more mileage from the end of Avos 5:8, but you would have to convince those who see continual war on all fronts as a sign of divine favor that cherev baa la-'olam is actually the opposite.
The government should be run by people who work out.
Read Mishima.
But muh the Zohar and Kabbalah is all allegory not literal. Funny how no actual kaballists take that position. Zohar is a plague on the Jewish nation.
Just gonna link this here
https://daastorah.substack.com/p/r-shlomo-kanievsky-nissim-or-not?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=33pit
At least you agree with zichron on one thing.
-https://daastorah.substack.com/p/r-shlomo-kanievsky-nissim-or-not/comment/249583675
But please, Daas Yochid's argument was that the fact that the US cooperated so closely with Israel was Providence. I didn't see you address that at all.
Really?
I'm just annoyed you paywalled a post calling me out. When I called you out I didn't make you pay to rebut me in the comments.
?
Really, that’s the argument? The nes is that America went to war on our behalf?
That was his argument. I don't think he called it an outright nes, just like the story of the Megillah wasn't an outright nes. But that Netanyahu finally got his way after all the years, at a time when is most hated, through Trump winning in an unprecedented manner and then defying much of his base...
Trump may not be the most Philo-semitic President we've had, although he may, he is certainly the most pro Zionist.
Listen to Academic Agent on Youtube. He has very good take on the war
*Watch Academic Agent on Youtube. He has a very good take on the war
PS: sorry for my retarded spelling
You can edit comments on substack.
Obviously these Zoharists follow the teaching of Rav Yeshua ben Yosef that the promises of rain are to be understood metaphorically.
"For He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
Do you think the yad Hashem was visible when Hitler conquered France in 6 weeks? I’m not asking as a gotcha. What do you think?
That Iranian AD is very very bad is not a surprise to anyone knowledgeable on these topics. The only thing unexpected in my view was was low Israeli causalities from Iranian missiles but that's largely downstream of them conserving their stockpiles for a long war and attacking neutral gulf countries. That the USAF and Israelis can blow things up and kill people should not be a surprise, it has been almost a century since America has fought a war without total control of the air.
The first doesn't really prove anything. Maybe it means it's an under-estimate, but maybe it means it's an over-estimate.
The second is actually a very strong point. If Farsis have a significantly higher average it would change things a lot, and perhaps they do, because if they didn't the whole thing would probably have collapsed by now.
PISA results for Azerbaijan: mathematics (397), reading (365), and science (380).
Azeris make up about 20% of Iran’s population and they have relatively high integration into the elites.
There is no reason to believe that Farsis perform better than this.