Five months into the war, we’ve hit a slowdown. Rather than invading Gaza’s major population centers simultaneously, the IDF has been methodically working its way down from the north. Only Rafah in the South remains uncleared. The military and political leadership have re-imposed the old rules of engagement in the cleared areas, so that soldiers are standing by and watching Hamas fighters infiltrate back. Sometimes, the IDF re-clears previously cleared areas; last week, it began re-clearing Shifa Hospital, previously cleared in November, killing dozens of terrorists and capturing hundreds.
America has clearly indicated that it does not wish Israel to clear Rafah. Egypt has threatened to review its peace agreement with Israel in the event of an attack on Rafah. Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that he intends to clear Rafah and continue the war until victory, but has not yet given the order to attack. Our left has consistently demanded a ceasefire and a hostage exchange. Hamas has stated that it will only accept a deal which involves an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which would be tantamount to defeat.
It is not clear what the field grade and junior general officer class think of the state of things; by their very nature, they do not generally allow themselves to make public statements on national policy. One telling exception is Brigadier General Dan Goldfuss, who made a televised speech in front of a tank in Gaza demanding that the political echelon show itself worthy of the troops and drive on to victory. The speech was disavowed by the IDF and Goldfuss was reprimanded but not removed from his position.
Against this background, we should look at Dr. Uri Milstein’s recent interview of IDF Major General (Reserve) and war hero Itzhak Brik. Brik spent a decade prior to this war as the IDF’s ombudsman, pointing out its systemic decay and a degradation of operational capability, and prophesying doom. His warnings were generally dismissed, and the current war’s disastrous first day has been seen as a vindication. Since the beginning of the war, he’s been analyzing the performance of the IDF and issuing further warnings of impending doom-thousands of Hezbollah missiles raining down, no logistical support capability, repair units disbanded, a self-serving General Staff, the same people responsible for the disaster continuing to run the war, etcetera.
In this interview, Brik continues to forecast doom. From his perspective, Israel is being distracted by this war from the truly important things: preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, preparing for the war with Hezbollah, where tens of thousands of advanced missiles will be launched against us, and reforming the IDF, whose culture of lies has led to advanced decay in crucial functionality like logistics and battlefield repair. Brik says that while we had freedom of maneuver in the early stages of the war, that was squandered, and now our superpower patron, the US, is losing patience with us. Russia and China are waiting with their claws out. If we invade Rafah, we will end up like South Africa, an embargoed pariah. Further, even if we invade Rafah, what will we do with it? It contains most of the Gazan population, 1.2 million Arabs. Will we evacuate them to tent cities in the desert? Thousands of Hamas operatives will come with them, hidden among the civilians, and have freedom of maneuver to attack us. And how can we continue this war when the people responsible for the failure with which it begun are still in charge?
No, says Brik. We must refrain from going into Rafah, accept a ceasefire with Hamas, get our hostages back. To do this, we need to replace the leadership, both Bibi and the General Staff. This will require a million people demonstrating out in the street. They will need to be united around a common cause, neither left nor right. A new leadership is required.
Milstein asks Brik about Moshe Feiglin. No, says, Brik, Feiglin is too far to the right, he will alienate more than half the voters. Milstein asks about the Bithonistim, a fairly milquetoast right wing grass roots organization of retired and reserve security officers. No, says, Brik, they are also right-wing and too committed to the entire Land of Israel, and they will also alienate half the voters. Instead, Brik mentions a new group of IDF field-grade officers, who are good guys, who see the problems with the system, but who won’t alienate people with extreme views.
What can we say about this? Brik is a career company man who is disappointed in the failure of the company to live up to its stated goals and ideals. He offers accurate criticism on the grass roots level, but is not a systemic thinker and can not offer solutions. Being a product of decades of the IDF’s environment of intellectual conformity, he has neither a vision, nor an ideology, nor a strategy. Raised in a kibbutz in the family of a Palmach veteran, and having spent his life as a public servant following orders, Brik has a strong sentimental attachment to the State and to Zionism as it was when he was a young man, before its collapse. He can not accept that the State has long become a corrupt municipal council with a pension fund, and that Zionism as such has been dead since 1948 or 1967 at the latest. Certainly, he can not imagine what might replace the State and Zionism. Thus, Brik’s entire position is negative-he can say what should not be, but not what should be.
If you were to force Brik to explicitly describe his preferred state of affairs, it would be something like this: Israel should return to the 1960s, with the exception of the fact that we would have a tight vassal-client relationship with our superpower patron, the United States. Internally, we should have a cohesive political scene, with no sharp divisions or strife. We should reform the IDF to get rid of the culture of lies and corruption which have permeated it in the former decades, and focus on containing our existential threats, Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah.
This vision doesn’t hold up to a closer look. First, this whole catastrophe befell us precisely because we gave up our sovereignty in favor of being the obedient client of the United States, spending decades handing territory, money, weapons and the initiative to our enemies. To the degree that the IDF’s senior officer corps is more mendacious and corrupt than it was in 1967, it’s precisely because the generals are maneuvering for American-approved sinecures after retirement. And the relationship between the US and Iran is not one of unmitigated hostility, as anyone who’s been observing the Obama-Biden foreign policy can attest. Our patron is inherently unreliable.
Second, if we were to become the obedient vassal of a superpower patron and give up the right to a sovereign policy, why do we need an army, whose entire purpose for existence is to be the tool of sovereign policy? Why would an IDF acting as an American subcontractor be worth keeping around?
Third, why would the Jewish people need such a State of Israel? Brik’s sentimentality for the state which he has served and before which he has bowed for his whole life aside, what is a Jewish Guam worth to the Jewish people? Why would Jews with talent and initiative live in such a provincial state instead of emigrating to the metropole? Left with the low-energy and unintelligent remnants who couldn’t make it in the metropole, what would the future of such a state hold?
Fourth, despite a lifetime spent in a force fighting the Arabs, Brik understands nothing of their psychology. Historically, Arabs waver between servility and opportunistic predation. That predation is only inhibited through the target’s perceived strength and likeliness to punish any attacks harshly. If you can massacre Jews, slaughter their babies and old people, rape their women, humiliate them, and then receive a ceasefire, have your prisoners released to a hero’s welcome, and benefit from a flood of aid (channeled through the same Jews,) what does this mean? It means that the Jews are weak and cowardly prey in a carnivorous neighborhood with no mercy for the weak and cowardly. Brik repeatedly warns that October the 7th was nothing compared to a multifront war, but he doesn’t understand that his recommended course of action would lead directly to such a war.
Finally, Brik doesn’t understand politics. A leader who runs after the masses is no leader at all. If no vision which alienates a substantial portion of the population is realistic, then neither leadership nor politics are possible; only a constant crawling to an ever-falling lowest common denominator.
But Brik is correct in two aspects. First, in his dismissal of the Bithonistim and Feiglin as potential sources of the revolutionary leadership which we so desperately need. Feiglin is a shill and a grifter whose three decade long political career includes no known instances of bringing useful results, not a single win, an Anglo nerd version of Ben Gvir, always apologizing for the short con while setting up the long.
As for the Bithonistim, their brand is built on their leaders’ successful careers in the corrupt and mendacious senior ranks of the IDF. In this respect, Bithonist Gershon HaCohen is exemplary. This shrill-voiced general was known for being suspiciously sympathetic to the right and the religious, so in 2005 he was asked to oversee the ethnic cleansing of Gazan Jews. HaCohen complied, was thanked for his service and then retired. Since then, he’s spent his time trying to redeem himself-but not too radically, you understand. The words “cuck” and “capo” are too harsh. HaCohen is a tragic figure, one who demonstrates the dead end that awaits everyone who tries his best to serve the State and God equally-he is doomed to betray God and then be betrayed by the State. This dead end is where the bus of the Bithonistim is parked. They are our Old Turks, the servants of a soul-dead state who do not wish to ride it into its logical destination but lack the courage to rebel against it.
In this context, Brik’s group of young colonels may offer us hope. Their lack of an explicit ideology may hide the willingness to do what needs to be done for their country and pay the price for it, just as the original Young Turks did. And just as the Young Turks started out holding modern progressive ideas and eventually came around to a radical nationalist vision, so may our Young Jews. Of course, they would have to be somewhat more Jewish than the Young Turks were…but only a bit. If they win, I hope they prove more idealistic.
All old Farts out, kill them if they’re in the way, including me, I’m 57. Otherwise I will fight beside you.
Yeah, I wanna die for something other than Western Civilization lays down and dies because the Boomers value their own comfort and bank accounts over their families, nations, civilization.
We go down fighting so our kind can live.
I’m 🇺🇸
So, what happens? Is Israel going into Rafah or will America's Deep State cause the Netanyahu government to fall?
Brik's right about Rafah: what are you going to do with it?