by Dr. Tzvi Sadan, translated by Hillel Fendel.
Editorial note: This article was originally published in Hebrew on Monday morning, some 30 hours before hundreds of Hizbullah cell phones exploded in Lebanon.
It's clear that even now, after everyone should have known already that there's no difference between Hamas and the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority, that Israel's security establishment continues to believe in the "Hamas is deterred" (mis)conception. (It should really be known as the Kaplan conception, in honor of the Kaplan St. protestors who have been demanding the return of the hostages, whereas the true goal of many of them is to bring down the government.)
Because the old conception continues to be their underlying perception, the military bigwigs are convinced that we can "calm down" our enemies if we simply give them weapons from Iran, money from Qatar, and work in Israel.
A report on Channel 13 from a week ago makes this quite clear: "The Defense Minister, the head of the Shabak, and the IDF Chief of Staff warned the Cabinet regarding the security situation in Judea and Samaria, and asked that things there be calmed down – with an emphasis on transferring money to the PA and not changing the status quo on the Temple Mount. If the situation in fact blows up, the IDF's response will come at the expense of the combat in Gaza." [The last sentence was meant as a warning. - HF]
There are other ways, of course, to "calm things down." For instance, Israel could drop a bomb on the parade of Nukhba [Oct. 7th] terrorists in Jenin, or exile the residents of Hawara to Nablus, or establish new Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. But [Chief of Staff] Hertzi HaLevi, [Defense Minister Yoav] Galant, and [Shabak head Ronen] Bar would rather "calm down the PA street" just as they calmed down Gaza. They feel that, "If we just give our partners in the territories guns, money, and good jobs, for sure we'll have quiet; if it worked so well in Gaza, why shouldn't it work in Yosh as well? They're the same Arabs, no?" [The last sentence is a cynical play on the claim of hawks in Israel when warning about the dangers presented by various Arab elements. - HF]
There are several other indications that the pre-Oct. 7th conception has not only not disappeared, but has actually, incredibly, strengthened over the past year. We continue to heart things like: If the Gilad Shalit deal succeeded in bringing a measure of quiet (which it did not), then it's logical to think that a small hostage deal now will do the same, no? And if after the Disengagement/expulsion from Gush Katif we were able to return to the Philadelphi Route whenever we wanted (not), then for sure we can abandon it now and return again at the snap of our fingers, no? As the talking heads continue to make these statements, it is clear that the Kaplan conception is still alive and kicking.
This adherence to a concept that has turned out to be disconnected from reality, lacking in factual basis, and disastrous – is, among other things, the result of a belief that has developed in our circles that security assessments are a type of prophecy, and that the heads of our intelligence agencies are prophets – unfortunately, false ones. Those security chiefs who continue to adhere to the "Kaplan concept" are behaving as irrationally as members of a cult.
Many have long understood that Galant, Hertzi and Bar are stuck in their belief in the false conception – but as for me, I only really got it just recently. It happened when I heard that some in the IDF and Shabak actually want to give guns to the Palestinian Authority, and bring PA workers in to Israel, for the purpose of "quieting things down."
"Hey," I said to myself, "I think these guys [the heads of the Defense Ministry, IDF, and Shabak] have a bad case of cognitive dissonance." This is a condition that deeply affects one's judgement, and characterizes cult members, whose false beliefs often become stronger the more they are proven to be wrong and in direct contrast with reality.
Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter were apparently the first to identify this condition, in their work "When Prophecy Fails." Their book revolved around a cult called the Seekers, whose members believed that a great flood was to happen on a particular date, and that they themselves would be saved from it by aliens on a flying saucer. The three authors studied the members before and after, and discovered that many of them, with cognitive dissonance, continued to believe in the flood and the flying saucer even after the date passed in total dryness.
These cult members endangered no one other than themselves – but the members of the "Hamas is deterred" cult, who also appear to suffer from the above syndrome, continue to speak and act as if Hamas and Fatah and other enemies can be deterred – and this endangers all of us in a most concrete manner.
My diagnosis that cognitive dissonance is harming their judgement is one of a historian, not a psychologist, and therefore cannot justify compelling them to be professionally treated. It is sufficient, however, to strongly recommend that they be fired from their positions – and I therefore strongly recommend to the Government of Israel and the man at its helm not to allow those who place Israel in concrete existential danger to remain in their posts.