Playing in the Sandbox, Instead of in the Real World

by Dvir Shreiber, Besheva, translated by Hillel Fendel.

A sad satire on the media emphasis on the sand thrown at Ben-Gvir

Most certainly you have all heard of THE event of the week that took Israel by storm last week, namely, the sand incident of last Friday on a Tel Aviv beach. It began when Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir took his family out on a pre-Sabbath outing to the seashore. A woman there, apparently not a strong nationalist, threw sand on Ben-Gvir, and then ran back into the waves with a feeling of great accomplishment.

However, at that point, as we know, the big bad terrible police came and demanded (!) that she (!!) get out (!!!) of the water (!!!!) and actually arrested her (!!!!!) – even though she's only a little girl 27 years of age with epilepsy and over-developed delusions of grandeur. Social media and propaganda news stations in Israel erupted in fury that the police were acting like the Stasi police of East Germany, like Argentina in the 70's, like Israel during the Disengagement from Gush Katif, and basically we all had one big mud-throwing party. 

But while the country was aflame with the bitter fate of the little beach girl, in the Jordan Valley there was another little incident, marginal, really nothing important, which made the headlines for about a minute and a half and was then buried in the sand. It was just a simple case of a Jordanian terrorist who got out of his truck at the Allenby Crossing and shot three Israeli guards to death. Nothing too dramatic, a terrorist attack against Jews in the Land of Israel is pretty routine, nothing to get excited about. In fact, just a week before that there was another Arab Palestinian terrorist attack, and there too, three Jews were murdered. So what? Did it change anything about us? Did it lower the volume of our arguments? Did it cause anyone to stop accusing Bibi of either killing the hostages himself or of asking Sinwar to do it?

The Jordanians, on the other hand, did not take the attack in stride as if it were just another news item. They gave out candies, trampled on Israeli flags, and shot fireworks. And the Jordanian government, that which condemns us with every breath we take, this time didn't do that right away; it rather kept silent for a half-hour, and then condemned us. 

Israel, for its part, decided this time not to remain silent: That very evening, Netanyahu announced firmly and unmistakably that from now on, no government minister would visit the Temple Mount without coordinating beforehand with him, in order not to offend Jordanian sensibilities. This was a logical approach; it is inconceivable that they would attack us and we would simply ignore it and not apologize to them.

The Bridge of Blood
The Jordanian attack and Netanyahu's quick announcement reminded me of what happened to me in Elul 1996, exactly 28 years ago, when I was a young reservist guarding the Adam Bridge between Israel and Jordan (50 kilometers north of the Allenby Crossing). It was a sleepy place, with maybe one old truck passing through every hour. My job was to make sure no one snuck across the bridge into Israel, and also to drink a lot so as not to evaporate in the illogical Jordan Valley heat.

One morning I look up and see an armed Jordanian officer walking along the bridge towards our side. I yelled at him in Arabic to stop. He didn't. When he reached the middle of the bridge, I raised my gun and told him in English that he is not permitted on our side. He gave me a piercing look, turned around, and went back. 

Half a second later, one of the Israeli officers in charge rushed up to me and said, "What did you do?!" I said, "My job." He yelled back, "Oh no!" and ran across to the bridge and the Jordanian officer, and apologized to him. They embraced and both returned to our side to have a cup of coffee, while I continued to evaporate and ask myself what I was doing there altogether and if anyone needed me there. A bit later, the Israeli officer came back to me and explained that we're not allowed to say, "You're not allowed" to a Jordanian, because it makes him feel bad and could ignite a regional war. "This is border of peace," he explained patiently. "They can come here whenever they want. No more war, no more bloodshed."

Six months later, a Jordanian soldier shot and murdered seven Israeli schoolgirls visiting the Naharayim Peace Island, another border crossing north of the Adam Bridge. Twenty years after that, the murderer was released from Jordanian prison and was welcomed home as a hero. Israel didn't comment, apparently not wishing to offend any Jordanian sensibilities.

The Jordanians are in fact very sensitive – perhaps because they don't really have a history and are a quite recent invention. The British, after all, established the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan especially for the Hashemites, after promising them the Arabian Peninsula in exchange for cooperation against the Ottoman Empire, but they [the British] did not keep their word. So as compensation, and also to encroach on the national home that the British had promised the Jews in exchange for cooperation against the Ottomans but did not keep their word, the British gave the Hashemites the entire eastern bank of the Jordan River. They also helped them take control of Judea and Samaria. And Jerusalem. And Gush Etzion. The main thing was that the Hashemites should not be offended…

In the Six Day War, the sensitive Jordanians tried to conquer all of central Israel from us, but we won. Ever since then, we have been doing everything we can to appease them, so that they should not feel too bad. This is why Jews are not allowed to drink water on the Temple Mount; the Jordanians are very sensitive to that. This is also why we give them lots of our desalinated water [in accordance with the peace treaty with Jordan of 1994], and double the amount every few years. 

As a token of their appreciation, the Jordanians double the amount of weapons and ammunition that they allow the terrorist organizations to smuggle into Judea and Samaria. We of course close our eyes to this, in order not to shame them. This method worked so fantastically well with Gaza and Egypt, so there's no reason why it shouldn't work with Judea and Samaria and the sensitive Jordanians.

Stepping Up the Pace

The Jews of the Jordan Valley have been noticing for months heightened military activity over the border with Jordan. But it's a bit awkward for the IDF to ask the Jordanians what's going on there, because they might get insulted. Last month, a Jordanian MP was caught at the Allenby Crossing attempting to smuggle tremendous amounts of weapons into Israel. In response, we apologized to the king, because we realized what an embarrassment it was to him that one of his subjects was caught. 

The Israeli Embassy in Amman looks like a fortified military base, because an Israeli presence in their capital is insulting to them. The same is true for Jewish holy objects such as tefillin, and this is why they don't allow Jewish tourists to bring them into their country.

So there was a murderous attack at the Jordanian border a few days ago. Is that a reason for us to hurt Jordanian feelings, now of all times? After all, we need a quiet eastern border so that we can deal with our northern and southern borders, after years of self-restraint in the face of everything that happened there, so as not to cause regional war. But with the Jordanians, it will be different; they won't hurt us, they're sensitive people. Let's just go back to talking all sorts of nonsense about the shifting sands on the beach and throwing sand on Ben-Gvir and in our own eyes. That should keep us busy and undistracted by the more important things.

Generals with Cognitive Dissonance

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.