Rat Men

The killings of the World Central Kitchen staffers epitomize an intelligence failure that goes right back to the initial October 7 attack. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot, these kinds of crossed wires led to the shooting of three escaped Israeli IDF hostages by their own side. Friendly Fire is the title of the C.D.B. Bryan title about the same phenomena during the Vietnam War. But there's something incredibly weird and wrong about this whole episode of Israeli history from the very start. How could one of the world’s most advanced intelligence services have missed what was occurring often in full daylight within walking distance of its own border? Conspiracy theories are frivolous while civilian death counts are rising, but what seems to be missing in the fray of “emotional warfare” is a real head count, ie one in which someone is using something more effective than the biblical eye for an eye. You can’t destroy an ideology, but you can suffocate and strangle it with wisdom. What if the IDF had never invaded? What if they had dug in on all their borders? What if Israel had even let food and water into Gaza? Tactically where are the vermin (ie Hamas fighters) going to go? Will they tunnel under the border walls? Sure they will continue to proliferate, but in all likelihood they will simply grow fatter and more populous within their own limits? And what would that mean? Perhaps they’d grow hungry enough to consume each other.

read Mark Segal on Hallie Cohen, The East Hampton Star

and listen to "Papa Don't Preach" by Madonna