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Absolutely Certainly Again

The founding editor of The Times of Israel cries out in shock while his people besiege and bomb a city without air defenses:

More than three weeks after that blackest Shabbat in our Israeli history, we remain, unsurprisingly, a nation deep in shock.

Shocked at the unrestrained murderous savagery that thousands of our neighbors unleashed upon us — the hysterical exultation with which they ripped away 1,400 lives in ways many of us still will not bring ourselves to watch….

But the shock is also expanding, now, to horror, disappointment and fury at the shift outside Israel — from brief, initial empathy for all those whose lives were shot and burned and butchered away, for their bereft and broken families and for the innocent snatched away into Hamas’s underground hellholes, to a rising global effort to deprive us of the right to ensure it will not happen again. A rising global effort propelled by Israel-haters and antisemites, assisted by falsehoods and misrepresentations everywhere from TikTok to supposedly responsible media, and inflated by fools, to try to halt our military response, or limit and undermine it. Basically, to tell us that what happened on October 7, if it happened, was terrible, but we need to get over it. Subverting “Never Again,” and telling us instead, well, yes, Almost Certainly Again.

But David Horovitz shouldn’t be shocked. He shouldn’t even be surprised. His people don’t need to “get over it,” they need to learn that their actions speak much louder in the ears of the world than their endless flow of words.

Let’s get this straight. Jews have been invading the British Mandate of Palestine since the end of the 19th century, just as they’ve been invading various countries for centuries, often illegally. After decades of anti-British terrorism led to the British withdrawal, the Jewish military forces won the wars of 1948 and 1967 fair and square, and they now hold the land currently controlled by the State of Israel and recognized by the international community by the same right of conquest that most modern states hold their land.

They hold no historical claim to the land prior to that 20th century claim, because their initial claim to the land of Canaan is also one of conquest, conquest that was repeatedly superseded by various other conquests by a number of other parties. Remember, the Jews didn’t even found the city of Jerusalem. Furthermore, the greater part of the land of Israel never belonged to either the tribe or the kingdom of Judah, so the Biblical claim to which the Christian Zionists hold so fervently doesn’t even apply to any of the Canaanite lands north of Jericho or east of the Jordan River.

The allotment for the tribe of Judah, according to its clans, extended down to the territory of Edom, to the Desert of Zin in the extreme south. Their southern boundary started from the bay at the southern end of the Dead Sea, crossed south of Scorpion Pass, continued on to Zin and went over to the south of Kadesh Barnea. Then it ran past Hezron up to Addar and curved around to Karka. It then passed along to Azmon and joined the Wadi of Egypt, ending at the Mediterranean Sea. This is their southern boundary.

The eastern boundary is the Dead Sea as far as the mouth of the Jordan.

The northern boundary started from the bay of the sea at the mouth of the Jordan, went up to Beth Hoglah and continued north of Beth Arabah to the Stone of Bohan son of Reuben. The boundary then went up to Debir from the Valley of Achor and turned north to Gilgal, which faces the Pass of Adummim south of the gorge. It continued along to the waters of En Shemesh and came out at En Rogel. Then it ran up the Valley of Ben Hinnom along the southern slope of the Jebusite city (that is, Jerusalem). From there it climbed to the top of the hill west of the Hinnom Valley at the northern end of the Valley of Rephaim. From the hilltop the boundary headed toward the spring of the waters of Nephtoah, came out at the towns of Mount Ephron and went down toward Baalah (that is, Kiriath Jearim). Then it curved westward from Baalah to Mount Seir, ran along the northern slope of Mount Jearim (that is, Kesalon), continued down to Beth Shemesh and crossed to Timnah. It went to the northern slope of Ekron, turned toward Shikkeron, passed along to Mount Baalah and reached Jabneel. The boundary ended at the sea.

The western boundary is the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea.

Joshua 15: 1-12

Now, Israel’s right to exist is no more questionable than the USA’s right to exist. No reasonable, historically-literate individual can deny it. Everyone has to live somewhere. Every nation has the right to live somewhere.

And Israel has the right to defend itself. No question. But therein lies the problem. Israel has more than 11 percent of its Jewish population living on what are not recognized as Israel’s lands, and the Jewish nation has more than 50 percent of its people living in a diaspora scattered throughout lands that belong to other nations.

And all of those nations have the right to defend their lands too. Including the Palestinians. So, it’s always important to look very carefully at the question: who is defending what?

Very few outside the Muslim world supported the October 7 attacks by Hamas. Most of the world was rightly horrified by them. But everyone also understands that they didn’t happen in a vacuum or for no reason. Similarly, everyone understands that Israel has the right and the responsibility to respond to those attacks with military action against Hamas, as well as to utilize its military forces to rescue the hostages that are being held by Hamas.

However, that understanding does not go so far as to provide pre-approval for an unlimited military response. If it is true that the IDF has already killed 6,747 Palestinians in Gaza in reprisal, and for which the Gaza Health Ministry has provided evidence to the U.S. President, then it appears Israel is already approaching the limits of what most fair-minded people around the world are going to accept, especially in light of the frothing-mouthed genocidal rhetoric being thrown about by too many loud-mouthed US supporters of Israel. The correct Israeli response to the massive pro-Gaza support being demonstrated around the world should not be shock, rhetoric, and even more doubling down, but rather, sober contemplation of the likely consequences if what appears to be a path toward opening the second front of World War III is continued.

The reason people are telling writers like David Horovitz “Almost Certainly Again” is because for every violent action or forced compulsion, the potential for an opposite reaction that corresponds to, or exceeds, the magnitude of the original action is created. This is not to justify these hypothetical reactions, merely to explain their inevitability. And as long as there are Jews who refuse to stay in their lanes and live in their own lands, there will be reactions to their various provocations, large and small, no matter how eloquently those provocations are justified or rationalized or legalized or defined away.

Those who advocate genocide should not expect much in the way of sympathy from the rest of humanity when they find themselves under attack by anyone, for any reason. Which is why I’ll go Horovitz’s imagined interlocutors one step better and say: Absolutely Certainly Again. Because the only thing that a nation can reliably control over time is its own collective behavior, and the recent rhetoric of the Israeli government as well as that of the global diaspora tends to indicate that neither has learned the vital lesson of the Third Law of Motion as it applies to violence.

We must pray for more reasonable minds to prevail. But we should not expect them to do so.

UPDATE: This sort of rhetoric from the Defense Minister is why people around the world do not trust Israel’s assertions of self-defense and refuse to support its military actions in Gaza. Because this isn’t some hot-headed relative of a Hamas victim, this is one of the government leaders to whom the IDF generals answer.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant underlined his government’s determination to ignore pleas for a ceasefire. He told families of the 239 hostages trapped in Gaza: ‘We are fighting animals, not people.‘

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Lonesome October

It’s not too late to read the book in the appropriate month. The Dark Herald pays tribute to an increasingly forgotten fantasy great and one of his more original novels.

A Night in the Lonesome October was Zelazny’s love letter to the old Universal horror movies as well as classic authors in the field. He dedicated the book to Shelley, Poe, Doyle, Lovecraft, plus a couple of relative newcomers Bradbury and Bloch. Also, Terhune but that was mostly because of the dog.

This is a book where the style of the story’s telling outweighs the narrative and that is perfectly fine because it is the style that matters the most. The narrative itself is just for fun, although Zelazny makes the reader figure it out for himself.

The book is constructed as a diary of Snuff the Dog. Each chapter of the book corresponds to a date in the month of October, the climax as you have guessed is on Halloween. Snuff used to be something else, somewhere else, but in this time and place, he is Jack’s Dog. Jack as you already know has to do his work at night and yes Jack does have a very big knife.

Jack and Snuff are part of a faction called the Closers, it takes quite a while before you find out what they are closing. There is another faction called the Openers and they are in opposition to the Closers. It’s more than a little difficult to tell which side are the good guys and which the bad because their methods are rather similar and early in the story they can’t really tell which side the other is on either. It is all part of the Great Game.

The Openers and Closers are familiar to you. There is the Good Doctor and his secret Creation, the Great Detective, the Mad Russian Monk, the Count, the Fallen Priest, and Larry Talbot. Each of these Player in the Great Game has an animal familiar with human sapience. Except for Larry who is of course his own best friend.

At the start of the Game things are very cordial between the players, the Great Game is only played every few decades so there is a sense of comradery… At first. But as the month progresses, alliances are formed which are followed by betrayals, naturally. Then Players start being eliminated, that too is part of the Great Game. Finally, the remaining Players and their familiars gather in a certain place where the rite that will decide the fate of the world will be decided.

Although it may not show, Roger Zelazny is probably one of the more significant influences on my own writing. And while Lord of Light is my favorite of his novels and the epic Amber series is the most similar in scale, A Night in the Lonesome October is easily the one that has proved to be most influential.

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A Warning for Americans

And for everyone else who just wants to be left alone. Sometimes, being left alone isn’t an option. Sooner or later, you may be forced to make a choice regarding for whom you will fight, like the people of Ukraine who now fight themselves conscripted and forced to fight for Clown World, NATO, and the Kiev regime. Simplicius quotes a letter from an award-winning Russian writer who volunteered for the Russian Army and is now fighting on the front lines at Avdeevka:

Do I feel sorry for them? No. They killed and injured my friends, they want to kill me every day. I don’t feel sorry for them. Although, for the most part, the people who stand against us are not rabid Nazis, but ordinary Hataskrayniks who were forcibly driven to slaughter.

But if you look at everything in its entirety, it was they who brought Ukraine to its current state. That same silent majority who don’t care about Bandera, or the Russians, or the USA – as long as their farm, kindergarten, pigs are not touched, as long as they don’t run out of vodka and lard.

They didn’t care about the Maidan, about the shelling of Donetsk and Lugansk, about the genocide of the Russian population, about the murders of children, women and the elderly, about Azov’s torture, about language bans, about the split in faith… And then it turned out that they couldn’t sit it out, that you have to take a machine gun and die for the interests and goals of NATO.

And then they hated us, with a fierce, terrible hatred. Because their little farmstead world collapsed. Because this war reminds them every day of their cowardice, weakness and silence. And in their anger they blame us for everything, because they are afraid to look in the mirror and ask themselves uncomfortable questions.

These reluctant Ukrainian soldiers would have been wiser, and they would have had a much better chance of surviving, if they had stood against the Kiev regime instead of doing nothing until they found themselves forced to fight for it. Because, as enemies from Japan to France and Germany have learned over the centuries, Russia very seldom loses its wars.

It all sounds a little too familiar, doesn’t it, as the USA goes to undeclared war again in defense of Israel and the collapsing Clown World Order.

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Netanyahu Rolls the Dice

The IDF appears to have launched its ground invasion of Gaza:

Israel’s war cabinet overcame a bitter rift to launch troops and tanks into Gaza yesterday – while Palestinians were left in a terrifying blackout as communications were shut off and Israeli warplanes unleased airstrikes on the strip.

Benjamin Netanyahu only agreed to press into the war-torn enclave after hostage talks with Hamas terrorists had collapsed and he had unanimous approval from senior ministers. He had previously refused to authorize an invasion as he rallied political support – angering military chiefs as their western allies began to call for a ceasefire, the Telegraph reported.

Now, the Jewish nation already have troops and tanks on the ground in Gaza as they ‘expand’ their military operation, with aerial bombardment overhead unleashing strikes of ‘unprecedented’ intensity into the burning region.

And those living in the besieged strip have been left in the dark as their electricity and communications were cut off – including that of struggling NGOs and emergency services.

‘Our troops and tanks are inside the Gaza Strip. They’re shooting and they’re operating,’ Major Nir Dinar confirmed to the New York Times.

Well, now we’ll find out if Hezbollah and Iran are all talk or not. As a general rule, IDF officers are trained to err on the side of aggression, and they assume that Arabs will usually run rather than fight. Their current training was shaped by the experience of their elders, who were described as follows by Col. Macgregor in his book Margin of Victory.

All of these men were tough task masters who trained their officers in unconventional ways. To compensate for the IDF’s small size, they emphasized individual responsibility, inventive tactics, and daring leadership. Their preference for demonstrated talent and guts over education and social standing infused the IDF with a degree of energy and imagination seldom seen in Western military organizations, which tend to reward longevity of service rather than performance. Only the youthful and dynamic leaders that rose to command inside the revolutionary armies of France in 1789 come close in comparison. Extensive combat experience against a known opponent—the Muslim Arab—translated into a strong preference for offensive action designed to surprise and unhinge the Arab enemy, a preference inextricably intertwined with the elasticity of mind that youth and imagination bring to warfare.

Margin of Victory, Col Douglas Macgregor

Israel’s political leadership is somewhat of a gerontocracy now, but one that possesses the advantage of actual military experience that is largely missing in the USA’s political leadership. But despite the tendency toward caution that tends to come with the years, any mistakes made by the IDF can be expected to fall on the side of taking excessive risks.

Only time will tell if this decision to engage in urban warfare is the correct call, and, as usual in the case of war, the decisions made by those parties that are not presently engaged in the conflict.

UPDATE: Some are saying it’s just a recon-in-force, but regardless, there isn’t any question that the infantry and armor are both in on the ground now.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says the military is “advancing through the stages of the war” in Gaza, with ground forces carrying out operations in the Strip.

“Infantry, armored, engineering and artillery forces participating in the activity, accompanied by heavy [air] fire,” he says, noting that “the forces are still on the ground and continue the fighting.”

He says no soldiers have been hurt in the expanded ground operation in Gaza so far.

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Clown World Backs Down

There will be no Third Front in Africa, at least, not for the time being:

The West African regional bloc ECOWAS, which had threatened to use force against Niger in response to a recent coup, is now quietly demobilizing the standby forces that had been positioned for a proposed military intervention, according to French news outlet RFI.

A meeting of ECOWAS military commanders was scheduled to be held in Nigeria’s Sokoto State this week. However, this was reportedly canceled due to organizational issues. The military officers arrived in Abuja, the capital of Africa’s most populous nation and the headquarters of the regional bloc, but did not proceed to Sokoto, RFI reported on Friday.

The demobilization order was expected to be issued during the meeting but, following its cancellation, ECOWAS will now be “very discreet” in withdrawing the standby troops, a source told the French broadcaster. ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) has two options, the source added: “Say nothing and let it be seen,” or “turn around.” The decision was made because “no one is opting for military intervention anymore,” RFI quoted a diplomat from one of the 15 ECOWAS member states as saying.

West African bloc ‘quietly’ withdraws forces deployed against Niger, 27 October 2023

It’s extremely informative to observe the way in which Clown World is reducing its support for Ukraine and refraining from attempting to claw back Niger, despite the African country’s importance to France, in light of what threatens to become the second major front in WWIII. This indicates that either a) Clown World has some sane and sober strategists involved in the decision-making process or b) Israel uber alles.

Either way, the more the US military gets itself enmeshed in the tar pit of the Middle East, the more likely it is that China will quietly go about its business of reunification with Taiwan and the faster the Kiev regime will fall.

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