It’s taken me some time to be able to respond to the worst disaster in Israel’s history, and the worst massacre of Jews in one day since the Holocaust – but then again, the same can be said of my government. Following are some points about what has happened here since Saturday, Oct. 7^th 2023, that you might not read elsewhere:

1. Many people are saying that this is Israel’s Pearl Harbor moment. I guess, sorta – if Pearl Harbor had happened not because “at dawn we slept” but because “several days before the attack we sent the naval base’s entire defensive force to the mainland, to protect the Klan as it burned crosses on Black lawns.” Because that is pretty much what happened.
   
   Israel’s extremist, messianic, virulently racist settlers have been inflaming the West Bank for months now, hoping to cause a major conflagration that would enable a massive ethnic cleansing, or worse. So the IDF, (lulled into false confidence about a ‘deterred’ Hamas,) decided that the protective forces of the Gaza Perimeter area were more necessary on the hills of Samaria, protecting settler provocateurs as they invade Palestinian villages, and roaming other hills to hunt for Palestinians who may wish to avenge these incursions into what little territory they can still call their own.
   
   So if you’re wondering how mighty, advanced, hi-tech Israel was caught with its pants down – that’s how. There were almost no combat-ready troops within many miles. The few that were there were, were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the enemy.
   
   
2. This was by no means the end of the failures on the Israeli side. Once the situation in the south became clear, reserve and standing army troops on leave at home began mobilizing toward the area. However, the IDF failed deplorably to organize rapidly and provide transport, with most troops reaching the staging points near the border on their own, or with ad-hoc rides organized by the “traitors” from Brothers and Sisters in Arms, one of the leading groups in the protest against the regime coup legislation Bibi has been leading since his reelection last year. Then the troops waited for literal hours at the staging points, before finally being unleashed on the enemy and beginning the reclaiming of Israel’s sovereign and internationally recognized borders.
   
   
3. Troops and local security details are still woefully undersupplied in everything from food to ceramic flack vests. All manner of famous people, from business magnates to a known organized crime boss, have stepped in to fill the void left by a government fundamentally hostile to public service. While security details of small locales along the northern border are screaming for weapons, in case Hezbollah gets similar ideas, 1,000 long-bore rifles were distributed to the residents of the WB settlements. The government’s priorities couldn’t be clearer.
   
   
4. These weapons, it must be noted, are not used solely for defensive purposes. Since the outbreak of the war on Saturday, the “hilltop youth” as they have been euphemistically called here – the lawless militias of the settler movement, aided through sufferance by the IDF – have amassed the following (and quite possibly incomplete) tally:
   
   On Monday they set fire to groves and homes in the village of Einabus, in the Nablus district.
   
   On Wednesday they invaded the village of Qusra, armed and masked and riding ATVs, and murdered 4 people (3 died at the scene, one later at the hospital.)
   
   On Thursday they ambushed the funeral convoy of their victims from the day before, and murdered a father and his son.
   
   No suspects have been apprehended. Chances are none will. If any are, chances are no charges will ultimately be filed. If any are, proceedings will somehow break down. If not, leniency and reasonable doubt will abound come verdict and sentencing time. In the occupied territories, that’s just the way things go. And if you’re bla— I mean, Palestinian – you might as well not show up… well, anywhere the “hilltop youth” feel like rampaging, really.
   
   Oh, also on Wednesday, the football hooligans of the Judo-nazi movement, the Beitar Jerusalem FC “ultras” known as La Familia, showed up in their hundreds at Sheba Hospital in Tel HaShomer – only the IDF’s #1 medical facility – due to a rumor that injured captured terrorists were being treated there.
   
   In their morality, just like Hamas’s, vengeance matters far more than life. Who cares that we have over a hundred captives in the hands of the enemy, and need every live captive we can save as bargaining chips? The blood lust must be sated, or national honor will never recover.
   
   And on Thursday, the far-right settler patriots scored a veritable intelligence coup for the cause:
   
   They had infiltrated the telegram group for the hated village of Hawara, where they have pogromed before, and discovered that a local pizzeria had used the image of an elderly Israeli held captive by Hamas as a repugnant promotion image. So the settlers flexed their political muscles, got the Prime Minister’s Office itself involved – let that sink in – and within 3 hours bulldozers were dispatched, and the provocative pizza parlor became a pile of rubble. Priorities, you see.
   
   So while Israel’s south weeps and bleeds from well over a thousand cuts, while the north cowers and holds its breath, waiting to see if the other robed religious madman (and his Iranian handlers) intend to join the fray, and while even the rich and comfy center has suffered fatal casualties from the rocket fire attendant to this war – the settlers are determined to set the east of the country on fire too, all under protection of the IDF and with the explicit encouragement of their representatives in Israel’s “fully-fully right-wing” government.