In his appearance on the Judge Napolitano show May 11, former MI6 Intelligence officer Alastair Crooke presented an intriguing discussion that he says is now going on inside the Israel Defense Forces, and in the press, about the ideas of an IDF Colonel, whose name he did not give, but whom he says is much respected. This Colonel has written about the dangers of Permanent War, saying it doesn’t work.
The Colonel’s view is that during the time that David Ben-Gurion was Israel’s Prime Minister (1955-63), Ben-Gurion’s idea was that Israel, as a small country, with a small terrain, could not afford a big army. So, Israel defended itself within its borders, but did not go beyond its borders. Crooke said that Israel abandoned that idea on October 7, 2023, when it adopted the idea of permanent war, which enunciated that there was not end-game, but that Israel must protect itself against holocausts, and that there would be another holocaust unless “we [Israelis] don’t meet every threat with full force.” Every population was seen as an Amalek, a relentless enemy of Israel.