The ruling paradigm within Israeli intelligence was that Hamas had been somewhat co-opted into a temporary but stable silent agreement to live alongside Israel, aided by Qatari money and periodic minor saber rattling.

Oct 7th proved this wrong as Hamas invaded Israel slaughtering, raping and kidnapping over 1000 people.

One of the so- called “lessons learned” from the catastrophic failure of Israeli to prevent the Hamas invasion was that a “dissenting opinion” from the prevailing paradigm (that Hamas would not attack) within the military and intelligence community was not well tolerated. As a result, warned signs of impending doom were dismissed. I claim that dissenting opinions within all big bureaucracies are crushed. They are useless.

These events are a playback of 1973, when the Egyptians invaded Israel and for a time drove back the IDF. The 1973 lessons learned exercise was as follows:  there was a ruling paradigm (the Egyptians would not dare attack us) from which the Israelis could not see beyond which blinded Israel to the events which unfolded.

These paradigms in Hebrew are called: “conseptsia”, i.e. -ruling paradigms.

Again and again, the dangers that these paradigms pose are acknowledged and known to all;  people self-inoculate against challenging the dominant paradigm. To counter this, dissenting opinions are seen as an effective antidote to challenge ruling paradigms.

This is a nonsensical expectation about the power of dissention. Dissenters may exist, but as the old Arabic language adage has it, “the dogs bark and the caravan moves on”. Large organizations cannot tolerate dissenting opinions. 

Let me explain why via a possible example.

Allon, Bill, Frank and Daniel are all senior officers in Unit W-which monitors noise patterns picked up from underground attack tunnels in the south of Lebanon. Unit W’s commander, Allon, believes that the noises in a tunnel stem from construction work being done to strengthen the tunnel, not expand it. Bill  disagrees. Bill  believes that within the tunnel, a railway track is being laid and the tunnel itself is being elongated into Israel and is thus a strategic threat which needs to be eradicated immediately.

Allon is about to be retire; he has a long legacy of stability that he wants to protect. Frank and Daniel have always agreed with Allon’s assumptions, and kissed his arse, as needed, to get promoted. Allon has always served as Frank and Daniel’s winning horse, as it were. These mediocre yes-men were dragged up by kowtowing to Allon’s complacency cum rigidity.

Bill, the dissenter, if chosen to replace Allon, will only make Allon’s legacy into a laughing stock, by making a lot of noise to better verify what’s really going on and even perhaps rectify it. Bill, btw, was right all along.

Frank got Allon’s job-Bill was always considered a “trouble maker crazy” by top brass.

Bill remained “side-show Bob”, squawking “I disagree”… on the sidelines until Bill’s assessment proved to be true.

This is an inherent unchangeable dynamic in a large bureaucracy.  Bureaucracies have NO tolerance for self-correction from internal dissention.