The Fog of War
Here’s why I delayed posting 10 drafts over the past 6 days
At the start of the war, I made a promise to myself: I would stay truthful no matter the cost.
The fog of war distorts everything. It makes truth blurry.
I’ve seen oh so many have their judgment, memory and morality distorted.
During World War II, Americans protested entering the war even as global tyranny was spreading across Europe and Asia. Under the banner of pacifism, many argued against intervention despite the obvious moral imperative and the enormous stakes for freedom around the world. History has shown us how dangerous confusion can be.
Today the fog takes different forms. The advant of instant news was corrupted by digital warfare, the kind I’ve spent the last 12 days trying to document through anecdotes. I will continue to publish these posts, just not now.
I have decided to slow down on posting darkness and go back to my initial plan to wait, then demand accountability. Because the Nazis could not just be called out in 1939-1945, but should have been called out harder after 1946.
My recent drafts continued the trend of focusing on whack ass musicians and nobodies, like myself, on the internet. Another draft covers the strange double standards in how energy prices are discussed today, compared to the start of WWIII when Ukraine was seen as an acceptable reason for even steeper gas prices. Other posts discuss robotics and strategy with Iran, which may turn out to be accurate or naive predictions. All of them could be published tomorrow.
But I am choosing to be more careful.
I am not a journalist.
I am a proud Jew who is exhausted by media bias and revolted by what social media has become. It’s true the internet was never really a positive and healthy place, except certain groups used strategically to form communities. It’s true I have a dark sense of humor. But the constant mockery of death crosses every line.
Watching unserious discussion after each tragedy is making me ill. Some people need to stick to sports and reality TV.
One catalyst in my decision to slow down was the tragic IRGC school bombing on day one of round three. By day two I apologized for barely misspeaking, once, by carelessly mentioning an unverified image in an IG comment nobody even read. That’s my stubborn commitment to Truth. Since, we’ve only had things get foggier. After a week of the world blaming Israel, on day eight the US has politicians saying it was actually a US Tomahawk missiles to blame (a weapon Israel does not even possess, and one that the Islamic State famously tried to copy). Today, day ten, OSINT is circling back to the start, giving analyses of why it might have been IRGC, but real reasons, not random photos. Despite this, and as expected, nobody is apologizing for blaming Jews without evidence. Few care about facts we knew decades ago: Islamic State is willing to send (some amount of) innocent children to a school, either to learn more about their religious motivation or to act as human shields. Common sense would have journalists ask who sends children to school during a war, but journalism has long lost common sense. Instead, the Free Palestine cult, and it is a cult, has normalized looking past sending innocent children to act as shields for a garbage cause.
I may be immature in many ways, but I will never stoop to the NYTimes writers and editors, who lied about major world events, to deliberately demonize Jews, then ran a full two page non-retraction trying to justify their actions. I’d rather just not write or go online if that’s the only option. Fortunately, dear reader, we are better than NYTimes staff.
If I cannot be confident about the facts of an event, whether it implicates my side or the other, then I know I have to be careful about writing in a matter-of-fact tone. I must wait. I must be better than The Guardian or CNN.
There is also no rush. I am alive, and I will survive. My blog rarely gets more than fifty readers a day. Sadly, writing more than a dozen pieces for the Times of Israel blog, connected to one of the few reputable journals, has not changed that. Nor has asking others to share my work or collaborate. So I have new plans on how to grow a genuine audience, who care about truth during digital warfare, who equally detest the kind of posers that masquerade as progressives while undermining actual humanitarian values.
That will take time. And editing. Luckily, I long joked that my articles are subject to change as I feel fit.
I am only human.
While I wait to go back to serious-posting, I have real work to do and a mind to protect. I have myself to deal with.
Of note, my Instagram account was deleted after I responded bluntly to antisemites, a careless mistake costing me anecdotes. My real family is under stress. And I carry a deep fear of the deaths that continue as war drags on.
When the mind has too much time to wander, it wanders toward grief.
Ukrainians and Israelis share something that is difficult to explain to outsiders: When you live abroad during a war that is happening at home, there is a feeling close to survivor's guilt. Yes, we are lucky. Yes, our families tell us to stay where we are. But there is still a quiet voice asking whether we should be with them, in war, even if we can’t help at all.
I do not believe that many Westerners chanting slogans about liberation actually understand grief. If they did, they would call for surrender at any cost just to stop the deaths. Instead, they cheer destruction from a distance.
The people I know back in war zones—Israel, Ukraine, Russia and occupied Iran—continue to work, to raise families, to move through their days with quiet courage. They aren’t bogged by uncertainty. They're more alive than you know.
A coworker and friend in Ukraine always, and I mean always, answer the question "How are you?" with a simple, "Still breathing." That is sometimes the only honest answer.
I will keep my promise to stay honest. That promise never had a deadline. For now, the pace of my blog, a hobby, will slow. Instead of daily posts, there will be posts when I truly have the time.
It will all be OK in the end.
Even the fog of war will pass. When it clears, there will be time to confront the bad actors, the manipulators, the cowards and the crowds who embraced dopamine instead of truth. There will be time to make people apologize or show their refusal to, for the crime of lying to the public or lying to themselves, in turn prolonging suffering. There will be time to seek justice in ways the world has never seen, more humane, and more forgiving.
Until then, let us endure.
Please, dear random-ass reader, choosing my lunacy over a podcast or an episode of Taskmaster, make time for happiness wherever you are and whatever you are dealing with.
We all have problems. I will not pretend that ours on the winning side are even one percent as severe as those faced by people on the losing side. But after seeing cranky Americans cry over gas prices while others are dying, or cry about two protesters after the Islamic State slaughtered tens of thousands, after catching myself crying, yes, crying, like a baby, about not being back home in the middle of a war, while braver men have to fight and die in this war, I’m reminded that pain is not a competition.
When I was jumped by a SWAT at 16, I heard others demand therapy because they were in lockdown. A best friend in Israel faced severe PTSD from an incident that wouldn’t phase other soldiers. Many great friends, especially in US and Europe, list social anxiety as their biggest problem in life, preventing them from joy. Each pain is all real as the next.
Everyone has problems, even when their lives are objectively better than others. Pain is still real, even when it exists alongside greater suffering.
We all deserve better leaders and supporters, especially those my team is fighting against. We deserve empathy.
So go have fun. Go laugh. Take joy where you can find it. And enjoy the rest of the content on this blog, not kept in draft, which I hope occasionally brings a giggle, a Google, or at least a curious thought about your waking life.
