FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
TEL AVIV – The beak of the black swan has turned against Gal Hirsch. Nine years ago, when he was in uniform and considered one of the most innovative and controversial generals, he wrote an essay on military theory for the Armed Forces magazine, applying mathematician Nissim Taleb’s intuition to Israeli tactics: “When faced with an enemy, the …”operating among the civilian population, we must develop our deadly black swan that operates in the fourth dimension, that of insecurity, illegality and disorder, outside accepted and predictable conceptual models.”
The unexpected event that is shaking everything up and leaving chaos in its wake was instead triggered at dawn on Saturday with the invasion of southern Israel. Now Hirsch — who switched to the force side after leaving the Army to advocate for those who offer more for private use — must try to apply another concept developed by Taleb: antifragility, like shock and stress can make us stronger. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given him the task of coordinating the team that will deal with the “missing and abducted,” the 130 hostages held in Gaza – according to the description of the horror recounted by the Palestinian fundamentalists – and those who did not. Nevertheless, he was identified after the devastating attack (neither alive nor dead, perhaps kidnapped).
The Prime Minister had already wanted Hirsch as police chief in 2015, but the American FBI’s accusation – which ended in vain – of bribing a Georgian minister to get contracts for his security company, the accusation of tax evasion in Israel, meant that they were nominated blown up.
A former officer of the Shaldag – one of the special forces among the special forces – he was forced to retire at the age of 42 and was appointed chief of staff a few months after the end of the Second Lebanon War between July and August 2006: as commander of the one in charge of this front Division, he was held partly responsible for the fiasco, starting with the killing of three soldiers and the kidnapping of two others – perhaps already dead – while patrolling the border.
Proponents of his strategic ingenuity and outside-the-box thinking have always defended him, viewing him as a soldier whom politicians sacrificed for their own protection. He tried to enter politics with his own party in 2019, and two years later he announced that he had cancer: “I am ready to win this fight too,” he was lying due to injuries sustained in an ambush had contracted it, had already been in the hospital for 12 months. He has encountered many black swans in life, now he must face the darkest.