"We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds"
About this Quote
Dayan’s sentence is a cold inventory of vulnerabilities, designed to sound less like a complaint than a grim operating manual for life in a contested state. The repetition of “We could not” works like a drumbeat of limits: not even a celebrated army can seal every seam in daily life. By naming infrastructure (“water pipeline”), landscape (“every tree”), labor (“a worker in an orchard”), and the domestic sphere (“a family in their beds”), he sketches a map of what insurgent violence targets: not just bodies, but routines, morale, and the promise that normal life can take root.
The intent is twofold. On the surface, it’s an admission of practical constraints - a public inoculation against the fantasy of total security. Underneath, it’s a moral and political argument for hardness. If protection can never be complete, the implication goes, deterrence and retaliation become the language the state must speak. Dayan’s choice of examples isn’t neutral: orchards and pipelines are nation-building symbols, proof of cultivation and permanence. Attacks on them are framed as assaults on the legitimacy of presence itself, turning sabotage into existential threat.
Context matters: Dayan belonged to the generation that fought for Israel’s creation and then managed its borders in an era of fedayeen raids and reprisal doctrine. The subtext is a warning to his own public as much as to enemies: don’t demand perfection, don’t expect innocence to be spared, and don’t confuse restraint with safety. It’s rhetoric that normalizes a permanent emergency - and, with it, the political appetite for force.
The intent is twofold. On the surface, it’s an admission of practical constraints - a public inoculation against the fantasy of total security. Underneath, it’s a moral and political argument for hardness. If protection can never be complete, the implication goes, deterrence and retaliation become the language the state must speak. Dayan’s choice of examples isn’t neutral: orchards and pipelines are nation-building symbols, proof of cultivation and permanence. Attacks on them are framed as assaults on the legitimacy of presence itself, turning sabotage into existential threat.
Context matters: Dayan belonged to the generation that fought for Israel’s creation and then managed its borders in an era of fedayeen raids and reprisal doctrine. The subtext is a warning to his own public as much as to enemies: don’t demand perfection, don’t expect innocence to be spared, and don’t confuse restraint with safety. It’s rhetoric that normalizes a permanent emergency - and, with it, the political appetite for force.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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