Posted on 08/25/2006 8:16:07 PM PDT by Cedar
The Worst Government in the History of Israel By Naomi Ragen
We finished a quiet Sabbath in the relative safety of Jerusalem, only to check the news and find out the heartbreaking news that seven more Israeli soldiers have been killed and eight-four injured in the worst-led war in Israel's history. [The number of dead and injured has since risen.--ii]
In addition, the government which interfered with the military (i.e.go win the war without upsetting CNN and the BBC), imposing guidelines that have helped get not only our boys killed left and right, but our civilians as well, has now decided to accept a Security Council resolution which ensures that Israel's soldiers and her people have made their ultimate sacrifice for nothing: our kidnapped soldiers will not be returned. Hezbollah will not be disarmed. And Israeli forces will be replaced by some U.N. force and a bunch of European anti-Semites who will allow Hezbollah to rearm.
The full text of the resolution has been published in YNET. So far, 1,784 Israelis have responded in its talkback. The overwhelming majority say something like this:
We went to war to free our kidnapped soldiers. Why aren't they mentioned? For shame. Olmert, Peretz, Halutz, the triumvirate of losers.
Let me add this: Mr. Olmert, Mr. Peretz, Mr. Halutz: You have squandered the lives of our soldiers. You have squandered our opportunity to free the nation of Israel from a deadly enemy. You have set the stage for the next war.
By September, we will be under attack once more. Do the decent thing: Resign, all of you, and let Mr. Netanyahu and General Ya'alon (who was kicked out because he refused to go along with the disengagement) take over.
Resign, Mr. Olmert. Resign in shame for your incompetence. Your inability to carry out a single one of the objectives you so stirringly announced at the beginning of this war. With all of you and your incompetent Kadima-led government out of office, we will all be safer and better prepared when the rockets start to fall once again, as they inevitably will with the U.N. and the French guarding our borders.
And if you won't do the honorable thing, we will do everything we can to get you fired. You make me sick. I am ashamed to be a citizen of my country under your leadership. I am appalled to have a son in the IDF under your leadership.
For shame, for shame, for shame!
The only reason Ohmert won the last election was because he led the party Ariel Sharon founded.
An honorable government would not have fought a war in such a way that so predictably ended as a draw and wasted his countries sons and daughters lives for naught.
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )
Lie down with liberals, wake up with fleas.
Amen!
Well said and amen to all!
I don't know about "worst ever". Saul and Ahab had their own sets of problems.
However, neither had the fatal flaw of putting world opinion ahead of their country's security, nor listening too closely to Foggy Bottom, wherever that was before it moved to DC in the early 1950s.
Interestingly, Seymour Hersh wrote an article for The New Yorker magazine, in which he said sources within the Bush admin. had told him Bush wasn't gung ho about Israel's attacking Hezbollah...giving the IDF free rein to go into Lebanon. But VP Cheney and the Neocons pushed it, seeing this mini war as a softening up of Lebanon/Hezbollah/Syria in the leadup to a full scale attack on Iran by the US in the New Year. (Hersh wants a congressional investigation.)
A Jewish Liberal friend here in the US said he felt Israel had every right to defend herself, but that we could solve Middle East problems by simply talking. 'Find out what they want and give it to them.' That was his answer to Jihad. (He's delusional.)
"The Worst Government in the History of Israel "
Worse than King Saul? Worse than King Manasseh? Worse than King Zedekiah? Worse than King Herod?
Would he voluntarily walk into the gas chamber for the sake of peace?
Not arguing with you...wishing your friend was here to be argued with :)
The more I read about this debacle the more I conclude Olmert never wanted to engage in any military operation against Hezbollah. Instead, he was politically forced to take action he desperately didn't want to take by an Israeli public opinion that was outraged by Hamas' kidnapping one of its soldiers and Hezbollah killing eight and kidnapping two. However, when he first acted, it looked to the Bush administration and much of the rest of the world that he actually intended to do what needed to be done. Instead, he and his cabinet, clinging to their idea of appeasement and "disengagement" like a drowning man clinging to an anchor, determined to do as little as they could get away with politically and quietly urge the US to obtain a UN brokered cease fire. Unfortunately, the Bush administration, seeing Olmert's actual desire to appease the Islamofascists while still appearing to be a loyal and patriotic Israeli, made the terrible mistake of acceding to that corrupt desire.
The upshot of all this is that we're in a horrible, dangerous international situation that's far worse than than the day before Olmert initiated his non-war.
Before then Iran and North Korea had to guess about whether we and Israel had the courage to take them on and destroy their nuclear weapons programs. Indeed, had Israel taken our green light, decapitated Hezbollah, cleaned them out of southern Lebanon, and gone all the way to the Syrian border, we'd have sent the entire Axis of Evil an unmistakable message that we had the will and ability to take them on militarily and defeat them if they continued to pursue their nuclear programs. Paradoxically, by giving this demonstration of determination, we'd have gone a long ways toward terrorizing Iran, Syria, and North Korea into backing down on their nuclear programs and support of terrorists, thereby enhancing the prospects of having a real Mideast peace.
Now, due to what the Olmert government actually did and our acquiescence in it by going to the UN, we're faced with the opposite situation. Almost all of the fears Iran and North Korea may have had about what we'd ultimately do regarding their nuclear programs have been dispelled, giving them a green light to go full speed ahead. They have no reason to fear any threats from either the US or Israel. Thus, the chance that we may have to take serious military action against Iran and North Korea, up to and including using nuclear weapons, is greatly increased. If we don't take such action, we're doomed to have one or more American cities nuked by terrorists in the next few years. Olmert has, of course, painted a giant nuclear target on Israel's back, a target the Iranians aren't likely to ignore.
GET THESE HACKS OUT OF HIGH OFFICE!!! Their idiocy resulted in unnecessary deaths of IDF men. Plus right in the middle of the Lebanon war these rats sent IDF to a West Bank town to uproot the foundations of a Jewish house. An allegedly illegal settlement. Right in the middle of the fighting!
Obviously not.
You make many good points.
I agree, the US/Israel threat level has been tarnished by it all. It showed a weak hand. I really don't know who is running the show anymore, makes you wonder.
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