No matter the outcome of the statehood bid for the Palestinian Authority, the only sure loser in this scenario is an Israeli government which has once again allowed itself to react to events, rather than dictating them. The price for defeating the statehood bid is almost certain to be more concessions. Whether Abbas gets his UN vote or gets blocked at the gate by Obama, he can still count on more Israeli territory extracted under pressure.
The terrorist game has always been fairly simple, create a crisis and force Israel to react, and then collect their winnings. The Israeli game has been to point at the terrorism and lawbreaking on the enemy side and expect the world to finally acknowledge that the Palestinian Authority has lost its credibility and force it to negotiate honestly. After decades of terror and lies this clearly isn't going to happen, but that hasn't stopped the Israeli government from playing that one card over and over again.
Sharon, for all his many flaws, was the only Israeli Prime Minister who actually took the initiative and deployed his own offensive strategy that did not depend on proving anything to the world. It was a bad strategy, but it's a measure of the ineptitude of the other four Prime Ministers since Oslo who couldn't come up with anything besides gamely trotting to the negotiating table, making a reasonable offer and hoping for the best.
Netanyahu's second outing has been marked by a grand economic vision and no security or foreign policy vision to speak of. Instead Israel has gone into reactive mode with disastrous results, allowing itself to be panicked by the flotilla and now by the statehood bid into putting all its energies into campaigns that play directly into the hands of its enemies.
The man who had the historical background and the foreign policy experience to come up with something more than playing whack a mole with every crisis has been surprisingly inept in the big picture. And the other side has seized the initiative.
Netanyahu's failure to address Hamas in Gaza has led to the Free Gilad Shalit movement at home and the international flotilla movement abroad-- two contrasting movements, both led by the left, both taking advantage of Israel's passivity. The blockade of Gaza and the Separation Barrier have become symbols of Israeli inaction portrayed as vicious cruelty by anti-Israel movements that understand how to exploit the moment. Add Iron Dome to the tally, a hyper-expensive brilliantly conceived defense system which fails to solve the problem, but ties a complex Gordian knot around it, that the vicious Islamist thugs will cut through with another low tech solution.
Israel is full of engineers and generals all pointed at the wrong goal, and easily undermined by a shift of terrain that once again forces them to make concessions to enemies that are dumber, but who do take the initiative.
The difference between the magnificent triumph of the Six Day War and the near apocalypse of the Yom Kippur War was the difference between taking the initiative and waiting behind passive defenses for the approval of the international community before taking action. The lesson of both wars is that Israel does not have enough territory, population or resources to be passive. But its current hyper-passive alertness is nearly as awful as pure passivity would be.
Over and over again, the enemy counts on provoking an Israeli reaction and leading it into another lose-lose scenario in which whatever it does, it loses. Passivity allows the enemy to claim victory and a last minute overreaction results in condemnation and forces Israel to write more checks in the form of concessions.
The statehood bid isn't a suicide bombing, but it's equally senseless and equally effective at sending Israeli diplomats desperately scrambling for a solution to a problem they should have headed off long ago. Instead like the flotilla, Israel has been caught flatfooted by its own inaction and its reaction is once again putting it deep in debt to the likes of Obama, who will be sure to call in that debt with interest.
This defective strategy predates Oslo and goes back to the Intifada, where fairly low level but photogenic outbursts of violence became the basis for a terrorist state inside Israel thanks to governments who mishandled the situation. And the mishandling keeps going on and on.
The goal of the pro-Palestinian cause is attention. That attention is the oxygen of its movement. When its activists barge into Jewish events and disrupt them, they measure their success in the attention that they garner for it, both negative and positive. Attention is the measure of their power. Their ability to disrupt is their power.
The same is true back in the Middle East where the terrorists have gained power from their disruptive abilities-- the more they sabotage, kill, maim, hijack, or otherwise command attention, the more they create a process where their disruption becomes a form of blackmail. Give us what we want or we'll do it again.
Playing this game reactively makes it easy for the disrupters to stay one step ahead and play their game. The larger the reaction, the more effective the disruption. Israeli leaders and advocates have become convinced that the only way to win is by winning the war of ideas-- but the more you debate a disruptive force, the more the disruptive force wins. Witness the Israel Philharmonic concert at the Royal Albert Hall where a booing match ended in victory for the disrupters, even though they were outnumbered. But terrorists don't have to win on points, their very ability to disrupt is already a victory.
The statehood bid is more of the same-- a political disruption which has already succeeded because of the disruption it already caused. The Palestinian Authority has nothing to lose and everything to gain from disruption. Abbas, an unelected leader supported by Western money has more in common with the fallen regimes of the Arab Spring than with the revolutionary movements he is trying to pose as. Too fearful to negotiate and all too aware that his time is running out, statehood is a feint that will either buy him another six months or destroy him. But it's better than doing nothing. That is something which Abbas has finally understood, but Netanyahu still hasn't.
Of course Netanyahu and Israel have much more to lose, but Israel has been steadily losing since Oslo-- if it doesn't come up with a decisive plan then it is likely to lose everything. The mantra of defensible borders and defensible demographics that has seduced to many politicians and generals is another excuse for doing anything, except drawing up more plans to expel two-hundred thousand Israelis from their homes in the hopes that somehow that will fix everything.
But what's there to fix?
Israel made the mistake of paying too much attention to its image problems and not enough to its military ones. It hasn't won the image war and it's rapidly losing the military one. No Muslim army ever succeeded in cutting Israel in half, even during the Yom Kippur War, but it is on the verge of allowing itself to be pressured into creating a contiguous Palestinian state that will cut it in half.
No Muslim army has managed to seize half of Jerusalem since 1967, but that too is now a mandate on the table. The negotiations and concessions have already cost Israel more territory than any war since 1948 when it was low on weapons, had militias instead of an army, was under an arms embargo and was also on the edge of civil war.
Yet when you talk to Israeli generals, the one thing they have on their mind is the image problem. Gone is the Oom Shmoom attitude, in is the need to fight political wars in which no one gets hurt too badly, but enough force is displayed to let the terrorists know who is stronger. This idiocy has ended in massacres of Israeli civilians and the flotilla disaster. It has cost the lives of countless soldiers and unsurprisingly Israel's PR is still terrible, as can be expected from a country where everyone tells you exactly what they think within 5 seconds of meeting you.
Israel's problem isn't its image, it has an image problem because it has a terrorist problem. If Israel were Sri Lanka or Turkey, then the world might shrug and the story would be reported on Page 5B, but Israel's enemies are an alliance of Islamist petrodollars and the red brigades of the left who have more people, access and resources. The longer the situation drags on, the more material they have to work with, and the more they can make this seem like a raw bloody wound that has to be solved for the sake of regional and world peace. And the more Israel debates, the more it inflates.
Israel has lost its own left, it isn't going to win over the international left, or the Jewish left, the majority of whom with a few exceptions think the world would be a better place if it were to be destroyed.
Muslim immigration is swiftly dividing Europe into three sides, the side that favors Islam, the side that is against Islam, and the apathetic side that will stand aside and listen to whoever is in charge. The first side will never be for Israel. The second side will not always be for Israel, but it will rarely be for the terrorists. The third side will think whatever the first side tells it to, so long as it controls the government and the media.
In a West divided between internationalists and nativists, there will be a dwindling number of people who want to hear how Israel helps Bedouin women get an education, and most of those people will be liberal Jews. The internationalists have made it painfully clear that Israel does not belong, in terms that even Peres is slowly beginning to understand, that it is a racist extremist nativist state that must be destroyed to make way for a tolerant democratic multicultural Arab-Muslim klepto-tyranny.
The American and European foreign policy establishments can't let go of Israel, but they can't stop torturing it either. It's a powerful piece in a game that they don't dare commit to, and in the game of half-measures that they play, it's a piece that does more harm than good. And the Israeli government is playing that same game of half-measures, which also do more harm than good. Everyone wants to keep their options open, to take the high road and kiss the olive branch-- but that road leads down to the abyss.
What Israel needs to do most of all is stop talking, stop reacting and stop playing defense while waiting for a referee to recognize all the fouls committed by the other side and call the game in its favor. The only referee likely to do that is the omnipotent One, and there's no word on when He intends to to blow the whistle. The more Israel reacts to the disruptions, the more they persist and trap it in a game of Catch 22 ball that it can't win.
The peace is not winnable, the war is, and only war can bring about some kind of manageable peace. As long as Israel holds on to the belief that passive defenses, barriers and blockades and bar lev lines will maintain some sort of liable status quo, its position will keep on degrading until it is at risk of being unsalvageable.
Israel has trapped itself in a lose-lose scenario, it needs a strategy that doesn't depend on illusions, on the failures of the other side finally becoming apparent or on tinkering with the status quo so it doesn't hurt so much. It needs to plan for victory, rather than looking for ways to manage defeat. And it may have to get much more desperate before it is ready to commit to the kinds of risky strategies that it has become famous and infamous for.
Bad leadership and international pressure has trapped Israel in a downward strategic spiral of reactive policies leading to image problems, leading to more reactive policies, leading to more disruptive assaults, and more image problems. Breaking out of that spiral will take hard work and risks, but it isn't impossible. What it requires is serious thinking of how to secure a future for Israel that does not depend on the goodwill of its enemies. That is the fundamental error and question that it faces today. And it will likely not find its way to that new independence until its back is once again up against the wall.
Sharon, for all his many flaws, was the only Israeli Prime Minister who actually took the initiative and deployed his own offensive strategy that did not depend on proving anything to the world. It was a bad strategy, but it's a measure of the ineptitude of the other four Prime Ministers since Oslo who couldn't come up with anything besides gamely trotting to the negotiating table, making a reasonable offer and hoping for the best.
Netanyahu's second outing has been marked by a grand economic vision and no security or foreign policy vision to speak of. Instead Israel has gone into reactive mode with disastrous results, allowing itself to be panicked by the flotilla and now by the statehood bid into putting all its energies into campaigns that play directly into the hands of its enemies.
The man who had the historical background and the foreign policy experience to come up with something more than playing whack a mole with every crisis has been surprisingly inept in the big picture. And the other side has seized the initiative.
Netanyahu's failure to address Hamas in Gaza has led to the Free Gilad Shalit movement at home and the international flotilla movement abroad-- two contrasting movements, both led by the left, both taking advantage of Israel's passivity. The blockade of Gaza and the Separation Barrier have become symbols of Israeli inaction portrayed as vicious cruelty by anti-Israel movements that understand how to exploit the moment. Add Iron Dome to the tally, a hyper-expensive brilliantly conceived defense system which fails to solve the problem, but ties a complex Gordian knot around it, that the vicious Islamist thugs will cut through with another low tech solution.
Israel is full of engineers and generals all pointed at the wrong goal, and easily undermined by a shift of terrain that once again forces them to make concessions to enemies that are dumber, but who do take the initiative.
The difference between the magnificent triumph of the Six Day War and the near apocalypse of the Yom Kippur War was the difference between taking the initiative and waiting behind passive defenses for the approval of the international community before taking action. The lesson of both wars is that Israel does not have enough territory, population or resources to be passive. But its current hyper-passive alertness is nearly as awful as pure passivity would be.
Over and over again, the enemy counts on provoking an Israeli reaction and leading it into another lose-lose scenario in which whatever it does, it loses. Passivity allows the enemy to claim victory and a last minute overreaction results in condemnation and forces Israel to write more checks in the form of concessions.
The statehood bid isn't a suicide bombing, but it's equally senseless and equally effective at sending Israeli diplomats desperately scrambling for a solution to a problem they should have headed off long ago. Instead like the flotilla, Israel has been caught flatfooted by its own inaction and its reaction is once again putting it deep in debt to the likes of Obama, who will be sure to call in that debt with interest.
This defective strategy predates Oslo and goes back to the Intifada, where fairly low level but photogenic outbursts of violence became the basis for a terrorist state inside Israel thanks to governments who mishandled the situation. And the mishandling keeps going on and on.
The goal of the pro-Palestinian cause is attention. That attention is the oxygen of its movement. When its activists barge into Jewish events and disrupt them, they measure their success in the attention that they garner for it, both negative and positive. Attention is the measure of their power. Their ability to disrupt is their power.
The same is true back in the Middle East where the terrorists have gained power from their disruptive abilities-- the more they sabotage, kill, maim, hijack, or otherwise command attention, the more they create a process where their disruption becomes a form of blackmail. Give us what we want or we'll do it again.
The statehood bid is more of the same-- a political disruption which has already succeeded because of the disruption it already caused. The Palestinian Authority has nothing to lose and everything to gain from disruption. Abbas, an unelected leader supported by Western money has more in common with the fallen regimes of the Arab Spring than with the revolutionary movements he is trying to pose as. Too fearful to negotiate and all too aware that his time is running out, statehood is a feint that will either buy him another six months or destroy him. But it's better than doing nothing. That is something which Abbas has finally understood, but Netanyahu still hasn't.
Of course Netanyahu and Israel have much more to lose, but Israel has been steadily losing since Oslo-- if it doesn't come up with a decisive plan then it is likely to lose everything. The mantra of defensible borders and defensible demographics that has seduced to many politicians and generals is another excuse for doing anything, except drawing up more plans to expel two-hundred thousand Israelis from their homes in the hopes that somehow that will fix everything.
But what's there to fix?
Israel made the mistake of paying too much attention to its image problems and not enough to its military ones. It hasn't won the image war and it's rapidly losing the military one. No Muslim army ever succeeded in cutting Israel in half, even during the Yom Kippur War, but it is on the verge of allowing itself to be pressured into creating a contiguous Palestinian state that will cut it in half.
No Muslim army has managed to seize half of Jerusalem since 1967, but that too is now a mandate on the table. The negotiations and concessions have already cost Israel more territory than any war since 1948 when it was low on weapons, had militias instead of an army, was under an arms embargo and was also on the edge of civil war.
Yet when you talk to Israeli generals, the one thing they have on their mind is the image problem. Gone is the Oom Shmoom attitude, in is the need to fight political wars in which no one gets hurt too badly, but enough force is displayed to let the terrorists know who is stronger. This idiocy has ended in massacres of Israeli civilians and the flotilla disaster. It has cost the lives of countless soldiers and unsurprisingly Israel's PR is still terrible, as can be expected from a country where everyone tells you exactly what they think within 5 seconds of meeting you.
Israel's problem isn't its image, it has an image problem because it has a terrorist problem. If Israel were Sri Lanka or Turkey, then the world might shrug and the story would be reported on Page 5B, but Israel's enemies are an alliance of Islamist petrodollars and the red brigades of the left who have more people, access and resources. The longer the situation drags on, the more material they have to work with, and the more they can make this seem like a raw bloody wound that has to be solved for the sake of regional and world peace. And the more Israel debates, the more it inflates.
Israel has lost its own left, it isn't going to win over the international left, or the Jewish left, the majority of whom with a few exceptions think the world would be a better place if it were to be destroyed.
Muslim immigration is swiftly dividing Europe into three sides, the side that favors Islam, the side that is against Islam, and the apathetic side that will stand aside and listen to whoever is in charge. The first side will never be for Israel. The second side will not always be for Israel, but it will rarely be for the terrorists. The third side will think whatever the first side tells it to, so long as it controls the government and the media.
In a West divided between internationalists and nativists, there will be a dwindling number of people who want to hear how Israel helps Bedouin women get an education, and most of those people will be liberal Jews. The internationalists have made it painfully clear that Israel does not belong, in terms that even Peres is slowly beginning to understand, that it is a racist extremist nativist state that must be destroyed to make way for a tolerant democratic multicultural Arab-Muslim klepto-tyranny.
The American and European foreign policy establishments can't let go of Israel, but they can't stop torturing it either. It's a powerful piece in a game that they don't dare commit to, and in the game of half-measures that they play, it's a piece that does more harm than good. And the Israeli government is playing that same game of half-measures, which also do more harm than good. Everyone wants to keep their options open, to take the high road and kiss the olive branch-- but that road leads down to the abyss.
The peace is not winnable, the war is, and only war can bring about some kind of manageable peace. As long as Israel holds on to the belief that passive defenses, barriers and blockades and bar lev lines will maintain some sort of liable status quo, its position will keep on degrading until it is at risk of being unsalvageable.
Israel has trapped itself in a lose-lose scenario, it needs a strategy that doesn't depend on illusions, on the failures of the other side finally becoming apparent or on tinkering with the status quo so it doesn't hurt so much. It needs to plan for victory, rather than looking for ways to manage defeat. And it may have to get much more desperate before it is ready to commit to the kinds of risky strategies that it has become famous and infamous for.
Bad leadership and international pressure has trapped Israel in a downward strategic spiral of reactive policies leading to image problems, leading to more reactive policies, leading to more disruptive assaults, and more image problems. Breaking out of that spiral will take hard work and risks, but it isn't impossible. What it requires is serious thinking of how to secure a future for Israel that does not depend on the goodwill of its enemies. That is the fundamental error and question that it faces today. And it will likely not find its way to that new independence until its back is once again up against the wall.
Comments
The muslimes have expelled some 900,000 Jews through systematic, state-sponsored persecution throughout the Mid-East and N. Africa. More recently, the muslimes in Iraq have successfully expelled 300,000 Iraqi Christians through similar methods. Who remembers them? So why should anyone play nice w/the undesirable population of Israel?
ReplyDeleteknish, your excellent article reads like the preface to an even more excellent article in which you spell out what you think israel should do. 'israel should stop being reactive. it should take the bold initiative and do...what?'
ReplyDeletersvp
-- spanky
Our dysfunctional political system can only produce mediocrities, hacks. It can't produce leaders.
ReplyDeleteAnd our idiot media either preaches outright defeatism or trumpets defeat as victory.
Great article. I applaud calls for Israel being on the offensive (Caroline Glick writes about this quite often), but I also have a similar question as the second commentator wrote: What would being offensive look like? Stronger words to hammer away at the world community (as if it will matter) to try to educate them about the reality on the ground? More aggressive military operations, but where and toward what end? While I crave a more offensive Israel, I wonder what exactly it is that I am craving. Perhaps it's for a sign of more backbone, strength, defiance in the face of all this crap. But how? And what is the balance between such (as yet unknown, at least to me) actions and the need for diplomacy (like it or not). And how much can this tiny country shoulder without consistent and unequivocal world support?
ReplyDeleteWill Israel be forced to adopt Kahane's policies in order to survive? Should those not willing to be loyal to a Jewish state be expelled? What other method could be successful in preserving not just the Jewish state, but Jewish lives in Israel, period?
ReplyDeleteIt is a catch 22 as you mention in your once again great article but how to un-catch? Even Israel needs the resources of the western world for it's military life line as the 1973 war showed. Without American supplies they would have lost and all inhabitants would have lost their lives to Muslim barbarism, yet throwing all Arabs out of Judea, Samaria and Gaza would now have the western world cut of all ties and leave Israel open to a military mass attack whereby re-supplying would not be a given and use of it's nukes close to the own border an impossibility. On the PR front Israel suffered not only from the paradox of a pre-mature delay of information to the press but also from poor English spoken by their spokesmen and only now some native English speakers are being employed here but still the effort to tell the complete truth at all time makes them vulnerable to verbal attack and of-course mis-interpretation. The recent unnecessary apology to Egypt which only resulted into "anger on the street" and later a repport of active Egyptian terrorist involvement a prime example again. Like anonymous wrote, I would like to hear your solutions input and how to get that message to the government. Via a friend of mine I could get you Ehud Barak's cell phone number.
ReplyDeleteMindrider and anonymous,
ReplyDeletethe propagandists who work against Israel are PR trainied, do workshops, have "info" stalls, meetings, money, professional campaigns, are media savvy and control the media, the universities etc etc.
Bear in mind that the only reason this campaigning works is becaseu the EU made a bargain with the Arabs, and becaseu those in various govt positions have been infoiltrated by Muslim Brotherhood types and Marxists.
The first step before the first step i referred to earlier is to be,ieve Israel is worth saving.
As to Ehud barak, didn't he give away a whole bunch of oil and gasfields to the palis? isn't he partly responsible for the malaise in Israel as is stands today?
Oh yeah - further to kmy ealrier recommendations -
expel Omar Barghouti from Tel Aviv uni.
Sue the pants off Hamas, Hezbollah, every jihadist Arab Knesset member, Uri Avneri and his ilk, and every rabid antiIsrael campaigner in Israel for slander, defamation, security breaches, anbd general unpleasantness.
Or fine them for costing the State excess costs in security.
If they can't or won't pay, take their assets and fire them.
Cut off the funding to these morons, who have pleanty anyway, and use it to shore up Israel's defenses and get an Israeli Arab-speaking media channel, PR expertise.
And you know the Security Barrier?
Cheer it up with some tinsel at Christmas Time, build Succot near it at Succot and forec every NGO parasite proPalestinian club to pay a bunch of maintenance fees, damage control fees, insurance fees.
And don't let them in unless they have life insurance, which they must sign up to with an Israeli insurance co.
They
ll love the martyrdom aspect of this but at least israel will get some money to spend on security.
ReplyDeleteThe internationalists have made it painfully clear that Israel does not belong, in terms that even Peres is slowly beginning to understand.
How much longer can we wait for 88-year-old Peres' slow progress towards understanding?
Re: the offense, I have made my own preferences known in the past, this article was about analyzing the failure of initiative and call
ReplyDeleteMy own belief expressed in numerous articles is that Israel has to regain total control over its territory and roll back to before 1992
I say ignore the 1948, 1972 and whatever else lines they want us to "roll back to". We should roll back to the Abrahamic convenant lines and make them all shut up.
ReplyDeleteThe Abrahamic covenant lines are the only right borders.
ReplyDeleteThis is right on target Daniel...
ReplyDeleteWell, almost!
'What Israel needs to do most of all is stop talking, stop reacting and stop playing defense while waiting for a referee to recognize all the fouls committed by the other side and call the game in its favor. The only referee likely to do that is the omnipotent One, and there's no word on when He intends to to blow the whistle'.
It has to be said that the rate of progress at which the reborn State of Israel has developed and become established since 1948 is nothing short of miraculous!
Its military successes and subsequent survival, despite persistent attempts to destroy it by the amassed forces of its intransigent enemies, are remarkable by any comparison.
However, Israel is surrounded by an implacable foe in The Nation of Islam, which is a many headed serpent - Cut off one head and it strikes with another one!
The tenets of Islam call the shots> There is NO making peace with Jews or Christians.
They are 'the Infidel' and the jihadic war cry is 'Death to the Infidel'.
Therefore,Israeli peace negotiators are in a 'no win' situation... damned if they do and damned if they don't !
Personally, I applaud Netanyahu et al for remaining resolute in refusing to concede certain unilateral concessions which would inevitably result in national suicide for Israel, despite the persistent pressure from Obama & his Quartet allies.
Netanyahu has no option but to steer a perilous course between snakes and trap doors!
The Arab Propaganda Machine is an evil beast, fed on Taqiyya tactics and spewing out lies & deception. Its aim is to get world attention for the imaginary impoverished plight of the Palestinians, supposedly at the hands of ' wicked' Israel!
If the Arabs can deceptively convince the Nations into believing that grossly erroneous untruth, they will suceed in causing Israel to become a pariah nation. Israel will then have to go it alone!
Its back will be up against that proverbial wall Daniel!
However, that is precisely the scenario indicated by the Prophetic Word of God.
The Omnipotent One has,in fact, indicated, in considerable depth & detail, when He will blow the referee's whistle!
Space on this platform does not permit me to expound the prophetic eschatological scriptures at length , so the following texts must suffice to summarise the scenario...
Zechariah 12:3
'In that Day,I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for ALL people;
All that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the Nations of the Earth be gathered together against it'
Joel 3
' In those Days and in that time when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah & Jerusalem,
I will also gather together ALL Nations into the Valley of Jehoshaphat[Judgement]
And will plead with them there for My People and for My Heritage, Israel , whom they scattered among the Nations and parted My Land;
Multitudes,multitudes in the valley of decision;
For The Day of The Lord is near in the valley of decision
The Lord shall roar out of Zion and utter His Voice from Jerusalem;
The Heaven & The Earth will shake but The Lord will be the Hope of His People and the Strength of The Children of Israel'
Ezekiel 38/39
' Thus saith The Lord God,
I am against you O Gog,the chief prince of Meshech & Tubal>
[ Russian/Arab Alliance]
In the latter years, you will come into The Land that has been brought back from the sword and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel which have been always waste but is brought back out of the Nations:
And it shall come to pass when Gog shall come against The Land of Israel, says The Lord God,
that My fury shall come up in My Face!
You shall fall on the mountains of Israel...
So I will make My Holy Name known in the Midst of My People Israel.'
> Bull's Eye!
There is a difference between war against armies and fighting terror. With Terror you can reach longer periods of cease fire but you cannot stop it. In your post you talk as if the goal of Israel should be to win a war regardless of anything . The purpose of leadership is to keep a country thrive in a complicated internal and external environment without turning the war on terror into its main activity. "Iron Dome" is not only a defense system – it is needed to
ReplyDeletedisable the enemy's ability to start a war whenever they want.
You mock the reaction to the flotilla - but this reaction was the responsible one and was acknowledged as such by the anti Israel UN. Its easy to write posts and its easy to see weapons as the solutions to everything.
After all the "winning" of the Arabs against Israel , these countries/groups are going to fail miserably and Israel has a better chance to survive
Israel is stuck into a 'groundhog day' and it will not be able to get out of it without a catastrophe threatening its existence. There must be something so horible that all the PC talk will fade and they will start acting. I'm very much afraid of this scenario, but I don't see how they can overcome their apathy and inertia.
ReplyDeleteYou write great articles and I'm always emailing or sending a link to my friends and family. This article has got me thinking as to what would be a place for Israel to start. I am thinking that the Kineset could be a place to start. A loyalty oath to the State of Israel would be a good start since since all people of Israel can be elected to the Kineset, the least they should have to do is swear an oath of allegiance that protects them and their family.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually dead easy. The pals have set the precedent when they stole Gaza and ethnically cleansed it of Jews: it was a pal state and only pals were allowed in it. Bibi should quote Abbas when he says that both peoples should be separated - agree and proceed to remove all Muslims and mosques, remember the horrific destruction of the Magen Dovid synagogue, with that dreadful Orla Guerin virtually weeping saying it was understandable behaviour. I understand many Muslims are peaceful but they have 57 states already, and it will be a Jewish state, Judah=praiserof HaShem not praiser of curse, as Alah translates to.
ReplyDeleteWith no internal terrorism or complaining, Israel can be a
proper Jewish state, oh, and dismantle the Wakf Kate b
I've often thought that if there was land for peace there must be a corollary. Hence land for war.
ReplyDeleteFor every rocket from Gaza, take back 10 meters from the no man's land.
Especially if the peace with Egypt crumbles, Let the Gaza terrorists and their supporters squirm as they are pushed toward the Sinai Desert, their new homeland. Peace undone is land for peace undone.
The West Bank can sit and spin. We can continue to negotiate with our "partners" for a long, long time.
Mr. Greenfield, How do you propose rolling out the borders?
ReplyDeleteIt's all so complex. What will Israel need to do to finally end all of this?
ReplyDeleteMy mind keeps going back to the US and WW II. Even after Germany was captured we knew we still had to deal with Japan.
I think Israel is at that point. But how can they destroy their enemies without destroying themselves? It does seem like a lot of people are just waiting for the inevitable to happen:(
Where has the will to fight gone? The scrappy, rough around the edges fighters?
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteCould you please comment about Noam Chayut and his Breaking The Silence.I find the contents disturbing.
Thank you
What's there to comment, these are enemy propagandists who happened to serve in the IDF. It's no different than John Kerry making up a bunch of lies for photo ops to advance his career and then discarding them when they no longer suited him.
ReplyDeleteThis scum is funded by NGO's which are funded by radically anti-Israel sources. Follow the politics and the money.
Even though the State Department lists three Palestinian organizations as Terrorist Groups, the US Administration is still giving them the benefit of the doubt by saying that, in three months or so, we might be able to readress this statehood thing.
ReplyDeleteThose three groups are Palestine Liberation Front, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinians. Appeasement has gained nothing good. It has only earned open derision from states which Obama tries to woo but have always stood against us.
http://msmignoresit.blogspot.com/2011/09/obama-rebuffed.html
Speaking of offense and defense, why, oh why, did Netanyahu speak so falsely at the UN? Why even speak about or frame things as if the PA would engage in genuine peace. The truth is that it is not going to happen. Abbas is telling us where they stand and Netanyahu continues to act as if he's dealing w/some other entity than he is. It's sickening. If Netanyhu won't stand up and speak the truth, then who?
ReplyDeleteSome say if he did speak the truth and cut the diplomatic crap, Israel would have even more hell to pay in the world of public opinion, not to mention outright violence. But the world hates Jews, already.
What to do? Feels like such a trapped, no win situation.
If in the eighties, Israel had openly announced, that terrorism against Israel would lead not just to retaliation, but the permanent non-negotiable incorporation of parts Judea and Samaria into Israel, it would have stopped the Jihad immediately. The Jihadis in Hamas would also have discouraged their Marxist allies to stop provoking Israel, for that would lead to loss of territory.
ReplyDeleteSuch a policy would have earned Israel not just respect, but strategic as well as historic land, that should be in historic Israel. It would also show everyone that Israel was willing to fight for what it believed in. It would make clear to the America and Europe that Israel was not a pushover but had to be treated with respect.
Frankly, Israel’s present dire predicament lies not with Hamas or the Lefty Westerners, but with its present and past leaders, and those who elected them.
DP111:
ReplyDeleteThe intransigence of the Arabs re failure to effectively negotiate or uphold any peace deal has been evident since Israel became a restored nation in 1948.
The Muslims are the aggressors by definition of Islamic ideaology.
Israel has never been the aggressor but has successfully defended itself against every Arab assault.
While it would be gratifying to witness Israel taking the kind of tough stance you suggest,
the bottom line is that Islam erroneously considers the whole Middle East region historically constitutes the Dar al Islam, and as such, it must be ethnically cleansed of all Jews and restored to Islamic control.
Consequently, the very existence of the Jewish State there is considered by Muslims to be a curse and a scourge that must be permanently eliminated.
Therefore,whatever consequences Israel threatened to deploy against persistent terrorist attacks, would not cause the Muslim radicals to desist!
Israel is facing an existential threat and the only way it can survive is to ensure its military prowess and its weapons of warfare are superior.
When push comes to shove, Israel is capable of defending itself against the hordes of Allah - and their enablers!
Netanyahu is wised up way ahead of Western Leaders concerning the demonically driven pursuit of Islamic Global Domination.
He is well acquainted with the mindset of the radical Muslim Groups, incorporating Hudna & Taqiyya tactics, having authored books and internationally addressed the subject!
The Netanyahu Administration realistically retains the option of a pre-emptive strike, pending the emergence of a serious threat to Israel's security.
Watch the space re the sponsors of Hezbollah and Hamas... Syria & Iran!
Re Anonymous... huh?
ReplyDeleteNetanyahu's speech at The UN is widely being applauded as a paradigm re TRUTH!
He spoke convincingly with commendable political acumen that clearly portrayed the heartfelt convictions of the Man re the dignity & rights of his Nation and the heritage of his People.
The Truth was transparent in his words from start to finish and was challengingly expressed with passion, boldness, honesty, candour.
What a breath of fresh air in the stifling smog of deceit & hypocrisy that smothers all moral principle in the denizens of the UN!
Good one Bibi!
That speech was brilliant!
I want to frame it and display it on my wall!
Israel is reacting to maintain PR but it does not engage in PR before events happen that put them in a bad light anyway. PR is an ongoing thing. The Arabs "Palestinians" have one billion Muslims behind them who share their religious hatred for the Jews whether they live in Islamic states or in non-Muslim states as minorities whether in Europe or in Asia like India, plus they have Western Media who now see them as displaced victims. You won't change the Muslim hatred for Jews, so it ends up a demographics game. The more Muslims there are the more dangerous a world it is for Jews even the liberal Jews who don't realize it yet. The more gentiles stay or reconvert to gentile religions the safer the world is for Jews, whether Israel exists or not. A South Asia all Hindu would not only be peaceful for the region but the world as Pakistan is the Islamic terrorism epicenter of the world. Zoroastrian Iran would care far less about the existence of Israel since none of Zoroastrian holy sites are there, and Persians don't like Arabs anyway. At the end of the day the Israel/Muslim war is a religious war. As for the media Israelis need to engage the media long before events like the flotilla or this UN stunt happen. Israel supporters need to engage in every commentary on Israel to combat the false history being promoted. Freedom of speech needs to be defended against blasphemy laws in the West or the rest of the world. Freedom of speech is most important, and the promotion of secularism via the legal system in the West which faces advances of appeasement to Islamic religious fundamentalism which seeks privilege religious status.
ReplyDeleteA major part of Israel's stasis, its inability to take the initiative in managing its own destiny instead of being merely reactive arises from its constant recycling of worn out, useless political hacks. Why is the thoroughly incompetent Ehud Barak still around? He was never any good, even as a general. (And how did he rise to such a rank in the first place?) But there he is - Defense Minister - getting in the way, stepping all over everyone, being insanely stupid in his leftist muck. The list is long, tortuous and sickening.
ReplyDeleteIsrael, so full of amazing indigenous history, risen from the ashes hard won with blood and treasure is selling out its people and heritage for a mess of terrorist pottage.
Muslims don't recognise the sovereignty and indigenous rights of non-Muslim. So it is only fair that non-Muslims don't recognise the rights and sovereignty of Muslim land, especially land that has been forcibly taken from non-Muslim.
ReplyDeleteThe UN is a corrupt organisation dedicated towards partitioning land in order to appease the 57 Muslim nations and to make sure there are buyers for Western military hardware.
The West makes good money on the tensions between North and South Korea, Taiwan and China, India and Pakistan. It means that they can still buy weapons without there ever needing to be direct wars. Instead it becomes paranoia and proxy wars using infiltrators and sponsoring militants.
The UN is inclined to want to create two states because the Muslims want land and the West wants to sell weapons.
So all nations need to pull out of the UN and form and international organisation that excludes the OIC member and their corrupting influence with a clear mandate that no territory be ceded by any of the member states. Muslim territorial rights are to be considered invalid because Islam believes the whole world should be under Islam and history has shown there can be no accommodation or compromise between Muslims.
Ty for the article.
ReplyDeleteIsrael will never have clear ownership,rights or security until the past is simplified and verified in the court of world opinion.
Muslim bastardization of history is the basis of a large portion of public disagreement and political gaming .
The media has no interest in rights,fairness,truth or responsible governments .Terrorism ,bloody picts,violence and muslim's fake victimization thrills their sadistic liberal hearts.Israel works hard to be a democracy and defensive based state and are publically demonized for defending themselves.They need to adopt a PR system to feed the MSM monster.Use the media,the violence,hate and racism constantly directed at them.Use Islamic abuses,laws and antisemitism ,the failures of UN.Fire up the propaganda machine in every country,show the FACTS.Drown out Al Jazeera's lies,plaster websites with history and info.Be loud and in their face.90% of Americans know nothing of the truth of Israel but have heard PA lies for generations .Stop apologizing ,trying to make peace or concessions .
The world owes Israel for failing the Jews.Not for the Holocaust but for the current cowardice,bigotry and duplicity.
Judaism is the parent of all major religions,it's homeland is the birth place of the major evolution of religion ,politics and standards for human life.How does the world show respect,responsibility and memorialize one of the greatest events in human history? We let a secondary religion based on hate destroy ancient sites,slaughter millions and rewrite truths.Show Catholics what they will lose if Islam takes control.Is oil worth human souls and history lost forever.
The muslim stranglehold of the UN and their direct violations of resolutions and human rights with no repercussions should lead every non muslim country to leave the UN.If the US would grow a pair and leave this criminal organization the EU may wise up.Tell the world about UN sex slavery.
Countries with freedom of speech laws act more responsibly than those without.Wage a war of words using their standards instead of democratic idealism.And build stronger borders while the war of words flows.
Just a thought.
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