Missed Opportunity

It used to be said that the Arabs never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Like so much else in this eternal conflict, the shoe is now on the other foot.

While pundits wax lyrically about American support it must be clear that this support is strictly business: the American proxy totally vanquishing the Iranian proxy in Lebanon.

After 18 days of half-measures and dallying, Mr Olmert looks to have wasted a great opportunity in justifying this unprecedented support and, in the same process, sending a far clearer message to the enemies of Israel.

The Best Multinational Force

Israel should never have left Lebanon.
That is now clear as daylight.
That Barak pulled our boys out in the middle of the night, only emboldened the enemy which is now deeply dug in within bunkers or behind human shields.

In a few weeks, we shall be back to square one.
In control of South Lebanon up to the Litani river.
The idea seems to be to hand this buffer zone over to a multinational force.
Right now few countries have rushed forward to volunteer for this peacekeeping job.
Besides, what kind of multinational force can we trust anyway?
Russians? Chinese? Heaven forbid, even French?

The irony is that the very territory we are recapturing is the tribal homeland of Naphtali and Asher. Part of biblical Israel as divinely gifted to our people.
Not many people know that.

From that perspective, I would like to suggest the perfect multinational force to occupy this area.

Russian Jews and French Jews. Jews from America and Britain. Argentinian and Brazilian Jews. Jews from Italy and Germany. A whole contingent of olim from all corners of the globe.

Those are the only peacekeepers we can trust.
And their presence would send the most effective message to our enemies.
If you want our land, use it for peaceful purposes only.
Use it thus, or lose it forever.

This sums it up ...

Talkback on Kaufman

Talkback to Daily Mail piece by the odious Gerald Kaufman

Of the Palestinians it has often been said: "They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." And in the wake of each of their missed opportunities, when Israel has been obliged to defend its citizens, Gerald Kaufman has never missed the opportunity to attack what he claims to be his own people. Whether it is simply to appease Islamic voters in his Manchester constituency or pure self-hating malice, I do not know. But let him stop claiming kinship with the Jewish people. He may have entered this world as a Jew. But long after he has gone, if anyone still remembers him, it will be as a Judas.

- Zalmi, London, UK, 24/7/2006 13:00

Absurd !

The recent attacks by Hamas in the South and Hezbullah in the North have clearly come about because of one thing: their sense that Israel has gone soft and can be defeated.

No clearer sign of weakness and invitation to attack could have been sent to Iran, Hezbullah, Syria and Hamas than Olmert’s words to a Washington gathering in June last year when he said: “We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies …”.

Added to that was Israel’s tacit tolerance of a ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ building up on its doorstep and Olmert’s endless prattle about dismantling settlements and ceding large parts of the so-called West Bank.

Any normal leader would have thanked G-d for the wake-up call received this month.

Not Olmert.

For even as our soldiers fall on the slopes of the Bekaa … even as residents of our northern towns and cities huddle in shelters … even as the parents and spouses of our captured soldiers weep in the night … Olmert still talks of the further expulsion of Jews from Judea and Samaria and the ceding of these - our biblical lands – to Arabs whose lust for our total annihilation has never diminished.

To the contrary, the lust is stronger than ever! The Jewish blood they have scented from dozens of unpunished suicide bombings, the encouragement they have received from the unreciprocated release of thousands of prisoners and the weakness they sense from surrenders by Barak, Sharon and now promised by Olmert - even in battle - how could this do anything other than embolden our enemies to make the final push?

That Olmert should have so absurdly promoted his next phase of surrender in the thick of this mortal conflict seems ludicrous. That he should have made this speech in Nitzan, before hundreds of Gush Katif evacuees, amounts to as much chutzpah as rank stupidity.

It truly beggars belief!

Deploying the Patriots

Under a hail of missiles from our 'peace partners' in the North, many of Israel's enlightened journalists of the left have run for cover.

But this has not stopped Jews in the diaspora from self-righteously protesting Israel's disproportionate action in Lebanon. From the publishers of the New York Times down to the new group that calls itself: Jews for Justice for Palestinians.

Such Jews don't seem to realise that they are digging their own graves. The parents or grandparents that they lost in the Holocaust were dragged out of their fancy offices, universities and homes in Europe and thrown into the same cattle-trucks and gas chambers as their less enlightened and traditional Jewish brothers and sisters.

There was no Israel to escape to then.

There is now.

And, to keep it that way, Patriot missiles are not enough.

We need Jewish patriots.

Stam Mishna

In Talmudic study there is a rule that a Mishna which contains no name –
a stam mishna – is attributed to Rabbi Meir.

The following piece was recently emailed to me without attribution. I thought it was excellent and forwarded it to my email group. I have since had a number of messages saying its author was the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. Whatever reservations our people may have had about his tactics, his world-view was right on target.


Dear World

I understand that you are upset by us, about Israel. Indeed, it appears that you are quite upset, even angry. (Outraged?) Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset by us.

Today, it is the "brutal repression of the Palestinians"; yesterday it was Lebanon; before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom Kippur War and the Sinai Campaign. It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily.

Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we - the Jewish People - upset you. We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian people who cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic nations - Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians. And we go back a long, long way in the history of world upset. We Upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us in 1648-49; we upset the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land, were so upset at Jews that they slaughtered untold numbers of us. For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define our relationship through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the Church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews Within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit.

And it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to leave you - in a manner of speaking - and establish a Jewish State. The reasoning was that living in close contact with you, as resident-strangers in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you, irritate you and disturb you. What better notion, then, than to leave you (and thus love you) - and have you love us and so, we decided to come home - home to the same land we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman World that, apparently, we also upset.

Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please. Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and holocausts, having taken our leave of the general world to live alone in our own little state, we continue to upset you. You are upset that we repress the poor Palestinians. You are deeply angered over the fact that we do not give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The "radical" Arabs are upset and the gentle Egyptian moderates are upset.

Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel. In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody. Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed Palestinians slaughtered tens of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Indeed, 67 Jews were slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929.

Dear world, why did the Arabs - the Palestinians - massacre 67 Jews in one Day in 1929? Could it have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967? And why were 510 Jewish men, women and children slaughtered in Arab riots between 1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967? And when you, dear world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have created a "Palestinian State" alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs cried "no" and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews - was that "upset" caused by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way, dear world, why did we not hear your cry of "upset" then?

The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and stones are part of the same people who - when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for their state - attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea. The same twisted faces, the same hate, the same cry of "itbach-al-yahud" (Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today, were seen and heard then. The same people, the same dream - destroy Israel. What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not "repress" them.

Dear world, you stood by during the holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as seven states launched a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the Mongol massacres. You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. And you would stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing extinction. And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land.

If that bothers you, dear world, well - think of how many times in the past you bothered us.

In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew who could not care less.

Beyond Belief

I have lost count of the hyperbolic terms Olmert has used to describe each progressively more serious attack on the citizens and country he is sworn to protect.

First there was a serious escalation, then a very serious escalation and then a line had been crossed, followed by a line that should never have been crossed. Then the threatened retaliation was to be serious, then very serious and then very,very, very serious.

Wow ... three very's! How that must frighten Mr Nasrallah.

Then Olmert keeps assuring the Arabs that he does not plan to reoccupy South Lebanon any more than he intends to do so in Gaza. Since Iran has unlimited rocket launchers to ship into Lebanon and it takes all of half an hour to set one up, are Olmert and Chalutz intending to target them singly with daily air sorties for the next 12 months? This is absurd.

One gets an impression of total unpreparedness and confusion. No clear gameplan and the wastage of precious time during which the world seems to be tolerating Israel's defensive actions. That won't last the week, you can be sure.

But in the face of all this apparent confusion,comes this quote from the defence minister who was charged with executing Sharon's disengagement from Gaza:

Mofaz also said that the government had been aware of most of Hizbullah's capabilities.
"Most of what is happening to us now was expected [in the event of a conflict with Hizbullah]," he concluded.

Can you believe ANYTHING this Kadima government has to say?

Let's Swap !

Perhaps we should consider a swap with Hizbulla after all.

1,002 in exchange for our 3 soldiers.

1,000 of their Arabs and two of ours.

Peres and Beilin.

Gilad's War

Of how many people could it be said: “They saved the State of Israel”?

Gilad Shalit would certainly fit the bill.

His capture finally triggered an alarm and opened the eyes of his countrymen and leaders to the reality they have been consistently been denying for decades: that there can never be peace with those who control and exploit the Arabs of former Palestine.

Missiles are raining in on our people from a Southern Lebanon surrendered by Barak and from a Northern Gaza surrendered by Sharon.

Were it not for the capture of Gilad Shalit, this war would not have broken out for another 18 months by which time Kadima’s ‘peace partners’ would have opened the third missile barrage from newly 'disengaged' hills in Judea and Samaria.

Peace is an illusion - and an expensive one at that.

Israel must accept that it is destined to survive differently to other nations in that it must live in a state of permanent conflict with its neighbours. Nowhere is it stated more clearly than the Torah and Devarim 7:2 which reads:

And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them.

The Rainforest of Civilisation

I have always regarded the Jewish nation as the rainforest of civilisation.
The world stands idly by whilst it is systematically destroyed.
And with it, the God-given cures for most of the worlds ills.

Here is just one recent example of this truism:

Researchers from Israel's Institute of Evolution have identified a gene that could revolutionize agriculture and help alleviate world hunger. Discovered in fungi at the bottom of The Dead Sea - the saltiest body of water in the world - the gene enables plants to withstand salinity. Institute director Eviatar Nevo's team has shown that when the gene is transplanted into brewer's yeast, it enables the yeast to grow in saline earth as well, a development that could mean that much more land worldwide can be used in the future for agriculture.

Day 11

Olmert complains that the two new Kassam hits on Ashkelon represent a ‘major escalation’ by Hamas.

He may not know it, but that it exactly what was intended by Hamas.
Major escalation of terror against Israel.
They want us out. Totally out.
It seems the man still doesn’t understand that simple truism.

And if missiles can be fired at one of our largest cities whilst we are on a war footing in Gaza,
G-d only knows what we can expect when the IDF retreats from Gaza as Olmert has already promised (in advance) and seems to repeat every day.

Olmert, by any standards, is a moderate.
And when you elect a moderate, you can expect moderation.
That means indecisiveness, prevarication and hesitation.
That’s exactly what the PA has in Mahmoud Abbas.
And look where he got them.
A man afraid of his own shadow!

We have truly brought ourselves down to their level in ‘official’ government.
But, our ‘right wing’ and Yesha settler groups, are mirrored in their Hamas and Hezbullah.
At least those opposing sides are clear in their aims and goals:

Hamas to wipe Israel off the map.
Yesha to reclaim biblical Israel.

Yesha is prepared to live with peace-loving Arabs side by side and have proved their ability to do so.

By contrast, Hamas and its ilk can never be trusted to lie down with the lamb.
It is clear that their lust for Jewish blood cannot be sated.

So, 11 days into the captivity of 19-year old Gideon Shalit, we still wait for Olmert to wake up to the clear and present danger facing the state of Israel.

What would his friend Bush have done with the equivalent of Kassam strikes on New Jersey?
Show restraint? Turn the other cheek? Offer confidence building measures? Look to the corrupt governments of Egypt and Syria for diplomatic solutions?

I guess we must be thankful that Olmert has been tested on a relatively tepid crisis.
I shudder to think what might have happened had such a man – or mouse – been in charge in ’67 or ’93. Or G-d forbid the next surprise attack by our neighbours.

Prime ministers like Ehud Olmert, it would seem, are the best promoters of military coups.

Nu ?

In the Entebbe days, our boy would have been back by last Shabbat.
In Ben Gurion’s day, Hamas would have been flattened by now (see quote below).

So why is time a-wasting?
It’s the same IDF then and now.
The only logical explanation is that Olmert is holding them back.

The longer he waits, the greater the chance of world condemnation.
Which he holds to be so important.
So why doesn’t he just let the IDF get on with it?

Here's that BG quote:

"Let me first tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive." David Ben-Gurion's advice to Officer Ariel Sharon following the controversial and much-condemned raid on Qibya, as relayed by Ariel Sharon during an interview for the documentary "Israel and the Arabs: 50 Year War".

Calling Up Olmert

During the election campaign we all lampooned Olmert for saying in a major speech in the USA: “We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies.”

True to that ethos, he has held his army back again and again. And when they have been allowed to move, it has been just to rattle sabres and fire artillery into sand dunes, so as not to upset the ‘civilized world’ which sits in judgment over Israel’s every defensive move.

He has lost a week in wasteful diplomacy, relying on anti-Semites like Mubarak and Abbas to save the life of a teenaged Jewish soldier. During that lost week Hamas will have wasted no time marshalling the tank-traps, antiaircraft missiles and RPG’s they have freely imported since disengagement to counter the non-surprise attack which must now follow if Olmert is to make good on his promises to retrieve Gilad Shalit.

What’s more, we can expect the opening of a northern front with Hezbullah firing missiles in support of their brother terrorists in the south. This promises to be no cakewalk.

It is to be hoped that, during that same week, the reservist prime minister has accepted his call-up orders to: “fight, be courageous, win and defeat our enemies”.