UPDATE: Kfir Brigade captures 7 wanted Palestinians overnight.
TODAY’S BLOG:
Today, your humble servant continues with his list of the top 10 worst decisions ever made by Israeli governments. If you missed the first five yesterday, here they are again:
1. The decision in November 1956 to withdraw from the Sinai.
2. The decision in 1967 to hand over control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to the Islamic Wakf.
3. The decision in 1973 not to stage a preemptive strike on the Egyptian and Syrian air forces before Yom Kippur.
4. The 1979 decision to withdraw from Yamit.
5. The decision in 2000 to unilaterally disengage from south Lebanon.
Herewith the remainder of the list:
6. The decision in 2005 to unilaterally withdraw from northern Gaza.
Israelis against Israelis. The withdrawal from Gaza 2005.
The very same Jewish community members who were forcibly removed from Yamit by the IDF–and who had subsequently been led to create the communities of northern Gaza by the Israeli government–were forcibly removed from their communities again by the IDF. And again, just as Ehud Barak had done in southern Lebanon, Ariel Sharon brazenly decided to unilaterally withdraw, with no negotiations and no concessions from the terrorists in Gaza.
What was the result? The national religious movement was betrayed by the Ariel Sharon and his Kadima party. Just as the national religious movement predicted, Northern Gaza became a launching pad for terrorist rockets which continue to be fired at Israel almost everyday (more than 1 per day for the last month). Not that they needed it, but the Israeli public received even more confirmation that the Palestinians do not want peace with Israel–they want to destroy Israel.
7. The decision in 2006 to not wage all out war against Hezbollah.
After Israel had made the proper decision to go into Lebanon in an effort to retrieve its kidnapped soldiers, Ehud Olmert and the IDF General Staff then proceeded to employ an inexplicable military strategy of only entering Lebanon in a strip of one kilometer thus making the IDF sitting ducks for Hezbollah terrorists. By the time Israel finally got around (weeks later) to landing paratroopers on the ground behind Hezbollah lines, Olmert was already succumbing to international efforts to stop the fighting. A spokesman for Hezbollah later admitted that if the Israelis had just continued for another week, Hezbollah would have been effectively wiped out.
A "victorious" Nasrallah--he now permanently lives in a Beirut bunker fearful of Israeli retaliation.
What was the result? Hezbollah was immeasurably strengthened: able to claim that it had stood up to and defeated the vaunted IDF, retain most of its arsenal, and begin to immediately rebuild whatever they had lost. Nasrallah became the hero of the Arab world. More than 15,000 rockets are now sitting on Israel’s northern border.
8. The decisions to offer the Palestinians everything under the sun in 2000 and 2007
Jeff and acquisition de viagra http://martinblaser.com/excerpt.html Leena are the old couple who have money, but no one to support. Kamagra jelly and for sale levitra soft tablets are the most preferred versions of the genuine sildenafil pills. Many men experience temporary impotence at some point in their lives, and the risk of surgical complications are also reduced to a great extent. http://martinblaser.com/viagra-7324 generico cialis on line But this is just a misconception because consulting the tadalafil 20mg for sale doctor becomes necessity.
An outgrowth of the Oslo Accords, Ehud Barak’s decision to offer the Palestinians everything in 2000 led to the second Palestinian intifada–with over 1100 Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists. Given that fact, Ehud Olmert’s decision to offer the Palestinians huge transfers of land, forcible evacuation of Jewish communities throughout Judea and Samaria, international control of Jerusalem, and even repatriation of a limited number of so-called Palestinian “refugees” in Israel–was even more dangerous. Yet the Palestinians rejected Olmert’s offer as they had Barak’s.
What was the result? Again, the Israeli public could see for itself that the Palestinians do not want peace–they want Israel. And the public could see once and for all that Kadima and the Israeli left were leading Israeli down the road to disaster.
9. The decision (2001-2011) to let thousands of Hamas terrorist rockets rain down on Sderot and southern Israel.
Some of the thousands of rockets fired at Sderot over the years.
When Hamas was slowly forced to turn from suicide bombers to firing rockets because of the separation fence (the first Qassams started falling in 2001 as the fence started going up), Israel did nothing to stop the rockets for over seven years. Sderot and southern Israel were hung out to dry and dismissed as unimportant by the vast majority of the Israeli populace and by the Israeli government.
Even when Israel finally decided to launch Operation Cast Lead (December 2008), the IDF inexplicably decided not to go after the top echelon of Hamas. Even after the most recent rash of rockets this past summer, Israel has again decided to do nothing (this time for fear of inflaming the Egyptian situation!–see tomorrow’s blog).
What is the result of the decision to do nothing for years and years? There is a real sense in southern Israel that the rest of Israel along with the Israeli government does not care what happens here. As long as Hamas only fires 8 or 10 rockets a week, who cares? This has ominous implications for the future–both in terms of the unity of the country and in terms of the aspirations of those children who have grown up in bomb shelters here in southern Israel.
10. The 1993 decision to sign the Oslo Accords.
This decision may seem out of chronological order, but the ramifications of this decision are so terrible and pervasive that your humble servant has saved it for last.
In retrospect, if anyone should have known who the Palestinians are, it was Itzhak Rabin. Yet he signed an agreement (barely passed by the Knesset), that was again based on the bogus concept of land for peace. And almost immediately, instead of bringing peace, the Oslo Accords brought suicide bombers to the buses, schools, hotels, restaurants, discos, and markets of Israel for the next decade. Nowhere in Israel was safe.
The Oslo Accords are responsible for the separation fence, security guards at the entrance to every building in Israel, and the end of all hope that the Palestinians are capable of peace.
The depressing outgrowth of the Oslo Accords: the only way for Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace.
THIS DAY IN ISRAELI HISTORY
On November 28, 1995, (years after Oslo was signed and one year after Rabin was killed) Israeli Prime Minister Peres announced that if the PLO did not cancel the sections of the Palestinian Covenant calling for the destruction of the State of Israel, “the peace train would stop.”
Arafat’s answer to this was a brilliant strategic maneuver: a widely telecast meeting of the PLO in Ramallah voted to remove the offending section from the Palestinian covenant. Peres and President Clinton were happy and the peace train stayed on track. Yet the section calling for Israel’s destruction was never actually removed–and remains in place even until today. You can check it out at the U.N.–where a copy of the PLO charter is located.
FOLLOW-UP:
Amjad Awad, the second person who confessed to the barbaric Fogel family slaughter in March is being sentenced today. Amjad and Hakim Awad have never expressed a syllable of remorse for stabbing five members of the family to death–including the infant Fogel daughter. Hakim Awad has already been sentenced to five life terms in prison. In your humble servant’s opinion, both Amjad and Hakim Awad should be executed.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.