What has gone wrong with Israel’s defense establishment?

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9:00 am Israel time, Wednesday, September 2 2015

**The daily Palestinian terror report:

At 12:41 am this morning, Arab arsonists set fire to the cemetery on the Mt. of Olives. At least 10 Jewish gravestones were doused with gasoline and burned.

At 11:23 pm last night, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired two mortars at southern Israel. One damaged a location in Israel, the other hit a building in Gaza.

At around 9 pm last night, a Palestinian terrorist was captured at the Tapuach Junction with numerous weapons including an M-16 and a Kalashkinov rifle.

**What happened early yesterday morning in Jenin . . .

. . . remains a mystery today. There has not been any information about whether the six Palestinian terrorists–including Bassam al-Sa’adi–were actually killed or not (see yesterday’s blog).

It is believed that his body is under the rubble of his house, but who knows?

TODAY’S BLOG:

It is an unfortunate truism that our vaunted Israeli defense establishment has become one of the most dysfunctional institutions in this country.

Two decades of leadership by passive, “politically correct” Ministers of Defense and IDF commanders whose only thought is about what job they will get when they leave the service, has led to a stunning “leadership gap” in which our idiotic defense leaders cannot recognize the sheer lunacy of what is coming out of their mouths.

This was never more clear than in the comments yesterday of Israel’s so-called “Defense” Minister Moshe Ya’alon and in those of the abominable head of the abominable IDF COGAT unit, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai.

We begin with Ya’alon’s speech at the annual Kalkalist (Economic) Conference–a speech that coincided with opening of the Israel school year. Ya’alon prefaced his remarks by saying that he hoped that Israeli students would nourish respect for “everyone’s civil rights” and “a belief in the importance of the law”.

Fine words . . . but not when spewing forth from Ya’alon—particularly when we have just witnessed Ya’alon spending the last month personally signing detention/imprisonment orders for young Jewish community members on “suspicion of being involved in suspicious groups”. No actual charges, no indictments, no respect whatsoever for the civil rights of these people, and absolutely no respect for the law.  

One wonders how it is possible that Ya’alon cannot see the utter hypocrisy of the words coming out of his mouth.

But Ya’alon wasn’t finished.  Next, he wanted to blather again about the government’s accomplishments in last year’s war with Hamas in Gaza:

“The effect of security on the economy, is understandable. Just look at last year’s war with Hamas. If we had not succeeded in neutralizing the rocket attacks against Israelis, our economy would have been hurt a lot more. The State of Israel is the most protected in terms of layers of protection.”
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What does Ya’alon think? That everyone has forgotten what happened last summer?

Let me remind him. The rocket attacks from Hamas and friends in Gaza were never neutralized. The terrorists were firing more than 100 missiles at us on the last day of the war just as they were firing at us on the first day of the 51-day conflict. So many missiles and mortars in fact that Ya’alon himself cravenly decided not to visit the Gaza border communities just before the end of the war because he was afraid he would be hit by missiles and mortars.

And what about since then? Has the missile and mortar fire ever completely stopped? Just think about the last 24 hours–two missile attacks and two mortar attacks. The idea that the missile threat from Gaza has been neutralized is a bad joke.

But wait, Ya’alon had even more nonsense to dispense: “Hamas is demonstrating a commitment to the ceasefire.”

What planet is Ya’alon living on? Ongoing Hamas missile fire, ongoing Hamas tunnel construction, ongoing Hamas terrorist training, ongoing, ongoing, ongoing . . . There is no “ceasefire” except in Ya’alon’s feeble brain.

To underscore these facts about Hamas we have only to listen to what COGAT commander Yoav Mordechai said yesterday to a group of reporters:  “The Hamas movement has taken control of the construction and management of humanitarian warehouses and halted all residential building inputs in favor of building up the underground infrastructure of the organization.”

First, note Mordechai’s use of “politically correct” terminology”:

Hamas terrorists have become “the Hamas movement”; buildings that house concrete and steel ‘dual-use’ construction materials have become “humanitarian warehouses”; Hamas tunnels have become “underground infrastructure.”

And yet you may say, dear reader, that at least we seem to be able to say that Mordechai recognizes the problem (the problem of Hamas control of incoming “humanitarian materials” that your humble servant blogged about on September 24th last year).

But if you said that, you would be wrong.

Mordechai immediately followed the above comments about Hamas using all of the construction materials coming into Gaza for tunnel building by proudly crowing: “Israel has allowed, from the end of last year’s war until today, the introduction of 1.7 million tons of building materials for the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip.”

How is it possible that Mordechai doesn’t see the lunacy of his own words? How can he stand in front of a group of reporters and tout an IDF policy that is helping prepare Hamas for the next war?

The profound disconnect between the words of “defense” leaders like Ya’alon and Mordechai and what is happening on the ground is a national disgrace–and a signal that new wars that are on the way.