A Dire Warning For the IDF: Is Anyone Listening?

Yom Shleeshee

Tuesday

4 Av 5781

July 13 2021

 

The Quotes of the Day

A fierce verbal battle erupted yesterday in the Knesset between PM Naftali Bennett and former PM Netanyahu over a laundry list of issues. This was the exchange about Iran:

PM Bennett:  Insofar as Iran and Netanyahu are concerned, I will not go into detail so as not to harm the security of the country, I will just say that there has never been anyone in the State of Israel who has spoken so much and done so little about Iran. “

Former PM Netanyahu: “This is not the time to go over all the efforts that my friends and I have made which have delayed, sabotaged and thwarted, on the operational, political, economic and intelligence levels, over the years . . . it is not for nothing that the Iranians wished our government would be replaced by your own . . .”

The News On The Israeli Street

On the Corona front . . .

***730 newly diagnosed cases yesterday; 4,623 active cases in the country; 6,439 Israelis dead from Corona.

***Intriguing data from the Health Ministry this morning shows that a person who has had Corona and recovered is 40 times less likely to be infected again than a person who has been vaccinated with Pfizer.

***Apparently, the Corona Cabinet will meet tomorrow to try to facilitate tourism in Israel beginning August 1. Specifically, it will recommend that Israel finally recognize Covid vaccinations from the United States and Europe–as long as the vaccines used are recognized by the U.S. FDA or the E.U. EMA. If a tourist has not been vaccinated with an approved vaccine, he or she will need to take a serological test at Ben Gurion Airport.

Corona leads to terror? . . .

Here’s a great idea (not). Because Israelis are stuck in Israeli unable to travel because of Corona, and are filling hotels in Eilat to capacity and those hotels don’t have enough workers, why not bring in busloads of potential terrorists from Jordan and PLO territory to ease the worker shortage?

More specifically, 800 more Jordanians to add to the 800 already in Eilat and 1000 Palestinians. 

Think about that.

2,600 potential terrorists roaming around Eilat.

Great idea, right?

The sheer idiocy of it all is astonishing. How many attacks have we already had against Israelis in Eilat by Jordanian “hotel” workers? Supposedly, workers from the Philippines were supposed to fill the worker vacuum, but Israel has temporarily held up their entry because of Corona. 

Oh and by the way, virtually none of the Jordanian and Palestinian “workers” have been vaccinated against Corona.

 

 

Babe in the wilderness . . .

It didn’t take long for new President Bougie Herzog to reveal yet again that he doesn’t have the slightest idea about what he is doing.

Yesterday, he decided to engage in a telephone conversation with one of the vilest anti-Semites on the planet, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Herzog outrageously discussed how Israel and Turkey can cooperate in such areas as energy and technology–apparently without giving a second thought to how Turkey has been trying to thwart the Israel-Europe gas pipeline project and how Turkey has stolen military technology from Israel.

Apparently, Herzog then waxed metaphorically about how Turkey is important for the stability of the Middle East and the two agreed that promoting positive steps in “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” will help improve Israeli-Turkish relations.

Say what?
Once fitted with corrective lens, they found a change. get cialis overnight Men do not want to levitra online uk talk about their sexual problems but this can lead to a permanent damage to the penis, hence getting medical attention as early as possible. Some of the vardenafil generic users can say that these medicines are cheap and so, the effect of the medication allows room for spontaneity in your love life. The expenses spent for the reasons are obviously make the retail price buying online viagra of the medicine costly.

This is the same Turkey that harbors Palestinian terrorists, funds Islamic terror groups in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria, continues to try to take over swaths of eastern Jerusalem, and in general, does everything to destabilize Israel–not to mention destabilizing the rest of the Middle East by military campaigns in Syria and Libya.

Herzog is simply out of his depth and will only go further off the deep end during his next seven years in office.

Guess who didn’t show up for the 4th of July? . . .

It has just been revealed that a number of ambassadors led by French and Germans refused to attend the annual 4th of July celebration at the new American Embassy in Jerusalem.

The reason according to them?

“Jerusalem is not recognized as the capital of Israel.”

Can you believe it?

Of course you can.

Hilarity in Iran, again . . .

This time it was with the train schedules on boards across the country.

In short, the train schedules disappeared and a photo of the new President along with his phone number took their place.

A terrible decision . . .

After spending more than one hundred million shekels, the Ministry of Finance has decided to pull the plug on the proposed railway from Ashdod and Ashkelon to Eilat.

According to Finance Minster Liberman, getting rid of traffic jams in the country is more important.

Getting rid of traffic jams is important, but your humble servant could not disagree more with stopping plans for the railway. Not only would the railway facilitate tourism to Eilat and thereby get tens of thousands of cars off of the roads, but also it would be a springboard to develop the area from Beersheva to Eilat.

And how exactly does Liberman propose to get rid of traffic jams? Apparently by building more roads.

Heaven help us.

 

TODAY’S BLOG

A Dire Warning For the IDF: Is Anyone Listening?

A ceremony was held several days ago that was little reported and seems to have resonated less.

In that ceremony Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir was replaced by Maj. Gen. Herzl Halevi as the deputy IDF Chief of Staff. This replacement was part of annual transfers in the IDF and was not a reflection of Zamir’s performance.

In his departure speech, the normally laconic Zamir spoke forcefully about what he sees as severe shortcomings in the IDF. Specifically, he referred to how the recent conflict with Palestinian Gaza should wake everyone up because of the fact that Hamas and Islamic Jihad were joined by Palestinians in Judea and Samaria as well as Israeli-Arabs. 

Zamir suggested that the IDF has reached a red line–and would be hard-pressed to deal with such a conflict again, particularly if Hezbollah decided to fire its 150,000-200,000 missiles at Israel.

In his words, this was the heart of his speech (emphasis mine):

“We may face a heavy, long, multi-arena campaign, combined with face-to-face challenges, back-and-back contours and depth, and for that we need decisiveness, breathing space and a strong reserve . . . In my opinion, the IDF is on the verge of the minimum size necessary to face the complex threats from those we have experienced in recent years . . . Israel needs advanced technological capabilities, but a critical mass of quality and quantity.”

In short, this is an implicit indictment of both former PM Netanyahu, former IDF Chiefs of Staff Gantz and Eisenkot, and current IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi–all of whom have signed off on ever-heavier reliance on technological warfare and on ever-greater reductions in the size of the IDF and IDF reserves.

The Israeli public does not want to hear this, but the fact is that as the threats around us multiply, we need a large army on the ground. We cannot rely on the Israeli Air Force and technological wizardry to bail us out of every military confrontation.