Home Olmert's Shamefull Performance
Home Olmert's Shamefull Performance

Olmert's Shamefull Performance



In 2000 Ehud Olmert's current political ally and then Prime Minister Ehud Barak withdrew from Lebanon giving Hizbullah a free hand to build up an army at Israel's borders and turn former Israeli controlled territory into a war zone from which to shell Israel all the way to Haifa. Barak promised that the retreat would secure Israel's borders so that Israeli troops would not have to return to Lebanon. He lied.

In 2005 Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert withdrew from Gaza. They turned Gaza over to Hamas which began building up an army there and using it as a base for terrorist attacks against Israel and to shell Israeli towns and cities. Sharon and Olmert claimed that the withdrawal would secure Israel's borders and Israeli soldiers would never return to Gaza. They lied. A year later and they're back. A year later and the only difference between Lebanon and Gaza is that the Hizbullah had 6 years of free reign to prepeare for this war, while Hamas less than 1 year.

With Israel casualties of the killed and wounded in the hundreds, with the entire north of Israel under fire, with tens of thousands of refugees and Haifa's residents sleeping in shelters; the idea that withdrawing from territories and turning them over to the terrorists can bring security or peace. That false delusion has been buried along with the bodies of dozens of soldiers and civilians, of the rubble in Haifa and Sderot. Or it should have been.

Ehud Olmert arrived at Nitzanit where so many of the refugees he created, before Hizbullah got their crack at them, live. Where a woman who lost most of her possessions in Gush Katif went after a shell struck her home and she lost all she had left. He arrived with no regrets or apologies for the disastrous failures of his policies. Instead he continued to champion a further retreat from the West Bank. Even as Israel is being pounded from Gaza and Lebanon, Olmert wants to open the door for Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to shell Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Facing the very people who were the victims of his government's disastrous policy of retreats that had led to this war, Olmert snidely told them that a pilot had died today and his family unlike the settlers didn't ask for any compensation. This shamefull Soviet display of rhetoric is almost fantastic coming from a man living in safety and lecturing people who actually are on the front line. That pilot was killed in a war with the enemy. The settlers were attacked by their own government and even the compensation promised to those who left on their own, was never paid.

Olmert's determination to continue pursing a policy that has led Israel to disaster would be the equivalent of England proposing to continue turning a blind eye to German conquests even as German bombers were striking London. Even at war with enemies that have taken advantage of Israel's retreats to subject Israel to the kind of assault the country has not experienced for decades. Even after dozens are dead and Arab terrorists have thoroughly demonstrated that a border and a wall are no defense against a sustained bombardment, Olmert is blindly continuing to push a policy that only a lunatic could embrace at this point.

Talk about seperation and secure borders becomes laughable when the enemy simply goes over and under your borders. Israel is not ancient China and a wall is a static defense that cannot keep a determined enemy out. If the arguments against withdrawals were theoretical beforehand and required the Israeli public to imagine the enemy shelling Israeli towns and cities, no imagination is needed anymore. It's just a matter of looking outside or turning on the TV news. The war is here and will only intensify as every inch of territory yielded by Israel will be turned by the enemy into a base of operations to inflict terror on Israeli citizens.

International forces are not the answer. Hizbullah operates openly around UN positions. NATO will not remain long and will likely be equally tolerant of Hizbullah. Any NATO forces that don't turn a blind eye to Hizbullah operations will quickly meet the same fate as the US Marines who were deployed there. NATO, particularly those members already committed to Iraq, are not going to fight another war in Lebanon against Hizbullah. All that NATO's deployment accomplishes is to provide political cover for Israel's retreat and to give Europe further authority to dictate settlement terms to Israel; all the while charging the bill to Israel's political capital for getting NATO troops there in the first place.

Negotiations have failed. Withdrawal has failed. Turning over Israel's security to foreign troops is futile and an admission that Israel can no longer protect itself and desires to be a colony again. The last time around Rome was happy to oblige. Do we really want a repetition of that history?

In the end all the clever new solutions meant to usher in a bright and shiny new middle east have failed. Wise men return to the old solutions that kept the peace. Fools and liars learn nothing and continue the folly of their ways.

Comments

  1. The remark Olmert made about the family of a deceased soldier not asking for compensation unlike the people of Gush Katif proves that he has ice water coursing through his veins.

    As for Lebanon, Gaza, you have to wonder if Olmert and others will wait until they are knee deep in blood before they realize that appeasing terrorists doesn't work.

    Quit fighting them in drips and drabs. Do something definitive and do it now before Israel really is backed into a corner so small that even escape isn't possible.

    As long as Israel has the upper hand so far in this battle continue the fighting and cripple Hamas and Hezbollah once and for all.

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  2. yes israel does need to get serious about fighting, but unfortunately the last 13 years have been spent under various leaders looking to make a deal or for some shortcut or easy way out

    as usual they'll beat up the terrorists, maybe even badly, and then fall back and the terrorists will get fresh blood and regroup again while the government proposes new retreats

    it's getting bad, really bad

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  3. That really is my greatest fear for Israel. That its leaders will give up so much land, pushing virtually every Jew in the nation further into an overcrowded city; a "ghetto" in essence of their own design. And then Hezbollah or Hamas will make good on their threats to go deeper into Israel with their missiles. Appeasement, displacement of Jews from settlements further into the nation in a sequestered area. Concentrated for easy targeting. It all seems so very familiar. Horribly familiar.

    Hitler made good on his threats. People discounted his rantings as just that. The German people praised Hitler and his regime for backing things better for them, as some in Lebanon are now saying of Hezbollah in their defense.

    I just can't shake this fear that it is happening again. Fear mongering? No. Not this kind of fear.

    I can write and speak about various aspects of this war, but that is the one underlying thought and fear that keeps going running through my mind. I can try to put it on the backburner but something always triggers it and it comes to the surface, almost always in the early hours of the morning when I don't have other things cluttering my mind.

    It's sort of like seeing a ghost. That's all I can really compare it to.

    But thank you for letting me write here, where I feel most comfortable.

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  4. I prefer Hashem's way. You go in. Wipe every living person, man, woman, child off the planet. Poof! Problem solved. We're in these situations now because we let the morons live back when we first entered the Land. Over 3200 years later, we still haven't learned from that stupid mistake.

    We're not real bright sometimes.

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  5. Anonymous27/7/06

    Was there a formula that worked? I do not think so. Even Biblical Israel was constantly engaged in warfare. The Jews were persecuted, the Jews do deserve an secure and independent state on their own, yet the events of the last 5000 years have proven, that the Middle East is the wrong neighborhood for a secure and independent Jewish State.

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  6. to Anonymous - is there a 'good neighborhood' for a Jewish state then?

    Africa? That's a peacefull neighborhood and overrun with Islam in the bargain too. Africa will likely be the stage of a continental civil war between Christians and Muslims within two decades with a degree of bloodshed as yet unseen.

    Asia? These days it consists of China and a lot of small determined nations, all of whom are going to have nuclear weapons in a decade. Imagine a roomfull of accountants with sharp blades eyeing each other. Never mind that asia has no shortage of Islamic terrorists either.

    Do I even need to go into what a mess latin america is? As for Europe, it may be quiet now but it's also the region that's killed more Jews than anyone else. Can it be remotely considered safe.

    There is no such thing as a safe place. Besides the fact that Israel is our heritage, the place to make a state is the place you make a stand.

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  7. HF - it's simply what has been happening and is. Narrowing borders, retreating in the face of false promises, an international community winking at the enemy in hopes he'll be satisfied with killing you.

    It's Czechoslovakia being fed to the Germans all over again. Everyone condemns Zionism as racism but no one ever condemns Arab nationalism or Islamism that fuels Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc...

    it's a ghost because it's happening again and it's nothing new

    Look over Shoftim, Judges 11: 12-28

    Yiftach's reply really still applies today and is the one we should be using.

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  8. To anonymous,

    Golda Meir said it quite well: "This country (Israel) exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by G-d Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy. "
    -----Golda Meir (15 October 1971)

    To say the middle-east is the wrong neighborhood for the Jews, is to say G-d screwed up in where He put us. :] G-d doesn't screw up. Israel is where she is because that's the way G-d planned it.

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  9. Anonymous27/7/06

    I am surprised at the people who will run your video presentations on their web sites without even a hat tip.. and also not even leave a word of comment as to how much they liked it on here.. Incredible.
    I am seeing your videos everywhere. You need to copyright from these yahoos.

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  10. Anonymous27/7/06

    Our mistake has always been we pursue Goyish approval. Hashem has told us how to fight wars and said when we fight in that manner there will be peace. But for some reason, primarily fear of the Goy, we refuse to do as we must

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  11. Anonymous28/7/06

    Goy goy goy goy What is goy , boy?
    Want to translate goy for us goy boy with much toys?
    Goya is spanish food
    As a card carrying Goy I want to know what I did now.
    I am always being called on the carpet for some felony or other
    Explain to me Kahaneloyalone.
    I am crying over here

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  12. Anonymous28/7/06

    Goy means nation as in not Jewish nation

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  13. Sultan--I read Judges, thank you! I agree, it is an excellent response.

    A little off topic, but reading about Yiftach and his background got me thinking about others in the Torah and how they come from less than perfect background. This almost seems to be an asset to them and the Jewish people.

    And Yiftach's messages like those of Moshe and Esther to those in authority--polite, respectful but firm. Am I reading this right? That's another thing that occurred to me. Reading Torah, we usually don't know the inflection in a person's voice, the expressions on their faces.

    Frank: Goy (singular) and Goyim (plural) can also be used in a pegorative sense. Whether it's demeaning or not largely depends on the intent of the person using the word and how it is used. A clue to that is the words preceding it.
    But I know many people are sensitive about it, so I usually use "non-Jew" or "gentile". There's less chance of being misunderstood (and I already have trouble in that department lol).

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  14. it also helps to remember that few in the torah are perfect or anywhere near it, the torah shows us even great people warts and all, in order to tell us that everyone has flaws and people should not be worshipped only Hashem and that anyone can aspire to do important things despite their own flaws

    yiftach's message is very much diplomatic and actually I think in the torah you often do hear tone of voice in the original ivrit anyway and a lot of personality comes through in sparse dialogue, far better than most writers can manage to accomplish

    he makes his points cogently, maps out the reasoning and stands on his rights

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  15. note to Anonymous: cowardly attacks on commenters won't be tolerated, that's why your comments aren't up and won't be going up

    if you hate jews, that's your bigotry and not my problem

    ReplyDelete

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