What will it take for the average Israeli to get angry enough to demand a politician who will do something about the current state of war in Israel? How can Israel stand for a politician who tells his people that there’s nothing he can do to stop terrorists from firing rockets into Israel?
“Don’t conduct yourselves as though the Grad rocket attacks were not a one-time thing; this has been Israel’s reality for the past 60 years, and this demands restraint as well as strength,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told board members of the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon Tuesday.
[…] “The Grad is heavier than the Qassam, and we have no way of preventing these things (rocket attacks) from recurring.”
Really? No way to prevent these things from recurring? Funny. Only one rocket has been fired in the last several days.
A rocket struck Ashkelon on Tuesday afternoon, dispelling reports that a secret cease-fire agreement had been reached between Israel and Hamas which would end the rocket fire against Israeli cities in return for a cessation of IDF activities against Palestinian gunmen.
Can you believe I just wrote that? “Only one rocket has been fired in the last several days.” Only one. Because that’s a good thing, right?
No. It’s a horrible thing, and even more horrible that we can so easily use the modifier “only” in a report of a rocket fired into Ashkelon by Palestinian terrorists.
There is going to be a bloodbath in Ashkelon or Sderot eventually. Many children are going to die. It’s only a matter of time.
During Olmert’s visit to Harel Elementary, the prime minister discovered that the school has no bomb shelters that can be reached within 15 seconds of the sounding of a siren warning of an incoming rocket.
The closest fortified room – the school’s computers class – was two minutes away from the yard and most classrooms. “We don’t have enough time to get to the shelter, so we hide under our desk,” the school’s fourth-graders told the prime minister.
When I was in fourth grade, we had regular air-raid drills. But we didn’t have rockets falling on us from a few short miles away, fired from the middle of populated areas by terrorists who know that Israel won’t randomly rocket Gaza.
But a kassam or a Grad missile will hit a school, or a daycare center, and cause the deaths of many children someday. It is inevitable under the current circumstances, with the current government, who appear to be knuckling under to terrorism by asking Hamas for a cease-fire.
Then, Olmert will authorize the ground operation into Gaza that will suddenly become the way to prevent rockets from being fired into Israel.
Maybe.
And shame on Shas for taking Olmert’s bribes to stay in the coalition. Shame on all of the politicians who put their political careers ahead of their citizens’ safety.
Olmert’s inaction is going to lead to another Baruch Goldstein incident. It is only a matter of time, before someone snaps.
One of the most foolish decisions at the founding of the Jewish State was to implement a parliamentary democracy modeled after those of nations like France, rather than a political system that could react to the constant threat of war. As long as such wars remained conventional israel was able to survive by adopting ‘unity governments’, which is really a genteel word for ‘junta’–but modern permanent asymmetrical warfare has rendered her current model of collegial government obsolete and ineffective.
I have felt for some time that Israel’s colonels–since her generals have obviously have become as sclerotic and corrupt as her politicians–need to institute a military coup modeled after the Uruguayan response to the Tupumaro insurgency. Frankly, I think Israel’s survival has reached a critical crossroads now, and without the immediate removal of Olmert, the unthinkable may become a tragic reality–the defeat and dissolution of a sovereign nation through a national failure of will. Merely shooting him would not be enough, since he would be replaced by the equally weak Barak or Livni–Israelis need to rethink the entire process and then act swiftly and even brutally to implement the needed changes. The world accuses them of being Nazis already; what more do they have to lose–besides their homes, their citizenshop, their identity, and finally their lives? Kadima has done far more harm to them than Arafat’s PLO.
“When I was in fourth grade, we had regular air-raid drills. But we didn’t have rockets falling on us from a few short miles away, fired from the middle of populated areas by terrorists who know that Israel won’t randomly rocket Gaza”…we did, however, have a policy that any missile attack on the U.S. would be met by a response in kind.
Yet Israel faces opprobrium if it takes defensive measures that are infinitely less severe than the things we stood ready to do to Russian cities for 40 years–and the things we actually *did* do to German and Japanese cities.
It was shocking to see on the news, into the faces of children and teachers and the whole country watching.
While I don’t advocate politicians handing out empty promises and I do think we have to live with the potential threats by our poor victimized neighbors… I think Olmert had simply loads of chutzpa.
I wonder when he overplays his hand and is sent home in boshet panim.