Israel Matzav

Facing down our defeatist leaders

Two words aptly describe the Bush administration and the Olmert government's responses to the escalating war. They are respectively: appeasement and capitulation.

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As then, today in exchange for a "pledge" to stop enriching uranium, the US is willing to give Teheran nuclear fuel, airplanes, spare parts, light water reactors, World Trade Organization membership and US acceptance of the mullocracy as a legitimate regime.

There can be no doubt that Carter's deal effectively caused the US to facilitate North Korea's development of nuclear weapons. And now, after refusing for five years to adopt an Iran policy, Bush has been convinced by the likes of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to follow the Europeans' lead in appeasing the mullahs.

For all that the nuclearized Pyongyang threatens its neighbors, North Korea is still less dangerous than Iran. Unlike Pyongyang, Teheran sees itself as a contender for global supremacy. It has terror cells all over the globe capable of striking Western targets at a moment's notice. Aside from that, Iran has already committed itself to using the nuclear bombs it is now building to destroy Israel and bring America and Europe to their knees.

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THE OLMERT government in Jerusalem similarly refuses to recognize that a war is being actively waged against Israel. Olmert's refusal to accept the reality of war is even more unjustifiable than the Bush administration's because while Americans haven't been attacked where they live since September 11, every day Israelis are attacked in their homes.

Against the backdrop of the intensification of the Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, Sderot's Mayor Eli Moyal showed the absurdity of the government's willful blindness when Sunday he presented Olmert with the only choice he has. As Moyal put it, Olmert can continue to ignore the war and so turn the bombarded town of Sderot into a ghost town, or he can fight the war and turn Beit Hanoun in Gaza - from which the rockets raining down on Sderot and surrounding communities are being launched - into a ghost town. That is, it is us or them, as simple as that.

To this the government responded with denial and surrender declarations.

Olmert and his equally inexperienced, weak-kneed, ideologically blinded Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni claim that they are sending Hamas a clear signal by doing nothing. And what are they signaling? That if Hamas doesn't shape up, Israel will give it Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem.

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As Moyal said, it is time to face the facts. There is no middle way. You cannot nuance genocidal foes bent on your destruction and defeat.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:48 AM