All Quiet on the Northern Front
This article by David Bedein originally appeared on the web in March 2005. Recall that was some five months before the unilateralOn February 18th, 2005, during a public presentation for the annual Jerusalem meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced a challenge from a questioner. The questioner asked Olmert how he could trust the intentions of Abu Mazen, since Abu Mazen has been allowing terrorists under his jurisdiction to arm themselves to the teeth.Today's decisions not to embark on an all-out ground war - as the IDF wants - and to assure the Syrians that Israel does not intend to attack its continued supply of arms to Hezbullah, show that the Olmert government still wants to walk away and ignore the issue, just as Olmert did two years ago, rather than facing the menace or our nothern border. Hezbullah will be given the chance to regroup and return to fight another day regardless of the outcome of the current battle. Only God can save these fools from their folly.
Olmert's reaction was passionate. He pounded on the podium and exhorted people to examine "Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon as a model which Israel would apply to Gaza and Samaria." Olmert explained that Hizbullah terrorists now stationed in former Israeli army positions throughout Southern Lebanon had accumulated 15,000 missiles and mortars in Lebanon. Continuing to pound on the podium, Olmert that "they have never, never, never used missiles against Israel on the northern border since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May, 2000."
I found Olmert's comments to be incredible. My son Noam served on the northern border in an IDF combat unit for almost three years and was under fire the entire time This was not at some kind of summer camp.
Our news agency dispatched a reporter to a press reception on February 23rd, at Jerusalem's Beit Agron International Press Center in Jerusalem, to ask Olmert if he stood behind his statement that the Hizbullah had not fired any missiles into Israel since Israel's withdrawal in May, 2000. The reporter showed Olmert a declassified IDF situation report from June 8th, 2004, the day that Noam completed his IDF service.
The IDF document shown to Olmert spoke for itself:
"In the four years since the IDF unilaterally redeployed its troops from Lebanon, the following attacks on Israel took place from the north: 34 attacks with mortar shells and anti-tank missiles into northern Israel; 7 shooting attacks with light arms fire into northern Israel; 8 roadside bombs that were planted in northern Israel; 127 times when anti-aircraft missiles were fired into northern Israel; 5 Katyusha rocket attacks into northern Israel; 10 infiltrations into northern Israel; 11 soldiers killed in northern Israel, while three IDF troops were kidnapped and murdered; 50 soldiers were wounded in northern Israel; 14 civilians were killed in northern Israel."
Olmert glanced at the IDF report, stood his ground, and reiterated his stand that "I meant to say that they have not fired into Israel in the last five years." When the reporter showed Olmert that the IDF report demonstrated that the Arab terrorists had continued firing missiles into Israel, killing 28 people, Olmert walked away, saying that he did not want to discuss it.
Read the whole thing.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:17 AM
2 Comments:
Good news as you have already probably heard.
A call up of 30,000 more troops.
Even better news from a Syrian blog.
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Taunting Lions
The repeated calls on the Assads of Syria to allow for cross-border operations to take place in the Golan may not be as “innocent” and naïve as they might seem at first. Indeed, when they are issued by an opposition figure like Mamoun al-Homsi, such calls are actually meant to taunt and gaud the Assads into taking a course of action that better fits their very nationalistic rhetoric, but one, nonetheless, that will bring about a confrontation that the Assads know very well that they cannot handle and that will only serve to expose them for the national frauds that they are. As such, calling for the liberation of the Golan is “smart” politics at this stage.
The only problem with it, of course, is that they, the Assads, are so addict on brinkmanship that they may find it necessary, if such calls were reiterated widely and frequently enough in the country, and are adopted by no lesser figures than the likes of Salahuddin Kiftaro, the son of the country’s late Grand Mufti, who had been first to issue such a call anyway, to take the gamble and allow for some operations to indeed take place across the border regardless of the consequences, which are bound to be quite dire, as we can all imagine. Or, the entire issue might simply be taken out of their hand all together and be forced upon the scene by some hapless nationalist or Islamist group acting on its own initiative. For the Assads have been playing with this fire for quite a while now that the contagion could easily spread and blow up in all our faces. In both cases, the country will end up paying a terrible price.
M. Simon,
I posted about Syria twice this week. They would love to get involved in this war.
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