Israel Matzav

More mea culpas

Yesterday morning, I reported that Major General Yiftah Ron-Tal, former commander of the IDF's ground forces, called for Chief of Staff Dan Halutz to resign, saying that those who were responsible for this summer's failures in Lebanon - both military and political leaders - must pay a personal price. I also noted that Ron-Tal made a direct connection between the IDF's role in carrying out last summer's surrender of the Gaza Strip and the failure this summer in Lebanon.

Ron-Tal was technically still a member of the IDF. He was using up his vacation time yesterday. No more. Dan Halutz was not happy with Ron-Tal's call for him to resign, so Halutz fired him.

Halutz said that he attempted to reach Ron-Tal all day yesterday, but that Ron-Tal said he was busy with his studies. The IDF Chief then ordered Ron-Tal to appear for a clarification at 6 PM, but Ron-Tal again did not show up. Instead, Ron-Tal submitted a letter of resignation after 33 years of service. Halutz ignored the letter, and instead fired off a long letter of dismissal of his own, ending Ron-Tal's service immediately.

The left tried to besmirch Ron-Tal's reputation by claiming that his remarks were prompted by a meeting he had with Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu last week. But Ron-Tal - although admitting that he met with Netanyahu - said he has no interest in going into politics.

Speaking to Israel Radio this morning, Ron-Tal blasted Halutz's decision to fire him:

Ron-Tal, speaking to Israel Radio, blasted Halutz's decision to fire him, saying, "it is worthy of the Chief of Staff to first and foremost demand from himself what he so passionately demands from others, especially when lives and the security of the nation are at stake."

Halutz fired Ron-Tal on Wednesday night hours after he slammed the chief of staff and called for his resignation citing the failures of the war in Lebanon.

Halutz issued a press release saying that he had decided to fire Ron-Tal due to his comments which were "unfitting for a senior officer and member of the general staff."

Ron-Tal then claimed that he had already submitted a letter of resignation to Halutz before the chief of staff fired him.

"After 33 years of service I know when it is time to resign and to bid farewell to my comrades and my subordinates," Ron-Tal wrote in the letter.

Ron-Tal, who had only one month left of a one-year period of pre-retirement inactive service, was expected to join the Likud and run for the Knesset.

What Ron-Tal said that got the army's ire up was said in an interview in a local newspaper in Kfar Habad, in the country's center:

Ron-Tal said that those responsible for the fighting in Lebanon this past summer must be held accountable for the war's failure. Responsibility lay with both the military and political echelons, he said. He further claimed that there was a clear connection between the IDF's failure in the recent Lebanon war and its participation in the disengagement from Gaza last summer.

"The IDF, from a readiness standpoint, was well-prepared for this war," he said. "That wasn't the problem with this war...Our army last June and July was in a sufficient state of fitness to subdue Hizbullah, but the army dedicated most of its time to training for the disengagement, and therefore the training suffered."

"It was not on such a level that it was impossible to fight, but there was a need to remove the rust in the first days of fighting. Did the army have to participate in the disengagement? It wasn't its job to evacuate Jews, which was non-consensual, and it, as the army of the people, was not supposed to do that," Ron-Tal said.

Halutz has come in for a lot of criticism from the right - as has Ron-Tal but for different reasons:

MK Uri Ariel (National Union) had harsh criticism of Lt.-Gen. Halutz for firing Maj.-Gen. Ron-Tal.

"In Halutz's eyes, a soldier who raped a girl is better than a soldier who objects to the expulsion of Jews from their homes," Ariel said, referring to the recent incident in which a group of Air Force soldiers were found to have serially-raped a 13-year-old girl, but were not dismissed. "Dan Halutz has not yet understood what everyone around him already senses - that very soon, he himself will leave the army in disgrace."

The Nahalal Forum - a group of secular right-wingers from kibbutzim and moshavim - announced its welcome to Gen. Ron-Tal "to the camp of rational Zionists who believe that this land is the land of the Jewish Nation and no other collective." The forum congratulated Ron-Tal for "revealing his ethical and Zionist opinion on the Disengagement, on what followed it, on the IDF's lack of preparedness for war, and on the criminal approach the government took towards its citizen pioneers in Gush Katif."

Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Tzvi Fogel feels that Ron-Tal did not proffer his criticism in the appropriate manner. Fogel feels that Ron-Tal should have resigned and not sufficed with merely expressing his verbal protest. "Ron-Tal himself was one of those who was responsible for the implementation of the Disengagement in the framework of his position as Ground Forces Commander," Fogel told Arutz-7's Hebrew newsmagazine, "up until six months ago. It's not serious or respectable to now claim that in the past six months the IDF's situation deteriorated."

"Ron-Tal should have admitted his own mistake, as part of the system, instead of spitting into the well of which he was part," Fogel said.

Ron-Tal is not the only retiring general to speak out against the expulsion of the Jews from Gaza. Maj.-Gen. Gerson HaCohen, who oversaw the army's role in the expulsion, and IDF Chief Rabbi Yisrael Weiss have also spoken out against it. Weiss said that we must never allow another disengagement again.

What's more surprising is that the mea culpas are spreading to the political side. Today it was Kadima Achora MK Tzachi HaNegbi's turn:

Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi (Kadima) said in an interview with Israel Radio Thursday afternoon that the disengagement from Gaza was a mistake, "based on a number of parameters."

Hanegbi added that in the opinion of all Kadima members, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's convergence plan was no longer on the agenda.

"The disengagement was perceived as weakness, and the weakness brought about attacks in Gaza and the North," said Hanegbi, who supported former prime minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan.

According to Hanegbi, "it [disengagement] was not conducive to better security or to peace."

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:48 PM