Israel Matzav

The real indictment: Shimon Peres' 'New Middle East'

The end of the Winograd Commission press release I quoted above is a powerful indictment of the delusion promoted by Shimon Peres, among others, that a 'New Middle East' is at our doorstep in which lambs and wolves will lay down together. It's powerful stuff and should be thrown in the face of every MK in the government and those to their left in the opposition:

19. The IDF was not ready for this war. Among the many reasons for this we can mention a few: Some of the political and military elites in Israel have reached the conclusion that Israel is beyond the era of wars. It had enough military might and superiority to deter others from declaring war against her; these would also be sufficient to send a painful reminder to anyone who seemed to be undeterred; since Israel did not intend to initiate a war, the conclusion was that the main challenge facing the land forces would be low intensity asymmetrical conflicts.

20. Given these assumptions, the IDF did not need to be prepared for ‘real’ war. There was also no urgent need to update in a systematic and sophisticated way Israel’s overall security strategy and to consider how to mobilize and combine all its resources and sources of strength – political, economic, social, military, spiritual. cultural and scientific – to address the totality of the challenges it faces.

21. We believe that – beyond the important need to examine the failures of conducting the war and the preparation for it, beyond the need to identify the weaknesses (and strengths) in the decisions made in the war – these are the main questions raised by the Second Lebanon war. These are questions that go far beyond the mandate of this or that commission of inquiry; they are the questions that stand at the center of our existence here as a Jewish and democratic state. It would be a grave mistake to concentrate only on the flaws revealed in the war and not to address these basic issues.

I can't wait to hear what Israel's first astronaut - the man who is ready to turn the country into a website or into islands in the sea - has to say about this.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:32 PM