Israel Matzav

Covering Olmert's rear end

In a shameless move today, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee released a 150-page report that blames the IDF for the failures in last summer's war. The Committee was heckled by reservists, and the only member who apparently stood up for the report was Tzachi Hanegbi, who continues to shame his 82-year old mother by acting like a cheap, valueless politician. Even current Defense Minister Ehud Barak admitted that the government was responsible for the war's conduct.

"They all went home, the only one who's left is the prime minister," another reservist said, referring to the fact that both former defense minister Amir Peretz and former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz had to resign following the war, while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has remained in office despite continuous calls for his resignation from opposition MKs and plunging numbers in popularity polls.

Following the reservists' outbreak, Hanegbi's predecessor at the FADC, Likud MK Yuval Steinitz, said "in the clearest manner possible, and when I say this I think I speak for the entire opposition: The things written in this report, and the conclusions of the Winograd report, demand not only that the defense minister leave office, but also that the prime minister resign, and I am hoping this will be the result of the final report of Winograd."

"The general tone of the report is that the time was right despite problems in military readiness, including international support and the relative weakness of our enemy [Hizbullah]... this was a missed opportunity, and this is the sharpest criticism [made in the report]... and it reflects on both the military and the political establishment," Steinitz added.

The Likud MK also said that "the failure, that the Syrian army was preparing and for a whole week not a single tank was positioned in the Golan Heights, was a strategic failure no less than the loss of our deterrent power."

Former Mossad chief and current Labor MK Dani Yatom sided with the reservists, saying "the report is flawed in that it doesn't tackle the political echelon, and those who say the report is missing [important conclusions] are right."

"One cannot criticize decisions and the decision making process independently from analyzing the [military's] interfacing with the political echelon... in order to be a prime minister during a time of war, one has to know to ask the right questions," Yatom added.

Yatom said the decision to embark on a ground operation in the last two days of the war was "wrong... because such a mission cannot be accomplished in two days... 33 soldiers died in those two days and it did not achieve anything, not even amended the UN decision [UN resolution 1701, which brought about the ceasefire on August 14 2006]."

But Olmert has no intention of taking responsibility for his own actions, let alone resigning. It will take tens of thousands of Israelis in the street to even have a chance of convincing him otherwise. And so far that hasn't happened.

I'm just one little blogger trying to do my fair share....

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:29 PM