Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Why is Ehud Barak still Defense Minister of Israel?

Redacted from article in Israel Matzav
May 30, 2012

“Barak has been through everything and learned nothing”

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3697

Recently I received an email from Zechariah Baumol’s yeshiva announcing an event marking 30 years since his ‘disappearance’ in the battle of Sultan Yaqub. That battle was commanded by none other than the current Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, who is rumored to have gone to sleep while the battle was raging. Baumol is one of five soldiers from that battle whose fate was unknown for many years. He is one of three from that battle who are still missing.

Barak – along with Shimon Peres – is a politician about whom it can be said that he has been through everything and learned nothing. It was Barak who fled a training accident at Tzehilim, leaving IDF soldiers to die as he left in his helicopter. It was Barak that tried unsuccessfully to reach a deal with Yasser Arafat at Camp David twelve summers ago and got a violent intifada in return for his flexibility (i.e. giving away virtually all of Judea and Samaria and at least 1/2 of Jerusalem and Arafat turned him down). It was Barak who left an IDF soldier to die while he sought ‘permission’ from Yasser Arafat to rescue the soldier on Rosh HaShanna twelve years ago. It was Barak who continued to try to give away the store to Arafat, while that intifada raged, in a bid to save his seat as Prime Minister. And, it was Barak who, as Defense Minister, passed on the opportunity to finish off Hamas during Operation Cast Lead.


(In addition, it was Barak who unilaterally withdrew from the Lebanese Security Zone in the dead of night surrendering territory essential to Israel’s defense and abandoning our loyal Lebanese Christian allies to their fate. Some of these Lebanese were granted asylum in Israel but were in the end so poorly treated that they rather returned to Lebanon to face dire consequences as “traitors” to the Hezbullah regime in the South. Now the consequences of Barak’s cowardly withdrawal are complete. There has been a complete take over of Lebanon by Hizbullah and hundreds of thousands of missiles are aimed directly at Israel from the exact area abandoned by Barak.

It is also Ehud Barak who has promoted the dubious defensive weapon, Iron Dome. At the time the program was initiated I wrote that somehow it reminded me of the shtetl Jews of Russia that had no choice but to hide in their secret cellars beneath the kitchen floor of their shabby dwellings in the hope that the Cossacks did not find them, rape their women and kill any males and children found.
So, once again, due much to Barak, Israelis are hiding in their cellars waiting for the enemy to strike and hoping somehow the thousands of missiles directed at them will all be intercepted by Barak’s magic Iron Dome weapon, which, of course, test after test have proven they will not. But, this time inexcusably, the Jews with a far superior military force, instead of taking the offensive against a pitifully weak enemy and wiping off the face of the earth their capabilities to hurt Jews, the Jews are once again hiding in their cellars.) jsk

I suppose we should not therefore, be surprised that Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, “If it turns out that it is not possible to reach an agreement, (which, of course, it is dead certain it is not) we need to consider an interim arrangement or alternatively a unilateral step,” Barak said at the conference. “Israel cannot permit this to remain in deadlock.” (Obviously Barak has not learned anything from his previous withdrawal from the Lebanese Security Zone and Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza that has simply created huge terrorist strongholds whose only goal is the destruction of the Jewish state.) jsk

But, here’s where it gets rich: The ‘Palestinians’ are unwilling to ‘accept’ a unilateral withdrawal. Presidential spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh already told WAFA that any Israeli unilateral measure leading to the establishment of a state with temporary borders is unacceptable. This Israeli policy leads to the continuation of the conflict; it does not lead to a solution, rather it ends the concept of the two-state solution, added Abu Rudeineh. He emphasized that the Palestinians are “committed to a just and comprehensive solution of a state within 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and without Jerusalem nothing will be accepted.”

In 2009, we were told that Prime Minister Netanyahu ‘needed’ Ehud Barak to show that his was not ‘just’ a rightist government. But, Barak now controls only five Knesset seats, and is the leader of a party that is unlikely to pass the threshold in the next Knesset election. And, unless he is taken into the Likud, he will not even be an MK after November 2013. In light of Barak’s continued argument for Leftist positions that most of the current government opposes, and in light of the presence in Netanyahu’s own party of Moshe ‘Boogie’ Yaalon, who is also a former IDF chief of staff and would be a far superior appointment, one has to wonder why Barak remains Defense Minister.
Unless, of course, Netanyahu himself is a closet Leftist.


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