Another Israeli general who's lost the plot

This is a time for arabs to be at war with themselves and with Iran's proxy Hezbollah, and for Israel to enjoy some peace

Usually the problem is of Israeli generals is that of their feeling so powerful that they wish to test Israel's strength to resist attack. By making Israel such a tempting target through the giving away of land the surrounding arabs will be just unable to resist having another go. General Nizan Alon is just one of a number of such generals and intelligence Diskin types who really believe that miniscule Israel is way too large for its own good.

So it's refreshing to have an ex-general Amos Yadlin, who headed military intelligence between 2006 and 2010 who comes along without weeping for the poor palestinians, about how if he was a Palestinian he'd also take up the gun and slaughter Jews - Yes ex-defence Minister Barak actually said he could understand our enemies attacking Israel, that he would in their shoes. Well thankfully Barak the walking security disaster who during two years of the 2nd Intifada and thousands of dead and injured Israelis is well out of the picture. Barak didn't have a clue to stop the slaughter. Sharon did however, and the job was done within the year. Sharon didn't spend years using the friendly Nato manual on how to make friends with hostile muslim population and Palestinian Arab enemies, or by throwing money at them as Nato did in Afghanistan. No Sharon used good intelligence to find the murdering swine who sent idiots high on islam to place bombs in cafes, buses and even in a Passover seder for the elderly. He then arrested or assassinated the killers. There was much condemnation from the world, but Jews stopped dying, and the PalArabs have little stomach for a rerun of the intifada. Israel managed what western armies say is impossible, to suppress terror without cosying up to the enemy population. And that's why Israel won during the second intifada, and Nato is leaving Afghanistan with its tail between its legs.

Of course Israel has gone soft again since 2002 and the arabs are making Israeli's lives hell on the roads with tactics just short of an armed intifada. Isolated killings and daily firebombings and stonings are the rule, and woe betide a Jew who draws his weapon in self defence.

But I digress. Back to Amos Yadlin who believes Israel has so few problems that it should go look for a little action, as in bombing Syria, with the best of intentions of course.  Yadlin seems to believe the anti-Israel propaganda about Israel's being the region's policeman, and wishes to stop Assad from massacring his civilians.

“We have red lines [for intervention]. Our red lines include [Syria] firing at Israel, the transfer of advances weapons to Hezbollah, and activity by the chemical [weapons] units. I believe we should add to these red lines the murder of civilians at a level where we can no longer stand idly by,” Yadlin said.

But what Yadlin doesn't explain is why Israel should pull the arab irons out of the fire when arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt are just brimming full of western weapons, with many hundreds of the most modern fighter aircraft including Awacs radar. If arabs themselves don't feel the necessity to go put Assad's airforce out of business, why should Israel risk doing the job?

And in any case let's be frank, is it in Israel's strategic interest to stop this war between the sunni and shia world? We know very well that what will happen once this conflict ends is that those thousands of seasoned jihadis in Syria will turn their guns and their rockets on Israel. They make no secret of their goal being Israel after they have sorted Assad out. Thankfully Assad has powerful friends who are propping him up, true friends such as Israel can only dream of. Russia doesn't spill crocodile tears for Assad's enemies as the US and Britain do for each arab terrorist Israel knocks on the head. China is quite happy to sell anything Assad needs, if Iran doesn't have it in its own armory.

Has Yadlin even given a thought to how many of the 170,000 rockets shared between Hezbollah, Syria and Iran might descend on Israel were Iran to take offense at Israel knocking out the air force of their best buddy in the middle east?

Yadlin goes on:

Unilateral action should by no means be Israel’s first option, said the retired major general, who currently heads the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Aha, it's preferable to have some friends join in, but Israel with all of 8 million people should be prepared to go it alone to start a totally unnecessary war on behalf of the civilians of an enemy state who spare no opportunities to tell how much they hate jews and the 'zionist entity,' unless they are receiving treatment for wounds at the zionist's field hospital in the Golan.

The preferable contingency would be a NATO operation led by the United States with Turkey as its key member to implement a no-fly zone over Syria “at the very minimum.” 

Where has Yadlin been for the last few years? He wants Turkey to drive its war planes up to the Golan Heights? Will Erdogan be able to resist the opportunity for another provocation? What will Israel do when Turkey's jets 'stray' over the border? Nato might not be so interested in going to war with Israel once Israel down a couple of Turkey's F16's, or F35's when they arrive, but does Israel really need to get entangled with such a mess.

Turkey would dearly like to 'protect' Syrian civilians, just as Jew baiting and killing Russia 'protected' Jerusalem's Jews in the 19th century. There was reason for its interventions to help Jews, and that was of a grand strategy for warm waters that Yadlin is blissfully unaware. In those days Britain and France protected themselves from Russian hegemony in the area, in their own interests of course. Yadlin might not be that savvy or knowledgeable, but with Turkish troops already 30kms inside of Syria at least, 'protecting' a tomb, it would not take much encouragement for Turkey's army to march up to the Golan.

And that might not be such a bad idea as that would surely bring the islamic proxy war between Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others into a hot one. Sadly the truth is the hotter the Syrian-Islamic war gets, the better for Israel and western interests. Only when a terrible price in blood has been paid, by many arab actors, Iran and Turkey will they, as with Europe after two world wars learn the meaning of peace. Iran should have learned the lesson when it lost a million men fighting Saddam Hussein. Like Germany after WWI, it needs another opportunity to learn the lessons.

Israel should learn from the Kurds. They lie low until attacked, but will not be pushed around, as ISIS and Al Nusrah have found to their cost.

As for the muslim Arab world, it is wedded to violence in its culture, violence in the family, in the tribe and in the state. And unbridled violence will be the cure.

Turkey's irascible PM Erdogan is itching to join in against Syria and he should not be dicouraged to do so, but with his fellow muslim radicals for support, not with any Israeli complicity or help. Turkey is nowadays no friend, it is an enemy state not only for Israel but for the West and its values.

The sooner Israel learns to ignore the sometimes lukewarm overtures from Turkey the better. Erdogan has been a lifelong antisemite, a man who even wrote a disgustingly antisemitic play called MasKomYa, supposedly about Jews controlling the world as masons, communists and simply being jews. Hatred of Jews is in Erdogan's blood and he will spare no effort to undermine Israel, even if it means for a time suppressiong his hatreds.

Israel has lost enough blood because of a hundred years of arab aggression against the jewish People. We must suppress our sadness at seeing so much conflagration in a region that could be so different were arabs to lust after peace rather than conquest and war in the name of islam. Any intervention Israel makes will rebound on it, as when Israel tried to force a peace agreement with Lebanon in 1982.

Let Israel instead continue to enjoy its breathing space, to sit this one out and thank the Lord who works in mysterious ways to keep his People safe.

Nice bonfire in Damascus, now park up the F16's, brew the tea and leave the arabs to sort out their problems as before, in their own inimitable style

Ban Ki Moon, head of the organization of arab and islamic tyrants (and other assorted despots) otherwise known as the UN has condemned Israel. What a surprise.

How dare Israel go into the hyena's den and smash his teeth.  Israel should always wait for the UN to solve things peaceably as it did in Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur and now in South Kordofan.

Israel maintains its dignity, and its silence. Let the wolves howl, let the Syrian rebels unite with the Assad regime in talking of the jewish foe, of attacks by “external occupying forces” . Let them curse in frustration, and know that Israel will not wait for its enemies to come knocking, but will search them out and frustrate their plans in Israel's own time, on their own territory.

Israel seeks no war, no bloodshed, but by creating such a maelstrom in Damascus (the amount of munitions stored in the syrian army dumps is mind boggling. There is no way that 8 warplanes can deliver the amount of ordinance needed for a tiny fraction of that fireworks party) Israel has struck a very strong deterrent posture. Arabs will be impressed. And when arabs are impressed, they will normally look, as with the school bully, for an easier target.

Netanyahu has shown that Israel can keep its nerve in the face of the threats now being levelled at it. After delivering a pasting that Assad will not soon forget, Netanyahu took off for China. That sends one strong message to Israel's enemies, saying in effect, "I think so little of you that i'm off to trot." Netanyahu could not have acted better. But then, Netanyahu now has Moshe Ya'alon at the controls of the IDF, not the effete Ehud Barak, a man who went out of his way to understand, even justify the terrible atrocities committed by palestinian arab bombers against innocent israeli civilians.

Assad will hopefully now wish to cease attempting to reinforce Hezbollah with his most modern munitions and thus avoid further Israeli interventions. But that is a somewhat forlorn possibility as Assad is joined hip and thigh with Hezbollah and Iran. Assad is no longer an independent actor, if he ever was so until Assad finally goes (hopefully not too soon) Israel must expect further provocations, attempts to test the 'red line.'

Israel is now on high alert, has been for the last few days when a surprise exercise of ground troops was called in the north (now we know the reason, the troops are there so that Assad and Hezbollah don't get any ideas about how as arabs they have been 'humiliated' and in need of a little revenge).

As long as Israel's enemies don't talk themselves into doing anything foolhardy (difficult at the best of times for arab leaders who let their tongues wag their bodies), Israel must once again try and sink into the background, its red lines from now on being well understood by its enemies.

This is in contrast to Obama's chemical weapons red line fiasco. When Assad broke it by using chemical weapons, Obama shrank from acting. US credibility having been low for a while is now bumping along the bottom not just in the middle east, but in the world as a whole. From the Green revolution in Iran to Benghazi Obama has shown the USA as a broken reed (And of course China is watching, learning, and aggressing against its neighbours, sure in itself and in this US administration's reaction to its provocations).

Of course the USA is a mighty nation, one that has proved itself time and again, so just as soon as the american people shake themselves out of their stupor and elect a real leader, the world will sit up and take note. Okay, that will take a little while, but Israel can hold on, and some.

The shia and the sunni must be allowed to get on with their beloved business of showing each other just how right their lethal interpretation of islam is. My feeling is that they are both right. Islam is indeed a cruel, intolerant, crusading and imperial religion, the fruit of a poisonous and anything but 'holy' text.

Muslims will in a week or two's time have necessarily forgotten Israel, and it will remain forgotten until the next time islamist arabs try to test Israel's red lines.

My belief is that nothing has changed. The struggle will be brutal, and slow and very bloody, even with the West supporting the rebels, and maybe because of it. Absent this support the sunnis might have lost under the total commitment that Iran and Hezbollah are giving to this cause.

Neither side can afford to lose, not the alawites who stand to be slaughtered should they fail to create their redoubt, not Hezbollah who might find their whole community in Lebanon slaughtered by the sunni victors in Syria and their allies in Lebanon, should they fail to keep the lines of communication open to Teheran. The shia in Lebanon are beginning to feel very lonely and unloved.

So ironically the intensified efforts at shipping missiles to Hezbollah are all about Assad's building a defensive line of fortifications rather than any real intention to use those ground to ground missiles against Israel.
But Israel is not interested in allowing Hezbollah to build that impregnable shia-alawite redoubt, buttressed by game changing weaponry, directed at Israel or not (in the first instance). Hezbollah is the black mamba of snakes, unpredictable, agile and very deadly. You can't keep that sort of pet out in the open, confined or at all. The problem is that as well as the shia black mamba, we have the sunni fer-de-lance.

Israel's interest is in having the alawaites and Hezbollah isolated from each other as much as possible so as to break the direct line of supply through Iraq to Iran. Netanyahu is acting with great strategic skill and foresight here, only intervening when absolutely necessary in a war that Israel otherwise has no interest in taking part in.

For Israel the best outcome is one whereby these two snakes live together in the same pit and unable to unite with others of their species. The snakes will just as happily bite us as each other so it is not in our interest to feed them unless one is failing so badly that the other might become strong enough to devour the other.

So arabs will slaughter each other and weaken themselves so much that they will at some time in the not too distant future learn a holy terror, not the terror they have enjoyed making and inflicting on others until now, but the terrible fear of war close by in their own neighbourhood, affecting themselves and their families for months or even years on end. No matter how much they 'love death as we love life', the gnawing and unending fear can not but eventually have results.

Like the nazis arabs still hold to their koranic racist and imperial beliefs, ideas which extoll the virtues of armed conflict, murder and looting of one's enemy.

But should this conflict go on for long enough, even arabs will learn that war is not glorious, that nobody wins from war, that death and destruction is terrible, and is sought out only by fools, and evil people inspired by equally evil books, promoted by charlatans who wish for others to pay a bloody price.

This war will go on , supported on the one side by Iran and Iraq and their allies, and the sunni states on the other. It will go on and on until the lesson is learned, until there has been so much death, destruction and misery that as with the nazis, the glory of war is all gone, leaving only the terrible memories of the survivors.

Israel must not listen to those like general Ashkenazi who would have Israel take sides with one enemy against another. The enemy of my enemy in the middle east is not my friend. He will not thank you beyond today's battle. Tomorrow or even late this evening, he will be at your throat.

Israel must now pull back into its shell, doing no more than looking sullenly over the ramparts at its enemies. They'll understand.

Israel's death wish continued........giving away the Golan

Of course this revelation that Netanyahu would have given Assad the Golan is politically timed to damage Netanyahu's chances of re-election. But it nevertheless worrying.

Now that we see just how much a peace treaty is worth to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, we must be pretty sure that Netanyahu would not give away strategic land again in exchange for a piece of paper which as in Morsy's words will be subject to re-negotiation. For Muhammad Morsy of Egypt the only value to the peace treaty with Israel is that terrorists will be able to fire at Israel from the Sinai at no cost to himself. As long as egyptian soldiers are not harmed by Hamas (Gazan MB) then he will be happy for terrorists to attack Israel. All this whilst egyptian forces remain inviolate,under the terms of the peace treaty. 

Of  course Morsy will plead that he needs more troops and tanks to re-arm the Sinai so as to clear out the place of terrorists. Israelis aren't anymore so stupid as to believe this. The only use for egyptian tanks in Sinai is to build up an offensive capacity there against Israel.



      
 









 We must not forget that Morsy only a month before his election screamed at his adoring crowd that Jihad is the only way. A deputy leader of the MB then said that Jerusalem would be liberated in the coming year. 



And today we have Mohammed Badie the "Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood" espousing that:

“the Zionists only understand force,” and that Arabs cannot hope to achieve justice from the Jews “through the corridors of the United Nations or through negotiations.”

The Muslim Brotherhood and associated islamist have a long list of grievances that can never, ever be satisfied. Even if they destroyed Israel the grievances would move onto neighbouring countries and the the West. And that's because the caliphate is at the core of their beliefs. Their language, in arabic only is violent. In English they recite their demands in terms of human rights, of racism against muslims, of islamophobia etc.

‘Zionists only understand the language of force and will not relent without duress,’ Badie continued. ‘This will only happen through holy Jihad, high sacrifices and all forms of resistance’

“The time has come for the Islamic nation to unite around one man for the sake of Jerusalem and Palestine,” Badie said. “The Jews have dominated the land, spread corruption on earth, spilled the blood of believers and in their actions profaned holy places, including their own.”

Barak will never change. Even when a Brotherhood tanks has its barrel aimed at his own house he'll still be in denial, will understand the palestinian arab suicide bomber, will understand arab 'grievances', will be only too willing to give away Israel's territory until its enemies can just coast down the road to victory.

I still try and believe that Netanyahu will protect Israel and will be prepared to draw Iran's nuclear teeth before it's too late. There does not seem to be any alternative than Netanyahu as there is no one of the calibre of a Jabotinsky, Begin or Ben Gurion around. Netanyahu unlike Barak has his heart in the right place, knows that our enemies do not want peace in exchange for land, but rather the defeat of Israel and its utter destruction. 
Were they to succeed there would be nothing left of Israel, it would go back to the desert, just as the farmlands and farm industries developed by the jews of Gush Katif before they were forced out of Gaza.

Israel must never again give away any land. Peace comes through strength, now giving away land, in making an already tiny land smaller. Giving away land invites attack. When Israel finally learns this, it will have peace, not before.

Report: Netanyahu agreed to full Golan Heights withdrawal

Yedioth Ahronoth reports that in late 2010 PM, Barak conducted secret indirect talks with Assad; US documents reveal Israel agreed to return to June 4, 1967 lines in exchange for peace deal; negotiations were interrupted by uprising against Syrian president

The onset of the rebellion against Bashar Assad in January 2011 interrupted intense negotiations between the Syrian president and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which the latter agreed to a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace agreement, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday.

In the spring of 2010, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak launched secret indirect negotiations with Assad through American mediator Frederick Hoff, a former commander in the Marines and an expert on border demarcation in disputed areas.

Earlier this week Hoff resigned from his post as special US envoy to the Middle East. According to the Yedioth Ahronoth report, documents written by Hoff suggest that the negotiations were based on Netanyahu's willingness to return to the June 4, 1967 lines, giving Damascus full control of the entire Golan Heights area. Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Mideast war.

American businessman and Netanyahu associate Ronald Lauder reportedly negotiated a similar deal in 1998, during Netanyahu's first term as premier. At the time, Netanyahu denied that claim.

Netanyahu's successor, Ehud Barak, also offered a Golan withdrawal for peace, but the talks failed.

According to American sources, Netanyahu and Barak agreed to withdraw to the 1967 lines in exchange for a comprehensive peace deal that would include an Israeli "expectation" for the severing of ties between Syria and Iran. However, the sources said, the burgeoning deal did not include an explicit commitment by Assad to severe ties with the Islamic Republic.

The report said the sides did not agree on a timeline for the Israeli withdrawal: Syria wanted the agreement to be implemented within one and a half to two years, while Israel asked for more time before pulling out of the region.

Yedioth quoted a senior American official as saying that the negotiations were serious and far-reaching and would have likely ended with an agreement had they not been interrupted by the uprising against Assad. The official estimated that Netanyahu resumed the talks with Assad to justify the stalemate in the negotiations with the Palestinians and because he viewed Syria as the weak link in the so called "axis of evil," which also includes Iran, Lebanon and Hezbollah.

According to the documents written by Hoff, the discussions were held at the prime minister's official residence in Jerusalem. Netanyahu and Barak kept the talks a secret, but in early 2011 a Kuwaiti newspaper reported that special US envoy Dennis Ross met Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem and said that Damascus was willing to resume talks with Israel and that the Jewish state was willing to return the Golan Heights. The Prime Minister's Office denied the report.