We Cannot Afford a Wimpy Defense Minister
Things are heating up in Gaza. The IDF went in last night to start a large operation there, the largest one since Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. So far they have killed four and wounded at least 11 other terrorists. The operation is said to be to prevent Kassam launchings (yes, they are still launching rockets at Sderot and the western Negev) and to uncover and destroy tunnels from Egypt, where the terrorists are smuggling huge amounts of weapons.
The only problem is that our wimpy Defense Minister is holding them back. The IDF has stated clearly that they want to permanently take over the Philadelphi route (a strip of territory at Gaza/Egyptian border), but Amir Peretz is balking. Peretz, a dove from the Labor Party, should never have been given the position. He is obviously not right for the job, as he proved during the Lebanon war this summer. The only reason he is there was to prevent him from having the Finance portfolio. With his background as Histadrut Union leader and the constant strikes that he called, it was thought that he would cause less damage running the army than running the country's budget.
Which just goes to show that even the lesser of two evils is evil enough.
Things are heating up in Gaza. The IDF went in last night to start a large operation there, the largest one since Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. So far they have killed four and wounded at least 11 other terrorists. The operation is said to be to prevent Kassam launchings (yes, they are still launching rockets at Sderot and the western Negev) and to uncover and destroy tunnels from Egypt, where the terrorists are smuggling huge amounts of weapons.
The only problem is that our wimpy Defense Minister is holding them back. The IDF has stated clearly that they want to permanently take over the Philadelphi route (a strip of territory at Gaza/Egyptian border), but Amir Peretz is balking. Peretz, a dove from the Labor Party, should never have been given the position. He is obviously not right for the job, as he proved during the Lebanon war this summer. The only reason he is there was to prevent him from having the Finance portfolio. With his background as Histadrut Union leader and the constant strikes that he called, it was thought that he would cause less damage running the army than running the country's budget.
Which just goes to show that even the lesser of two evils is evil enough.
posted by westbankmama at 8:53 AM
8 Comments:
I was very suprised to see him in the Defense Minister.
Emanuel - so were we all!
sheva7777 - The "funny" thing is is that he DOES live in Sderot, and there have been Kassams fired at his house. Left-wing doves in this country are just blind!
jerusalem joe's comment is very interesting. even where we are living currently in the US, there is intense unrest in the non-odox segment of the community when it comes to odox jews. i think that it possibly has to do with when non-observant people see judaism lived and practiced, it leaves them unsettled--they know somewhere inside that they should be doing more than they are and this bothers them.so instead of changing themselves, they find fault with odox jews and odox practice and belief. it's easier to let the real, outside problems go (like the antisemitism in my own community) and instead focus on an internal source to blame for any problems. i definitely agree with JJoe's comment. it's all over the place.
jerusalemjoe - so we "settlers" unsettle others? ;) Seriously, do we make others feel guilty and defensive? Are you bothered by some who are arrogant (a real problem with many Odox Jews, I admit...)
bec - what I don't understand is that the real problems, as you describe, are literally life-threatening. The problem of Jewish identity isn't. Don't people have a sense of priorities?
You all might as well be arguing about the weather. A worse humanitarian situation is goin on in Gaza and the West Bank, and you're bickering like school children over how important it is being a settler.
Try being completely EXCLUDED from the political process. Try being a Palestinian for a day. Try being called a terrorist because of the actions of a few screwballs and for wanting to live out your short lifespan in peace.
wbmama,
i think people should prioritize, and obviously, the life-threatening problems are more important. however, those problems aren't easy to deal with or solve. it's easier to blame who/what we see every day that annoys us rather than face the bigger issues at hand.
if you think about it like a marriage, it's easy to have daily fights over small, seemingly insignificant things while ignoring bigger problems that loom in the distance that would be harder to deal with and possibly cause more problems.
behemoth 101,
wouldn't it be a much better world if the palestinians felt the same way as do you, and acted on the desire to live peacefully by standing up to terrorism and stopping it, so as not to soil their reputation as people who are looking for peace, instead of sitting by quietly and letting "a few screwballs" ruin a possible good relationship with israel and the rest of the world?
me too.
Save your breath, folks, re Behemoth--his blog is a hatefest of puerile anti-Israel name-calling, rich in outrage and suffering from a paucity of facts...."Hasbara" money, for example, should be used to feed all the Palestinian people....he won't mention that Al Manar, Hezbollah's propaganda arm, spends more money spewing hate in a month than Israel spends in a year explaining itself. See: http://kampfeblog.blogspot.com/
This is so typical of the western intellectual colonialist mindset that infantilizes, romanticizes, and patronizes the Arabs--always portraying the Arabs as hapless children who don't really mean to murder and maim Jews and are only 'kidding' in their unending promises of Jewish genocide both before and after the establishment of the State of Israel.
Gotta wonder about someone who uses half of "Mein Kampf" in his blog title anyway....
"Kampfe," like "Jihad," is an untranslatable word connoting a great struggle- be it physical or metaphysical in nature.
You might recall an uplifting spiritual song Jews used to sing in the concentration camps... the Klezmatics play it in their repertoire and it is called - "In Kampf".
It's easy for the linguistically and intellectually challenged to associate these words exclusively with violence because of some unfortunate historical examples.
You think a straw man argument like Al Manar will save Israel from its immoral self? Israel killed mainstream Judaism and replaced it with chauvinist nationaism:
Like moths to a flame, these Pharisaic Phalanx-niks can't help but betray their plans by occident!
Desperation has put the backwards neo-Zealot outpost in an ideological pickle - sure it takes power, but does it do so NOT at the expense of the very religion it claims to protect?
Check out my post for the predictable truth we all saw coming - Sinister Semitic Shlock-artists and the Slime they Sell!
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