Egozi’s Fury
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עברית (Hebrew)
“The cabinet will decide” or, alternatively, “the cabinet will approve”. In fact, there is no cabinet in Israel. There are several cabinets, each in the image of the minister who is supposed to be a member of a responsible cabinet that leads a country at war.
Nearly each cabinet member has a different position. Nearly all of them run towards any microphone and certainly in the general direction of any TV camera in sight. This body is supposed to do its work behind the scenes, but this is Israel. In my belief, the cabinet members sleep in their cars at TV and radio parking lots and keep sets of suits and ties there.
I would like to make a proposal: transfer all cabinet meetings to TV and radio parking lots. Everything will be faster, including the leaks.
If this is what a war cabinet looks like, then maybe it is best that Israel just give Hamas whatever they want because all is lost.
If this is the face if Israeli leadership, then we are truly in dire straits. A bunch of ministers who cannot reach a decision and runs over to the press to explain why.
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No one in Israel seems to understand that in some situations, terms like “protocol” and “ethics committee” are simply senseless. The Knesset does not realize it either.
In their recent visit to Qatar, Arab MKs from BALAD – Jamal Zahalka, Haneen Zoabi and Basel Ghattas – met with BALAD founder and former chair Azmi Bshara, who had fled to Qatar in 2007 following allegations of espionage and aiding Hezbollah in the course of the Second Lebanon War. The MKs also gave interviews to the Arab press.
So what happened following this scandal? The Knesset ethics committee will soon convene to examine the BALAD MKs junket to Qatar and the funding. Knesset sources said yesterday this trip was made in blatant breach of protocol, as the three MKs did not ask for prior approval for the trip, nor did they even report its sources of funding. Here this: they neither asked for authorization to go nor did they report it. These MKs simply went to an enemy country, meet up with an indicted enemy, and the Knesset is only talking about protocol. Someone there lost their mind. Is there any immunity on aiding the enemy at a time of war? Their parliamentary immunity should have been revoked the moment they got back and landed. After all, our taxes pay their salaries. The authorities should have arrested them when they disembarked and throw away the key.
Sitting in his bunker, Nasrallah is saying to himself “Israel is hardly what I thought it was”. He is looking on as the farce aka ‘talks with Hamas’ unfolds. He is watching this crazy situation, when a murderous terrorist organization is dictating to Israel when the ceasefire begins and when it ends.
He looks on as the Israeli government falters at the slightest move by the US or Europe and as swarms of attorneys shadow Operation Protective Shield, and tells himself “these people are not too hard to handle”.
So I am certain Nasrallah is working on the next round against Israel. This time, his organization, which dominates Lebanon and has at his disposal dozens of thousands of functional rockets, will paralyze Israel since the latter does not know how to conduct itself vis-à-vis a terrorist organization.
All the experts in Israel do not seem to understand that a terrorist organization is beaten by sheer brutal force. Israel still lives under the sense that the Hezbollah and Hamas are countries. Well, they are not. In these cases, war must be won by a “berserker” who realizes that against terror, you simply have to pull out all the stops. But when swarms of attorneys weaken an already weak leader, the outcome is most regrettable.
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Mayors and other civil leaders of the communities along the border with the Gaza Strip lost all confidence in the government. These guys have known for a very long time that when it comes to wiping out the menace to any normal life for 14 years now, you cannot count on Israel’s government, but this time was the final straw. They were told everything was fine, that residents can return home. Only yesterday, we saw high cement walls erected around preschools along the Gaza Strip. How does this come across? Very simple: that Israel intends to allow Hamas, and come tomorrow perhaps ISIS too, to continue terrorizing the lives of residents living right near the border.
The prime minister, the minister of defense, and any microphone seeking minister, played homage to the local residents’ “national strength”. So here it goes: the residents and their leaders hey are tired of false promises. They are tired of contradictory orders. They suddenly discovered that powers that be charged with defense did not know, nor do they know now, about the extent of the threat they are facing.
Everything is done in haste, in a haphazard half-baked way. Well, as long as they hail their national strength. This strength does have its limits. Even for those among us who do not live along the border with Gaza.
