By Elyakim Haetzni, YNET
We told you that if you eliminate the Jewish settlements in Gaza, rockets will land in Ashkelon. We told you that the Philadelphi Route and Gush Katif are an essential obstacle between Sinai and the Strip, because only from there we can protect the Negev, yet you counted on the Egyptians and on European observers.
We told you that the Egyptians will not be serving an Israeli interest and that the Europeans will only take care of themselves, but you called us radical and fanatic.
Yet there we go, once the Jews were kicked out, the Egyptians cooperated in turning the Philadelphi Route into an arms highway for terrorists and the European observers simply ran away.
We told you there is no substitute for Jewish presence and that “moderate” Palestinians, “peace seeking” Arab states, and foreign forces will not prevent infiltrations from the Strip to the Sinai and from there to the Negev. We told you that the Jewish settlers living in Gush Katif were in fact protecting Eilat and Be’er Sheva, yet you laughed, uprooted, and expelled.
We told you that the few Qassams fired at Sderot and the mortar shells fired at Jewish settlements constitute a tolerable situation as long as the IDF fights the enemy from within the Gaza Strip’s settlement areas and the settlers handle their suffering with restraint because they went their voluntarily. Yet you presented a self-righteous question: Why don’t you have mercy on your children? Let’s see you answer that question with regards to the tens of thousands of children in Sderot, Ashkelon, and the entire western Negev.
We told you that the soldiers are not protecting the wall, but rather, the city which the wall protects. Yet you were still dissatisfied that the soldiers were “sent to guard the settlers.” Does the war in the south cost less? And those who wish to “save the cost” of soldiers sent to seemingly guard the Judea and Samaria communities, do they still fail to understand that these soldiers in fact guard central Israel?
Trapped in a minefield
We told you that there are no Arabs who would accept the “deal” offered by the Left: Take the 1967 lines but let us keep the 1948. It is for good reason that the Palestinians refer to Sderot as a “settlement” and refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Yet you chose to make peace with yourselves and hoped that the tiger will be satisfied with the settlement chunks you’ll throw its way.
We told you that only settlement activity deters the Arabs because these communities create new roots in the land where the Arabs wish to uproot Jewish existence from. We told you that settlement activity and security will always be intertwined, just like the way it was in the days before the State’s establishment.
Today, the government is helpless: Should we be “drawn” into Gaza again? Should we enter, sustain casualties, and leave? And who will come in our place? There is no other way here: A defeated enemy must lose territory, and in the wars with the Palestinians this means new settlements. Up until now, all the sages of the peace camp have not yet found a better means for deterrence, punishment, and prevention of war.
In Gaza, the “land for peace” doctrine led Israel to a minefield where any advancement means death and we can only be saved by walking back, in the older tracks. The Jews used to control 12% of the Strip’s territory. Today, more than ever, this territory is vital for our national security, and the IDF must occupy and hold on to them.
We hope that we will find the righteous people who despite the wounds of the past would be willing to return Jewish life to the Gaza region and get us out of the minefield.
Gotta get in my comment about Canada.
This morning the Post reported on the Canadian government’s angst about the Israeli (mini)invasion of Gaza. The Post itself will have no truck with this nonsense incidentally, but it’s exceedingly strange that a country that sends its young men halfway across the world to Afghanistan to protect the locals from Islamist thugs, and thereby help civilization maintain itself, would in the next breath turn around and criticize Israel for doing the same thing with its belligerent next-door neighbours.
Today we must purge the IDF OF EVERY OFFICER ABOVE THE RANK OF MAJOR WHO BELIEVES THAT VICTORY OVER THE ARABS IS IMPOSSIBLE!Every Officer must be made to ans a very extensive questionnaire there are no right or wrong ans. This will be a combination psychological and political profile. We must purge the IDF of political defeatist attitudes for a can do spirit. Our amy and especially her high ranking officers have been corrupted by the Oslo Syndrome that is a live cancer in our societal and political jargon and thinking, before radical brain surgery commences I would try to stem the deepening spread through the less radical slower homeopathic method (Democratic process)but be ready with saw and scalpel in hand should it fail.
Norman F
I disagree with this approach most strongly and though not Jewish (I don’t see why that matters) I have the interests of the Jewish people at heart.
If you think this then why should we not all sit back, do nothing and watch things just evolve.
This is a form of fatalism. It can just as easily unfold somewhat like this: The Israeli ruling class along with US and EU Imperialism work consciously to create conditions of total chaos, and in those conditions invite the forces of NATO to come in and police Gaza, Judea and Samaria. On the backs of NATO, as has happened all over Yugoslavia, Fascists will carry out a programme of ethnic cleansing, in this case against Jewish settlers, who are isolated and spat upon by the Israeli ruling class of Olmert.
It is the same issue as the shooting of Jews in the Atalena affair.
You also are very badly mistaken in referring to the Olmert ruling class as the “Israeli Left”. They have nothing in common with revolutionary socialism. They are more a creation of Stalinism and of Social Democracy in the peculiar conditions of Israel. There is in fact a history of intense difference between Trotskyism and these forces whom you call the “Israeli Left”.
Israel will sooner than later reoccupy Gaza. The death of the so-called two state solution is merely a matter of time. The Israeli Left’s formula of retreat and uprooting Jewish revanants has not brought about peace and quiet but has merely started the clock ticking down towards a bloodier and far more brutal war than any Israel has ever known. And yet the world has the effrontery to call these incipient warmongers “lovers of peace!”