Previously:

• The Destruction of Israel - Chapter 1: Israelis’ Realisation
• Addendum: Drugged by political correctness

Following:

• Chapter 2: Iran’s next war on Israel

Lebanon: What happened and what is to be done?

By Ami Isseroff

The aftermath of the Lebanon disaster may be worse than the disaster itself. An air of unreality surrounds the debate and analysis by different leaders and public figures in Israel.

Israel has lived by two maxims since 1948:

• Even if nothing else works right, the army and the defense department can be counted on to do the job.
• Whether we are doves or hawks, we understand that without the IDF Israel would not exist for a year, peace treaties or no peace treaties.

Never mind 1948, when there was virtually nothing here. In 1956 and 1967, it took a year to get a telephone installed in Israel, and then it never worked anyway. The whole country was an animation of an Ephraim Kishon story. Getting an official document from the Ministry of Interior was a five year plan. Israel had a Milo Minderbinder economy, literally. Factories made money by buying detergent for 2 cents in Germany, shipping it to Israel, packaging it and selling it back to the Germans for a penny, making a 1 cent profit thereby. New immigrants lived in tents and shacks. Public “servants” were just as likely to tell you to go to hell as to do their jobs. Nothing happened on time, and almost nothing worked.

The IDF worked magnificently, however. It was born of the Haganah, a small, tough force that had many of the characteristics of the current Hezbollah, and it retained these characteristics even as it grew into a modern mechanized fighting force. Arms were purchased where it was possible to purchase arms, and strategic and tactical solutions were improvised using what was available. The results were spectacular. This strength made progress toward peace possible. Everyone understands that the strength of the IDF, and not the humanitarian ideals of our Middle Eastern neighbors, must be the cornerstone of any Israeli foreign policy.

Today great glass and concrete buildings in Herzliyah Pituach attest to the supposed economic strength and viability of Israeli society. Telephone, Internet, Wi-Fi all work with Western efficiency, and Israeli firms attract billions in foreign investment and export revenue. This created the illusion of invulnerability and sowed the seeds of complacency. This war exposed the illusion.

The war demonstrated that the IDF and the Defense Ministry and the entire government decision-making apparatus are no longer functioning properly.
There was not one problem, or one mistake, but numerous mistakes that show a systemic malaise:

• Facing the missile threat for six years and failing to provide a solution or a defense of any kind.
• Saving money on reserve training so it could be squandered on settlements and frills.
• Deciding to attack when there was no solution for the anti-tank missiles - a known threat.
• Deciding to attack when there was no solution for the rockets raining down on Israeli cities, and no civil defense in place.
• As in 1973, depending on USA for vital weapons that USA held up for political reasons.
• Failure to call up reserves before attacking. This left the Golan at the mercy of the kind Mr. Assad for many days, and also meant that there were no ground troops to throw into the battle when the air assault failed.
• Reliance on the same absurd American tactics that failed in Vietnam - bombing from above when the enemy is underground and trying to bomb supply routes of guerillas.
• Failure to make a realistic assessment of progress in the first days, when the air-attack was failing.
• Basic logistics failure - reserve units reached the front with no food and missing other basic supplies and equipment.
• Failed diplomacy and a failed strategy that did not achieve the essential, vital goal of the war: getting international action to disarm the Hezbollah.

In this war, the IDF, or the civilian direction of the IDF, abandoned all of the proven Israeli military doctrines: to carry the war to the enemy immediately, to act quickly because the war must be brief, never to give up ground taken in battle.

Each of these absurd and obvious mistakes cost many lives. How many people died in order to take and retake Bint el-Jbail?

Compare this war, and its results, with the results of the great Israeli setback in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, to comprehend the gravity of the current situation. In 1973 Israel was caught unawares. Three Egyptian armies came pouring across the Suez Canal in the south. In the north, over a thousand Syrian tanks stood ready to overrun the Galilee and go racing to the sea, with nothing to stop them but 150 inadequate obsolete Israeli tanks with no night vision capability and inferior armor and firepower. Hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers faced the IDF. What happened then? A massive national effort was launched. Within hours of the first disaster, men, armor and artillery were pouring into the gap. Incompetent commanders were replaced within hours of the beginning of the fighting. Over 2,000 Israeli soldiers gave their lives, sometimes in fruitless counterattacks, but in the end, the situation was saved. In three weeks of war Israel destroyed over 2,000 Syrian and Egyptian tanks, surrounded the Egyptian Army and captured additional Syrian territory. This was called a “mechdal” - a failure.

The IDF “failure” may be compared with the glorious victory of the Red Army in the battle of Kursk. Like the IDF, the Soviets destroyed over 2,000 Wehrmacht tanks. However, in doing so, the Soviets lost about 2,000 tanks of their own. The IDF lost 400 tanks in 1973. That was the “failure” of the IDF in 1973 that was the subject of a national outcry and a commission of investigation.

In this war the IDF did not face hundreds of thousands of troops equipped with the latest weapons, but only a handful of fanatics with essentially World War II weapons. This war was not forced on us. It was a war of choice. Rockets rained down not in the Sinai desert, but in the heart of Israeli territory. Nobody in the government thought it was a big emergency. There was no general mobilization. Massive and tragic civil defense failures over many days were met with hot air pronouncements, but the head of the home front command was not replaced.

When eight soldiers were killed in Bint el Jbail the attack was paused, and when twelve more were killed in Kfar Giladi owing to operational stupidity, the great leader Olmert got cold feet and froze the advance entirely. Incompetent commanders remained in charge for nearly a month. A senseless attack was launched at the end of the war, when the outcome was known, to waste more lives for no reason.

Ehud Olmert was definitely correct when he said this war would change the reality of the Middle East. Until now, the rock bottom assumption that governed Middle East reality, was that the IDF was unbeatable and Israel could not be destroyed by force. The unnecessary war exposed the vulnerability of the IDF, and gave credit to the claim of Hassan Nassrallah and his gang of assassin dervishes that it is possible to vanquish the “Zionist entity” by force. The big crime of this war was not the loss of about 150 lives because of stupidity and incompetence. The big crime of this war could be that it has invited the next war, in which many thousands will lose their lives. That is what we must prevent at all costs, but there is no sign at all that the government, or the opposition, understand the problem.

In 1973 Israel was like a sleeping lion that was wounded but returned to attack. Today we are like a drunk who got insulted in a bar and went swinging wide with a broken beer bottle, only to wake up with cuts and bruises in a hospital, not knowing what really happened.

This war was not a failure of courage or of individual soldiers. IDF has not yet become like the incompetent Americans in Iraq, unwilling to leave their safe enclosures, unable to find the enemy for lack of intelligence and unable to subdue the enemy except by carpet bombing of civilians. In this war, Commando raids in Tyre and Baalbeq and elsewhere demonstrated courage, resourcefulness, ingenuity and willingness to sacrifice. All these were wasted because of indecisive command in the IDF and in the government. Like the Egyptian army in 1967, orders were given and remanded a half dozen times in a single night, and troops committed to pointless missions. How many times more can the Israeli government expect its citizen army to throw away their lives because of the decisions of fools and criminals?

The government is attempting “business as usual.” The Israel Foreign Ministry continues to insist that UN Security Council resolution 1701 is “good” even though it does not disarm Hezbollah, and plainly will not do so, and will not prevent the rearming of the Hezbollah. With each passing day, the implementation of resolution 1701 looks more and more like a disaster for Israel as well as for free Lebanon, yet the Israeli government doesn’t even seem to recognize there is a problem.

Mr. Peretz refuses to give up his post as Defense Minister, because, it is explained, that would ruin his chances to be Prime Minister. Perhaps this war should be called “The war of the Israeli succession.” Perhaps it was all about Peretz’s bid to be Prime Minister. A man who is totally ignorant of military matters, and who spectacularly proved his incompetence in a “hands-on” experiment, is directing the defense establishment of the fifth military power in the world, a state that is faced continuously with the threat of imminent annihilation.

After wasting about one hundred and fifty Israeli lives and a billion dollars in a pointless and nightmarish military adventure, this man thinks that a grateful nation will make him Prime Minister. Peretz is right that Hassan Nasrallah won’t forget the name of Amir Peretz. He will remember it every time he wants a laugh. Every Israeli will also remember the name of Amir Peretz, and how many people were killed so that he could play at defense minister and advance his political career.

Almost every Israeli leader has commented on the onerous responsibility that comes with the decision to go to war, knowing that many lives are in the balance. People - often good friends - will not come home. Widows and orphans will grieve. Ehud Olmert apparently was unacquainted with this reality. He went to war as though he was deciding on some new economic project. When it finally dawned on him that in war people can get killed, he was horrified and he froze. How can this man remain Prime Minister?

Clearly, the fault does not lie only with the Olmert government. The state of the IDF is the result of decisions that that date back many years. Over-reliance on the US and US supplied gadgetry that is never supplied when we need it was part of the downfall of the IDF in 1973, and in 2006 the same problem repeated itself. We were told that the big IDF that replaced the little and smart one, the IDF with the sophisticated American weapons, were absolutely necessary to fight a modern war. But this big fancy IDF faced an enemy that was very much like the old smart IDF, an enemy equipped with whatever weapons could be found, and relying only on spunk and ingenuity. The big IDF theory didn’t prove itself. $3 billions a year in American military aid could not beat some junk military hardware. We also knew for a long time that the IDF was becoming a garrison army in the Palestinian territories. We also know that successive governments have gutted both the IDF and the Israel defense industries to save money, because business and social lobbies demanded lower taxes and more social measures. The robber came to Israel and said “Your money or your life,” and Israel responded, “Take my life, I need my money for my old age.”

The critiques of the opposition are likewise largely irrelevant. Avigdor Lieberman, as usual, insisted and insists on attacking everyone and everything in the Middle East. What would be the result of attacking Syria with the IDF as it is today? Benjamin Netanyahu, as usual, enjoins us to hold on to settlements. How can we hold on to settlements with no army to defend them, and what is the point of these settlements if they don’t offer security? Yossi Beilin wants to negotiate, but no Arab country will make or keep a peace agreement with a weak Israel that cannot beat a handful of fanatics with anti-tank rockets. The same people keep saying the same things they always said, like parrots, in the face of an entirely new reality, in which none of the previous assumptions still hold good, and all the previously burning issues have become non-issues.

Chief of Staff Halutz is criticized, not for wasting about 150 lives and making mistake after mistake, but for a minor gaffe, selling his stock on the first day of the war. All the people responsible for the debacle seem to be secure in their posts, and no corrective action is contemplated. Perhaps nobody understands that there is a problem. Halutz’s stock sale is overshadowed by only one other great scandal that preoccupies Israel: Haim Ramon will resign his post at the Justice Ministry. He didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t waste a billion dollars or burn half the Galilee. All he did was kiss a girl. That is the farcical unreality of Israeli society.

What is to be done? Clearly, the Israeli political apparatus at present is not capable of recognizing the problem or offering a solution The first step must be to realize the full extent of the problem and the gravity of the situation, to form a nonpartisan movement that will demand the resignation of the key government ministers and key IDF general staff officers who were responsible for all the different failures. A new government, and a new corps of senior IDF officers must then immediately take steps to correct the obvious failures, as well as to investigate the less obvious ones and find solutions.

The remedies are not limited to technical corrections only, but must encompass the whole way in which the Israel government and society prioritize defense, and the entire current battle doctrine, strategic philosophy and posture of the IDF.

Via Yourish.com and Israpundit.com

In Natan Sharansky’s book, The Case For Democracy, Sharansky outlines a test for a free society, the town square test:

If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a “fear society” has finally won their freedom.

Both George Bush and Condolezza Rice have endorsed this test, but one person, an everyday 17-year-old British citizen, Lulie, has put it to the test in modern day Britain by showing her support for Israel.

You can read her story and the results here.

hat tip solomonia

Perhaps there is something wrong with the test. Does it expect too much from people? Or do the results really show that we live in a fear society, that the reason the silent majority is silent is out of fear of a violent threatening minority?

If you found Lulie’s wearing of the Israeli flag “asking for trouble” or that she deserved what she got, or you feel she had no right to do what she did, perhaps you prefer the freedom to do this:

or perhaps you fear (or support) those who celebrate Arab violence and intimidation :

.

.

or you show compassion and understanding towards those who bless the mass murder of approx. 12 million European civilians on racial, ethnic, and biological grounds:

.

.

Hmm, it’s not difficult to decide, is it?

Further proof the Democrats are not fit for government:

Via NewsMax -

Michael Moore Threatens Hillary

The day after Sen. Joe Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut primary, Michael Moore warned Sen. Hillary Clinton that strong opposition to the war in Iraq is her “only hope” of winning the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.

In a mass mailing addressed to “Friends,” the Bush-bashing filmmaker wrote:

“Let the resounding defeat of Sen. Joe Lieberman send a cold shiver down the spine of every Democrat who supported the invasion of Iraq and who continues to support, in any way, this senseless, immoral, unwinnable war . . .

“Nearly every Democrat set to run for president in 2008 is responsible for this war. They voted for it or they supported it . . .

“I realize that there are those like Kerry and Edwards who have now changed their position and are strongly anti-war. Perhaps that switch will be enough for some to support them. For others, like me - while I’m glad they’ve seen the light — their massive error in judgment is, sadly, proof that they are not fit for the job. . .

“To Hillary, our first best hope for a woman to become president, I cannot for the life of me figure out why you continue to support Bush and his war . . . I’m here to tell you that you will never make it through the Democratic primaries unless you start now by strongly opposing the war. It is your only hope. You and Joe have been Bush’s biggest Democratic supporters of the war. Last night’s voter revolt took place just a few miles from your home in Chappaqua. Did you hear the noise? Can you read the writing on the wall?”

In a postscript, Moore adds: “Republicans — sorry to leave you out of this letter. It’s just that our side has a little housecleaning to do. We’ll take care of you this November.”

Perhaps Michael Moore would have preferred another 12 years of UN sanctioned to starve the innocent civilians of Iraq, such sanctions which the Russians and the French could breach their way around to line their own pockets, while making a mockery of the international community and international law.

The all-inclusive Mayor of London Ken Livingstone praised Sheikh Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a moderate Muslim leader and held a reception in the Sheikh’s honour when he visited London, telling Qaradawi that he was “truly welcome, welcome to London”.

But Qaradawi’s definition of “all-inclusive” is perhaps a little different to that of Mayor Livingstone’s, for Qaradawi supports “female genital mutilation, wife-beating, the execution of homosexuals, destruction of the Jewish people, suicide bombing of innocent civilians, and the punishment of rape victims who do not dress with sufficient modesty”, according to OutRage! member Brett Lock.

Qaradawi’s support for suicide bombings and targeting of civilians can be seen on BBC Panorama’s exposé of Interpal, the UK charity that raises money so that the Hamas government can indoctrinate today’s vulnerable Palestinian children into becoming tomorrow’s suicide/homicide bombers. Watch that documentary here.

Livingstone’s defence of his friend Qaradawi is to try to brush it all off as part of a Mossad or Jewish conspiracy, despite Qaradawi’s apprehensible beliefs being freely broadcast on middle east television channels and in the Arabic press.

For instance, Qaradawi had “all-inclusive” things to say about the December 2004 Tsunami victims:

“People must ask themselves why this earthquake occurred in this area and not others…Whoever examines these areas discovers that they are tourism areas….where the forbidden acts are widespread, as well as alcohol consumption, drug use and acts of abomination… Don’t they deserve punishment from Allah?”

That was Qaradawi in 2004 and 2005, and true to type, not much has changed in 2006, when in June Qaradawi led a new assault on homosexuals. On Al-Jazeera Qaradawi called homosexuals “sexual perverts” and should be punished as such. Two possible penalties Qaradawi might like to see meted out to homosexuals are burning and throwing homosexuals from great heights “as God did when He punished Sodom”.

Much to Red Ken’s disappointment, I’m sure, is Qaradawi’s apparent support for George Bush as US President, about which Qaradawi said:

“But it was Bush who won [the elections], because he is Christian, right-wing, tenacious, and unyielding. In other words, the religious overcame the perverted. So we cannot blame all Americans and Westerners.”

Perhaps it was this last “moderate” statement of Qaradawi’s that led Mayor Ken Livingstone to say with conviction:

“When you get a progressive figure who is moving that religion in the correct direction you engage and you develop it.

Either Red Ken can’t see an extremist when come with explosives strapped to their waists, or Ken’s definitiion of “moderate” is the free West’s definition of Islamofascism.

Quotes from:

• OutinHonolulu - Livingstone defends Qaradawi, despite outburst
• Ynet - Muslim Cleric: “Punish all gays”
• Eurabian Times - Livingstone on Qaradawi: ‘progressive’

See also:

• ADL - Ken Livingstone In His Own Words
• Oliver Kamm - Livingstone and the Left
• Harry’s Place - The Quality of Ken Livingstone’s defence

or “frog-shit green“

Is Orange the colour of censorship?

You’d think that a mobile phone company’s motto was “it’s good to talk”, and that such a motto meant that it valued our fundamental freedom of expression enshrined under Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, the conventional right empowered to UK courts in the form of article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998.

It’s somewhat confusing, then, to find that Orange Mobile may not want its employees expressing themselves freely outside of the workplace, and in a move towards this, they have suspended their employee Inigo Wilson for expressing himself freely on a blog.

“He did what?”

He expresssed himself freely on a Conservative Party blog on the issue of Leftyspeak. Not only that but it was mostly satirical. Of course, no such exposition would be complete without covering the tribal honour-shame blame culture of demopathic Islamists and Islamofascists - a spiritual connection for any Lefty, as they, too, in Europe are demopaths.

And that’s where Inigo Wilson came unstuck. True to demopathic type, Islamists spare no katyusha when it comes to criticising all the heathen things democratic societies have done to poor Muslims, or poor defenceless Palestinians, but as soon as you are self-critical of them, you’ve commited a crime equal only to blasphemy.

Here is Inigo Wilson’s excellently written - yet satirically Islamo-critical - exposition of Leftyspeak:

• Inigo Wilson - A Lefty Lexicon

And who campaigned to get Wilson suspended? Why our very own euphemistically-named Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC UK) who are simply gleaming more than a Hezbollah-terrorist-in-a-rocket-factory for their latest -

• SUCCESS: Orange Suspends Islamophobe!

This, of course, is the same MPAC that had no problem with a Reuters employee sending LGF’s Charles Johnson death threats from the Reuters workplace. Did I mention MPAC are demopaths? MPAC was even banned from the “free speech? what’s that?” National Union of Students so that practically puts MPAC in the next camp to the Islamofascist Hizb-ut-tarir (a UK-classified ITO, that’s an Islamo-terror organisation to you and me).

Naturally, a lot of people care about our freedom to express ourselves outside of working hours (those that don’t are demopaths). Or to paraphrase free-speech bandit Mel Gibson: “Employers may take our blood, but they’ll never take our freeeeeeedom”.

At this stage Orange are conducting their so-called “investigation“, which, let’s face it, is just them deciding whether to choose the side of their majority freedom-loving client base, or to pander and capitulate to Eurabia and its Jihad agenda (lest the “legitimately aggrieved” riot and fire-bomb Orange shops the way they fire-bombed Scandinavian embassies over a few innocuous cartoons).

So, if you are concerned over our ever decreasing circles of freedom, an email of protest over this to Orange is the best place to start. That e-mail should go to stuart.jackson@orange.co.uk [hat tip Iain Dale].

See also:

• ConservativeHome - Orange, Inigo Wilson and freedom of speech
• Iain Dale - Inigo Wilson deserves our support
• Guido Fawkes - Tory blogger suspended by Orange
• Guido Fawkes - Orange Hypocrisy Prize for Literature
• LGF = UK Radical Front Group Gets Blogger Suspended

Breaking: As I type, the Hezbollywood cameras are rolling again for a mass funeral sequel to Qanagate: Hezbollywood’s human shields and their MSM deniers.

Will update with links later. In the meantime, how easy is it to buy an Arab?

Update: AP writes a whole new requiem for funerals with

Lebanon buries war dead in mass funerals

hat tip Judith at KesherTalk and Allison in an unsealed room

A spirit of absolute folly
By Ari Shavit

In the difficult summer of 2006, the State of Israel is declaring in astonishment: They surprised us. They surprised us in a big way. They surprised us with Katyushas and they surprised us with the Al-Fajr rockets and they surprised us with the Zelzal missiles. They surprised us with anti-tank missiles. And they surprised us with the operational skill of the anti-tank squads. They surprised us with the bunkers and the camouflage. They surprised us with the command and monitoring. They surprised us with strategy, fighting ability and a fighting spirit. They surprised us with the astonishing power that a small death-army with low technology and high religious motivation can have.

However, more than they surprised us in Summer 2006 with the strength of Hezbollah, they surprised us this summer with our own weakness. They surprised us with ourselves. They surprised us with the low level of national leadership. They surprised us with scandalous strategic bumbling. They surprised us with the lack of vision, lack of creativity and lack of determination on the part of the senior military command. They surprised us with faulty intelligence and a delusionary logistical network and improper preparedness for war. They surprised us with the fact that the Israeli war machine is not what it once was. While we were celebrating it became rusty.

Generally it is not right to conduct an in-depth investigation of a wartime failure during a war. However, at the end of the most embarrassing year of Israeli defense since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Israeli government is not drawing conclusions. It is not reorganizing the system, there is no evidence of a real learning curve and it is not radiating a new ethos. On the contrary: It is adding another layer of folly onto a previous one. Its slowness to react is dangerous. Its caution is a recipe for disaster. Its attempt to prevent bloodshed is costing a great deal of bloodshed. So that now of all times, just when the forces are moving toward south Lebanon, there is no escaping the question of where we went wrong. It is so that Israel will be able to achieve a last-minute victory and so that the troops will be able to achieve their goals and so the soldiers will be able to return home safely, that we must ask already now: What happened to us? What the hell happened to us?
A simple thing happened: We were drugged by political correctness. The political correctness that has come to dominate Israeli discourse and Israeli awareness in the past generation was totally divorced from the Israeli situation. It did not have the tools to deal with the reality of an existential conflict. It did not have the tools to deal with a reality of an inter-religious and inter-cultural conflict. That is why it focused entirely on the Palestinian issue. It made the baseless assumption that the occupation is the source of evil. It assumed that it is the occupation that is preventing peace and causing unrest and perpetuating the instability.

At the same time, political correctness assumed that Israeli strength is a given. That Israel is insanely strong. Therefore, political correctness disdained any attempt to build and maintain Israeli strength. The defense budget was cut, the values of volunteerism were mocked, the concepts of heroism and fortitude became despicable. Since the Israel Defense Forces was identified as an army of occupation - rather than as an army defending feminists and homo-lesbians from the fanaticism of the Middle East - they had reservations about it, they shook it off and became alienated from it. After all, in the spiritual world of political correctness, power and army have become dirty words.

Any national idea was rejected because of the sanctity of the private sphere. Every cooperative ethos was dismantled in favor of the individual. Power was identified with fascism. Masculinity was publicly condemned. The pursuit of absolute justice was mixed with the pursuit of absolute pleasure and turned the reigning discourse from a discourse of commitment and enlistment to one of protest and pampering.

Another thing happened: We were poisoned with an illusion of normalcy. The State of Israel is fundamentally an abnormal state. Just because it is a Jewish state in an Arab region, and just because it is a Western country in a Muslim region, and just because it is a democratic state in a region of fanaticism and despotism, Israel is in constant tension with its surroundings. On the one hand, because of the situation in which it finds itself, Israel cannot live a life of European normalcy. On the other hand, because of its values and its structure in terms of identity, economics and culture, Israel cannot avoid being a part of European normalcy.

Therefore Israel is in a constant state of basic contradiction. The way to resolve this contradiction is to create a positive anomaly ? both ideological and ethical - that will provide an answer to the negative anomaly in which Israel exists. There is no other way: Israel must prepare a defense envelope that will protect its internal environment from the external environment surrounding it. Life in defiance of the environment is an essential part of Israeli existence.

However, in the past generation this cruel insight has dissipated, the delusion has spread that we have overcome our problems and reached a state of tranquility, and that we can live in this place like any other nation. This illusion led to a situation where the positive Israeli anomaly gradually became blurred, and the energies devoted to maintaining the defensive shield that isolates Israel from the region and protects it from this region were drastically reduced. Weakness prevailed. Our willpower was weakened. The bubble so inebriated the Israelis that they didn’t bother to surround it with a fortified wall. Therefore, the pressures of the external environment steadily increased - with the terror of 2002 and the Qassams of 2005 and the Katyushas of 2006 - until they penetrated deep inside the Israeli environment. Thus was created the paradox that those who wanted to believe that Israel could be totally normal were the ones who caused it to decline into a chaotic situation of total anomaly and a loss of balance.

Both political correctness and the illusion-of-normalcy spread first and foremost among the Israeli elites. The Israeli public in general has remained for the most part sober and strong. It did not err with illusions of a new Middle East. It did not turn its back on the existential imperative, the defense ethos and the IDF. Even its core values were not destroyed. Therefore, it impressively withstood both the test of terror of 2001-2003 and the test of “fire-on-the-home front” of 2006. It demonstrated an almost British fortitude and continues to do so.

On the other hand, the Israeli elites of the past 20 years have become totally divorced from reality. The capital, the media and the academic world of the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, have blinded Israel and deprived it of its spirit. Their repeated illusions regarding the historical reality in which the Jewish state finds itself, caused Israel to make a navigational error and to lose its way. Their unending attacks, both direct and indirect, on nationalism, on militarism and on the Zionist narrative have eaten away from the inside at the tree trunk of Israeli existence, and sucked away its life force. While the general public demonstrated sobriety, determination and energy, the elites were a isappointment.

Capital brought the illusion-of-normalcy ad absurdum, and established a crushing social-economic regime here that does not suit the historical situation. The academic world promoted political correctness ad absurdum and conducted a somewhat suicidal spirit of criticism here. And the media combined the two and created a hallucinatory state of mind, which combines unbridled consumerism with false righteousness.

Instead of being constructive elites, in the past generation the Israeli elites have become dismantling elites. Each in its own area, each by its own method, dealt with the deconstruction of the Zionism enterprise. Step by step, the top 1000th percentiles abandoned the existential national effort. They stopped doing reserve duty, they stopped sending their sons to the fighting units. They mocked those officers who warned about unilateral withdrawals. They mocked those officers who warned that the emergency warehouses were emptying out and the enemies were becoming stronger. And they deceived themselves and those around them that Tel Aviv is in fact Manhattan. Money is in fact everything. And thus they bequeathed to young Israelis a legacy of values that makes it very difficult for them to attack even when the attack is fully justified. Because a country that lacks equality, that lacks justice and that lacks faith in the rightness of its path, is a country for which it is very difficult to go on the attack. It is a country for which not many are willing to kill and be killed.

And in the Middle East of the 21st century, a country whose young elites find it difficult to kill and be killed for it is a country on borrowed time. A country that cannot endure. So that what is now being revealed before our eyes, as the smoke of the Katyushas continues to rise from the Lebanese thicket, is not a failure of the IDF but a failure of the elites that turned their back on the IDF. What is being revealed now, when Israel cannot properly protect the lives of its citizens, is not problems of command and problems of tactics, but rather deep-seated problems of a society whose elites have abandoned it. It is not Major General Udi Adam or Brigadier General Gal Hirsch who are the problem, it is the Israeli spirit. A spirit that for far too long has been a spirit of stupidity. A spirit of absolute folly.

Usually, the accusation of folly is directed at battle-hungry generals and warmongering politicians. However, at the end of this war, the accusation of folly will be directed at an entire cadre of Israeli opinion-makers and social leaders who lived in a bubble and caused Israel to live in a bubble. The army will be required to put its house in order and to rebuild, but the true anger will be directed toward the elites who failed. Elites who betrayed the trust of a wise, impressive and strong nation.

However, now it is wartime. The citizens of the north are still in bomb shelters, the soldiers of the regular and standing armies are risking their lives in a war that was not properly planned or properly defined and is being conducted poorly. Therefore, what is needed now is to operate quickly, to operate while in motion, in order to strengthen the spirit of those participating in the battle. What is needed is to create immediately a new discourse that will suit the new situation. Without a new spirit and without a new language there will be no victory in the fighting. Therefore, while the war is raging we must find the spirit and we must find the language that we lost in the years preceding the war.

Israel tried with all its soul and all its might to be Athens. However in this place, in this era, there is no future for an Athens without a speck of Sparta. There is no hope for a society-of-life that does not know how to organize itself to deal with death. Therefore, after decades during which the right and the left and the center took Israeli power for granted and wastefully exploited it, now there is no escaping the need to place the renewed building of Israeli power at the top of the agenda. We are returning to the encounter with our fate; returning to what is decreed by the reality of our lives.

Part of the agenda of the death cult that surrounds the free, democratic State of Israel is to discourage people from wanting to live there.

While Hezbollah fired 3500 missiles at women and children, then claimed “victory”, Israel’s immigration officials saw no dip in immigration applicants arriving by the plane load. Here’s the evidence, let’s call it “Ziongate“, just to piss off the Leftist-backed Islamofascist death cult

I haven’t always supported Israel, but the disgusting attacks they’ve had to endure from two lands they ceased to occupy and their unity in the face of such demopathy has shown real national character that as a freedom-loving person, I cannot help but admire and respect. I’m actually jealous in a way because I live in Europe where democratic character went the same way as our continental backbone: out through our trousers!

Also, I think the moral inversion that is the European MSM has done more to recruit for the Israeli army than anything Israel could come up with. French freedom lovers are leaving the Islamic Republic of France in record numbers despite the threat of Nasrallah’s phallic obsession with rockets and Jewish civilians. And if I’m asked one more time by fellow Brits if and how a non-Jew can join the Israeli army, I’ll have to launch my own IDF hotline!

Now which country should I move to when I decide to resign from Europe?

Long live all freedom-loving peoples and may Israel find speedy immunity to the surrounding death cult.

(Addendum: that fact that 243 North Americans immigrated to Israel and this blog entry is number 243 is pure coincidence…)

Ahmadinejad has launched his own blog - there’s an English version available, and you can even ask him questions.

Hmm… let’s think? What I’d ask Hitler if I could is what I should ask Ahmadinejad. They are so very similar. So that question can only be…

“Is it true that you’ve only got one ball?”

Here’s Ahamdinejad’s fansite - have fun with it:

www.Ahmadinejad.ir

Update:

• via LGF, Ahmadinejad’s blog may be a ruse to attack your computer with viruses (if it’s vulnerable because it runs on Microsoft Windows). More on that here.
• hyscience reports that while Ahmadinejad’s free to blog, many Iranians aren’t

…was held in San Francisco on Saturday.

There’s one clear winner:

view all the losers here.

[hat tip asher at kesher talk].

And Michael J Totten’s interview with IDF spokesman Michael Oren is a must read.

Via Kesher Talk:

“We destroyed a lot of their infrastructure. They had more weapons and more underground bunkers and tunnels than we had any idea. People coming out of there say it’s vast. … Look at Nasrallah today. In 2000 he did his victory dance in Bint Jbail. He can’t do that this time. His command and control south of Beirut is completely gone. We killed 550 Hezbollah fighters south of the Litani out of an active force of 1250. Nasrallah claimed South Lebanon would be the graveyard of the IDF. But we only lost one tenth of one percent of our soldiers in South Lebanon. The only thing that went according to his plan was their ability to keep firing rockets. If he has enough victories like this one, he’s dead.”

Read the whole thing here.