Israel Commentary

Redacted from article in Israel Matzav

May 30, 2012

“Barak has been through everything and learned nothing”

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3697

Recently I received an email from Zechariah Baumol’s yeshiva announcing an event marking 30 years since his ‘disappearance’ in the battle of Sultan Yaqub. That battle was commanded by none other than the current Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, who is rumored to have gone to sleep while the battle was raging. Baumol is one of five soldiers from that battle whose fate was unknown for many years. He is one of three from that battle who are still missing.

Barak – along with Shimon Peres – is a politician about whom it can be said that he has been through everything and learned nothing. It was Barak who fled a training accident at Tzehilim, leaving IDF soldiers to die as he left in his helicopter. It was Barak that tried unsuccessfully to reach a deal with Yasser Arafat at Camp David twelve summers ago and got a violent intifada in return for his flexibility (i.e. giving away virtually all of Judea and Samaria and at least 1/2 of Jerusalem and Arafat turned him down). It was Barak who left an IDF soldier to die while he sought ‘permission’ from Yasser Arafat to rescue the soldier on Rosh HaShanna twelve years ago. It was Barak who continued to try to give away the store to Arafat, while that intifada raged, in a bid to save his seat as Prime Minister. And, it was Barak who, as Defense Minister, passed on the opportunity to finish off Hamas during Operation Cast Lead.

(In addition, it was Barak who unilaterally withdrew from the Lebanese Security Zone in the dead of night surrendering territory essential to Israel’s defense and abandoning our loyal Lebanese Christian allies to their fate. Some of these Lebanese were granted asylum in Israel but were in the end so poorly treated that they rather return to Lebanon to face dire consequences as “traitors” to the Hezbullah regime in the South. Now the consequences of Barak’s cowardly withdrawal are complete. There has been a complete take over of Lebanon by Hizbullah and hundreds of thousands of missiles are aimed directly at Israel from the exact area abandoned by Barak.

So, once again, due much to Barak, Israelis are hiding in their cellars waiting for the enemy to strike and hoping somehow the thousands of missiles directed at them will all be intercepted by Barak’s magic Iron Dome weapon, which, of course, test after test have proven they will not. But, this time inexcusably, the Jews with a far superior military force, instead of taking the offensive against a pitifully weak enemy and wiping off the face of the earth their capabilities to hurt Jews, the Jews are once again hiding in their cellars.) jsk

I suppose we should not therefore, be surprised that Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, “If it turns out that it is not possible to reach an agreement, (which, of course, it is dead certain it is not) we need to consider an interim arrangement or alternatively a unilateral step,” Barak said at the conference. “Israel cannot permit this to remain in deadlock.” (Obviously Barak has not learned anything from his previous withdrawal from the Lebanese Security Zone and Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza that has simply created huge terrorist strongholds whose only goal is the destruction of the Jewish state.) jsk

But, here’s where it gets rich: The ‘Palestinians’ are unwilling to ‘accept’ a unilateral withdrawal. Presidential spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh already told WAFA that any Israeli unilateral measure leading to the establishment of a state with temporary borders is unacceptable. This Israeli policy leads to the continuation of the conflict; it does not lead to a solution, rather it ends the concept of the two-state solution, added Abu Rudeineh. He emphasized that the Palestinians are “committed to a just and comprehensive solution of a state within 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and without Jerusalem nothing will be accepted.”

In 2009, we were told that Prime Minister Netanyahu ‘needed’ Ehud Barak to show that his was not ‘just’ a rightist government. But, Barak now controls only five Knesset seats, and is the leader of a party that is unlikely to pass the threshold in the next Knesset election. And, unless he is taken into the Likud, he will not even be an MK after November 2013. In light of Barak’s continued argument for Leftist positions that most of the current government opposes, and in light of the presence in Netanyahu’s own party of Moshe ‘Boogie’ Yaalon, who is also a former IDF chief of staff and would be a far superior appointment, one has to wonder why Barak remains Defense Minister.

Unless, of course, Netanyahu himself is a closet Leftist.

Hard to believe but …  Is the Israeli government, with Netanyahu, really stupid enough to repeat this awful tragedy? Will they now, in a sick effort to pacify Israel’s enemies, withdraw from Judea and Samaria? Such an action,  G-d Forbid, can only result in the self-destruction, once again, of the Jewish state?

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=2630

Shades of the Jewish self destruction  to the Romans in 70 AD and 135 AD that has resulted in the centuries of persecution experienced by the Jews ever since. ( jsk)

 A Haunting Visit To The Gush Katif Museum

Redacted from article 

By Devora Spitzer

The Jewish Press, January 13, 2012

The Gush Katif (beautiful area on northern coast of Gaze, where Israeli towns and agriculture were reborn) Museum in Jerusalem was established by Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpo, head of the Rambam Hashalem Torah Institute, centered in the town of Beitar Illit. Rabbi Wolpo has authored many highly regarded works of Halacha (Standard for orthodox religious observance) including two that research the halachic prohibition of forfeiting territories of the Holy Land to non-Jews.

At the time of the Gaza disengagement, he and his colleagues invested tremendous effort in attempting to derail the Israeli government forced expulsion of nearly 10,000 Jews. As the disengagement was implemented and while the fires were still burning, they resolved to establish this museum. It took three years to come to fruition. The museum’s early visitors, back in 2008, were mostly from the national religious segment of Israel’s population. But gradually, this changed. Both haredim and secular leftists had remained largely ignorant of what actually happened to Gush Katif’s residents. As they heard about the museum,  more and more  started visiting and were deeply affected by the exhibits.

“The people of Israel have been experiencing disillusionment,” says Rabbi Wolpo. “The Kassam rocket attacks, the Hamas ascent to power, the revolutionary changes in surrounding Arab nations, the enormous danger from terror organizations based in the Sinai desert – all these have brought Israelis, including many who once supported the expulsion, to re-think their positions. Now they’re opposed to further expulsions of Jews from Judah and Samaria, God forbid. I’m sure the museum has played an important role in this, because when people visit, they start to understand what really happened there.”

We pass through the rooms. Pictures document the history of Gush Katif, revealing that ever since the time of the Hasmoneans, of Chanukah story fame, there was a continuous Jewish presence in Gaza and its environs. This continued until the terrible 1929 Arab pogroms. Only after the 1967 Six-Day War did Jews return. They built thriving communities, never dreaming that one day they would be cruelly uprooted by their own government.

In February 2001, the first rocket was fired at Gush Katif. At the time, the news was widely featured in the Israeli and international media. But later, if news accounts of rocket attacks appeared at all, they were relegated to the back pages. … More than 5,000 rockets fell on Gush Katif. Those attacks, along with so many other terror acts and shootings, claimed the lives of dozens of Jews; hundreds more were injured. The dead were buried in the sand of Gush Katif, but even they were dragged out of their repose when the Israeli government carried out the disengagement.

“Despite all the attacks,” says Rabbi Gefen, “the idealism of the residents would not let them leave. The terror could not convince them to give in, because you don’t give in when this concerns the Holy Land. They always insisted that if they wouldn’t be located there, the rockets would be fired at the population centers in the heart of Israel.” And, this forecast proved devastatingly true.

The Israeli Government, under the once acclaimed general and then PM Ariel Sharon, forced out the 10,000 dedicated Israelis of Gaza, abandoning the fertile area to the Arabs. Their houses destroyed, the families expelled, their lives shattered, the thousands of wretched families were cruelly plucked from their communities and land, and thrown into mobile homes until today – without livelihood, homes, or the wherewithal to support their families as they had until this cruel expulsion.”

“Many of the expelled families have already used up all the compensation received from the government,” Rabbi Wolpo stated. “They’re paying the bank a mortgage for their destroyed home in Gush Katif, together with high rent for their present leaky mobile homes in Nitzan or Yad Binyamin. Many simply don’t have money to buy bread.

… “Whoever observes the results of the previous withdrawals and considers the present revolutionary upsets in the Arab world, yet still speaks of further expulsions from Judah and Samaria and the establishment of a terrorist state in the heart of this land – is either insane or is an agent of our enemies,” Rabbi Wolpo tells me.

Devora Spitzer lives with her husband and six children in the settlement of Mata, in the Eila Valley. She is a sixth-generation resident of Israel, descended from Jews born in Hebron. Many of her family members were murdered in the 1929 Arab pogrom.