The bumbling Ehud Barak, he of the massive concessions to Arafat 10 years ago, is now Israel’s Defense Minister. It is his job to anticipate enemy actions and to have counter measures prepared and his failure to be prepared for the Syrian invasion on Sunday is lamentable. The so called “Arab Spring” combined with the feckless Obama administrations policies, has made the likelihood of war far more inevitable then at any other time in the past 20 years. Miss Glick has previously written on the phenomenom of suicide protests before.
by Caroline Glick
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have some explaining to do.
On Sunday, Israel was invaded along its border with Syria. More than 100 Syrians successfully infiltrated the country and rioted violently in Majdal Shams for several hours.
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But the government and the IDF were surprised by the invasion from Syria.
What can possibly explain this surprise? And what does it tell us about the defense establishment’s ability to cope with the swiftly expanding and changing threats facing Israel? BEFORE WE consider that issue, we need to understand the nature of the new assault now underway.
Sunday’s events were fully anticipated. In 1998, at the height of the so-called peace process, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and PLO/Fatah chieftan Yasser Arafat invented a new Palestinian holiday – the Nakba.
That year, for the first time, Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza rioted on May 15 – the secular date of Israel’s establishment in 1948. The purpose of Israel’s “peace partner’s” initiative was to escalate anti-Israel sentiments of Arabs on both sides of the 1949 armistice lines. And indeed, the next year, for the first time, the Nakba – or catastrophe – of Israel’s birth on May 15, 1948 was marked by Israel’s Arab citizens.
In the years since, the Palestinians and their brethren throughout the Arab world have consistently escalated their May 15 attacks, with anti-Israel mass demonstrations now common fare throughout the Arab world.
In recent months, Hamas and Fatah have been ratcheting up their incitement and calling for their followers to descend on Jerusalem on May 15. Millions worldwide participated in social media campaigns calling for a third Palestinian intifada to begin on May 15.
Regionally, in recent weeks, as Syrian anti-regime protesters have escalated their calls to overthrow the Assad regime, Hezbollah and the Syrian media have been joining the Nakba incitement efforts. In Egypt as well, as the Muslim Brotherhood consolidates its power, the calls for invading Israel and avenging the Nakba have escalated daily.
Politically, the Nakba campaigns couldn’t be an easier target for an Israeli information counteroffensive.
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In short, the entire notion of the Nakba is proof that the Palestinians specifically and the Arab world as a whole remain dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jewry.
Netanyahu and the rest of Israel’s leaders have the duty to point out this glaring, yet totally ignored fact. And yet, they have been silent.
The most Netanyahu could muster in the lead up to Nakba Day was a true but irrelevant mention of the fact that as full citizens of Israel, Israeli Arabs enjoy more freedoms than citizens of any Arab state.
As for the IDF, it’s hard to know where to begin describing its failures to understand or prepare for Sunday’s events.
Perhaps the oddest aspect of the IDF’s treatment of the mass infiltration from Syria was the IDF Spokesman’s Unit’s response.
First, IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai blamed the events on Iran. He called the events an “Iranian provocation aimed at creating friction.”
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Certainly Iran is always interested in drawing Israeli blood and weakening the country. But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn’t order the rioters to cross the border. Syrian President Bashar Assad did.
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Well said. But this brings us to the next question: If the IDF understands why this happened, why weren’t there sufficient forces along the border armed with riot-control gear to block the infiltrators? Not only was the regime’s rationale for the attack easily understandable, the IDF could see the rioters coming. They saw the them get on the buses. They saw the buses coming to the border. There were enough forces along the border to stop a similar penetration from Lebanon.
Why weren’t there enough to prevent the Syrians from entering Israeli territory? Why weren’t there enough soldiers on the ground to prevent them from entering Majdal Shams, vandalizing the village and flying the Syrian flag inside Israel? Moreover, what does its abject failure to deploy adequately tell us about the defense establishment’s ability to properly understand regional developments and trends, and prepare the IDF to protect the country in the face of them?
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So why was the IDF unprepared?
THE PERSON most responsible for the IDF’s poor handling of events on Sunday is Defense Minister Ehud Barak. And his incompetence is not surprising. Barak is a serial bungler. He is the same man who armed the naval commandos who boarded the Mavi Marmara with paintball guns, even though it was known that the Turkish IHH, which organized the pro-Hamas flotilla, had links to terror groups.
In recent months, Barak has been too busy warning about the widely exaggerated diplomatic “tsunami” at the UN in September, when the Palestinians declare their independence for the second time, to notice events in the Middle East in May.
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This brings us back to Netanyahu and his relationship with Barak. It is hard to explain Netanyahu’s failure to condemn the Palestinians and their supporters for mourning the Arabs’ failure to annihilate the Jews of Israel in 1948 without placing it in the context of his close relationship with Barak.
There are many explanations for why Netanyahu gives so much weight to Barak’s consistently and dangerously incorrect assessments of regional developments. If they serve no other purpose, Sunday’s dismal events must cause Netanyahu to finally reconsider his attachment to Barak.
Read the rest: Ehud Barak’s Nakba
Tags: Caroline Glick
