A fashla by our ineffective government

I was waiting to post anything about the events that happened yesterday. I wanted to see how our government would react before I started throwing blame around. I wanted to give the government a chance to make good by its citizens and soldiers. After all, an incident can happen in any country in the world. The question and the test is how the government reacts and takes precautions against it happening again.

Now that I see how our government has reacted, at least initially, I have allowed myself the pleasure of venting further against this ineffective and unqualified government.

The incident is clearly extremely serious. We cleared ourselves out of the Gaza strip about 10 months ago. There were many calls from bold and courageous individuals in the defense establishment at the time to call it off, or to reconsider, to slow it down, etc. Anything to re-work the details of the disengagement. Sharon had never explained to the public in detail his plan and his plan for the future. All he would say when responding to questions about the future post-disengagement safety of Southern Israel was that any incident coming out of Gaza would draw a swift and powerful response. His claim was that now that we would be out of the disputed area, we would always be able to claim the moral high ground and if anything should happen, we would have the right and clear conscience to strike back a powerful blow.

The sad fact is that we left the Gaza area and have suffered many attacks on our sovereign land. We have never responded with the swift and powerful blow that we threatened to use. We have hardly even responded with the weak and ineffective blows, such as shooting “pagazim” into empty fields. We have suffered hundreds of Kassam rocket attacks among other attacks. Now we have suffered a kidnapping and attack on our soldiers. Yet we have still not seen any response, let alone a swift and powerful blow.

In essence the latest attack is not really worse (in the sense of the level of attack against our country) than any of the Kassams we have been attacked with. They are both full attacks on Israeli sovereignty. Yet it is more horrific. The thought of Gilad being held captive by these animals, undergoing who knows what kinds of torture is frightening.

Clearly it is the result of the government policy of restraint in the face of attack. While the Arabs from Gaza have been intent on raising the level of escalation and conflict, Israel constantly refuses to respond. Our government is always worried about the reactions of the world, and never enough about the safety of its own citizens.

No matter what we do, we will always be condemned. Did anybody condemn the Palestinians when they rained all those rockets down on the heads of the residents of Sderot and the surrounding areas? We get condemned for what we do, yet get no credit for our restraint. We always hear that our restraint will give us more acceptance later. We have been showing much restraint for many years. We have refrained from reacting to suicide bombers, rockets, and various other attacks all to the tune of restraint. Yet whenever we might try to cash in on some of that moral high ground, we are condemned as if we never showed any of that good ol’ restraint.

Systematically the Arabs have put us into a situation where we would be vulnerable. We don’t control the arms flow into Gaza. We even supplied them with thousands of weapons. We showed our weakness in not being able to respond effectively, and now we responded with total confusion at the latest events. All we hear are the same threats we have been hearing for months and years. The government should have reacted right away and sent in troops when it was still fresh and confusion reigned.

But they did not. Instead, everybody is busy in the practice of CYA and trying to explain why the other guy was at fault for not predicting and being ready for such an incident. Shimon Peres just said last week, “Kassams, Shmassams” – he belittled the whole concept of our being attacked as something insignificant. Well, Shimon, those kassams shmassems led to this. And our inexperienced and ineffective government had no and has no idea how to respond. Their actions indicate they are waiting for someone else to come in and force them to apologize and give back Gilad, the captured soldier.

No matter what we do, we will always be condemned. Do the right thing, because in the eyes of the world we are evil and wrong no matter what we do. The ineffective and inexperienced politicians who allowed this to happen, and by lack of any meaningful response are setting the stages for future incidents with greater escalations, are at fault for this and should resign or be forced out.