The Israeli people's reaction to cease-fire

Hat tip to Cox and Forkum for the cartoon. You can read their related commentary and links HERE. A partial excerpt from one of their quotes, from The Jerusalem Post:

...The Knesset must vote no confidence in this government and new elections must be carried out as soon as the law permits. If the Knesset hesitates in taking this required step, then the people of Israel must take to thstreets in mass demonstrations and demand that our representatives send Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and their comrades out to pasture. ...

OLMERT'S DECISION Friday to begin the ground offensive was by all accounts motivated not by a newfound understanding that this is a real war, but by the headlines in the newspapers that morning calling for his resignation. Yet, by Friday, the IDF had only 48 hours to achieve the objectives it had waited a month to receive Olmert's permission to accomplish.

Diplomatically, in the space of five weeks the government managed to undermine Israel's alliance with America; to hand Syria, Hizbullah and Iran the greatest diplomatic achievements they have ever experienced; and to flush down the toilet the unprecedented international support that US President Bush handed to Israel on a silver platter at the G-8 summit.

The UN cease-fire that Olmert, Livni and Peretz applaud undercuts Israel's sovereignty; protects Hizbullah; lets Iran and Syria off the hook; lends credibility to our enemies' belief that Israel can be destroyed; emboldens the Palestinians to launch their next round of war; and leaves IDF hostages Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in captivity.

(bold emphasis mine) Can the Olmert government wiggle their way out of this one? I don't see how. And what about our own government? What are they doing?


Related links:


No retreat, no surrender

The problem, of course, is that Israelis are feeling that their mission was not accomplished. Hezbollah remains operational, and now defiantly so, while Israeli civilians remain a target. What did Israel win, exactly?

"....many Israelis, including those who sat for a month in stifling bomb shelters, reservists who dropped everything and reported to their units and the families who anxiously awaited a telephone from their sons in Lebanon and dreaded the knock of the local IDF liaison are feeling that their sacrifice has been betrayed.

After years of dismissing the UN as an ineffectual and anti-Israel organization, how can Israelis believe that of all the possibilities, it will be the one to make sure that Hizbullah never again threatens our northern towns and villages. "

It's interesting to apply this lesson to the Iraq war: if we leave too early, without finishing the job, and the country is once again turned over to thugs and terrorists, how can we tell the families of dead American soldiers that they fought with good reason, that their sacrifice was not in vain, that the cause was noble, but we just couldn't stomach seeing it through to completion?

If I had to spend a month in a bomb shelter, I'd be pretty angry, too.
Could there be a lesson in this for weak polititians everywhere?




Speaking of weak polititians, why is OUR government backing this cease-fire? Thomas Sowell has the answer:

Will cease-fires never cease?

...Why do these phony cease-fire scenarios keep getting repeated? Because there are too many people, including many in the media, who take the corrupt windbags at the U.N. seriously -- so our political leaders have to act as if they take the U.N. seriously as well.

This is a costly charade. Among its costs are human lives. U.N. cease-fires are the ultimate in feel-good decisions made by people who pay no price for the repercussions.

No one in his right mind believes that either the Lebanese army or the U.N. "peacekeepers" will disarm Hezbollah. The track record of both is virtually a guarantee that Hezbollah will be able to resume war against Israel at whatever time and place it chooses. Most people have no idea how small Israel is -- and therefore how vulnerable every part of it is to its surrounding enemies...

(bold emphasis mine) That explains the actions of our government. The UN is incompetent, and needs a good kick in the teeth. Shame on our government, for going along with such crap.

Condi tries to spin it all in a positive light, but Tammy Bruce exposes the spin for what it is, picking it apart piece by piece:

Condi, Too, Insists Everything is Great

...This sort of patronizing garbage should insult every single one of you. The speeches, actions and statements of both the president and Rice in the past few days also indicate quite strongly that they know they're in trouble with this situation. In other words, they know how bad it is and instead of working to fix it, they're spinning like tops trying to make it sound good...

Tammy quotes the highlights of Rice's speech, with her added commentary about why it doesn't fly. Tammy also offers a rather harsh assesment of Condi's performance as of late: Heartbreaker: The Failure of Condi Rice. One has to ask also, how much of these failures are due to President Bush? Has he lost his cojones? Mabye the Saudis have them in a jar somewhere, and won't give them back:


President Bush Renames the Enemy "Folks"

...For crying out loud, how many more euphemisms do we need to use to simply allude to the enemy, without actually naming them?

Why any non-terrorist Muslim would be upset at our calling the enemy what they are is beyond me. After all, if you're not Islamist Fascists then we're not talking about you, are we?

Ohhh, now I understand. The Saudis are taking it personally.

This is what happens when you take the tyrants and dictators at the UN seriously.