Israel

IDF General: War Clouds Gathering

Mark Noonan3 Comments

From Y Net:

Recent revolutions in the Arab world and the deteriorating ties with Turkey are raising the likelihood of a regional war in the Middle East, IDF Home Front Command Chief, Major General Eyal Eisenberg warned Monday.

“It looks like the Arab Spring, but it can also be a radical Islamic winter,” he said in a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv…

The “Islamic Winter” is pretty much what I expect.  We are about to reap an ill harvest…sown since 9/11 by our political inability to carry on the fight with sufficient determination.  As it turns out, our campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have proven strategic dead-ends – because we did not follow up with the next, logical steps.

Not being privy to strategy sessions of the Bush White House  – and none of us will be for at least 50 years – I don’t know if there was a plan for follow-up to Iraq…but I perceive that there was, at least, a desire to leverage the fall of Baghdad in to a general offensive against all the Islamists of  the middle east.  Syria likely the best post-Iraq target, but it could have been Iran, as well…but we didn’t do it.  There was that moment in the summer of 2003 when Islamism was tottering and ready to fall…but we allowed ourselves to get hamstrung in Iraq, giving the Islamists a breather where they could regain their confidence and bog us down in a  counter-insurgency campaign…a campaign which never would have been possible for the enemy to conduct in Baghdad if we were threatening Damascus and Tehran.

What hamstrung us immediately was not the Islamists, themselves, but the American left…fearful that a continuing series of American victories would cement American supremacy and worse (for the left) relegate the left to political irrelevancy, the left decided that procuring American defeat in the war was necessary…so they began to fire up the anti-war movement, nit-pick every military error and slander the men and women who were fighting the battle.  The rest, as they say, is history…President Bush, whatever his desires might have been, was capable in the end of only holding on…refusing to fold as Johnson did in Vietnam, but being unable to resume the offensive and bring the war to a victorious end.

And now the Islamists are on the march – certain that in President Obama we have a leader who will not strike at the heart of the problem, the Islamists have stepped up their terrorism and their subversion.  Countering our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Islamists are poised to gain control of Egypt; Turkey is slipping in to the Islamist camp, Libya’s Islamists are making a bid for power…and Iran continues to build towards a nuclear force.  As this virulent form of Islam strides from victory to victory, the number and confidence of the adherents grows…they are feeling their oats and thinking they only need keep fighting a bit longer and harder for total victory to be theirs.  This, I think, is where General Eisenberg’s fear comes from…these nuts might start to think they can beat Israel and/or the United States in a stand-up fight.

They misjudge – Israel is still immensely powerful and even President Obama, if forced by circumstances, will fight.  But it must be remembered that aggressive powers routinely miscalculate the balance of forces.  Time and time again they discount the reserves of strength in their opponents…especially if they are tyrants and their opponents are free people.  Always keep in mind that it was sheer impertinence for Imperial Japan to attack the United States…the total balance of forces between the two nations was such that for Japan it worked out to national suicide…as anyone thinking clearly in Japan would have figured out in an instant…but no one thought about it; they counted on our weakness and their supposed spiritual superiority to carry the day.  Our Islamist enemies are thinking like that…give them control of a couple more nations, and they might think that it is time for war…full scale, conventional war.

We might be heading or a bloody mess in the middle east – literal  millions of lives are at stake.  It is to be hoped that things will work out differently.  But their working out differently is mostly dependent upon people of the Moslem world deciding against Islamism…a cool, rational understanding that war cannot achieve Islamist ends, and so should not be tried.  I doubt there is that sort of sense building in the Moslem world.

Let this be yet another lesson for us – and one I pray we finally learn:  if we’re going to go to war, at all, go all the way to war.  Identify all the enemies and destroy all of them as swiftly as possible.  Leave no sanctuary…no place where the enemy can retreat to regain strength and strike us again.  American war can only be war to the knife…to the utter destruction and unconditional surrender of the enemy.  If we aren’t willing to do that, we’d better not fight, at all.  If another war comes, let it be the last war we have to fight against Islam…just as the war against Japan was fought to the point where it was clearly the last war we’d ever have to fight with that nation.

Turks Expel Israeli Ambassador

Mark Noonan17 Comments

From the Washington Post:

Turkey said Friday that it was expelling the Israeli ambassador and suspending military agreements with Israel, signaling a deepening rift between the former strategic allies in the aftermath of last year’s deadly Israeli raid on a Turkish ship leading an aid flotilla to Gaza.

The crisis with Turkey comes as Israel faces strained relations with another longtime regional ally, Egypt, over a deadly border incident last month, and it raises the prospect of Israel’s increasing isolation in the region at a time of tumultuous change.

Turkey announced its move ahead of the publication of a U.N. report that found that while Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip was legal, its commandos had used “excessive and unreasonable” force when they boarded the vessel, the Mavi Marmara, and killed nine Turks in clashes with activists…

That report is bound to be nothing more than another bit of UN Israel-bashing.  “Excessive and unreasonable” is a subjective judgment and, at the end of the day, Israel wouldn’t have had to use any force, at all, if the flotilla people had simply obeyed the law.  You go to break a blockade and you’re engaging in an act of war…Israel could have just torpedoed the flotilla and still would have been within the law.

But Turkey is taking this bogus incident as an excuse to expel the Israeli ambassador, and that means something.  Turkey, increasingly Islamist, is breaking its ties with Israel and lining on the side of the Jihadists.  This is a watershed moment – it is the end of any large, powerful Moslem nation even making an effort to be Western and civilized.  We can now expect increased pressure on Iraq to toe the Islamist line, especially if any sort of Moslem Brotherhood government emerges in Egypt.  We’re back to 1967 in middle eastern affairs but with a much more virulent strain of anti-Israel and anti-US sentiment in the area.

Our response should be to cut off all military ties with both Turkey and Egypt and refuse both nations any aid.  If we can keep Iraq in our camp that would be great…and we should offer strong inducements to the Iraqis to partner with us, lest they be swallowed up by Turkey, Iran or a combination of both.  But we have to be prepared for Iraq to cut ties with us, as well…they are placed in a difficult position and may decide that it is better to get along with everyone than count on an increasingly distant and distracted United States.

It could be that wiser heads will prevail and all this will blow over – but if the Islamic world really wants to fight, then there’s not much we can do about it, except to fight them.

Israeli-Egyptian Tensions Rise

Mark Noonan4 Comments

From Y-Net:

Large Egyptian army forces are battling Jihad operatives in the Sinai Peninsula Tuesday as Israel maintains its heightened alert on the tense southern border with Egypt.

Israel upped its military presence along the border, including the deployment of two navy war ships, following a terror warning that had been received indicating that a cell comprising of 10 operatives was in Sinai and was planning to attack Israeli targets. Earlier this month, terrorists killed eight Israelis after infiltrating the border from Sinai…

The peace treaty limits the number of soldiers Egypt can maintain in the Sinai – it must be remember that the Sinai provides Israel with strategic depth vis a vis Egypt (and, of course, Egypt vis a vis Israel).  For Israel’s security, the Sinai must either be Israeli, or it must be demilitarized so that in event of war, the IDF can swiftly seize all or most of it, thus protecting southern Israel.  The Egyptian troops being sent to the Sinai are going with Israeli consent…with Israel, I guess, hoping that the Egyptian army will curb the actions of the terrorists.

It is to be hoped this will work out – but I doubt the reliability of the Egyptian army as an anti-terrorist force.  Will the Egyptian army really go to work with a will against the terrorists?  Or will it make a few spectacular raids while tacitly allowing the terrorists to maintain their forces and launch attacks on Israel?  Time will tell – though Israel would at this point have been better off if they had never bargained land for peace in 1979.  Now that Egypt risks becoming Islamist, the Israelis will come to regret they gave up their excellent defensive positions along the Suez Canal.

Facing the Truth About Egypt

Mark Noonan3 Comments

Representative Kay Granger (R-TX) says cut off Egypt if peace is threatened – from the Jerusalem Post:

Washington’s $2 billion in annual aid to Egypt will be cut off if Cairo backs out of the peace treaty with Israel, Congresswoman Kay Granger – whose job as chairwoman of the US House appropriations foreign operations subcommittee means she literally writes America’s annual foreign aid bill – told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

“The United States aid to Egypt is predicated on the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and so the relationship between Egypt and Israel is extremely important,” the eight-term Republican from Texas said in an interview…

This is only sensible – in order to secure peace between Israel and Egypt, the United States and Israel went about 100 extra miles to secure Egypt’s agreement.  It must be remember that Egypt was the clear loser in two wars of aggression launched against Israel.

As a result of those two wars, Israel had gained and retained firm control of the Sinai…and could easily have pressed far beyond the Suez Canal at will.  Israel was under no moral or legal requirement to return a square inch of formerly Egyptian territory…heck, Germany has more claim to East Prussia these days than Egypt had to the Sinai after the Yom Kippur War.  But Israel sincerely wanted (and still wants), peace.  It seemed not too great a price to free Israel from the renewed threat of war with Egypt…and so Israel agreed to surrender to the losers in the matter of the Sinai.

For the United States, it was a matter that Egypt had played a huge role in messing up the Middle East, forcing the United States to expend vast amounts of time and resources fixing what Egypt had broken.  But we also wanted peace between Israel and Egypt – and so we figured a relatively endless number of billions of dollars was worth it.  In the end, what Egypt – the aggressor/loser – got was all that Egypt had justly lost, plus a massive, monetary bribe from us to make peace.  And so peace was made – but the price of peace on Egypt’s part is to not in any way, shape or form threaten Israel.

Right now, that is shifting…and if the Moslem Brotherhood gains even partial power in Egypt in the upcoming elections, then that shift will become more pronounced.  The price Egypt must pay for breaking the terms of the peace treaty is to lose the bribe we offered…and we’ll leave it up to Israel if they want to take back Israeli territory in the Sinai (and I think they should – forthwith, before the new Egyptian government gets organized and, perhaps, moves major military forces in to the Sinai).  A deal is a deal, and the Egyptians are breaking it…and I don’t have any concern at all about why Egypt might be doing this.  It is immaterial…there can be no justification, and so all deals are off.  The Egyptians must be instructed that the losers can make no demands…and can’t ever change the terms.

It is high time we learned that you can’t play around with things like this – watching and waiting and hoping things will come out right just doesn’t work.  The graves of Egyptians and Israelis are already being dug due to Egyptian actions…the quicker things are resolved, the fewer there will be.  It is a matter of acting forcefully in the near term in order to cut off a catastrophe in the long term.

The Crisis Between Egypt and Israel

Mark Noonan37 Comments

Getting a little hotter while diplomats scurry – from the New York Times:

Diplomats scrambled to avert a crisis in relations between Egypt and Israel on Saturday, and the Israeli government issued a rare statement of regret for the killing of three Egyptian security officers by an Israeli warplane.

Tensions between the two countries, which on Saturday led Egypt to announce that it would recall its ambassador from Tel Aviv, reached the worst point since the Camp David peace accords three decades ago, spurred by a burst of violence along their shared border in the Sinai Peninsula. A series of attacks there killed eight Israelis on Thursday; the Israeli government then retaliated against Gaza-based militants, and the three Egyptians died in the crossfire…

My question: were the security officers in Gaza?  If so, why?  If they were, then it is yet another indication that at least elements of the Egyptian government are fomenting war between Egypt and Israel.  That is really the crucial issue…not who killed whom, but why certain people did certain actions.

Naturally, the diplomats will miss this – their whole desire will be just to paper over the cracks and essentially pretend that nothing happened.  But something has happened…and it is a disturbing development in that Egypt may be in the process of breaking the peace treaty.

The best course of action right now is an assertive stance by Israel – a refusal to allow things to slowly disintegrate.  Put the Egyptians on the spot – do they want peace, or do they want war?  Either all attacks from Gaza cease, or not.  That is the price of real peace between Egypt and Israel at this moment – anything less than that means war, even if conventional battles are put off for months or years.

The Necessity of Pushing Egypt Back in the Sinai

Mark Noonan24 Comments

The attack in to Israel which came by way of Gaza terrorists infiltrating from the Sinai indicates the true state of affairs in Egypt – a significant part of Egyptian authority is willing to aid terrorist attacks against Israel.  This new fact by itself nullifies the Israel-Egypt peace treaty – we’re essentially back to 1967.

The proper response by the Israelis would be to push the Egyptians back from the Gaza and Israeli borders – at least 25 miles so as to put southern Israel out of easy rocket/terrorist range.  This would also allow a complete sealing off of Gaza and that would eventually result in the terrorists in Gaza running out of ammunition.

Remember, the Israelis gave up the Sinai in order to have peace with Egypt – unless the southern border of Israel is 100% secure against attack, there is no reason for Israel to stay out of the Sinai.  And it is better to act now than wait for the Egyptian government to move major military forces in to the area.

Jerusalem is in Israel

Mark Noonan30 Comments

In spite of what some might want us to believe – from Jewish Journal:

Jerusalem: To be or not to be part of Israel. That’s the question that White House administrations have tiptoed around for decades.

The State Department neither recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital nor views the eastern part of the city—captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed—as part of Israel. But Congress passed a law in 2002 that effectively recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Presidents have been caught in the middle, cautiously balancing their pro-Israel rhetoric against longstanding U.S. policy.

That’s exactly where the Obama administration found itself last week after news reports revealed that the White House quietly had removed all references to Jerusalem as being part of Israel from a collection of photos on its website…

It is amazingly cowardly of us to not just recognize historic and current reality – Jerusalem is the capitol of Israel.  To all intents and purposes, it always has been and always will be.  Its been 44 years since the Israelis liberated the eastern section of Jerusalem from Moslem misrule and it is high time we just bit the bullet and did the right thing.

But we can’t do that!  It would offend Islam!  Yeah, and our failure to recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel has won us just so many friend in the Moslem world, right?  Get real – there is nothing we can do to make them hate us any more than they already do, while a course of forthright action will at least instruct them that we are people of courage and not to be trifled with.  Recognize the Israeli liberation of Jerusalem..and throw in the Golan for good measure.  Time to end this silliness and start acting like we’ve got a backbone.

No More Arms to Egypt

Mark Noonan1 Comment

A bit of Obama foreign policy insanity noted over at Commentary:

While everyone in Washington was concentrating on the debt crisis this week, the Obama administration attempted to slip through a questionable arms deal that requires serious scrutiny. Though it got little attention, the Defense Department officially notified Congress on Friday that it was authorizing the sale of 125 M1A1 tanks to Egypt as well as other weapons, equipment, parts, training and logistical support. While most of the military sales to Egypt have sailed through without objection in the more than 30 years since it signed a peace deal with Israel, this is the first such sale since the fall of the Mubarak regime earlier this year. Which is exactly why the sale ought to be held up until the unsettled situation in the most populous country in the Arab world is better understood…

Until we see what sort of government emerges in Egypt, we should presume the worst and that means not providing Egypt with arms and support which could at some date be used against us or our allies.  The deal to arm Egypt with America’s best weapons was predicated upon Egypt firmly adhering to the Camp David accords and peace with Israel…already we see the rising Egyptian political class calling in to question these basic issues.  Wisdom dictates that we proceed with caution.

It is to be hoped that some how, some way, a non barbarous regime rises in Egypt.  If that is the case, we can resume arms shipments and make up for anything we denied them during the transition period.  According to the linked article, Congress has 30 days to object and thus halt the deal – I hope the House GOP leadership takes up this issue and forces a halt.  If Obama won’t use common sense in this matter, someone else will have to step up.