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A.P. photo/ Mahmoud Tawil -- Hizbullah
Jerusalem Post editor Caroline Glick lends credence to concern about a Hizbullah military expedition into Israel and about NGOs subsidized by the New Israel Fund undermining Israeli defense and morale. Hizbullah foresees a war that “would change the face of the region.” It now has ground forces capable of doing that, if Israel does not prepare or preempt. Ms. Glick, as our earlier report, foresees an Israeli Arab fifth column backing up Hizbullah.
The signs point to renewed war. Iran’s President threatened new hostility and emphasized his point, experts suggest, by launching a new rocket into space, equivalent to long-range missiles that may carry nuclear warheads.
The same day that the U.S. announced that it was sending an ambassador back to Syria, Syria’s President and Foreign Minister also threatened Israel with war. Hamas floated barrels of explosives onto Israeli beaches. Fatah sought reconciliation with Hamas obsequiously. [Perhaps this signifies putting wartime unity before domestic rivalry].
It would not suffice for Israel to prepare against the military assault. It also must prepare against the political assault from the Left. Just as Israel neglected Iran’s proxy forces that grew into formidable menaces, so, too, Israel neglected the Left’s anti-Israel agitators who grew into a strategic menace.
For example, NGOs subsidized by the New Israel Fund (NIF) provided most of the allegations used by the UN Goldstone report to falsely accuse vigorous Israeli self-defense of being war crimes. As a result of that and a Maariv expose of NIF, a movement arose to review the legitimacy of the NGOs. Do it merely reflect dissident opinion or is it an auxiliary enemy of the state?
“NIF-sponsored groups have worked steadily to intimidate political leaders, law enforcement officials and military commanders to toe their anti-Zionist line. In the wake of the PLO-incited riots in the Israeli Arab sector in October 2000, the overtly anti-Zionist NIF-funded Adalah group agitated for the formation of the Orr Commission. Charged with investigating the police who quelled the rioting rather than the rioters whose violence forced the prolonged closure of major highways to Jewish traffic throughout the country, the Orr Commission had a devastating impact on the police's morale and organizational culture. [The government of Israel usually does not face down the combination of leftist critics and Arab threats of violence.]
“Adalah successfully cowed the Barak government into agreeing to rules of inquiry for the commission that denied police officers even minimal rights of due process. They were not allowed to confront or question their accusers. In the aftermath of the commission's public hearings - which amounted to little more than show trials - the careers of several dedicated officers were destroyed. As a consequence, police commanders began curtailing their law enforcement activities in Arab villages. Everything from illegal building to livestock theft to incitement to war against Israel has gone uninvestigated and unpunished.
The ”…Orr Commission empowered the most radical voices in Israeli Arab society. Supported by Arab political leaders, Adalah published a manifesto calling for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. Bishara's suspected espionage for Hizbullah, and the legal establishment's self-evident fear of prosecuting him for treason, are also the direct consequence of the Orr Commission.”
“As for the IDF, NIF-funded organizations have played a key role in organizing the weekly riots at flashpoints like Ni'ilin and Bi'ilin and in the recent expansion of these riots to other places in Judea and Samaria like Neveh Tzuf. Supported by anti-Israel activists from Europe and the US, these riots have had a devastating impact on the IDF's morale and its ability to defend Israeli communities.”
”The NIF-funded pro-Palestinian group B'Tselem provides the rioters with video cameras with which they regularly shoot distorted footage. Their canned films portray Israeli civilians seeking to defend themselves from the rioters as attackers. They portray IDF soldiers trying to keep order and protect Israeli civilians as violent bullies. B'Tselem gives these films to its supporters in the Israel media, which broadcast them as credible footage and demand that the IDF open investigations against its officers for carrying out lawful orders.”
“On the defensive, the IDF is compelled to curtail its operations and Israeli civilians, now demonized, are viewed as legitimate targets for terror attacks. One recent film of the rioting outside Neveh Tzuf posted on YouTube shows border policemen simply fleeing the scene and leaving the residents of the community to fend for themselves.”
Im Tirtzu's revelations about the NIF outraged NIF. They attacked Im Tirtzu's financial backers and tried to inhibit Im Tirtzu by calling it “extremist, far right, racist, fascist, out-of-the-mainstream and all the other routine far-left terms used to demonize Zionists.” The tactic finally failed. Moderate leftists realized the pro-NIF offensive was an anti-Israel offensive, and are fighting back. So is Netanyahu fighting back against the Goldstone report, partly by reasserting Jewish rights in Judea-Samaria. So is Kadima, whose leaders were accused by Goldstone of authorizing war crimes.
“THE HARSH truth is that the main cause of Israel's poor performance in Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War was the Olmert government's ideological dependence on the far left and its central contention that it is Israel's presence in contested areas rather than our enemies' commitment to Israel's destruction that causes wars. Owing to their allegiance to this falsehood, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni were unable to prosecute the wars to victory militarily, justify the limited steps they did take to defend Israel diplomatically, or discredit the rising chorus of Israeli NGOs arguing that Israel had no right to defend itself politically.”
The notion that peace can be made with the Palestinian Arabs has been discredited time and again, more recently by their rejection of former PM Olmert’s offer to withdraw from most of Judea-Samaria and from part of Jerusalem.
“These developments clear the way for the Netanyahu government to take steps to neutralize the potency of these groups. The government should move swiftly to order the police and the IDF to enforce the law against these groups and their allies. It must also provide the political support to police and military commanders in the field to empower them fulfill their orders without fear that they will be persecuted for doing their jobs.”
”If the government seizes the opportunity to weaken these subversive groups, not only will it be making it clear that the political open season on Israel is over. It will be clearing the way for any future war to end not only in military victory, but in political victory for Israel as well.” (IMRA, 2/6.)
Now we shall find out one and for all whether Netanyahu is patriot or appeaser. Why didn’t he expose and oppose the unscrupulous leftist tactics, all these years?
(For the prior article on Hizbullah’s potential invasion, click here
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