Winograd Committee Press Release Monday, 30 April, 2007

“We determine that there are very serious failings in these decisions and the way they were made. We impose the primary responsibility for these failures on the Prime Minister, the minister of defence and the (outgoing) Chief of Staff. All three made a decisive personal contribution to these decisions and the way in which they were made.”

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By Edward Luttwak, Prospect Magazine May 2007

[..] Strategically, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been almost irrelevant since the end of the cold war. And as for the impact of the conflict on oil prices, it was powerful in 1973 when the Saudis declared embargoes and cut production, but that was the first and last time that the “oil weapon” was wielded. For decades now, the largest Arab oil producers have publicly forsworn any linkage between politics and pricing, and an embargo would be a disaster for their oil-revenue dependent economies. In any case, the relationship between turmoil in the middle east and oil prices is far from straightforward. As Philip Auerswald recently noted in the American Interest, between 1981 and 1999 – a period when a fundamentalist regime consolidated power in Iran, Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war within view of oil and gas installations, the Gulf war came and went and the first Palestinian intifada raged – oil prices, adjusted for inflation, actually fell. And global dependence on middle eastern oil is declining: today the region produces under 30 per cent of the world’s crude oil, compared to almost 40 per cent in 1974-75. In 2005 17 per cent of American oil imports came from the Gulf, compared to 28 per cent in 1975, and President Bush used his 2006 state of the union address to announce his intention of cutting US oil imports from the middle east by three quarters by 2025. [..]

[if this assesment surprises you, read how easily he dismisses Iran]

STRATFOR morning intelligence brief 04.30.2007

[..] The damning report is expected to conclude that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert essentially treated the Second Lebanon War as a rush job by failing to question the war plans drawn up by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and by launching into a full-scale battle without actually articulating the objectives of the war.

Needless to say, Olmert is facing some rough days ahead as he answers for his government’s ineptitude during the war. The report’s release is topping off a series of complaints against Olmert’s government, including charges of rape, wire-tapping, indecent conduct, theft, conspiracy, money laundering and bribery against a number of senior officials, including the president, finance minister, committee chairs of foreign affairs and defense, the former justice minister and Olmert himself. With his public approval rating hovering somewhere between 2 and 3 percent, Olmert is even making U.S. President George W. Bush’s ratings look good.
With such a bleak political career, it is a wonder that Olmert has lasted this long in power. He mostly has public apathy in Israel to thank for that, though the Winograd report could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive: White House now holds that Israel suffered a “strategic defeat” in the 2006 Lebanon War

This view was leaked hours before the Israeli Winograd panel published its harsh criticisms of the Olmert government’s conduct of the war Monday, April 30, in Jerusalem. It represents another of the grave setbacks Israel has suffered in the wake of its failed management of the Lebanon war. President George W. Bush’s original judgment directly after the hostilities ended was quite different: “Hizballah attacked Israel; Hizballah started the crisis and Hizballah suffered a defeat in this crisis,” he said.

The revised view was not conveyed to the Israeli government; it was part of a warning Washington delivered to the Turkish prime minister Tayyep Erdogan, Sunday, April 24, to call off his planned offensive against PKK rebel bases in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan. The US message to Ankara reportedly cautioned the Turkish army to beware of landing itself in a situation similar to Israel’s predicament in the Hizballah war, i.e. Israel was confident of a swift victory and instead suffered “a strategic defeat.”
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comment by Jerry Gordon

M.K. Dr. Arieh Eldad of the National Union party in Israel’s Knesset is one of the few who speaks truth to power. When he was in the U.S., we discussed getting English translations of his weekly columns in Ma’ariv and Yediot Aharanot in an effort to broadcast his views to a wider audience. This column was translated by Zeev Golan. So, here is an Israpundit exclusive, the translation of his weekly column from last Friday’s Ma’ariv. In it he shows his rapier-like acerbic wit in contrasting the IDF trumpeting the foiling of a planned abduction of an IDF soldier under the ‘umbrella’ of a Hamas Kassem rocket attack in the western Negev with the actions of the IDF Samarian division commander denying bus transports for thousands of Jews who returned to Homesh on Yom Ha’Atazma’ut to raise an Israeli flag on the ruins of the water tower in the abandoned settlement. We hope that this becomes a steady flow of commentary from Dr. Eldad – one of the few in the Knesset who are incorruptible in pursuit of the Zionist ethos. Kol Hakavod to Dr. Eldad.

by M.K. Dr. Arieh Eldad, Ma’ariv, April 27, 2007

Hamas terrorists attacked the western Negev with Kassam rockets and artillery on the morning of Independence Day. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has taken pride in an impressive achievement: True, it did not prevent the bombardment and did not kill – or maybe did not even try to kill – the terrorists – but IDF spokesman knew that they could take pride: We prevented the planned kidnapping of a soldier under cover of the bombardment.

The purpose of the IDF is to protect the state, its residents, its borders, its sovereignty and its honor. On the morning of Independence Day, the IDF failed to fulfill its role. But the IDF did succeed, at least this time, in preventing a kidnapping. An attitude and world view similar to this previously led Israel to accept the provocations and entrenchment of Hezbollah in Lebanon. We lowered our profile, avoided moving our military up north, and did not respond as we should have to the bombardments of our northern settlements. We hoped to “contain” Hezbollah terror and Israeli leaders promised that Hezbollah’s rockets would rust in their warehouses. More »« Less

by Omri Ceren

Turkey’s secular military seems increasingly unamused that NATO’s only Muslim-majority country (for now) is sliding into Islamism:

The Turkish government is warning the country’s military to keep out of politics after the army said it would not hesitate to intervene if this month’s presidential election leads to the Islamization of the country. While Turkey’s population is almost 100 percent Muslim, the state is officially secular. Abdullah Gul, the candidate of the moderately Islamic ruling party, did not garner enough votes to win in the first round of voting on Friday. The country’s parliament elects the president. The secular opposition boycotted the vote.

LGF reports that huge crowds have turned out to support the military’s secular stand, with some frankly inspirational words about the secular legacy of Ataturk. AFP is saying that more than one million people showed marched. Captain’s Quarters describes it as proof that Turkish secularism still lives

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

by Omri Ceren

The Assads have been threatening to take back the Golan ever since they were disciplined like errant schoolchildren in the Six Day War. That said, Syria’s recent and aggressive mobilization on Israel’s border makes the recent threats seem more serious. Certainly the IDF is taking it seriously:

The IDF on Thursday held intensive training maneuvers in preparation for a feared Syrian attack on the Golan Heights. Hundreds of tanks and thousands of soldiers, backed by helicopters and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, massed in the Judean Desert to drill simulations of war. The training exercise focused on Brigade 401 and its utilization of Israel’s most advanced tank – the Merkava Mark 4 – against the Syrian advanced Russian-made T-72. Since the Second Lebanon War, Military Intelligence has claimed that war with Syria is now closer than ever, and the IDF is on heightened alert in the North in preparation for the possibility of a surprise attack.

Or course, that assumes that Israel will have those troops available to fight that war at that time. Any war with Syria will probably be preceded by some Hezbollah stunt designed to draw out Israel’s forces into Lebanon. Even if that’s not how it starts, you can be quite certain that Hezbollah will make its presence felt once Israeli and Syrian forces engage each other. Syrian generals haven’t been spending time in Tehran for nothing. Of course, any situation involving an actual invasion of Israeli territory definitionally represents an existential threat. That means that the IAF is let off the leash in terms of degrading Hezbollah’s infrastructure, to say nothing of what will happen to Damascus. The calculus between military force and international condemnation changes when the alternative is the destruction of Israel.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

Barry Rubin in Cease Process, Not Peace Process reviews the peace process in all its ineptitude (worth reading) and argues

The first problem is that Fatah is not doing anything to help itself. Since Hamas took power in January 2005, it is impossible to detect any effort by Fatah to reform itself, strengthen its leadership, fight corruption in its ranks, or develop its unity. All the shortcomings that led Fatah to defeat in the January 2005 elections are still present. Nobody can save an organization that acts as if it is so bent on its own destruction.

The second problem is that Fatah’s main strategy in “combating” Hamas is to imitate it. Not that everyone in Fatah is radical and certainly not Islamist. But aside from the statements of a few, including Mahmoud himself, there is no big difference between them.

The third problem is that Fatah has accepted a role as Hamas’ junior partner. The two groups are rivals. But at present, they are allies.and concludes

and concludes,

The true proper option, though this isn’t going to happen, is to “decertify” the Palestinian movement. Since it did not deliver on its peace process promises and has essentially reverted to the pre-1993 policies (Hamas, actually, is back beyond 1974), the world should return to its positions of that era. That was when people understood that the movement sought to destroy Israel and was using terrorism. One day, was the hope, the movement would become moderate and a compromise solution could be negotiated with it. Until that happened, it would receive neither aid nor recognition. We’re still waiting.

Amen.

by Jerry Gordon,

While we await the release of the long-awaited Winograd Commission reports, Professor Efraim Inbar of Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies analysis is the closest we have to definitive criticism of the incompetent Olmert government, including the IDF military chiefs, during and following last summer’s botched mini-war in Lebanon. The Winograd Commission report will likely document in definitive detail their own analysis and recommendations save one-requesting the resignation of the Olmert Kadimah colaition government. More »« Less

By Ted Belman

Thursday I attended a panel discussion at the Hudson Institute in which the topic was Moderate Islam. All three speakers were Muslims with varying backgrounds. One was a Member of Parliament in Denmark who started a movement for Democratic Muslims. Another was a US doctor and the third was …

All professed to be democrats first and Muslims second. They presented a picture of Islam that gave room for their thinking and suggested that Islam was more about faith in God and the Golden Rule and that they could ignore political Islam. They even suggested that political Islam could be separated from the religion of Islam and that Sharia wasn’t binding and so on.
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