Leaders of Egypt's military junta sacked - The IDF's Egyptian fiasco

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
12 August '12..

So Muslim Brotherhood President of Egypt Mohamed Morsy just sacked the leaders of the military junta General Hussein Tantawi and the Egyptian Army's' Chief of Staff General Sami Enan.

Morsy has also cancelled the constitutional protections that the Egyptian military has enjoyed and overturned their edicts circumscribing his control over foreign and military policy.

That is, as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has declared, today Morsy completed the Egyptian revolution. Egypt is now an Islamic state. Its leaders drink from the same well as al Qaida, Hamas and all the rest. Egypt, with its US armed military has reemerged after 30 years as the greatest military threat that Israel has ever faced.

According the the Israel media, the IDF was surprised by Morsy's move. Clearly our esteemed generals believed reassurances they received from their Egyptian military counterparts that Israel had no reason to be concerned with the election of Hamas's big brother to Egypt's presidency.

This reminds me of what former chief of the IDF's General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said at the Jerusalem Post's conference in New York on April 29. In his remarks Ashkenazi said that no one in the IDF foresaw Mubarak's overthrow during the anti-regime protests in Tahrir Square. I began my remarks by mentioning that I had foreseen his overthrow and replacement by the Muslim Brotherhood already back in 2004. And like me, everyone paying attention to the internal make-up of Egyptian society -- rather than to the empty promises of generals with no popular support -- recognized that Israel's peace with Egypt was not long for this world.

[As daily attacks continue] Chief of General Staff: We Will Not Let Hamas Attack Our Civilians

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
16 September '10

Laugh or cry at this line: " We will not let Hamas fire on Israeli civilians and we have the capabilities to stop them"

Hello?

What are you trying to tell me Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi?

Are you playing a technical word game here?

"We will not let Hamas fire on Israeli civilians" - but Gaza terrorists from other groups who have been firing at Israeli civilians every day - now that's a different story?

Or are you sending a message that "we have the capabilities to stop them" but the civilian Israeli government is holding the IDF back?

But, then again, you say "we will not let Hamas fire on Israeli civilians" - so are you a throwback to the waiting period before 1967 when some top brass actually considered the possibility of simply overruling the civilians and getting down to business.

" the IDF will not refrain from taking any action necessary to protect Israeli civilians"

Give me a break.

You know it isn't true.

The IDF refrains every day.

That's not to say that this is bad.

Our world is much more complicated than that.

And there can most definitely be conditions that require that the IDF does indeed refrain.

As cruel as it sounds, civilians do indeed die as a result of very rational decisions that weigh the immediate protection of Israeli civilians against the long term interests of the state.

Ask the people in Ashkelon whose budget busting demand that their educational system be protected against rockets was refused.

But that's nothing new. And it goes far beyond defense.

We drive 110 KPH (or at least that's the posted legal limit) on roads when there is no question people will die because the speed limit isn't 40. We have a whole beautiful park system with cliffs that hikers slip to their deaths from each year.

You get the point.

The rhetoric is a bit annoying.

Here is a suggestion.

Sit down and figure out what you can publicly promise to deliver - and actually keep the promise.]

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Chief of General Staff: We Will Not Let Hamas Attack Our Civilians
16 September 2010 , 13:20 Jonatan Urich IDF
http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/10/09/1601.htm

On Wednesday (Sept. 15) the Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, visited the Bnei Dor Military Academy. During his visit, the Chief of Staff spoke about challenges currently facing the IDF and emphasized the significant contribution of students in the military academy. "The attempts at delegitimizing Israel and the IDF are growing stronger. But we have a moral army which operates in the most professional and ethical ways," he said.

Lt Gen. Ashkenazi discussed the current intensification of the situation on the Gaza border with the increasing number of rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel. "We face the threat of rockets and missiles fired from urban areas and nature reserves. We will not let Hamas fire on Israeli civilians and we have the capabilities to stop them." The Chief of the General Staff added that Operation Cast Lead created a new reality in the Gaza Strip, whereby the IDF will not refrain from taking any action
necessary to protect Israeli civilians.

"On the eve of Yom Kippur we in the IDF stand before many challenges. The reality is complex: Iran is growing stronger, as are Lebanon and Hamas. We also have much work to do in the Judea and Samaria region. The IDF, as the guarding shield of Israel, will stand between the enemy and the State of Israel. As commanders of the army, we are working hard to be prepared for war," added the Chief of Staff.

"We must continue fighting for our right to live here. Therefore it is important to enlist in the IDF and to have the most meaningful service possible," Lt Gen. Ashkenazi said, stressing that the IDF would continue the fight to encourage enlistment "despite the increase in draft numbers to combat units. It's very important to the army, as the army of the nation, to draft everyone despite the schism in ideas and beliefs between us. The IDF should be the bridge which connects everyone."

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What does it take to prove you're an enemy?

Lurker
The Muqata
12 August '10

Yesterday, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi testified before the Turkel commission investigating the Gaza flotilla incident. Judge Turkel asked him why the IDF was so completely unprepared for the murderous attacks against our soldiers by members of the IHH, the Turkish radical Islamist group that organized the flotilla. (The soldiers, who were "armed" with paintball guns, were obviously not told to expect any serious opposition.) Here is Ashkenazi's answer:

"The level of knowledge we had on the [IHH] was not like the level of information we have on Hamas. We did not investigate the organization. It was not on our list of our priorities, because it was not listed as a terrorist organization and was located in Turkey, which is not an enemy state -- and I hope it never will be."
[Sources: JPost, Haaretz]

Incredibly, even after hearing all the rabid, extremist diatribes against Israel spewed forth on an almost daily basis by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and even after watching Turkey openly forge alliances with Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah, Ashkenazi -- and the Israeli government -- still have not grasped the simple and obvious fact that Turkey has become our enemy.



As for the IHH, if the folks at IDF Intelligence had bothered to do even a couple minutes of googling, whey would have quicky discovered ample material clearly showing the organization's fanatical jihadist nature, such as this 2009 speech in Gaza by the head of the IHH, in which he called for martyrdom through attacks on Israel:

(Read full post)

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Tensions with U.S. Don’t Preclude Israeli Strike on Iran

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
23 April '10

In his post yesterday, Max posited that U.S-Israeli tensions make an Israeli strike on Iran unlikely. But in fact, such tensions may well make an Israeli strike more likely.

There are Israelis who believe that what currently looks like the only alternative — containing a nuclear Iran — is possible in principle. But for Israeli policymakers to conclude that containment is possible in practice, they must be convinced that if a nuclear Iran uses its enhanced power to attack Israel, whether directly or via its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, the U.S. will either take appropriate countermeasures itself or support Israel in any countermeasures it deems necessary, including military ones.

If Israel’s relationship with Washington were close enough to make this conviction plausible, one could imagine Jerusalem reluctantly acquiescing should Washington ultimately decide that containment was the way to go. But given President Barack Obama’s track record, both of failing to take strong measures against thugs and of giving short shrift to Israeli concerns, virtually no one in Israel’s government thinks he can be trusted either to contain Iran himself or to allow Israel to do so.

Thus, for Israel to refrain from bombing Iran under these circumstances, it would have to conclude that an uncontained Iran is worse than the risk of widening the rift with Washington. And there is no historical precedent for Israel putting its relationship with any foreign government above a security threat of that magnitude, however much it agonizes over the decision beforehand.

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CENTCOM, Gen. Petraeus and Israel

JINSA Report #: 975
25 March '10

Sometimes it takes a while for a story to come full circle. Last week, we reported (JINSA Report #973) on a ForeignPolicy.com blog that said American military officers in CENTCOM blamed U.S. relations with Israel for American weakness in the region. The ForeignPolicy blog went viral on the web, attracting other "authoritative" statements blaming Israel for American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan-and attributing negative comments about Israel to CENTCOM Commander Gen. David Petraeus.

Our take was that American weakness in the region is attributable in some measure to the Saudi and Gulf State belief that the United States will not prevent Iran, their nemesis as well as Israel's, from acquiring nuclear weapons. Although the Saudis do frequently complain about what they call "the Israel problem," it is a way of deflecting their own inability to be strong partners. The rest, we said, was a lie, an opportunity to shred the U.S.-Israel security relationship and label Israel a liability rather than an asset to American military planners.

Speaking in New Hampshire this week, Gen. Petraeus addressed the controversy, beginning with the point that some statements attributed to him personally were, in fact, sentences lifted out of context from a 56-page CENTCOM Strategy Document.

"There's... a statement in [the document] that describes various factors that influence the strategic context in which we operate and among those we listed the Mideast peace process. We noted in there that there was a perception at times that America sides with Israel and so forth. And I mean that is a perception; it is there, I don't think that's disputable. But I think people inferred from what that said and then repeated it a couple of times and bloggers picked it up and spun it. And I think that has been unhelpful, frankly." He noted other factors listed in the same section of the report, including "a whole bunch of extremist organizations, some of which, by the way, deny Israel's right to exist. There's a country that has a nuclear program who denies that the Holocaust took place...So we have all the factors in there, but this is just one, and it was pulled out of this 56-page document, which was not what I read to the Senate at all."

In response to a question, Gen. Petraeus said he had called Gen. Ashkenazi, the IDF Chief of Staff, and assured him that the web reports were inaccurate.

(Read full report)
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Will J Street Protest Anti-Zionists at the Nation and on the Streets of New York?

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
09 March '10

Were there any lingering doubts about the toxic nature of the American Left’s allergy to Israel, the Nation removes them today. Its website branded the head of the Israeli Defense Forces a “war criminal” that righteous New Yorkers should picket.

The event that got the Nation’s knickers in a twist is a fundraising dinner to be held at the Waldorf Astoria for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, a nonprofit group that provides aid to soldiers. The keynote speaker is Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the chief of staff of the IDF and the man who led Israel’s forces last year in its counterattack against terrorist fire on southern Israel. In Europe, Israelis like Ashkenazi have been subjected to harassment and bogus legal action, an outrageous situation that hard-core leftists here would like to emulate.

Indeed, what they want is to end the international isolation of the Hamas regime in Gaza and, instead, impose a blockade on Israel. But the irony of the Nation and its übersecular followers fronting for the Islamist murderers of Hamas is lost on the magazine.

The main point here is that the flagship American publication of the Left has no compunction about attempting to delegitimize the right of Jews to self-defense against terror, or about promoting an event that is part of the vicious International Israeli Apartheid Week libel fest.

(Read full post)
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PTA Commander-in-Chief

Caroline Glick

carolineglick.com

25 December 09

Unbeknownst to most Israelis, this week marked a critical shift for the worse in the regional balance of power. While IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi was busy demanding that the government pay a ransom of more than a thousand terrorists for captive soldier Gilad Schalit, few paid attention to Iran's newest strategic successes.

Over the past week Lebanon capitulated to the Iranian axis. Turkey solidified its full membership in the axis. And Egypt began to make its peace with the notion of Iran becoming the strongest state in the region.

Less than five years after former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated by Syria, his son Prime Minister Saad Hariri paid a visit to Damascus to express his fealty to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Days later, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki visited Beirut and began giving the Lebanese government its new marching orders.

On Wednesday, Hizbullah forces deployed openly to the border with Israel under the permissive eye of the US-armed Lebanese army. Lebanon announced that it was no longer bound by binding UN Security Council Resolution 1559 that requires Hizbullah to disarm. And Hariri announced that he will soon visit Teheran.

While Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his media echo chamber insist that Turkey has buried its hatchet with Israel, on Wednesday Prime Minister Recip Erdogan led a delegation with 10 cabinet ministers to Damascus. There, according to the Syrian and Turkish Foreign Ministries, they signed 47 trade agreements.

This Turkish-Syrian rapprochement is not limited to economic issues. It is a strategic realignment. As Assad's spokeswoman Buthaina Shaaban explained to Iran's Arabic-language al-Alam television channel, "We are working to establish close ties between Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq so these countries can act as one regional bloc in order to promote peace, security and stability in the Middle East, while keeping the West's dictates and lust for the region's natural and oil resources at bay."

(Read full article)
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