My enthusiasm for Meir Dagan’s blasts at the Netanyahu-Barak government has faded; I’m afraid the just-retired Mossad chief is going to end up a voice in the wilderness soon enough. (Late last week he raised his voice again, louder this time, saying that bombing Iran would be catastrophic, calling for acceptance of the Saudi peace initiative, describing the country’s leaders as aimless, reckless and irresponsible, and warning that there’s no adult around now to rein them in. All true, of course.)
What’s missing in Israel is the political will to pick up the gauntlet Dagan is throwing down; it’s not there in the government, of course, but also not in Kadima, nor in the public, either. The stagnation in this country is too thick. Bibi and Barak are keeping silent while their hatchetmen accuse Dagan of speaking out of turn, all of them waiting for the echoes from his words to die down. Since no major public figures are joining ranks with him, and there’s no shift in public opinion, the echoes should die down quickly.
So I’m afraid the Palestinians are still on their own in trying to solve the conflict; no help from America, none from Israel, either, although I give Dagan credit for trying. It says something pretty bleak about the desire for change in this country when the number one change agent, by far, is the former head of the Mossad, a protege of Sharon’s from the old days – and even he can’t light a spark anywhere but in the media.
Larry Derfner
Dimi
I think (or maybe it is just “hope”) that this Dagan phenomenon will fizzle out quickly. Obviously he is maneuvering for a place in the Kadima party, but there are already several failed generals and security people ahead of him in line…Mofaz, Halutz, Dichter, Peri.
The days of the “hero-general” coming into politics to save Israel are long over . The last really successful operation of the IDF was the Entebbe raid in 1976, 35 years ago. Much of the population can’t remember it and they don’t look on generals as saints-saviours as they once were. The record of Israeli generals in politics is one long list of disastrous failures. Generals make poor politicians because they come from a world where you boss people around to a world where you have to convince people to do what needs to be done (Eisenhower was a notable exception, but he already started out as a “politician-general”).
Let’s look at the record:
Rabin’s first term was uniformly viewed as a failure. His second term led to economic irresponsibility and the massive increase in terrorism resulting from the Olso Agreements which were foisted on him against his will.
Mofaz was in charge when the massive suicide bomber campaign started. He allowed one of his men to bleed to death while they were working on business deals with Jibril Rajoub. Mofaz also says one day before he jumps to Kadima “I will NEVER leave my home in the Likud”. His word means absolutely nothing.
Dichter–same thing, massive loss of life while he was head of the SHABAK. At least he apologized for his failures.
Halutz-disastrous Lebanon II war,
Peri-same deterioriation in security due to Oslo agreements.
One failure after another.
Maybe Dagan did a good job but a man whose whole life is cloak-and-dagger is NOT going to be able to adjust himself to a world where liquidating your rivals is a real option.
I need to add to the list Barak whose list of failure is too long to be repeated here, but recent ones were the Turkish flotilla fiasco. He took a party that had 20-some seats in the Knesset and drove it down to 5 or 8, depending on how you want to look at it.
Regarding Sharon, well, you no doubt love him. The Left has forgiven him for Sabra and Shatilla and the thousands of men killed and wounded for nothing in the Lebanon I. The reason he is forgiven, and even called the “second greatest Prime Minister after Ben-Gurion” is because he destroyed Gush Katif. He was also thought to have destroyed the Likud, but in retrospect he didn’t do that, but he did destroy the Labor Party. I view what he did as a massive betrayal. History will have to decide the matter. I have no doubts what the verdict will be..another failed general-turned-politician.
I don’t see how the leadership of the former Irgun terrorists Begin and Shamir and that of the former IDF captain Netanyahu has been any better.
Without going into all my disagreements with the above, which would take us into 2017, I don’t think anybody’s talking about Dagan going into politics – except for Netanyahu’s off-the-record flacks, pathetic liars that they are.
My criterion for whether an Israeli politician is successful is based primarily on one thing:
THE WELL-BEING OF THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY
“Making peace” does not contribute to the well-being of the citizens if it means there are massive terrorist attacks or that the lives of the citizens of a whole region of the country are turned into hell because of endless rocket attacks.
Rabin was a failure because there was a terrible deterioration in the security situation during his reign. He was hated by all the Labor Party voters I knew at the time. There was also an economic crisis.
I know the Left really can work themselves into paroxyms of hate against Netanyahu, but his terms as Prime Minister had the best security situation since the Oslo disaster was foisted on Israel.
Begin is a whole stroy unto himself. I am not defending his term as PM. Shamir was quite successful according to my criterion, though.
Regarding Sharon, yes, when he decided finally act against the terrorism and its infrastructure, it was done successfully. However, he waited a full year while the population of Israel was being terrorized and thousands of people were killed or injured simply to make President Bush and Shimon Peres (who gave the final go-ahead for Operation Homat Magen) like him by sitting on his hands and making ignorant statements like “what I see from here is not what you see from there”, or “restraint is strength” or “Gush Katif is like Tel Aviv”. This is a gross dereliction of duty and I do not forgive him for it.
Is a nation’s morality part of its well-being? Is the way it treats other nations part of its well-being? The leaders of apartheid South Africa saw their nation as white South Africa, that’s who elected them, and until the mid-80s, white South Africa lived like kings under its leaders, with prosperity and security to no end. But those leaders were were grossly immoral, so in my view (and not just mine) they were gross failures, and they would remain so even if white South Africa were still living in prosperity and security under apartheid today. As far as I’m concerned, the same goes for Israel’s post-67 leaders who sought to strengthen the occupation, which is not strictly apartheid, but which is a close relation, and which, at any rate, is grossly immoral.
Making “peace agreements” with terrorists like Arafat is GROSSLY immoral, and can’t work in any event, as we have seen.
Security is not an “off/on” polarity, either you are cruel and suppressive or humane and exposed.
Many of the suppressive features of Israeli policy towards Palestinians are structured as bargaining chips, so that Israel has something to exchange in a haggle (er, negotiation).
If to be a good neighbor, a prerequisite is health for the Palestinian community, then to unilaterally install suppressive features that diminish their current and prospects of community health, is counter-productive.
There are a few orientations of relationship:
1. Unconditional friend. We are kin. Your suffering is my suffering.
2. Conditional friend. We are neighbors. If you treat me well, then I will treat you well. If you treat me poorly, I will treat you poorly.
A. I trust you. I will err on the side of “gullibility” in an effort to retain our trust.
B. I distrust you. I will err on the side of caution, in an effort to ensure that our agreements remain.
3. Unconditional enemy – I more than distrust you. I will never consider reconciling with you, no matter what you do, say.
If politicians, statesmen, presidents, generals, media people and a whole host of others have proved unable to move the matter forward to any great extent, then what hope is there for anyone else to do so?
Perhaps, as touched upon here, the real problem is this.
None of us are willing to line up behind whatever person, plan or proposition can salvage something, anything from so deep an abyss as the one we’re in now. This same abyss has imprisoned and held us fast for generations. Its walls have become so high even the most powerful in the land can no longer contemplate scaling its heights.
If such be the case, then it may be that our sense of perspective has played us false. Instead of looking up at the towering walls that seem to surround us, we should be viewing the entire panorama from a much higher altitude, reducing it to proportions which make it appear smaller, more manageable, far easier to deal with than present conditions would allow.
Like most things in this life, the answer, when it is found, is often so simple that the only wonder is why no one had thought of it before.
Dagan has no chance, and either do the other former generals, former heads-of-Mossad, etc., who warn Israel of the peril of refusal to make a just peace. Human nature and the mechanized form of human nature (money-controlled politics and media) make sensible progress impossible.
Nations (governments and media and public) are sometimes motivated by unreasonable fear (which accounts, in part, for Israel’s behavior) or by unreasonable complaisance (as the USA and much else of the world is w.r.t. to climate change). Horrible, dreadful disaster may actually face people (climate change) and they do nothing. Or chimeras of dreadful danger may “face” a nation (as the USA after 9/11) and with no difficulty at all, the political class goes off into multi-trillion-dollar and apparently endless war (as Israel has also chosen, on an appropriately smaller scale, since perhaps before 1948).
The enormous cost of fighting climate change, which should be done, is far less than the enormous cost of fighting terrorists endlessly, which should not be done (especially where making peace is a cheaper and more moral alternative).
Shed a tear for the (possibly soon to be late) mankind.
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