The two people most responsible for the fact that the Nation of Israel cannot sleep soundly at night are Former PM Ehud Barak and present PM Binyamin Netanyahu. They really do not have to leak secret information about each other, as they did the other week, for us to understand that. Both of them are the greatest security catastrophes that Israel has ever known.
When Ehud Barak was prime minister, he caved in to (former radio broadcaster and current Labor party MK) Shelly Yechimovitz and The Four Mothers movement. The Four Mothers was a leftist movement that advocated complete retreat from Lebanon, where Israeli forces were on constant alert to keep terrorists and missiles away from Israel’s borders. Yechimovitz used her popular talk show at Israel’ public service radio to push the Four Mothers’ agenda on a daily basis. In a populist move, Ehud Barak ordered the IDF to flee the security strip it had been maintaining in southern Lebanon, abandoning Israel’s allies there to the “mercy” of Hizbullah, and leaving valuable military equipment to be scooped up by the terrorists.
This jaw-dropping move made Barak the hero of the leftist (public service) media, but triggered a complete strategic collapse. The number of Israeli dead since that retreat (in goalless Israeli military incursions into Lebanon) is much greater than the fatalities we suffered prior to the hasty retreat. Even more threatening, 150,000 missiles are now looming over Israel from the territory it abandoned. Some of them are precision guided, aimed at every strategic site in Israel. Strategically, this is a greater threat to Israel than the Iranian atomic bomb.
This is not the only catastrophe that Barak brought upon Israel. In addition to the military catastrophes, recordings prove that Barak destroyed the entire military purchase system. It is no longer possible to know what considerations motivate the weapons purchases that build the IDF. An excellent example of this is Israel’s major F35 fighter jet purchase. The high price of the plane is the inverse reflection of its capabilities. The jet, for example, cannot reach Iran with an effective payload.
The Iranian nuclear bomb is a fact that will be chalked up to PM Binyamin Netanyahu. Despite all my warnings over the years, including while I was a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee – Netanyahu insisted on a strategy that was predicated on making glorious speeches – and passing the responsibility for dealing with the Iranian threat to the U.S.
As soon as Netanyahu gave the keys to Obama, the result was already written on the wall. At that point, he could no longer complain about the direction that the U.S. president chose to take. Obviously, the international legitimacy for an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran has been totally obliterated. And even if Iran fulfills all its commitments (clearly it will not), the accords themselves stipulate that at the end of the time period of the agreement, Iran will be completely free to complete the construction of the bomb.
Without leadership with vision, Israel flounders from one crisis to the next. The time has come for authentic Jewish leadership for our country.