I woke up this morning in a bad mood.

I happened to bump in to Avi Abelow and I told him that Israel should completely evacuate Sderot, and no soldier should go into Aza to die in vain.

(If you recall, Avi Abelow was a conscientious objector who refused to go into Lebanon for soldiers to die for no reason, when it became clear to him that Olmert wasn’t sending them in to win.)

Olmert and Barak have made it clear that if Israel goes in, it is for “regime change” - handing over Gaza to Abbas and the PA terrorists.

Abbas has made it clear that once he has enough strength he will attack Israel.

While Livni pooh-poohs those statements as “for internal consumption only”, I am hard pressed to accept that when it comes to examining historically whom the Arabs lie to with statements like these, it has consistently been to Israel and the West, not to their own people.

Furthermore, if Olmert and crew pooh-pooh’s Abbas’s statement of his planned destruction of Israel, we might as well ignore Iran’s as pure posturing.

The whole reason terrorism in Judea and Samaria is unable to rise above a certain level is not because of Abbas and the PA (who are active participants in the terror), but because the IDF and the settlements are there controlling the territory.

The second the IDF pulls out, either Hamas takes over and starts shooting missiles, or the PA starts shooting missiles because it will finally be in a position of strength.

But my point was this. If the whole mission into Gaza is not to win, completely destroy the terrorist infrastructure and stay there, then our soldiers will go in and die in vain.

In fact, the war with Hizbollah will start within 24 hours of our joining the war in Gaza as active participants, and Olmert still isn’t prepared to call our current situation a war, so he will continue to make the same mistakes as in Lebanon, with even worse results.


Avi surprised me and told me I was looking at it all wrong.

First he mentioned that he gets called up by the Army every 6 weeks for a meeting.

They are begging him to come back to his unit. The officers he talks with at these meetings even “hypothetically” admit he was right that they were being sent to pointlessly die and not win, but they want him back.

They claim the entire battalion is in a state of “anarchy” because every soldier there knows that Avi was correct. Avi’s return would indicate that things are now right and the government won’t be sending them to die in vain. They are afraid that the soldiers won’t go and die to keep Olmert in office and keep the terrorists in power. They may be right.

Avi of course tells that nothing has changed, as it hasn't

They even “hypothetically” agree (as they can’t agree officially), but keep begging him to return to fix the situation by his mere presence. (Whether you agree with him or not, that by the way is the power of one man with principles, and that could be any of us, if we are willing to take a stand).


Anyway, Avi said I was looking at this all wrong.

The soldiers should go into Gaza, and they should make it clear that they aren’t leaving.

True, there are practical issues here such as how to implement this realistically, but that is something that the government will be forced to work out if the soldiers do this.

The soldiers should make it clear they are there to stay and do the job right.

In fact, officially, the army’s ideal plan at the moment is to return to their strategic positions in Gaza before the Expulsion (the government doesn’t like that ideal plan) as that is the best way they feel they can prevent the terrorism short of expelling the local population.

At this point, it is now up to the people.

If the people reject Dichter, Barak, and Olmert and say you were obviously wrong with the disengagement, you are obviously wrong about Abbas, and you are obviously wrong about how to defend Israel, and we demand the job be done right… quite possibly we can make this happen.

What do you think?