Two comments I read last week really struck me, unfortunately I can’t find the source at the moment, but it was probably in Haaretz or YNET.

The first was that Israel has a problem in Gaza because we don’t have an enemy like Nasrallah running the show with his finger on the trigger like we do with Hizbollah in Lebanon – because Nasrallah is a very responsible enemy.

The second comment was that our (government and IDF) leadership were surprised by the outbreak of events in Gaza after the disengagement. They thought things would follow the Lebanon model. Once we left Lebanon, Gaza broke out and (they claim) Lebanon was on a back burner. They expected that after we left Gaza, Gaza would go on a back burner, and the war in Judea & Samaria would break out!

What sick, demented thinking.

First of all, it is so typically Israeli with their short-term memory problems, that they already forgot the IDF soldiers kidnapped and murdered in Lebanon, the multiple attacks on the IDF positions (one time saved solely by a brave Hesder yeshiva boy), the Hizbollah UAV flights over Israel, the missiles launched into the Gallil, the multiple infiltration attempts, and so on.

But Israeli’s don’t count or remember failed attempts (where only a few people get killed), only successful results (lot of dead bodies) and only for a short period of time, and so as long as the IDF mostly foils the attacks, or the incident in question is over, well, then it never happened.

So I’ve learned not to expect more.

But it is the second statement that bothers me a bit more (though it shouldn’t at this point).

The article said that the Israeli leadership expected violence to break out in Judea & Samaria after (and as a result of) the Gaza deportation.

Did you catch that?

They expected it to happen as a result. They’re not hiding it. They expected it. Dare I say, even hoped for it, to give them an excuse for more deportations?

As a result they were bit on the gluteus maximum when they couldn’t forsee that Gaza would exactly follow the Lebanon model, and kidnappings would happen, and missiles would be launched, and infiltrations would be attempted, and terrorism would ensue.

But that’s only because they forgot that it continued from Lebanon with Nasrallah.

Left-Wingers Throw Rocks at Israeli Motorists

(IsraelNN.com) Left-wing Israelis and Palestinian Authority (PA) residents are hurling rocks at Israeli vehicles near el-Hader, on the Gush Etzion-Hevron Road.The protest surrounds continued construction on the partition barrier in the area.

Pesky Leftists. They didn’t prove to themselves with the Expulsion that they could outdo the Palestinians in their hatred, so now they simply decided to directly join forces with the enemy.

Note to self: Remember to take away their guns before the revolution.

When I hear Gaza, I keep thinking Vietnam.

Not like an Israeli leftist who thinks that we are simply embroiling ourselves in an unwinnable war or their idiocy that we need yet even more negotiations, but because the Left and the establishment are embroiling us in a war they don’t want to win.

Israel has now returned to liberate the exact same Jewish towns that 1,500 Jews were expelled from just one year ago. Why? Because the reach of the Kassam missile has been extended. Because disengagement failed.

And that is exactly the problem. The Left and the Government want to hide behind imaginary walls rather than address the core issues. Kassams landing too close, just move them further away (up to a point at least).

Thousands of Jews were kicked out of their homes where before there had been nothing but empty sand dunes.

Thousands of Jews were kicked out of their homes to create an imaginary separation between us and them.

And now we are back, simply pushing forward to our old positions, without addressing the core problem.

And until we address it, the current Israeli solutions will continue to be imaginary walls that impede nothing.

The expulsion may have succeeded but disengagement clearly failed.

It’s time the Left opened their eyes and looked at some solutions coming from the other side of the spectrum.

It looks like part of the occupation is (temporarily) ending for Northern Gaza.
In response to the attack on Ashkelon (which hit a school), the IDF will be recreating the Northern Gaza buffer zone.

Until 2005, Northern Gaza was the site that housed the Jewish communities of Dugit, Alei Sinai, and Nisasnit. Approximately 1,500 Jews lived in Northern Gaza, protecting middle Israel from Arab terrorism. Because of those 1,500 people, the 120,000 citizens of Ashkelon were able to sleep peacefully at night.

Because the government ripped those 1,500 people out of their homes, 120,000 citizens of Asheklon are now hostages to our lame duck government and Arab terrorism.

I’m hoping that this is the first step for our settlers to begin to return to their homes – though somehow I doubt it, Olmert still has more time to capitulate.

Beilin says: “There’s no military solutions to stop Kassams”
In reality: There’s no military solution that a leftwing government is prepared to authorize to stop kassams.

Problem: The PA is starving for cash.
Solution: Start a war with Israel.
Results: Arab League & Saudi Arabia transfer $100 million in aid to Palestinians (AP)

Peretz says, “The IDF will increase it’s pace”
Question: Aren’t we retreating fast enough?

Event: Olmert visits S'derot for the first time since the deportation.
Non-event: Olmert sneaked in for 15 minutes and then ran away. No one even knew he was there.

For the first time since the expulsion, Ehud Olmert has finally visited the town of S’derot, the recipients of Arab offerings since Sharon and Olmert decided to give away the house.

Fortunately for Ehud though, he doesn’t actually have to live in S’derot, and he doesn’t need to risk his life day in and day out or even for an hour.

Unlike what he expects from the residents of S’derot, Olmert is not willing to put his own life in superfluous danger so…

…Ehud Olmert snuck into S’derot and Ehud Olmert snuck out of Sderot.

Talk about cowardly leadership, though the real question is, was Olmert more afraid of the Arabs finding out he was there or the abused citizens of S'derot?

But can you imagine that despite the IDF positioned inside Gaza, Olmert is still afraid to openly go to S’derot, as they might shoot some Shmassams at him while he is there?

What is Olmert saying about his trust in the IDF, or in the actual mission he gave the IDF to fulfill (which wasn't to stop Kassams)?

Obviously, not much, because the Arabs happened to shoot a Kassam into the Negev while Olmert happened to be there.

But then again they shoot there without fear all the time, so that’s nothing new.

Some observations I’ve made that really aren’t going anywhere in this post.

Rather strange how much internal dissent there is these days. Sometimes a goal is clear and the path follows naturally, but sometimes the goal isn’t clear, but the path still is, or sometimes the goal is clear but the path isn't. Sometimes though you simply don’t which path will be more effective or less dangerous.

The Arabs, for instance, are just full of dissent.

They’re at war with everybody and everyone, in one way or another is at war with them.

But even internally they have dissent. Their most common disagreement being which is the best way to destroy Israel.

Even getting Hamas and Fatah to agree on the Prisoner’s document to plot a united strategy on how to destroy Israel led to further dissent.

And then we have the dissent within Hamas - two different sets of Hamas leaders striving to control the government and the strategy.

And all this of course leads us back to Israel.

Leaving out the Leftists not in the government (whether they want to be hurting the settlers, the religious, or the religion depends on which sect of secular they belong to), we have Olmert and Peretz openly fighting on how little to do in Gaza, and then we have the Security Forces openly disagreeing with Olmert and Peretz in that they (the security forces) want to do a lot more than either will let - never was there so open a disagreement as we have now.

We even have the IDF blowing up Palestinian electric power stations and then afterwards Olmert and Peretz promising to hook the Palestinians up (even further) directly to the Israeli grid - immediately (and obviously for free).

Unfortunately in the Orange Camp we have our dissenters too (but some of them seem to be being instigated from outside sources).

Ignoring the hypocritical (openly left) leftists that actually live in settlements (yes we have a few of those, and it is rather bizarre to hear someone openly advocating that not only is he is an occupier but he should be kicked out of his own home – I kid you not), you can’t go to shul on Shabbat without seeing the ideological war going on.

Someone (the government?) has been funding huge sums of money so certain “mamlachti” rabbis can publish these fancy, full size, glossy brochures and booklets they put out every week. Brochures that call for the settler population to remain passive, submissive and smiling(!) in the face of the destruction of their homes!

And finally now the Merkaz HaRav (and other) G’dolim have begunn to directly fight back against this subservient, compliant, yielding attitude that the government is trying to brainwash into the population through certain rabbis, and has started coming out in full force with their own flyers and booklets.

Ben Bayit alludes to it in his various posts.

But as one certain, very well known Mekaz HaRav Rabbi said, “Enough with the love, enough with the smiles, it’s time to be victorious”. – Amen!

Well, we still haven’t even achieved the unbelievably nominal goal as defined by Olmert (getting our soldier back), and Defense Minister Peretz is already opening the gates for Palestinian aid (yeah, yeah, the people aren’t our enemy, only the government these people overwhelmingly voted in to fight us is – I see the logic - not).

Meanwhile the Arabs dug a tunnel for nearly 3 months and nearly a kilometer long. Maybe the Shabak knew about it, maybe not (I’m gonna go with not), and we know (from after the fact) they have plenty of other tunnels they dug, so here we have all these tunnels under the fence, and we have all these missiles over the fence. When are people going to wake up and realize that this fence (and expelling Jews) isn’t the solution to the problem?

Well probably never, since 300 members of Yesh Gvul are protesting our trying to free our kidnapped soldier. They prefer we talk nicely with the same people that attacked, killed and kidnapped our people.

One of the side outcomes of Olmert’s pretend assault is that some former Gush Katifers have gone back in to see where their old homes stood.

One soldier reported that the Jewish towns they visited were still covered in layers of rubble (except for the shul’s edifice which is still standing). Another reports conversing with local Arabs that used to work in their greenhouse, and they were begging for the Jews to come back, because the other Arabs don’t treat them very well.

The Indian Defense Minister was due to visit Israel to discuss an upcoming huge weapons systems purchase.

Due to the Gaza situation he has delayed his visit.

Apparently he has become wary of Israeli military equipment, that after so many thousands of pounds of ordinance were deployed against Gazan targets they have resulted in only 1 dead terrorist.

He has begun to wonder if Israeli weapons technology is overrated.