Redstate

By haystack Posted in User Blogs — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I have promoted this blog before. Live From an Israeli Bunker is an excellent place to get real, down to earth, on-the-street coverage of the life experience the Israelis are going through in this war with Hezbollah. He has a post today that should be considered a MUST read if you want to understand what happened and what needs to happen going forward for Israel to get out from under all this Arab chest-thumping about recent events in South Lebanon.

Read on . . .

To start off today's piece, we have this:

Soldiers returning from the south of Lebanon have interesting things to say (via Ynet.co.il) - Following a couple of fighting days they asked for resupplies, they were told they will receive it but it didn't arrive. Exhaustion setting in they realized that they quickly need to find food or they will lose focus, so they entered houses in the village of A-tiiba and cooked for themselves, one scant meal a day for 12 days until they reached the Litani river and were given the order to turn back. For water they searched houses and added Chlorine to tap water.

I try to picture what would happen were American troops to be put in this situation. I wonder whether the local commanders would have been kept in charge as long as the Israeli commanders were. While much well-deserved blame has been placed on Olmert and the Generals he deployed for the initial invasion, I keep coming back to the lack of "moral support" anyone gave Israel from the moment their soldiers were kidnapped and killed. [Now, before y'all start barking at me about that, remember how many countries immediately criticized Israel for over-reacting, and remember how even the US and Britain were basically telling Israel to hurry up because there was going to be a lot of political fallout...so "just hurry up and git r' dun"...we got your back, but only for a couple weeks.]

This Israeli blogger has this to say:

Our current militarily inexperienced government held the army back, the army leadership is in teeters as well. Where are the generals? It's astonishingly irresponsible what went on there. I can understand trying to go out of their way to not hurt Lebanese civilians (that is very much the case, the military picture of what went on there is becoming more and more clear) but soldiers are not playthings, indecisiveness means casualties. Heads need to roll and there needs to be a shakeup, we cannot afford to have this repeat again in the next conflict which will in fact be worse.

I completely agree with this assessment, and given Syria's new promise to fight and defeat Israel in Golan as Hezbollah has done in Southern Lebanon, we must all get back to the reality that the war should NOT be allowed to be over until there is a clear and total defeat of Hezbollah; Israel can not afford to allow her terrorist neighbors ANY room to believe they have won or that they CAN win.

The folly of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, Text Here, must be recognized as the failure it was from its inception. It has already been publicly stated that Lebanon and the UNIFIL and French forces will NOT disarm Hezbollah, we know Syria is thinking she can beat Israel now that Hezbollah has, and Iran (having drawn out the timetable for what will ultimately be a "NO" on the bribes from the EU and others on their nuke programs) sees improved opportunites to "run the show" in the greater Middle East.

The Israel Defense Forces have Stopped their withdrawal, awaiting the Lebanese and International forces assigned to take up their positions. So, we have an equivalent Israeli occupation. We have a guarantee that 1701 will not be fully implemented. We have surrounding countries "more than likely" re-arming Hezbollah. Israel MUST get their Army in order. She MUST get her politicians on board and committed to round 2 (which is only a matter of when not whether), and the world must be given the straight facts on what is happening and who is the bad guy here. For that, we can not rely on the media. This continues to be a sad state of affairs, because their track record on this war to date leaves a great deal to be desired.

Our Israeli blogger gets the last word in this regard:

The media are also upto their same old tricks, Reuters photoshop and staged photos not enough? How about a BBC reporter out right lying! In a video that could have come straight from a Hezbollah's PR vault Barbara Plett claimed that the entire town of Bint Jbeil was destroyed. Luckily she wasn't the only reporter there, and cross referencing their reports reveals the truth. This from a country where just days ago a large terror plot was foiled meant to kill thousands of people and to be largely executed by homegrown (UK born) terrorists. Insanity.