A far cry from Ben-Gurion. The war has united the Israeli public – in its distrust for leaders who act without thinking.
Never has a new government with a line-up of fresh faces and ambitious goals been entangled in so many foolish affairs within such a short span of time as that of Ehud Olmert:
- a president suspected of sexual harassment;
- an environmental affairs minister accused of election bribery;
- a justice minister facing charges of indecent behaviour;
- a chief of staff who liquidated his stock portfolio two hours before the war;
- a defence minister who wasn’t aware of any missile threat; and
- a prime minister who raced into war without due consideration of its justness and consequences.
Much has been said and written
- about the wisdom of launching a full-scale war instead of making do with a retaliatory operation after the kidnapping of two soldiers;
- about the first Israeli government to allow its citizens to be bombarded by 4,000 missiles from a terrorist organisation;
- about a million Israeli refugees making a beeline from north to south;
- about the tremendous loss of life and property.
Who would have imagined, with all our military might, that we would not be victorious in a war where Israel was Goliath and Hizbullah was David?
Blindly, without thinking, Israel volunteered to leap for the second time into the Lebanese bog. With an army of reserve soldiers sitting there until the multinational force arrives, it’s only a matter of time before Hizbullah creeps out of its lair and batters us with roadside bombs and suicide bombers.
At the moment, it doesn’t feel like things are under control. It is far from certain that the Olmert administration has an agenda that will allow it to survive another three-and-a-half years in office. What we do know, sizing up this war, is that the government operated backward. First it acted, and then it sat down to think.
David Ben-Gurion used to shut himself up for days before important decisions. Rather than look before you leap, the Olmert administration was guided by the opposite principle: leap before you look. The bombastic threats against the enemy, the promises of a new Middle East, the talk about disarming Hizbullah and ending the rocket fire – it was more a shot in the dark than a premeditated plan.
The outcome of the war has exposed our weak points. Apart from President Bush, who says we won, our overuse of air power and the huge damage we inflicted on Lebanon and Lebanese infrastructure have prompted the world to change its mind about the justification of our actions. Hizbullah survived with most of its arsenal intact, and can always count on its patrons to replenish it. That, and the fact that it stands a good chance of becoming part of the Lebanese establishment and winning the elections, has prompted Assad Jr to rattle his sabre.
Israel is still toying with the dangerous idea of bumping off Hassan Nasrallah. When his predecessor, Abbas Musawi, was assassinated, Hizbullah blew up a major Jewish centre in Argentina, and we were saddled with an heir who is wilier by far.
In the old days, when a Jewish mother wanted to brag about her son, she would say he had the head of a cabinet minister. Today, it might be grounds for libel. With a million refugees wandering the country, millions of dollars of economic damage and the trauma of thousands of missiles hitting our homes, there is no question that the public is going to rethink its trust in a government that indulges in such hasty decision-making. With so many questions in the air and a political tsunami on the way, it’s time to get set for early elections.
· Yoel Marcus is a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, where a longer version of this article first appeared Haaretz.com
Yoel Marcus
Saturday August 19 2006
My TAGS:- Lebanon.2nd.Wr Israel politics corruption Olmert step.aside president sex crimes Defence Minister 2006 :Guardian history
David Ben-Gurion
(born David Grün 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the first Prime Minister of Israel. Ben-Gurion’s passion for Zionism, which began early in life, culminated in his instrumental role in the founding of the state of Israel. After leading Israel to victory in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Ben-Gurion helped build the state institutions and oversaw the absorption of vast numbers of Jews from all over the world. Upon retiring from political life in 1970, he moved to Sde Boker, where he lived until his death.
In 1946 Ben-Gurion agreed that the Haganah could cooperate with Menachem Begin’s Irgun in fighting the British. Ben-Gurion initially agreed to Begin’s plan to carry out the 1946 King David Hotel bombing, with the intent of embarrassing the British military stationed there. However, when the risks of mass killing became apparent, Ben-Gurion told Begin to call the operation off; Begin refused.
In September 1947 Ben Gurion reached a status quo agreement with the Orthodox Agudath Israel party. He sent a letter to Agudat Israel promising that the Shabbat would be Israel’s official day of rest, there would be no civil marriages, and the Orthodox sector would be granted autonomy in the sphere of religious education.
Ben Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. In the Israeli declaration of independence, he stressed that the new nation would “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or gender.” During the first weeks of Israel’s independence, he ordered all militias to be replaced by one national army, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). To that end, Ben-Gurion gave the order to fire on the Altalena, a ship carrying arms purchased by the Irgun (also called Etzel). The destination of those arms is unclear. That command remains controversial to this day.
During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War Ben-Gurion oversaw the nascent state’s military operations.
Comment by ratcatcher2 — September 29, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
1948 War and the Palestinian exodus
As head of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion was de-facto leader of Israel’s Jews even before the state was declared. In this position, Ben-Gurion played a major role in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the resulting Palestinian exodus. In recent years New Historians have argued that in this capacity he personally ordered expulsions of Palestinian-Arab communities.
In a study published in 1988 and revisited in 2003 and 2008, Benny Morris studied the events that lead to the Palestinian exodus. Among the different causes, he suggests that Ben Gurion and the Haganah leadership began expelling Arab civilians in March-April 1948 in an effort to remove hostile Palestinian-Arab towns and villages from Jewish controlled areas before the start of the Arab invasion which was expected when the British left in May. In an interview with Ha’aretz in 2003, Morris affirmed that Ben Gurion had probably ordered the expulsion of Palestinians from Lydda and from villages attacked during Operation Hiram in October 1948.
According to Shabtai Teveth Ben-Gurion envisaged a unitary Jewish state, even at the cost of expelling Arabs. He concludes that it had always been Ben-Gurion’s deepest conviction that the Arabs would only come to terms with Zionism when Jewish strength compelled respect. According to Morris Shabtai Teveth and Anita Shapira ‘argued that the Zionist leadership – including Ben-Gurion – had never supported the idea of transfer and had never taken the idea seriously, and that, therefore, there was no connection between the occasional propagation of the idea in the late 1930s by the British in the Peel Commission’s report and what happened to the Palestinians in 1947-1949′
Comment by ratcatcher2 — September 29, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Prime Ministership
Ben-Gurion led Israel during its War of Independence. He became Prime Minister on May 14, 1948 and would remain in that post until 1963, except for a period of nearly two years between 1954 and 1955. As Premier, he oversaw the establishment of the state’s institutions. He presided over various national projects aimed at the rapid development of the country and its population: Operation Magic Carpet, the airlift of Jews from Arab countries, the construction of the National Water Carrier, rural development projects and the establishment of new towns and cities. In particular, he called for pioneering settlement in outlying areas, especially in the Negev.
In 1953 Ben-Gurion announced his intention to withdraw from government and settle in the Kibbutz Sde-Boker, in the Israeli Negev. He had a major role in the reprisal operations that lead to the Qibya massacre at the end of 1953. He returned to office in 1955 assuming the post of Defence Minister and later prime minister.
When Ben-Gurion returned to government, Israeli forces responded more aggressively to Palestinian guerilla attacks from Gaza – still under Egyptian rule. The growing cycle of violence led Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser to build up his arms with the help of the Soviet Union. The Israelis responded by arming themselves with help from France. Nasser blocked the passage of Israeli ships through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. On the 19th-20th July, 1956, America and Britain withdrew their offer to fund the Aswan High Dam project on the Nile and a week later Nasser ordered the nationalization of the French and British controlled Suez Canal.
Ben-Gurion collaborated with the British and French to plan the 1956 Sinai War in which Israel stormed the Sinai Peninsula thus giving British and French forces a pretext to intervene in order to secure the Suez Canal. Intervention by the United States and the United Nations forced the British and French to back down and Israel to withdraw from Sinai in return for promises of free navigation through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. A UN force was stationed between Egypt and Israel.
Ben-Gurion stepped down as prime minister for what he described as personal reasons in 1963, and chose Levi Eshkol as his successor. A year later a rivalry developed between the two on the issue of the Lavon Affair. Ben-Gurion broke with the party in June 1965 over Eshkol’s handling of the Lavon affair and formed a new party, Rafi which won ten seats in the Knesset. After the Six-Day War, Ben-Gurion was in favour of returning all the occupied territories apart from Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and Mount Hebron.
Comment by ratcatcher2 — September 29, 2008 @ 4:38 pm
The Lavon Affair
refers to the scandal over a failed Israeli covert operation in Egypt known as Operation Susannah, in which Israeli military intelligence planted bombs in Egyptian, American and British-owned targets in Egypt in the summer of 1954. It became known as the Lavon Affair after the Israeli defence minister Pinhas Lavon, who was forced to resign because of the incident, or euphemistically as the Unfortunate Affair. Israel admitted responsibility in 2005 when Israeli President Moshe Katzav honoured the nine Egyptian Jewish agents who were involved.
Operation Susannah
In the early 1950s the United States initiated a more activist policy toward Egypt often in contrast with British policies. Fearing this policy would remove a moderating effect on Egyptian President Nasser’s military ambitions, especially toward Israel by encouraging Britain to withdraw its military forces from the Suez Canal, Israel first sought to influence this policy through diplomatic means but was frustrated.
In the summer of 1954 Colonel Binyamin Gibli, the chief of Israel’s military intelligence, Aman, initiated Operation Suzannah in order to reverse that decision. The goal of the Operation was to carry out bombings and other acts of sabotage in Egypt with the aim of creating an atmosphere in which the British and American opponents of British withdrawal from Egypt would be able to gain the upper hand and block the withdrawal.
The top-secret cell, Unit 131, which was to carry out the operation, had existed since 1948 and under Aman since 1950. At the time of Operation Susannah, Unit 131 was the subject of a bitter dispute between Aman and Mossad over who should control it.
Unit 131 operatives had been recruited several years before, when the Israeli intelligence officer Avram Dar arrived in Cairo undercover as a British citizen of Gibraltar called John Darling. He had recruited several Egyptian Jews who had previously been active in illegal emigration activities and trained them for covert operations.
Aman decided to activate the network in the spring of 1954. On July 2, they firebombed a post office in Alexandria, and on July 14, they bombed the U.S. Information Agency libraries in Alexandria and Cairo and a British-owned theatre. The homemade bombs, consisting of bags containing acid placed over nitroglycerine, were inserted into books, and placed on the shelves of the libraries just before closing time. Several hours later, as the acid ate through the bags, the bombs would explode. They did little damage to the targets and caused no injuries or deaths.
Before the group began Israeli agent Avraham Seidenberg was sent to oversee the operations. Seidenberg assumed the identity of Paul Frank, a former SS officer with Nazi underground connections. Avraham Seidenberg allegedly informed the Egyptians resulting in the Egyptian Intelligence Service following a suspect to his target, the Rio Theatre, where a fire engine was standing by. Egyptian authorities prematurely arrested this suspect, Philip Natanson, when his bomb accidentally ignited prematurely in his pocket. Having searched his apartment, they found incriminating evidence and names of accomplices to the operation. Several suspects were arrested, including Egyptian Jews and undercover Israelis.
Colonel Dar and Seidenberg had managed to escape. One suspect was tortured to death in prison and Hungarian born Israeli Meir Max Bineth committed suicide. The trial began on December 11 and lasted until January 27, 1955; two of the accused (Moshe Marzouk and Shmuel Azar) were condemned to execution by hanging and two acquitted with the rest receiving lengthy prison terms. The trial was widely criticized as a show trial, and there were allegations that evidence had been extracted by torture.
In meetings with prime minister Moshe Sharett, secretary of defence Pinhas Lavon denied any knowledge of the operation. When intelligence chief Gibli contradicted Lavon, Sharrett commissioned a board of inquiry consisting of Israeli Supreme Court Justice Isaac Olshan and the first chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, Yaakov Dori that was unable to find conclusive evidence that Lavon had authorized the operation. Lavon tried to fix the blame on Shimon Peres, who was the secretary general of the defence ministry, and Gibli for insubordination and criminal negligence.
Sharett resolved the dilemma by siding with Peres, who along with Moshe Dayan testified against Lavon, after which Lavon resigned. Former prime minister David Ben-Gurion succeeded Lavon as minister of defense. A short time later, Sharett, who did not know about the operation in advance, and who had strongly denied Israel’s involvement, resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by Ben-Gurion.
Comment by ratcatcher2 — September 29, 2008 @ 5:24 pm