Whither Israel?

It’s the same old same old: supporters of a cause putting more energy and passion into the cause than the leaders they’re rooting for. Thus Israel’s friends are backing it all the way in the important project of defeating and destroying Hezbollah, while, as Caroline Glick notes at Jewish World Review,

… Israeli leaders from Olmert to Defense Minister Amir Peretz to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have been demonstrating a disturbing lack of resolve. Their statements expose a consistent watering down of the goal of the IDF’s mission in Lebanon—from destroying Hizbullah as a fighting force to weakening it as a fighting force and “paving the way for a diplomatic settlement” that will apparently include Hizbullah.

While it’s possible Olmert will in the end act decisively (we can always hope), I personally expect nothing good of him. Ever since he let the odious Ted Koppel slap him down on the Charlie Rose show a few years ago I had Olmert marked as a weakling. And of course Olmert is also the “leader” who said in a speech in New York in June 2005:

We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors.

Experience tells us that a man who could speak this way—about the Palestinians of all people—is beyond help. Where, then, does that leave us? In a parliamentary system (and Olmert, regardless of how he was elected, is still a prime minister and not a president), when the government’s policy disastrously fails, the government steps down and is replaced. Instead, Olmert, the man who succeeded Sharon in leading Israel into its currently weak position, is now the one who is supposed to lead Israel out of it. Again, forgive me for being skeptical.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 25, 2006 11:01 PM | Send