Is the growing apathy apparent in both the US and Israel in the face of mounting threats further evidence that we are very close to the end of the present age described in the Bible? Continue reading »

A senior Israeli general on Monday confirmed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are training for a full-scale war with Syria, and that plans have been laid for a swift victory. But in the event of a conflagration, will Israel’s leadership allow those plans to be implemented? Continue reading »

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As I read the latest news reports sitting here at the mall in Jerusalem, it suddenly hits me how close we are to a major regional war.

And I am not talking about a semi-isolated flare-up with Syria and/or Hezbollah. I am talking about all-out war engulfing the entire region.

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Senior Israeli defense officials and politicians are trying their best to downplay talk of war with Syria in the coming year.

But their words tend to ring hollow amid the contrary assessments and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s order to the IDF to prepare for war just in case.

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The globally-acclaimed ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in and around Gaza is death in disguise for the residents of southern Israel. And it’s not even a very good disguise, nor is it a new one.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insists Israel is strong enough to take the chance and see if this time will be different:

“Israel is a strong country which can allow itself to have the strength to both fight and to also show restraint and to give the ceasefire the possibility to succeed.”

Later, Olmert told reporters:

“All of these things ultimately could lead to one thing – the opening of serious, real, open and direct negotiations between us so that we can move forward towards a comprehensive agreement between us and the Palestinians.”

Right. And who pays the price when you are wrong? The same people who have been paying the price for these ludicrous policies for more than a decade now, that’s who.

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Jerusalem Post columnist Evelyn Gordon has composed an excellent and clear argument why Israel does in fact have a military solution to escalating rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, despite claims to the contrary by Israel’s political leadership.

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Israel’s failures in its month-long war with Hizb’allah continue to mount. As the fighting came to a sudden halt under a UN-imposed ceasefire, it was clear that Hizb’allah had not suffered a crushing blow, was still capable of firing missiles into Israel, and would not release two abducted IDF soldiers.

But, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared, at least Israel had created the conditions for forcing the removal of Hizb’allah as a fighting force from southern Lebanon and its eventual disarmament by the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers.

Unsurprisingly, Israel has now admitted that those achievements were nothing but smoke and mirrors. According to The Jerusalem Post, Israel’s current leadership has resigned itself to the fact that Hizb’allah can’t and won’t be disarmed by Beirut or the UN, and that its deep roots in southern Lebanon make its removal from the area impossible.

Israel’s new focus: making sure an arms embargo on Hizb’allah is fully implemented so that the group cannot replenish its arsenal of long-range offensive weapons.

As it becomes increasingly clear that Lebanon and the UN are not going to use armed force to prevent Syrian shipments to Hizb’allah, it is only a matter of time before that achievement, too, falls by the wayside.

It would seem natural that the more powerful of two opposing forces would dominate the cycle of escalation in any conflict between the two. But Israel’s just-ended war with Hizb’allah - fought in a world of up-to-the-minute newscasts and political considerations - has discredited that theory.

Every new Israeli move in the war was immediately met by a Hizb’allah escalation - Haifa was hit for the first time; then Tiberias; then the Jezreel Valley; then Hadera. And just the threat of escalating the conflict by launching long-range missiles at Tel Aviv is certain to have affected Israel’s decision making.

To one degree or another, Hizb’allah’s escalation capabilities helped to shape the way Israel fought this war. Hizb’allah effectively employed strategic deterrence against Israel.

Israel must turn this situation around if it is to have any chance of scoring a decisive victory in the next round. Israel, not Hizb’allah, must dominate the escalation cycle.

Failing to take this lesson to heart will only further whet the Islamic world’s appetite for Israel’s demise, which more and more voices are saying is just around the corner after the debacle in Lebanon.

Having been on the frontlines of or in a position of national leadership during every one of Israel’s major and minor wars with the Arab world, Ariel Sharon was largely recognized as the father of the Jewish state’s doctrine of strategic deterrence.

But Sharon was the last of his generation, and today’s leaderhip appears more concerned with perceived diplomatic successes than with maintaining that deterrence. Continue reading »