Don Vladimir Putin makes another offer that can't be refused

Spot the Difference


Irwin Stelzer, a business adviser and director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute, has written a superb piece on Putin and Russia’s current modus operandi regarding its energy resources and general foreign policy which, basically, is in agreement with what I have written here, here, here and other places too, just do a search of the blog for "Russia".

The spark for this article is what is very likely to be the next forced sale by a foreign energy company of its assets in Russian energy. Last time it was Royal Dutch Shell which was forced to cede control of its $22 billion Sakhalin-2 natural-gas project to Gazprom, the state-owned Russian gas mega-company. This time it's British Petroleum (BP) who are being forced to give up their share of another gas-field.

As Stelzer comments, echoing my very words here, “Putin takes his inspiration from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather rather than Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and makes potential sellers offers they just can’t refuse”.

He also states that “Putin’s goal is not the mere profit maximisation that guides decision-making in market economies. It is to gain influence over the foreign policies of European countries and, to a lesser extent, America. He has already shown that he is willing to cut off gas to Europe, and cooperates with Opec to damage the American economy by keeping oil prices high”.

Read the whole article here

Racist U.K. University Union Boycotts Israeli Academia

The nefarious racists of Britian’s academic world have once again banded together to censure Israeli academia for the crime of being a particular nationality. The University and College Union (UCU) of Britain voted tonight (30.5.07) in favour of an academic boycott of Israel. Discrimination along lines of nationality is known formerly as racism so I hope they wear this tag proudly.

This boycott is not only racist but obviously rabidly anti-Semitic since Israeli academics and institutions are the only ones the British union boycotts. There are no boycotts of Russian academia for the killing of 200,000 civilians and other atrocities in Chechnya since 1994, no boycotts of Chinese academia for the deaths of an estimated 800,000 Tibetans since the Chinese occupation of the country in 1950 and the “cultural genocide” they have committed there. How about a boycott of Sudanese academia, if such a thing exists, due to the genocide in Darfur of perhaps 400,000 people and the mass atrocities there? Nope, no boycott for the war criminals of Khartoum either. Israel’s ‘crimes’ against the Palestinians are hundreds of times less serious than the aforementioned catastrophes and the UCU boycott illustrates a vile and, as noted, anti-Semitic double standard towards Israel.

Besides all this, boycotting academia is utterly unreasonable. Academics don’t decide government policy and demanding that all Israeli academics denounce government policy is plain and simple McCarthyism.

It’s hard to put into words the outrage I feel about this issue so I’ll just conclude by saying that once again, British academia has decided to compromise the exchange of knowledge and ideas in favour of their blinkered, anti-Semitic witch hunt. I seem to be saying this a lot recently, but shame on them, shame!

Letter to The Economist

Ok, I hope you don't think I'm obsessing, this is tthe second post in a row about the Economist but having read their "Briefing" on forty years on from the Six-Day War I had to write to them to let them know what I thought. Since they'll never publish it in a month of Sundays I thought I'd post it here. Unsurprisingly, I have not received a reply. Happy reading

------

Sir,

As you can see, this is a rather long letter, not intended for publication but simply to let you know the opinion of a reader regarding an article in the latest edition of The Economist (26 May, 2007). I would greatly appreciate a reply to some of the points I make.

I would simply like to address a number of issues raised in your article “Forty years on” and highlight what I feel are some problematic areas. I have dealt with my various concerns as they appeared in the article and not in a thematic manner.

Firstly, a most serious and fundamental matter. The article states that ‘the reunification of historic Palestine...under Israeli rule seemed to give the Palestinians a chance to get their own struggle for a state back on track’ (emphasis added). ‘Back on track’ implies that the Palestinians were already struggling to liberate what are now known as the ‘Occupied Territories’ before the Six Day War. But this is clearly not the case. There was no Palestinian national movement to liberate the West Bank from Jordan. Jordan was as much an ‘illegal occupier’ of that territory as Israel is today. The state of Transjordan captured the West Bank in the First Arab-Israeli war of 1947-1949 when it had no right or claim to that land whatsoever, yet there was a complete absence of either Palestinian or international pressure on Jordan to relinquish it in order to set up a sovereign state of Palestine for the Arabs living on the west bank of the Jordan river.

A smaller, yet significant point and one which illustrates the general problem of The Economist’s approach to reporting and commentating on the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the use, or lack thereof, of adjectives in this Briefing. Yasser Arafat is described as ‘a young engineer’, Nasser is given no description at all. However, Yitzchak Rabin is ‘hot-headed’ and Moshe Dayan is ‘hawkish’. The problem is clear.

While on the topic of nomenclature, I notice that the Palestinians engage in ‘armed struggle of some sort’ and ‘extremism’ while Israeli settlers and Palestinian combatants are both classed as ‘militants’, without any distinguishing adjectives. The word terrorist or terrorism is not used once in the whole Briefing, in keeping with The Economist’s standard policy regarding Palestinian violence, despite the fact that the term is employed by the publication in relation to the perpetrators of Islamist violence in Britain, al-Qaeda in general and other conflicts as well.

The article makes a dramatic, and in all probability, false assertion about the intentions of Nasser and the Arab states in their military escalation of April and May 1967 when it says of the war that it was prompted in Israel by ‘a misreading of the enemy’s intentions’. The article is clearly coming down in favour of one of the main historiographical opinions of the war that both sides stumbled into a conflict which neither really wanted. The other side of this historiographical conflict is that Nasser and the Egyptian leadership knew exactly what they were doing and thus sent 80,000 troops and 900 tanks into the Sinai, expelled the UN force patrolling the Egyptian-Israeli border, sent two MiG-21’s on a reconnaissance flight over Dimona and closed the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping in order to provoke a war with Israel which, it was believed, would be won quickly by the invading Arab armies. Anwar Sadat said that upon blockading the Straits of Tiran, Nasser declared that this action would increase the chances of war to one hundred percent. If this article sought to present the conflict in a neutral manner it would have been necessary to highlight some of these facts.

Another aside to the main issue of the Six-Day war tackled in the Briefing is the manner in which the article tags the 2006 Lebanon War as a ‘debacle’ from the Israeli point of view. The media generally overlooks the fact that the IDF estimates that it killed approximately 600 Hizballah guerrillas in just over a month of fighting and suffered 119 casualties in so doing. This 6 to 1 ratio would be enough to win many wars and had the fighting continued over several months the larger part of Hizballah’s army would have been destroyed with, in objective and unemotional terms, very little damage to the IDF as an effective fighting force. That the conflict was halted before this happened is due to both domestic Israeli and foreign pressure. The subsequent portrayal of the war as at best a ‘debacle’ and at worst a defeat for Israel is largely due to political considerations of both Israel’s external enemies and domestic critics.

The Briefing also directly compares Hamas to Israel’s settler movement (‘Hamas is to the Palestinians what the settlers are to Israel’) in religious terms. Unlike Hamas, however, Israeli settlers don’t perpetrate mass-murder bombings against Palestinian civilians or fire rockets indiscriminately at Palestinian towns. The comparison is highly offensive.

The article then boils down the conflict since 2000 to the usual ‘cycle-of-violence’ type analysis. Israel demands security first and Palestinians demand an end to the ‘occupation’ first and so the conflict perpetuates itself. The ‘occupation’, and its accompanying checkpoints, roadblocks and IDF incursions, was re-instated after the Palestinians launched the intifada in late 2000 as a means of protecting Israeli civilians from terrorist attack. Before that point, the Palestinian Authority directly administered forty percent of West Bank territory and ninety percent of the Palestinian population. The drastic decline in the political and economic fortunes of the Palestinian people is wholly attributable to the decision to take up arms once again against Israeli civilians.

The article carries on to state that ‘neither side has ever had a leadership willing to override those views’. This is simply wrong as Ariel Sharon did exactly that when he discarded the land-for-peace, bilateral strategy of the previous thirty-eight years of diplomacy and gave the Palestinians the Gaza strip without anything in return, especially security guarantees. The danger of this approach was subsequently highlighted (and Israel’s prior insistence on security guarantees before territorial concessions justified) by a huge increase in weapons smuggling into the Gaza strip from Egypt after the IDF relinquished control of that border, increased rocket fire into sovereign Israeli territory and the cross border attack by Hamas combatants on 25 June, 2006 in which Corporal Gilad Shalit was abducted and two Israeli soldiers were killed.

The Briefing also argues that economic conditions create ‘extremism’ when it states that the measures of IDF control over the West Bank ‘stifle the West Bank’s economy and drive even more Palestinians to extremism’. This assertion, frequently made by the media, is grossly misleading, if not completely false. There are numerous examples of Islamists who have perpetrated terrorist attacks and had not been reduced to abject poverty or oppressed by a brutal occupying regime. Such examples include, the members of the Hamburg cell who plotted the 9/11 attacks, the bombers who carried out the 7/7 atrocities, the would-be-bombers who tried to blow up a number of London Underground stations on 21 June, 2005, the conspirators who planned to use the 600kg of ammonium nitrate fertilizer they had acquired to commit terrorist outrages in Britain and numerous other cases. It is indoctrination and hatred that creates terrorism not economic conditions, otherwise how could affluent, middle-class Arabs living in a modern German city come to murder nearly three thousand innocent people? The assertion to the contrary is disingenuous to say the least.

The Briefing also states that the Saudi Peace Plan of 2002 was an admission of defeat by the Arab world by offering Israel ‘full normalisation of relations in return for full withdrawal from the territories captured in 1967’. The article fails to mention that this plan also states that the Palestinian refugee problem be solved in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194 which calls for the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel. Arab insistence on the ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian refugees remains a political and not a humanitarian demand aimed at nullifying the Jewish majority in the State of Israel, thereby destroying its Jewish character and thus the very aims and purposes of Zionism. Such a plan will never be acceptable to Israel and should not be portrayed as any deviation from the general Arab aims since 1947.

The problem with this Briefing, and The Economist’s approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict in general, is that it simply fails to balance its presentation of the complex issues of this struggle, which are overwhelmingly in favour of the Arab world, with the alternative Israeli perspective. In this article alone one, I have tried to point out the numerous instances when the alternative historical and political interpretation of events is simply whitewashed by The Economist’s political inclination. This attitude is so entrenched that the publication can not even bring itself to call the war by its most common name, the Six-Day War, as it alludes to the overwhelming Israeli victory and the defeat of not only the Arab armies but the failed and ideologically bankrupt regimes of the Arab world in the face of the resurgent, vibrant and newly-freed Jewish people. The Economist’s shortcomings in reporting and commentating on this crucial arena of international affairs is a stain on its reputation and, for the sake of the publication’s credibility, should be reviewed and amended to provide a more balanced perspective on this enduring and multi-faceted conflict.

Yours sincerely

The [extremely] Cantankerous Camel

He who controls the past controls the future

Quite typically, the Economist in its latest edition has written a highly favourable book review of a new revisionist work by Ha’aretz journalist Tom Segev about the build up to the Six-Day War. Segev claims in his book that “there was indeed no justification for the panic that preceded the war nor for the euphoria that took hold after it” and argues that Israel’s mad, gung-ho militaristic, Prussian-type Generals hijacked the decision making process and forced the politicians into a war they didn’t want. The Economist says of this book that “Mr Segev mixes a meticulous narrative with a shrewd analysis of the complex Israeli pysche” and that the work is “a marvellous achievement”.

Now it’s one thing to offer one’s opinion on a historical debate as the Economist does in this issue blaming Israel for failing to make peace with the Arab states after the war. It’s quite another to try to influence the historiography of an event by shamelessly promoting the view you agree with in a book review in order to have people by that book, read it, agree with it and thereby shape their views and the views of the intelligentsia in general. Frankly, this brazen attempt to manipulate history makes me sick and extremely angry. It is a particularly insidious, devious and underhand method of thought-control, worthy of an Orwellian dystopia.

Furthermore, as Michael Oren points out in a recent article in the Jerusalem Post, “the adversaries [of the historiographical struggle] are not merely vying for space on university bookshelves, but grappling with issues that have a profound impact on the lives of millions of people: Israel's security, the rights of Palestinian refugees, the future of Jerusalem”. He goes on to state that "the newly released Israeli diplomatic documents from the period leading up to June 5, 1967, offer overwhelming evidence against any suggestion that Israel sought war with the Arabs. Nor do the tens of thousands of papers so far declassified contain a single reference to any desire to divert public opinion from the economic situation, to overthrow Arab rulers or to conquer and occupy the West Bank, the Sinai or the Golan Heights".

The real purpose of the revisionist historians is to shape the current political and diplomatic situation. They are not just debating an abstract historical point, they are trying to assert real influence over the Israeli-Arab conflict in accordance with their own ideological and political views through the means of their distorted and purposefully slanted historical claims. Shame on them and shame on the Economist for promoting such manipulative, ideological obfuscation. The entire academic world, students, political commentators, journalists and general public should be on the highest alert for such outrages against history.

As Orwell himself wrote, “He who controls the past, controls the future; and he who controls the present, controls the past”. A salutary warning.

Somaliaza

Gaza’s descent into internecine violence is finally demonstrating to the world that basically, Gaza is a failed state before it’s even become a state, which must be some kind of record. Simply put, both political sides, Fatah and Hamas, now care for little else other than power, over and above their care for the people they are supposed to represent. When this happens what you get is civil war as exemplified in places such as Somalia since the early 1990’s, Afghanistan after the Russians left in 1989, Angola in the 70’s and so on. In this case, the Palestinian people were stupid enough to actually choose Hamas themselves at the ballot box, so they only have themselves to blame, although I can’t help feeling rather sorry for the desperate situation they now find themselves in.

What the resolution is I have no idea. I don’t see the merit in the IDF going in to Gaza to help Fatah against Hamas since the numerous branches of Fatah, such as the Al Aqsa Martyr Brigades, are as active as Hamas in firing Qassams from Gaza and planning suicide bombings from the West Bank. Abbas is so weak and has such little power over all the various factions of even his own party that Israel would simply be wasting its time, money and most importantly its soldiers lives trying to assure the ascendancy of Fatah in the strip as the different Fatah factions would continue to fire the rockets whatever Abbas would say once Israel left. A large ground invasion would temporarily halt the rocket fire but once the IDF troops left, which would be a necessity, the Qassam fire would very quickly return.

No solutions from the Camel then, not sure if the Penguin has any answers, perhaps he’ll let us know.

Camel, out.

Russia Bullies Another Neighbour

As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, particularly in this article, Russia’s behaviour under Vladimir Putin has often resembled a vengeful mob boss, employing financial blackmail to get what he wants, breaking legs when things don’t go his way, flat out assassinating problematic people who won’t keep quiet and occasionally indulging in a good old blood bath to remind everyone who’s in control and not to mess about with the Godfather.

Well this time poor old Estonia has copped it good and proper. On 27 April, Estonian authorities moved a statue known as the Bronze Soldier, from a square in the capital Tallinn and relocated it to a military cemetery outside the city. The statue commemorates Soviet troops killed fighting the Nazis during WWII but many Estonians consider it to be an unpleasant reminder of five decades of Soviet occupation.

In response the Kremlin stirred up the ethnic Russian minority in Estonia which led to riots in Tallinn, allowed the Estonian embassy in Moscow to be blockaded by an angry mob and the Estonian Ambassador was physically threatened by pro-Kremlin youth groups at a news conference. Most astonishingly, a concerted campaign of cyber-attacks has been carried out against Estonian websites originating from Russia. These attacks have knocked down government, business and media websites in the country. The Estonian Defence Minister stated that they had tracked the initial attacks to Russian IP addresses and that instructions in Russian had been spread on the web explaining how to jam Estonian websites.

These reprehensible actions illustrate perfectly the ugly character of Russia’s foreign policy. Moscow is behaving like a brutish thug, smacking down anyone who dares displease her. The gangster-style punishments the Kremlin meets out these days need to be addressed and vociferously condemned, with threats of economic consequences if this type of behaviour continues. Sadly, the European’s craven need for Russian gas seems to preclude any such possibility.

Joke of the Year: Zimbabwe to head UN Sustainable Development Commission

As is pointed in this Times editorial, that Zimbabwe has been appointed to head the UN Sistainable Development Commission, largely due to other African nations voting for them, is an utter disgrace and highlights the terrible flaws in the UN system. That a country with 4000% inflation can be appointed to lead this Commission is a ludicrous joke.

Mr Mugabe has recklessly destroyed its once-thriving agricultural sector, forcing out not only white farm owners but also 350,000 of their black farm-workers and handing much of the land not to the landless, but to cronies who have let it go to waste.

Millions of malnourished families now rely on food aid – aid that the regime uses as a weapon of political intimidation. As officially measured by the prices of controlled goods, inflation is 2,200 per cent; the real rate is double that appalling figure. The environmental consequences of misrule are acute. With electricity now rationed to four hours a day and cooking fuel unaffordable, even where it is available, people are raiding forests for firewood. Wildlife poaching is rampant in the national parks that are the mainstay of Zimbabwe’s tourism. Unemployment is 80 per cent and life expectancy is down from 60 in 1990 to 35. Talent has fled the country and few but the Chinese are prepared to invest there...

...That Zimbabwe insisted on its “right” to the post is no surprise; but for the 12 other African governments on the Commission to have chosen Zimbabwe to take Africa’s “turn” for the rotating chairmanship is a disgrace for which each one of them must be held to account. They have failed Africa.

Calling for Backup

Ok, so the Camel may have the hump, but the boys in black and white aren't done yet.

Point 1) the argument about ground troops earlier or later is not as straight forward as it sounds. We all know, our soldiers did well and did kill a fair number of the Hizbollah, but we also know that our ground troops had a very tough time against Hizbullah in their bunkers. Going in earlier could well have led to more deaths with the same deadlock. Bint Jbail was a disaster, what's to say other towns wouldn't have been the same or worse?

The Camel is right to say the war had to be fought on the ground, but he forgets that we just weren't ready or prepared for such a situation. Those Jihadist bastards fired anti tank shells at our boys at close range. That's how most of them died. That is a symptom of an army out of practise and poor planning, and that Olmert was too fresh in the job to have done much about. I'm not saying he's blameless, I just think everyone is getting carried away with calls for his head. The problem is far more complex and serious than just one politician alone.

There is no argument between the Camel and myself on Peretz apart from a far more punctillious understanding of Labor party affairs. That party is a complete embarassment and a disgrace to itself and the country. The party's founders would be turning in their graves to see the selfish egotism that now rides roughshod over all of its core values. Peretz was the hopeless leader for the impossible party.

I also restate to the hallowed humped one, that this political mess should not be scapegoated on Olmert - it is a reflection of our inner turmoil as a State. Something profound has to change to earn us back our success. Maybe, it's caught up with our actions towards one another... Maybe sadly it can only be remedied by the threat of another war? G-d forbid but maybe that's it.

Following on from that point, isn't it time we move on from the war and dig our heads out of the sand again. We still have Iran on our doorstep, who once again this week threatened Israel and Tel Aviv with thousands of long range rockets. Now is the time, for refocusing and uniting. This infighting is taking all of the anger and energy within the people and turning it inwards on ourselves.

I do agree that a fresh start would be great, new PM, new page, new start... great. Israel can't stomach defeat, this I know,but Mr. Camel beware of the precedent it sets. If Israel will find it increasingly harder to win wars in the future, will he have to demand the PM leaves office every summer from here on in? If so the country will be in turmoil, but the store owners at Rabin Sq. will be singing all the way to the bank.

PP

Mickey Mouse Recruited for Jihad by Hamas

Check out this frightening compilation of television clips from a childrens programme on Hamas Television with a Mickey Mouse type charachter cheering on Islamic world supremacy and Palestinian "resistance", courtesey of Palestinian Media Watch.

That Goat

Following up on a previous story, The Cantankerous Camel is sad to announce that the goat Rose who was caught in flagrante with a Sudanese man has sadly passed away due to a case of chronic plastic bag ingestion.

Charles Tombe was caught by the goats owner, Mr Alifi in a rather compromising situation and was forced to pay a dowry of 15,000 dinars to Mr Alifi. The storybecame famous on the internet and was one of the most viewed items on the BBC.

Rose, we hope you are content and unmolested in that big meadow in the sky, rest in peace.

Rose the Goat, Gathered unto her People, 4 May, 2007

Return of the Camel

Dissent amongst the ranks, what are we to do? I see the Penguin is getting a little uppity. Well, the cut and thrust of healthy debate is what this blog’s all about. So let me start like this: YOU’RE WRONG, my fish guzzling, flightless friend!!!!!

Firstly, the Penguin says that everyone was well up for a good fight when the war started and now it’s hypocritical to say the war aims were too ambitious. Firstly, that was the Winograd Committee’s conclusion, not mine and I didn’t say I agreed with everything the committee concluded. I personally think that it was fine to want to really strike a blow against Hizballah but as it transpired Olmert, Peretz and Halutz relied on air-power to win the war which was never going to work against an enemy as liquid as Hizballah’s guerrilla army. As I have said previously, by delaying a major ground invasion until the last two days of the war because of a fear of higher casualties, the political leadership wasted the lives of the men who died, since the limited ground operation never had a chance of coming near to the goal of severely damaging Hizballah.

I know these words sound cavalier and perhaps show a disregard for the lives of young Israeli boys who would be sent to fight such a war and die in it. As someone who will never be a combat soldier such statements could be considered callous and unthinking. However, had Eshkol and Dayan thought this way in 1967, and had pulled the attack because of fears about what turned out to be nearly 800 casualties, who knows what would have happened. Now I know the two situations are vastly different but had the IDF significantly hurt Hizballah, it is possible they wouldn’t be sitting on the border again with more rockets and arms than before the war. As it stands, we’re back to square one but with 119 more graves and two soldiers in Hizballah’s hands.

As for the Penguin’s other points, Peretz was irresponsible in the extreme for taking the Defence Minister job, regardless of whether it would have been politically problematic for him to turn the job down or give it to someone else.

He also squawks that “Everyone from Olmert to Halutz, Sharon, Mofaz, Bibi, Barak and Rabin”. I agree apart from Bibi and Rabin (although we can still blame Rabin for Oslo). Bibi left office in 1999 while the IDF still remained in South Lebanon and seven years before the Second Lebanon War. I fail to see how he can be apportioned blame in this whole affair. If anyone should, than it should be Barak as he withdrew from South Lebanon without a bilateral agreement, a cause of much of the current problems. Doesn’t it bode well that Barak is a leading candidate to win the Labour primaries and possibly become the Defence Minister, sounds like a good idea going on his past record...or does it?

Finally, the people have as much right to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister they elect as they have to elect him in the first place. Sovereignty resides with the people and just because we are not at the appointed time for elections does not nullify that fact. If there is a problem serious enough to warrant the PM’s resignation before scheduled elections then the people have every right to demand that the man they elected to lead them competently remove himself from the office he so clearly is not fit for.

And yes, you are a pansy!

Has the Camel gone too far?

Having read the Camel's last post and his venomous attack on lackluster prime minister Ehud Olmert, I have to come clean, break ranks and admit that I don't share his sentiment. It's time for the Penguin to have his say.

While we usually agree on most issues, my cantankerous friend's call for Olmert's resignation doesn't sit so well with me. We all remember the Euphoria of 'going to war' in the summer. We all remember the initial airstrikes on South Lebanon, and yes Mr Camel, we also all remember Olmert's stated aims of retrieving our soldiers and destroying Hizbullah. We were all impressed with Olmert, impressed with the speed of the response and quite frankly, we were all up for a good old fight. I find it a little unfair now that so many Israelis march on Rabin Square lamenting last summers unachievable war goals and foolhardy strategy for beating Hizbullah; hindsight is a wonderful thing. Olmert went on the advice of an arrogant Chief of Staff. Who was to know any better?

My Humped friend is right that the Winograd Report did highlight Olmert's ridiculous management of government; making a raving trade-union leader with no military finesse our defense minister was an irresponsible and cynical political move. I also agree that Peretz' inexperience is not his fault but is his concern. With that said, as the Camel should remember, of all the political parties, Labor was and is still the most back-stabbing, two-faced and nonsupporting of its leader. Whilst Peretz is to blame for being an imbecile, it would have been political suicide giving any on of his untrustworthy colleagues the top job of Defense. Ami Ayalon and Matan Vilnai could not have set their egos aside to serve under anyone else. In fact the Knesset's sickness is typified by the appointment of Peretz in the first place; the Labor Party only voted him in to snub Shimon Peres. A calamity akin to a British Lib Dem protest vote gone horribly wrong.

So all that said, it may be that the war was a failure and the political system let us down, but I think that the entire system is to blame. Everyone from Olmert to Halutz, Sharon, Mofaz, Bibi, Barak and Rabin should be under the same burning spotlight as the current beleaguered prime minister. Olmert inherited a corrupt, bureaucratic knesset and army that had taken itself down the wrong path for years, probable even decades.

Is it really all Olmert's fault oh Cantankerous one? Will it really all be solved by letting Olmert's unphotographic head roll? I think my Cantankerous friend that this will only serve to scapegoat the whole problem and the country won't be learn the right lessons. Winograd told us of an infrastructural corrosion of good governance and military prowess. I'm in favor of giving the country the government they voted for and letting them live with it. It's an important lesson to force the whole country to fix this problem together.

It may be written on the wall that Olmert won't survive another election, but I'd like to see him implement some of the recommendations of the Winograd Report. One last thought and you may call me a pansy, but I've felt uncomfortable with the victimization and bullying that has dominated the media headlines in the last few weeks.

As a spiritual zionist, I am a firm believer that our fate in this country is more determined by the way we treat each other than who we elect to Knesset. The accusations that Olmert should be blamed personally for the soldiers who were killed in the war (as many have suggested) is too much for me. Olmert is as much to blame as Sharon, Mofaz, Barak and all those others who let us grow so brutally unprepared and naive to the threats around us. What we need now is collective responsibility and accountability ..and our eyes focused forward on oiling our badly rusting State.


The Penguin has Spoken.

"In the Name of God, Go!"

Olmert, Peretz, the Second Lebanon War. What comes to mind, a bloody fiasco that's what. And so concluded the Winograd committee which presented an interim report on the war this week.

Now the committee did largely take the view that Olmert and Peretz rushed into a war which they were ill equipped to prosecute owing to their lack of experience in such matters and should not have set such ambitious war aims such as the destruction of Hizballah and the return of the captured soldiers which were hugely demanding military goals.

Winograd is in fact rather dovish and makes suggestions such as "the government did not consider the whole range of options, including that of continuing the policy of 'containment".

Now, I personally think that particular suggestion rather feeble as "containment" was clearly not working due to Hizballah's repeated attempts to capture Israeli soldiers in the six years prior to the war and its bold and successful attempt in July 2006, not to mention the vast arsenal and army it had succeeded in building.

Nevertheless, the report does go on to damn Olmert and stated that his conduct of the war "add up to a serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence".

Of Peretz the committee stated that "The Minister of Defense did not have knowledge or experience in military, political or governmental matters. He also did not have good knowledge of the basic principles of using military force to achieve political goals".

In short, what we have is a country being run by a weak, bumbling and above all incompetent Prime Minister and defended by a Defence Minister who has no experience in defence, military doctrine or strategic thinking. This would be problematic enough in a secure country with no clear threats, enemies or hostile states and/or illegal, non-state actors living on or inside its borders. For Israel to run by such a pathetic pair of incompetents is simply dangerous.

The incredible thing is, the man refuses to go, he just will not leave like the entire country wants him to. A poll this week surveying Israeli attitudes on who they would like to see Prime Minister showed that 0%, yes that's 0%, want Olmert as PM. The audacity of the man to keep turning up to the Prime Ministers office is simply unbelievable. In the face of such public loathing he just refuses to give up on the power he so clearly loves, and demonstrates every day that he doesn't resign his contempt for the Israeli people and his love for power above his sense of duty to the people. His aides even mock the direct action of the 150,000 people who came to Tel Aviv last night (see picture - taken by yours truly on poor camera phone) by calling the mass protest of "irrelevant". The stupefying scorn Olmert and his peers have for their own people is a insult of massive preportions and tells of the moral bankruptcy of his administration.

To conclude, I would like to quote Leo Amery (who was in turn quoting Oliver Cromwell) , a British anti-appeasement Conservative politician during the 1930's and an ally of Winston Churchill who said quite neatly...

..."You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

Ok, so I've said it before but regular postings may, and I repeat may, begin to appear again from now on. The past few months have been a bit hectic for the Cantankerous one but we'll see if we can get things going again. Having said that, I'm sure everyone has appreciated the humourous shenanigans of the Punctillious Penguin and we thank him for keeping our spirits up in these dark times. Truth is there's a lot to be cantankerous about in at the moment, so stay tuned for some really irrascible posts.

Love is in the air

In a dramatic twist to the political turmoil in Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu have annouced they are to marry.

Intergalactic Investigation

Retired Judge Eliyahu Winograd will now return to filming the next in the Star Wars series following his secondment to the Israeli Special Knesset Committee.