From the amazing Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish a few excerpts from his
gorgeous essay
Israel's military victories were never the results of an inspired military or political leadership. While the anniversary of the Six-Day War has led to an outpouring of adoration for the usual suspects; the khaki-garbed generals striding victoriously through a carefully cropped photo, even if one of them had come down with a nervous breakdown not long before, Israeli generals have never been geniuses, the best-known ones have carried their own press releases into battle, and have walked a fine line between daring and criminal incompetence. Their victories were won for them by the men in the field, who survived to carry out their operations.
If Israeli generals are overrated, then Israeli governments are far worse, and, considering the number of generals who have played a role in politics, the confluence of the two conditions is not surprising. Israeli governments have, for the most part, been timid, cowardly and incompetent. (Which is to say that they were, for the most part, a lot like the governments of the rest of the West.)
and
All this makes the Six-Day War that much more impressive and awe-inspiring. An act of G-d done through the hands of fighting men in a country facing annihilation. And it is also a reminder that Israel's survival does not depend on its governments. If past governments had been able to fully enact their peace agendas, there likely would be no Israel. Can such governments celebrate the Six-Day War? Do they have any right to take credit for what they have given away and what they intend to give away?
Much as the Jewish People have been preserved by G-d and Anti-Semitism, Israel has been preserved by G-d and the irrational hatred of its Muslim neighbors. And between these poles is where the ordinary heroism of its people emerges. This is not the heroism of brazen trumpets and endless victory parades-- but the heroism of survival.
Men glorify war in order to deny the mortality of the killing fields. But day-to-day survival is a much less glorious thing. It is not inspiring in the same overtly transcendent way. It is merely life. It is the routine of surviving from one battle to the next, one generation to the next, moving slowly toward the future, reciting Kaddish for the dead, and then going into the earth, while your children go on.
Caroline. Thank you for posting this. It takes amazing people like Daniel Greenfield and you, people of integrity and honesty, to present the facts as they are, not as people would prefer them to be. In the end the Jewish Homeland and Jews everywhere owe their existence only to a G-d who despite all our stupidity continues to give us another chance. G-d bless you and watch over you.
In Israel it's the land of little puppets at the top and puppets don't lead ,they just follow orders.
The little puppets of Israel know what to do when their strings are pulled.
At this late stage in the game isn't it amazing how the lowest,ego driven arrogant scum of Israel has floated to the top ?
We have Shimon the useful idiot of the globalists who betrays his own people and is rewarded for doing so today at Israel's White Temple in Washington sitting as Israel's President.
We have the retreat and capitulate General Barak as Defense Minister whose claim to fame is betraying the SLA when he and the IDF fled in the middle of the night from South Lebanon and for razing Jewish homes for the globalist Fourth Reich quartet.
And then we have the ultra crafty,slippery and devious Netanyahu who threatens the few Jews left with a conscience not to hinder his delivery of rubble which were once Jewish homes
to the false god he serves with religious devotion.
Can anyone else see why Israel is in grave and mortal danger from without and within ?
Only God can save Israel from themselves.
Dis-functional Israel led by egotistical and dysfunctional people and their political parties of futility and impotence who all prove to be little puppets following the orders of their masters in Washington.
Secular rule in Israel has failed miserably.
After the next war it will be over permanently.
Amen!
Well, once you make this argument you can also say that the Jewish people don't need the State of Israel to survive, as G-d will protect them. This supports the Hareidy ideology.
thank you for another beautiful and inspiring essay.
I strongly agree. My own expirience as a former volunteer with Zahal was that the military and political leadership was useless. As soldiers we fought for our people and our families. Not for the army brass or the political leadership, which we considered to be a bunch of liars.
"Israeli generals overrated?" - well Moshe Dayan was and Shmuel Gonen was awful but that is a terribly broad and unfair statement. The clowns who screwed up in Lebanon were awful but there have been far more competent commanders - Mordecai Hod, Uzi Narkiss, Chaim Bar-Lev, Ezer Weizman, Avraham Yoffe, Israel Tal et al. As for Prime Ministers - Levi Eshkol has never been appreciated as he ought to have been.
I second Joel's comment above from 13 June, specifically with regard to Motti Hod. Greenfield's remark doesn't hold water and is glibly unfair where the Israel Air Force's leader during the June 1967 conflict is concerned.
The credit for what the IAF achieved during the 6-Day War of course must be widely shared, but the pilots' astonishing achievement nonetheless reflects the "tone at the top" enabled and propagated throughout the organization by its top commander Hod.
By contrast, in the runup to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Hod's successor(s) at the IAF command echelon were obsessed with doctrines and strategies that tied them and their pilots in knots.
Thank you very much for linking to my piece. It's an honor.