Both Yaalon and Gantz have come out this week in support of Israel’s conduct both during and after Operation Protective Edge.Israel has decided that
1.) the Palestinians will only get the autonomy they have now even under negotiations for a two-state solution.
2.) Israel will facilitate greater mobility and economic progress for both Gaza and Judea and Samaria and
3.) Israel will support the Free Syrian Army in the Golan on condition that they keep the extremists out.
4.) Maintain the defacto freeze of construction east of greenline. This may be breached next year to prevent the government from falling.Ted Belman
Ask Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon about the external challenges that Israel confronts and his reply will always be reasoned and sober.
Ya’alon will try to place the severity of the threat in the proper perspective and even to play it down. If his strong pessimism is translated into a tough, hawkish stance regarding the diplomatic process with the Palestinians, when it comes to exercising military force the defense minister is a very cautious man.
That approach was evident throughout last summer’s war in the Gaza Strip and was reflected in a conversation this week with Haaretz. His implied message is that that’s how it has always been and probably will remain: Israel, according to Ya’alon, is stuck in a hostile neighborhood and must maneuver within it, exercising toughness as well as caution. There is no reason to get upset.
[..]
After seven weeks of a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, the most recent security incidents actually took place in the north – the downing of a Syrian warplane that crossed the border on the Golan Heights and the wounding of two IDF soldiers when bombs laid by Hezbollah on Har Dov exploded.
Ya’alon admits that “it’s possible that Hezbollah has accumulated more self-confidence than we thought.” He says the organization is trying to maintain a new balance of deterrence on both the Lebanese and the Syrian borders, by reacting with attacks against Israeli territory for every military move that it attributes to Israel in Lebanon.
“There is a reversal here,” Ya’alon says. “Once, the Syrian regime used to activate Hezbollah to strike at us in south Lebanon, without our being able to blame the regime for direct responsibility. Now, Hezbollah is operating the same way on the Golan Heights.” Israel attributes several of the incidents of the past year in the Golan – involving bombs and rockets – to the militias connected to the Bashar Assad regime in Syria but operating under the inspiration of Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Ya’alon confirms that Hezbollah’s most recent attack was ambitious, but he rejects the possibility that Israeli intelligence is playing down the intentions of the organization, which seems to have been prepared to risk an escalation had it succeeded in its plan to kill a large number of soldiers by detonating the bombs.
He says that Hezbollah is sending its fighters to Iraq and Syria against its will, under orders from Iran. The Shi’ite organization is also mired in an internal war against extremist Sunni factions in the Lebanese Bekaa. It has additional problems, aside from the tension with Israel. “The incidents with us don’t prove that Hezbollah is planning an escalation,” Ya’alon says. “We reacted forcefully. Let Hezbollah decide whether it’s worth its while to escalate.”
The battles in Lebanon erupted as a consequence of the civil war in the country that used to be called Syria. President Bashar Assad, says Ya’alon, now controls only 25 percent of the area of the country.
“It’s not Syria, its Alawistan [referring to Assad’s ruling Alawite sect] – the coastal cities in the north of the country and a corridor connecting them up to Damascus,” Ya’alon says. “The rebels are already doing away with his control on the border with us on the Golan. The east of the country is controlled by [Islamic State], and in the northeast the Kurds have autonomy.”
The entry into the Golan of extremist Sunni organizations identified with Al-Qaida, such as Jabhat al Nusra, worries him, but here, too, he has the impression that at present the situation is under control.
“Of course there’s instability there,” Ya’alon says. “But the area adjacent to the border is under the control of more moderate militias, such as the Free Syrian Army. It’s no secret that they benefit from the humanitarian assistance that we provide to the residents of the villages in the area: medical care in our hospitals, food for infants, equipment and blankets in the winter. That happens on condition that they don’t allow the more extremist organizations to reach the border.”
What did Hezbollah and the other organizations learn from the war in Gaza?
“First of all, that the ‘spider web’ issue is no longer valid,” Ya’alon says, referring to a speech delivered by Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah in May 2000 in Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, two days after the IDF withdrew from South Lebanon. Nasrallah claimed at the time that Israeli society “is weaker than a spider web.” The defense minister says that the speech summed up the 1990s, but things have changed. “Before Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 and followed by the campaigns in Gaza and finally Operation Protective Edge, there’s a different attitude and different determination.”
He isn’t happy about the fact that the battle lasted 50 days. But Ya’alon says the Arabs learned that Israel, as opposed to some of their theories, is also capable of withstanding attrition. Its spirit doesn’t break and its economy doesn’t crash. It defends itself and exacts a heavy price from its rivals.
At a conference in Cairo early this week, donor countries promised $5.5 billion to rehabilitate Gaza. Ya’alon is not convinced that the indirect contacts with Hamas will end with a more detailed cease-fire agreement. As far as Israel is considered, the principles already formulated in the limited agreement at the end of August are sufficient, in addition to the agreement it reached with the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority regarding the entry of goods and money to the Gaza Strip under tight international supervision.
In his opinion the heart of the matter is the diplomatic-security coordination with Egypt, which already enables significant limits on Hamas’s efforts to rearm. “In the past year not a single rocket has been transferred from Sinai to Gaza because Egypt has started to operate effectively,” he says. “Both we and Egypt stopped the transfers of cement to the Strip, long before the fighting, because we realized that the cement is used for digging Hamas’s tunnels.”
The new arrangements, he says, “will allow the Gazans to live. The transfer of money and the means for rehabilitation are already beginning. But a seaport, an airport – those are pipedreams. We can discuss it in Cairo, but even Hamas understands that these things are not on our agenda or that of the PA or Egypt.”
Lazy and galloping horses
But during the war in Gaza he was more concerned about the problems at home – mainly what he sees as a lack of responsibility on the part of cabinet members. “A certain minister (Bennett) received a report from the field and said that there was a brigade (Givati) that had developed a method of dealing with the tunnels, but we weren’t letting them do so,” Ya’alon says.
“I suggest that ministers take into account broader considerations such as the dialogue with the U.S. administration, the United Nations. After all, we didn’t start this operation as we did in the Second Lebanon War. We knew what we wanted to achieve. There are considerations that go beyond the fact that you have a force that is ready for action.
“There’s no shortage of threats. When you establish deterrence, you can’t attack everything just because the enemy has tactical capability. There are 100,000 Hezbollah rockets directed at us. So are we going into Lebanon now to deal with them?” (It’s possible that this last example does not do much of a service to Ya’alon; after the Second Lebanon War people came to him, as former chief of staff, with complaints about his claim that we should let the rockets rust.)
Bennett claimed that his direct connection with field commanders afforded him another point of view, as a cabinet member, of the crucial decisions and helped him to spur the defense minister and Chief of Staff Benny Gantz into action. Ya’alon rejected this explanation out of hand: “That’s unacceptable. Is it legitimate for a politician to form direct ties with army officers, and based on that try to manipulate the chief of staff in the cabinet and say that he’s a lazy horse compared to the galloping horses, the officers in the field?
“I received no request from him to visit the area during the fighting. Other ministers asked to visit the units and did so, with my permission. A politician sits there and brags that officers phone him. That’s anarchy, not democracy. I was sorry to see that the former chief of the Shin Bet security service (Yuval Diskin) supports his position. How would he feel if an MK were to speak with his coordinators and make manipulative use of what he heard from them? That’s why the prime minister and I came out against that.”
Ya’alon refuses to share the credit with Bennett for approving the operation against the tunnels. “Who’s responsible for the army’s fighting spirit? The chief of staff or some political party?” he asks.
“These are political considerations. I have been in [security] cabinets in the past 20 years, since being appointed the head of Military Intelligence. In the previous government the group of eight of which I was a member discussed issues of major importance. There were serious, sometimes stormy debates, but nothing left that forum. Even if you voted against a decision, you are responsible as a member of the forum not to come out against it in public, during wartime.”
Under the aegis of the holidays the prime minister solved the budget crises, at least temporarily, when he decided on an increase of about 14 billion shekels in the defense budget in the course of a year and a half, in the wake of the war in Gaza.
Ya’alon is still not satisfied. “I’m conducting a battle with the treasury, which thinks that we don’t need money for defense,” he says. “The prime minister promised during the discussion that the decision about the budget increase for defense does not include extra-budgetary issues, such as transferring the IDF to the Negev and the activity of the Mine Clearance Authority. That’s why I voted in favor.
“Now the treasury comes and claims: It’s all inclusive. I assume that there will be additional debates in the course of the coming year. At least they (the treasury) have stopped attacking us about pensions because they understood that it’s unacceptable. These are employees’ prerogatives. The chief of staff and I said: We agree to let you take away from high earners, and first of all from us. We also said that we would be first, but not alone. Can they carry out such a step? The High Court of Justice, the Histadrut labor federation, won’t let us.”
At the end of the summer Ya’alon promised that “after the holidays” he would deal with the appointment of the next chief of staff, who is supposed to succeed Gantz in mid-February. The date is almost here and Ya’alon says he will keep his word.
After Sukkot he will begin to consult with former defense ministers and chiefs of staff and will invite several candidates. The almost-certain candidate for the job, although Ya’alon is not willing to discuss it at all, is the present deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot.
The defense minister promised “a transparent, full process, with all the required consultations. We will carry out all the required preliminary examinations and bring the best candidate to the government around November.” or Egypt.”
dweller Said:
you never mentioned that I would show up therefore claiming you knew is obviously just another one of your usual fabrications, probably the way you “market” yourself. However, you should expect the rolled up newspaper when you pee on the rug.
honeybee Said:
all i know about cattle is from “Rawhide” and “all creatures great and small” (when harriot the vet usually pulls the calf out of the mother) and a few hand milkings on dairy farms plus the cow that chased me when i wandered into the pasture when I was a little boy.
yamit82 Said:
No message just a sweet song about long ago. Buenas Noches con Suenos de amoracitos.
honeybee Said:
I almost forgot how cramped those 1960 Chevy’s were. I had a 57 Chevy. Drive-in’s were good but I had my own private spots. Once I dated two sisters at the same time. Weird.
I read the lyrics to the song is there a message in them for me? I starting to read lyrics and follow the music now.
dweller Said:
whenever a phrase like this has been directed at you by others you ask the poster how he knows what everybody else is thinking?
So,, did you take a poll of the posters here or are you speaking on their behalf?
yamit82 Said:
I think he is upset 🙂
dweller Said:
It appears that you are the one who smeared Paul and yourself:
1-YOU use the words “enticement” and “seduction” as synonyms for the word “marketing”.
2- YOU have used the term “marketing” here in the past to refute arguments that he used a “deceptive” MO, stating that he was just “marketing” and not “deceptive”.
3-YOU stated that Paul used “Marketing” as his MO.
4-I supplied the online definitions for the words “enticement” and “seduction”
5-I added the word “deceive” and supplied the online definition
bernard ross Said:
I merely supplied definitions of words from cited sources, if you disagree with the association of the definitions of those words with Paul’s or your “marketing” then you must take your quarrel to the dictionary or to the mirror. Were there any facts in my post to which you disagree which came from me as opposed to other sources?
what was ironic and humorous is that you admitted indirectly that Pauls marketing was indeed deceitful just as Yamit has often stated. I can see why you would be so upset and calling names when disproving your own argument, liking kicking the ball into the other teams goal.
Do you have any arguments or disagreements regarding that post which are not emotional or expressions of anger at your being once more caught?
dweller Said:
I couldn’t resist bringing your faux pas to your attention, the smear was all your own responsibility, I merely provided 3rd party definitions for your own words.
dweller Said:
I quite understand your anger and frustration at being exposed once more by your own words and your need to lash out at others as a defensive reaction towards frustration.
In the same way you say that you correct others because you thought they would like to know the real spelling, I thought that you would like to know the definitions of the words you use and that your use of those words as synonyms to “marketing” logically demonstrates that Paul’s “marketing” was deceitful according to YOUR OWN USAGE OF THE WORDS.
As for your abusive name calling of others and my “appearing on schedule” to admonish your behavior:
When a dog pees on the rug the owner sometimes gives the dog a gentle rap on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. When you see me arrive on schedule it is simply to correct your unattractive behavior with a gentle rap on the nose using the “rolled up Newspaper” of logic and facts. No need to get excited.
yamit82 Said:
yamit82 Said:
What’s your night job??????? Darlin ?????????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKaHci9Mc4A
yamit82 Said:
Vet bills
bernard ross Said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sxnXO2RjVg
@ dweller:
Now why don’t you tell us what you really think?
@ b-e-r-n-a-r-d-r-o-s-s:
Anybody who could readily see that it was neither humorous NOR intended ironically NOR “obviously offered in the same spirit” as the above. That’s who.
I chose the right word, and I stand by it foursquare. Nobody’s fooled; party’s over, smartass. Don’t forget to shut off the lights when you leave the hall.
“Odd”? — hardly. Smears are THEMSELVES personally abusive. Anybody who deliberately indulges them has such a response coming, and yours was richly deserved.
Doesn’t take a “high level of consciousness” for somebody to recognize a smear when he sees one — only a poster with enormous contempt for his readers would assume otherwise.
Oh, but I most certainly DID know (as did everybody else), and your slime schedule is by now quite well-established. That train always arrives right on time; hard to miss it.
— You jumped on that comment like a dog on a bone; just couldn’t resist the opportunity for a smear, could you.
With you, only the irony is in recess, not the humor. I know what I’m looking at — and the looking has taken nothing from me by way of humor OR discernment. The difference between PresentCompany and a bucket of slime is
— the bucket.
honeybee Said:
No they are the Celtics girls.
bernard ross Said:
This is my day job. 🙂
yamit82 Said:
Your questions, like HB said, are what any donor, especially major, would ask. If he doesn’t have the answers now it gives him a chance to polish his presentation AND to think about factors he might have missed. Adults seeking funds or investment don’t need encouragement, they need money or help.
yamit82 Said:
LOL,I think you are ready to give up your day job
honeybee Said:
I see once more that you are both intelligent AND have excellent taste 🙂
@ yamit82:
TX says nice but not the Cowgirls.
@ bernard ross:
I even pointed him in the direction of his missing “Board Member”
Wasn’t that helpful? I could supply telephone and email but if he is serious I’m sure he can do it by himself.
What did Mr. d contribute except “HEAVY” panting with his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth?
honeybee Said:
I didn’t know you like Celtics!!
I Like Celtics too
yamit82 Said:
He’s short on lunch money but long on “moral support” and psychobabble.
yamit82 Said:
your questions got the ball rolling, creating interest beyond just looking at a request for a donation. Your questions are more beneficial to the project than psychobabble moral support; I doubt that robin wants his hand held.
@ robin@longhornproject.org:
For better or worse we live in a global economy. For countries like Israel it has it’s upsides and downsides.
years ago Israel produced beet sugar and the government needed to subsidize it by as much as $75 million dollars per year. That was when 75 million was a hefty part of the Israeli budget. They finally dropped the whole project.
O my kibbutz we produced a cash crop of cotton. Good quality and yieds but the cotton needed heavy irrigation with finite water supplies and without the subsidies it was never cost effective. Israel dropped cotton production in favor of other cash crops less dependent of subsidies and water a win win all around.
I suspect cattle might fall under the same economic balance sheet.
Two textile plants are closing becuase they can’t compete anymore and are losing money thousands will be laid off.
and in the South of Israel evey factory is vital and there are no replacemtn jobs for those losing theirs.
Your cattle concerns pale in relative importance to plant closings and laid off work force in a vital area in Israel.
Beef we can always import and Argentinian Beef is quite good and not as expensive as it is from the States Canada and Australia
yamit82 Said:
LOL, Ming the Merciless strikes again
I think he forgot his lunch money but will donate lots of “advice”
bernard ross Said:
A family to feed, household budget and little income at times disciplines one.
yamit82 Said:
Me too!!!!!!!!!! I like Celtic guys !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
honeybee Said:
you appear to understand business and investment much better than him
bernard ross Said:
Exactly on point as usual.
P.S.
I am silly-assed infatuated with you too, Yankee boy xxxxxxxxxxooooooooooo
dweller Said:
You sanctimonious prig I did nothing of the sort to discourage anyone. The man is asking for money not just moral support. I don’t think anyone except HB as any idea of what he is talking about and for sure you don’t. When a poster asks for money if you don’t think it’s incumbent to at least find out more on the subject or/and to ascertain of the party requesting funds from readers on this site is a legitimate party and not a scammer. The site of longhorn does none of the preceding to remove doubts.
Your reply indicates you are a fool or a knave probably both.
We know you to be a a consistent fabricator very loose on facts and details. If you want to donate your lunch money go ahead but if his not providing any of the details I requested does not ring your bell then there is something wrong with you and none other.
Since you want to get personal AH what goes between HB and myself is none of you fucking business and if our cross banter disturbs you then skip it as you have advised others upset with your comments.
Comments are comments and if those comments are personal which happens and are none of your business or concern unless they relate to the thread topic or directed to you in person. At least my attention is directed to the opposite sex Yours are mainly to guys and are mostly disparaging towards almost every woman ever posting on this site . You are condescending to women and at times dismissive.
I know you to be a misogynist and are probably as queer as Elton John but at least he has talent and success and I’m sure he can afford his own computer and services.
Since Ted Belman agreed with my Questions and offered his services free and that your new friend has not accepted that leaves you with nothing beneath your feet other than irritation that you might lose a friendly male correspondent that might be supportive of you.
I can research sites for you with your kind of guys if it helps. Do you prefer the ones with photos?
dweller Said:
Yamit82 are no harder then any donar or investor would ask.
dweller Said:
Don’t be jealous Sweetie, there is enough love in my Texas sized heart for you too.
honeybee Said:
Of course you are 100% correct, and furthermore, the questions initiated the flow of information about the project that surpassed previous information given. The project is now becoming more familiar to posters here.
However, when making such an astute observation such as you did you may become subject to the unwarranted, irrelevant and childish abuse of those seeking to create conflict:
d*****r Said:
Lucky you, you got a “two fer”: personal abuse and a psychobabble analysis in one short sentence. 😛
(your nemesis appears to get upset very easily these days, flying off the handle with insults at the least provocation.)
@ honeybee:
When that’s all the ‘hard questioner’ has to offer, and uses every other opportunity to pursue a policy of discouragement — as in the post to which I was responding when you entered this part of the thread.
If it weren’t for your silly-assed, online infatuation with the ‘hard-questioner,’ HB, your perception would be a lot less distorted.
thanks I have but I have not tried all of them. Mostly with crowd funding you need a marketing team. I will take a look at the others. They only give you the plateform they don’t look for money for you. You must use your own contacts with them.@ honeybee:
d*****r Said:
Gosh, who would have thought that such an “ironic humorist” would fail to see the ironic humor of his own post and would be so insulting and abusive when I shared my ironic humor “obviously offered in the same spirit”.
d*****r Said:
Nothing at all sinister: I merely introduced online definitions of the words you used as synonyms for the word “marketing”. As you have used the word “marketing” in the past to avoid the term “deception” in describing the MO of Paul I found it both ironic AND highly amusing that you used the words “enticement” and “seduction” synonymously with “marketing” and allowed us an ironic glimpse into your view of the term “marketing”. It is odd that you felt the need to respond in such a personally abusive manner considering the enormously high level of consciousness which you have obviously attained.
dweller Said:
You did not know and there was no schedule, you are merely claiming for yourself(marketing?) attributes which do not exist.
Also, oddly, you appear to have lost your sense of ironic humor. 🙂
dweller Said:
When is asking hard questions “raining on someone’s parade”;
@ robin@longhornproject.org:
Robin you may want to try crowd funding. Here is a blog that gives you a good overview and links to several crowd funding sites: http://bizteam.co/business-crowdfunding/
Discouraged, Yes I do feel that at times. But I keep trying. It would help if all of you shared the information. @ dweller:
@ yamit82:
You are MUCHO MAS obsessed with evil than I.
You don’t use the name but what’s in a name?
— You relate to what you oppose in quite the same way.
For you, what you oppose is evil. It’s that simple.
No plug-ins here.
We are in a World wide Islamic Cultural War or 1400-year-old Jihad.
We each see a different parts of it in the world and if you put all the violent parts together it adds up to only one cause: a 1400 year old Islamic Cultural War. It is the same as that joke of four blind men touching the elephant.
?The names of the Arabs and Muslim Terrorists change but the behavior has been always the same for the last 1400 years.
It is not about land, rights or settlements, water or being politically left or right. If it were it would have been solved long ago. It has not.
It is Cultural War that means Islamic Culture must destroy Western Culture or Western Culture must destroy Islamic Culture. It is a Cultural Genocidal War, just like the American/Indian wars were about. This time we are the Indians.
Muslims have been fighting each other and others for 1400 years or more. There is no reason that it will stop now. If we want peace we must change Islamic Culture.
The book “Culture and Conflict”, explains it clearly. It shows that current cultural conditions in the Arab Middle East will not support internal development, advancement or peace until there is a major cultural change. “It is critical that we understand our enemy. That is step one in every conflict,” RR. Philip Carl Salzman, INSB # 978-1-59102-587-0.
I have done that. thank you, Tomorrow I will be call Prof. Hills at Univerdity of Texas ask him to help with funds. I will be suggesting to him that we do the project together. we will have to wait and see. thank you for the idea. Robin @ dweller:
@ b-e-r-n-a-r-d r-o-s-s:
“enticement
Leave it to a self-important, obnoxious crank with personal axes-to-grind —
to take what was unmistakably intended as a response to an earlier attempt at ironic humor and which had been quite obviously offered in the same spirit
— and make it into something sinister.
How could I have known that such an individual would pipe up right on schedule to show his colors for what they so clearly are?
@ yamit82:
When did I say I was a disciple of Paul? I just recognize when somebody knows more about something than I do (he did), and I give credit where credit’s due. I’m nobody’s ‘disciple.’
And who said he was a ‘dwarf’???
You don’t have to know “all about” something to see it may have value.
WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM, YAMIT; WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO RAIN ON ROBIN’S PARADE?
Says who? My businesses did quite well as a matter of fact. You make a lot of stupid assumptions based apparently on malevolent wishful thinking.
Got a problem with failing? SCARED of it, are you?
Everybody fails, pancho. You’re SUPPOSED to. That’s how you learn. Failing doesn’t make you a failure.
— Not learning from your mistakes makes you a failure.
A toddler fails loads of times when he’s learning to walk. Takes many, many, MANY failed attempts till he gets all the muscular & neurological coordination together to walk. The following list consists of far more failed attempts than successes:
Lost his job
Defeated in run for State Legislature
Failed in business
Elected to State Legislature (success)
Fiancee died
Had nervous breakdown
Defeated in run for State House Speaker
Defeated in run for nomination for U.S. Congress
Elected to Congress (success)
Lost re-nomination
Rejected for land officer position
Defeated in run for U.S. Senate
Defeated in run for nomination for VP
Again defeated in run for U.S. Senate
The man belonging to that CV signed his name “A. Lincoln.”
@ robin@longhornproject.org:
Placing the kinds of ads I suggested (alumni magazine & school newspaper) shouldn’t be an expensive proposition, and they might provide entree to administrative policy-makers, if you haven’t spoken with them already.
The ads might even pay for themselves in time.
You sound discouraged, Robin. (Am I misreading you?)
@ bernard ross:
With mr. D it’s all about evil. He is obsessed Remember the preacher character in China Blue, played by Anthony Perkins reminds me of Mr. D.
yamit82 Said:
HMMMMMM????
dweller Said:
dweller Said:
dweller Said:
I daresay: that Paul sure knows his marketing!
HMMMMMM????
@ dweller:
dweller a disciple of “paul the dwarf” knows all about marketing….Seems he wasn’t all that successful for himself. Should one take advice from a failed marketer???
@ M Devolin:
Half truth!! Ever hear of an offer you can’t refuse? They called it positive reinforced lending.
Bear Klein Said:
When I was young innocent co-ed at Sam Houston State Teacher’s College at Huntsville, Texas, we girls would travel to Houston and to the Fur Coat Dept. at Neiman-Marcus. sit for hours to watch the Ladies from Mexico try on furs. It was the coldest place in Texas in July.
So glad to add a little amusement to your day.
@ Bear Klein:
@ honeybee:
@ yamit82:
@ honeybee: You are really funny. Neiman Markus eh?
Marketing with what money?
@ M Devolin:
This isn’t about force.
It is (in a manner of speaking) about enticement
. . . . or, if you will, seduction.
Even (dare I say it?): MARKETING.