A very disturbing interview was aired on Israel Radio this week with former IDF Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin Shahak. Shahak succeeded Ehud Barak as Chief of Staff in 1995, after serving as Barak's Deputy Chief of Staff. Following his retirement from the army, he served one term in the Knesset, and served as Minister of Tourism and of Transportation in Barak's government.

Shahak: If rocket attacks extend to include Ashkelon, then there might be no choice but to occupy Gaza.

Shahak's interview came against a background of several recent events. At the end of last week, he came out in support of Barak in the upcoming Labor party leadership primary, with the belief that Barak was best suited to assume the role of Defense Minister and, later, of Prime Minister. More seriously, though, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip last week resumed firing Kassam missiles at the Israeli city of Sderot, and surrounding towns and villages. An average of 25-30 rockets are being fired every day at these communities. An estimated 6,000 Sderot residents have left the city - out of a total population of only about 27,000. Until Monday night, through luck and miracle alone, no one was killed in the waves of missile attacks, although several dozen have been injured, some quite seriously.

In the Israel Radio interview, Shahak opined that right now the situation is not serious enough to justify occupying Gaza, but that if rocket attacks extend to include Ashkelon, then there might be no choice but to occupy Gaza.

In that one statement, Shahak exposed what is so terribly wrong with the mindset currently gripping Israel's military and political decision-makers. The idea that some of Israel's population - those in larger cities or with more money - are more important to Israel's security doctrine than others is an idea that has been eating away at Israel's moral imperative for decades. It is one that cuts across security, economic and educational realms, and across political lines of all colors. And it is a rot that threatens to physically destroy the entire country, causing our entire reason for being here to erode, and arguably preventing Jews from other countries from considering the idea of moving to Israel.

And in all the hype generated by the Winograd Commission's interim findings, it is the one principal cause of last summer's war that went almost completely unnoticed.

Winograd correctly slammed the Prime Minister, Defense Minister and then-Chief of Staff for their conceptual and tactical failures that led to the war and its unsuccessful conclusion. They called into question the decision-making abilities of the three principal leaders, as well as the information with which each was provided or not provided. Winograd stopped short of making recommendations as to the futures of these three men, preferring to let the people of Israel make that determination.

But without a fundamental change in the ideas and opinions that motivate our nation's leaders, without leaders who are prepared to deal with a situation from a position of strength and awareness of our own purpose here, all is lost.

In the final analysis, the failures of the Second Lebanon War and the Kassam barrages that have been plaguing Sderot for the past five years can both be traced to the same major problem. It is a problem when Israeli leaders can say with a straight face that attacks on certain populations don't warrant a response. Whether it is Kassams in Sderot, Katyushas in Acco, terrorist shootings in Gush Katif or Judea and Samaria, or bombs in the markets and buses of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem - those populations have all been told in recent years that they don't matter to Israeli decision-makers. But if they ever come to the "next" community, the terrorists better watch out.

Soon after the interview with Amnon Lipkin Shahak, the radio broadcast a report that Hamas had issued a warning that they were preparing to launch missiles at Ashkelon as well, and that they would cause a situation in which Ashkelon residents would also be forced to flee. So it seems that Hamas is perfectly willing to put Shahak's words to the test.

The failures examined by the Winograd Commission, and those continuing to take place regarding the Gaza Strip, did not begin in 2000. They did not begin when the rockets started raining down on Israeli homes and schools. These failures were sown years earlier by political and military leaders - people like Shahak and Barak - who think that we owe the Palestinians anything and that we should be negotiating with the very same people who are currently blowing up our kindergartens.
The failures examined by the Winograd Commission did not begin in 2000.

It is the careless, cowardly attitudes of a succession of Israeli leaders that have allowed our enemies to rain these missiles down on our heads safe in the knowledge that if we do respond, it will be only half-heartedly and not in a way that is likely to cause them much damage. Amnon Lipkin Shahak and Ehud Barak, as well as Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz and Dan Halutz, have worked tirelessly to turn Israel's military, political and technological might into the laughingstock of the Middle East, and have turned our tiny country into a vast training ground for the next generation of terrorists and their newest weapons.

The time has come for Israel's voters to get rid of all putative "leaders" like Shahak who have instilled in our national consciousness the idea that military or terrorist attacks on some people are acceptable. The blood that has flowed in Israeli streets for the past seven years - or one hundred and seven - continues to cry out for real Jewish justice and not the ignorant cowardice of our leaders.

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