The following quote is from a June 10 Haaretz story about Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak's "conversation between two speeches," i.e. President Obama's speech in Cairo to the Muslim world and Israeli PM Netanyahu's upcoming response:
"Barak spoke Tuesday night to the Council for Peace and Security, in an auditorium full of veterans of the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet security service and the Mossad - or as one journalist described it, 'generations of defense officials. These people led us from disaster to disaster.'
"Barak told the audience what he certainly managed to tell Netanyahu: It would be a mistake for Israel to be the one preventing Obama from trying to bring a peace agreement to the Middle East. Whether Netanyahu listened to him and was convinced, we will know only on Sunday"
Isn't this a unique and much-needed way of looking honestly at military and intelligence leadership, seeing them as the "people [who lead] us from disaster to disaster" instead of the heros who deliver us from peril and ensure our future security by way of the gun?
There is a well-worn phrase in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories — "Israel is not a nation with an army, but an army with a nation." The Israel Defense Forces, the Mossad, and Shin Bet have fielded Israel's senior political leadership since the founding of the state, not surprising given that all Israeli Jews and Druze are required to serve on active duty (men serve three years, women serve two) and as reservists until middle age. Orthodox can opt out.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak himself comes from the senior ranks of the IDF. He led troops in the first Lebanon War. He rose to the rank of general. Former PM Menachim Begin got his start with an organization called Irgun, a thorn in the side of the British occupation and a terror to Palestinians. PM Yitzhak Rabin — who presided over the Oslo Accords in the 90s before being assassinated by a settler extremist — also fought the British occupation before becoming an IDF general and leading Israel in the Six Day War. Current PM Benjamin Netanyahu — a hard-line and completely anti-conciliatory leader, whose vocal resistance to "agreements" between the Israeli state and the Palestinians is matched only by Hamas' resistance to such agreements — served as an IDF officer in an elite reconnaisance unit. Opposition leader and Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni, who served the last government as Foreign Minister and spearheaded the winter offensive in Gaza, served as a lieutenant in the IDF before going on to a long and successful career with the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. Tzipi Livni is seen as a moderate, perhaps even a leftist. Can you imagine a "moderate spy" rubbing shoulders with former senior military leadership in the U.S. Senate?
Having a separation of military/intelligence leadership and civilian leadership in government may not be as critical as a separation of church and state (a score on which the Israeli government also receives poor marks), but it is nonetheless important that the military and intelligence communities do not dictate domestic and foreign policy. In Israel, it seems as if the military directs all affairs, internal and external, and without regard for a peaceful vision of the future. And why would we expect officers (especially former generals) and top spies to look critically at the long-term effects of their overmilitarized policies? For them, military action — or laying the groundwork and forging the alliances for military action — is the only solution to Israel's complex problems with its neighbors.
We have seen what has happened in the U.S. everytime Congress has gotten too close to the Pentagon. In our time, we have not heeded Republican President and Five Star General (also Supreme Allied Commander during WWII, how's that for a title) Dwight Eisenhower's warning against the "Military-Industrial Complex." In his original speech, he was going to call that beast the Military-Congressional-Industrial Complex. The most recent results of our failure to heed his warning can be seen in Iraq and in the bank accounts of Halliburton — it was the promise of renewable multi-billion dollar no-bid defense contracts, and the complicity of Congress in granting them, that pushed us into the debacle in which we know find ourselves.
While General David Petraeus can be credited with offering realistic suggestions for working our way out of the hole into which we've dug ourselves, some of his predecessors can be faulted with putting us in the hole in the first place. General Tommy Franks, for one, who signed on eagerly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plan for a short war involving hi-tech Stryker Brigades and small unit tactics that would make a large military presence and a long-term occupation unnecessary (both things were considered doubtful by General Eric Shinseki, who was not among the pre-Iraq "yes men," and who — as Chief of Staff of the Army — warned the Senate Armed Forces Committee in 2002 that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would take several years and over 400,000 troops).
In Israel, the military carries even more political weight than in the U.S. — defense and security are everything to the Israeli state. Generals and intelligence officers have led Israel from "disaster to disaster," and they have led the Jewish people in the land of Palestine from an occupied people with a tenuous claim on the land to an occupying people whose claim on the land remains tenuous sixty years after "independence." Israel has never gained acceptance or stability in the region because of its ferocity toward Palestinian Arabs and its unwillingness to compromise. Zionist ambitions to control Judea and Samaria — a.k.a. the West Bank — preclude sustainable peace, contribute to militancy and extremism among Palestinians, and cause a completely unneccessary environment of fear and hate on all sides of the separation fence(s).
Israelis need to set aside "politics as usual" — which seem to depend almost entirely on the issue of foreign threats and how to deal with them — and ask themselves what they want from the future. They need to be honest with themselves. Do they want a future in which their children can live without fear, without hate? Or do they want a future in which their children will grow up into the same environment of distrust and perpetual threat that Israel has known since its founding? If they want the latter — and I can't see how they would — then they should continue on their current course, though to do so will be to foreshorten the life of the state of Israel, because such a top-heavy, overmilitarized national project will tumble under its own weight. If they want the former, the time is now to take measures and make compromises to pave the path of peace.
Get out of the settlements. Quit strangling the flow of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with checkpoints, fences, and incursions — those practices don't make Israel safer; they cause misery and breed hate. Put the military in its place — an important place, but at a safe distance from the civilian planning and decision-making apparatus.
Ehud Barak should be praised for acknowledging that Israel must not stand in the way of the West's efforts to negotiate peace in the region. President Obama said in Cairo that a sustainable peace between Israel and Palestine would benefit the United States, Israel, and Palestine. I think we can add the world at large.
"Barak spoke Tuesday night to the Council for Peace and Security, in an auditorium full of veterans of the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet security service and the Mossad - or as one journalist described it, 'generations of defense officials. These people led us from disaster to disaster.'
"Barak told the audience what he certainly managed to tell Netanyahu: It would be a mistake for Israel to be the one preventing Obama from trying to bring a peace agreement to the Middle East. Whether Netanyahu listened to him and was convinced, we will know only on Sunday"
Isn't this a unique and much-needed way of looking honestly at military and intelligence leadership, seeing them as the "people [who lead] us from disaster to disaster" instead of the heros who deliver us from peril and ensure our future security by way of the gun?
There is a well-worn phrase in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories — "Israel is not a nation with an army, but an army with a nation." The Israel Defense Forces, the Mossad, and Shin Bet have fielded Israel's senior political leadership since the founding of the state, not surprising given that all Israeli Jews and Druze are required to serve on active duty (men serve three years, women serve two) and as reservists until middle age. Orthodox can opt out.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak himself comes from the senior ranks of the IDF. He led troops in the first Lebanon War. He rose to the rank of general. Former PM Menachim Begin got his start with an organization called Irgun, a thorn in the side of the British occupation and a terror to Palestinians. PM Yitzhak Rabin — who presided over the Oslo Accords in the 90s before being assassinated by a settler extremist — also fought the British occupation before becoming an IDF general and leading Israel in the Six Day War. Current PM Benjamin Netanyahu — a hard-line and completely anti-conciliatory leader, whose vocal resistance to "agreements" between the Israeli state and the Palestinians is matched only by Hamas' resistance to such agreements — served as an IDF officer in an elite reconnaisance unit. Opposition leader and Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni, who served the last government as Foreign Minister and spearheaded the winter offensive in Gaza, served as a lieutenant in the IDF before going on to a long and successful career with the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. Tzipi Livni is seen as a moderate, perhaps even a leftist. Can you imagine a "moderate spy" rubbing shoulders with former senior military leadership in the U.S. Senate?
Having a separation of military/intelligence leadership and civilian leadership in government may not be as critical as a separation of church and state (a score on which the Israeli government also receives poor marks), but it is nonetheless important that the military and intelligence communities do not dictate domestic and foreign policy. In Israel, it seems as if the military directs all affairs, internal and external, and without regard for a peaceful vision of the future. And why would we expect officers (especially former generals) and top spies to look critically at the long-term effects of their overmilitarized policies? For them, military action — or laying the groundwork and forging the alliances for military action — is the only solution to Israel's complex problems with its neighbors.
We have seen what has happened in the U.S. everytime Congress has gotten too close to the Pentagon. In our time, we have not heeded Republican President and Five Star General (also Supreme Allied Commander during WWII, how's that for a title) Dwight Eisenhower's warning against the "Military-Industrial Complex." In his original speech, he was going to call that beast the Military-Congressional-Industrial Complex. The most recent results of our failure to heed his warning can be seen in Iraq and in the bank accounts of Halliburton — it was the promise of renewable multi-billion dollar no-bid defense contracts, and the complicity of Congress in granting them, that pushed us into the debacle in which we know find ourselves.
While General David Petraeus can be credited with offering realistic suggestions for working our way out of the hole into which we've dug ourselves, some of his predecessors can be faulted with putting us in the hole in the first place. General Tommy Franks, for one, who signed on eagerly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plan for a short war involving hi-tech Stryker Brigades and small unit tactics that would make a large military presence and a long-term occupation unnecessary (both things were considered doubtful by General Eric Shinseki, who was not among the pre-Iraq "yes men," and who — as Chief of Staff of the Army — warned the Senate Armed Forces Committee in 2002 that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would take several years and over 400,000 troops).
In Israel, the military carries even more political weight than in the U.S. — defense and security are everything to the Israeli state. Generals and intelligence officers have led Israel from "disaster to disaster," and they have led the Jewish people in the land of Palestine from an occupied people with a tenuous claim on the land to an occupying people whose claim on the land remains tenuous sixty years after "independence." Israel has never gained acceptance or stability in the region because of its ferocity toward Palestinian Arabs and its unwillingness to compromise. Zionist ambitions to control Judea and Samaria — a.k.a. the West Bank — preclude sustainable peace, contribute to militancy and extremism among Palestinians, and cause a completely unneccessary environment of fear and hate on all sides of the separation fence(s).
Israelis need to set aside "politics as usual" — which seem to depend almost entirely on the issue of foreign threats and how to deal with them — and ask themselves what they want from the future. They need to be honest with themselves. Do they want a future in which their children can live without fear, without hate? Or do they want a future in which their children will grow up into the same environment of distrust and perpetual threat that Israel has known since its founding? If they want the latter — and I can't see how they would — then they should continue on their current course, though to do so will be to foreshorten the life of the state of Israel, because such a top-heavy, overmilitarized national project will tumble under its own weight. If they want the former, the time is now to take measures and make compromises to pave the path of peace.
Get out of the settlements. Quit strangling the flow of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with checkpoints, fences, and incursions — those practices don't make Israel safer; they cause misery and breed hate. Put the military in its place — an important place, but at a safe distance from the civilian planning and decision-making apparatus.
Ehud Barak should be praised for acknowledging that Israel must not stand in the way of the West's efforts to negotiate peace in the region. President Obama said in Cairo that a sustainable peace between Israel and Palestine would benefit the United States, Israel, and Palestine. I think we can add the world at large.
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