Crank up the F-15's and bring out Slim Pickens on an H-bomb. My summer just got a hell of a lot harder.
"All the signs are pointing to Iran. Only in the past few months we've seen Iran try to target Israelis in Thailand, Indian, Georgia, Cyprus and more, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said following the deadly terror attack on a bus in carrying Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria.
Of course-there is absolutely NO WAY Yetanahyu would seek to capitalize on this. No way , whatsoever. I mean-it is not like his government has just fallen or anything:
The 70-day-old Likud-Kadima government that broke up on Tuesday was a prime example of political shoddiness at its worst.
Israel has seen its share of unity governments. Some lasted longer than others; some accomplished a great deal and some were missed opportunities. But there has never been anything like this.
In the dark of night 70 days ago, only minutes before the Knesset was going to schedule elections for September 4, the leaders of the two big parties shocked everyone with a "historic" coalition agreement for the ensuing 18 months.
The new government had four goals: pass a universal draft law, change the system of government, jump-start the peace process and pass an emergency budget. Tuesday, after 70 days of euphoria, the partnership dissolved without any one of those things being achieved.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz are emerging from this bad joke, which made a mockery of Israeli democracy, looking bad. Both are going back to square one in much worse positions than before. Netanyahu looks as though he has forged an eternal alliance with the ultra-Orthodox, while Mofaz, who wanted the public to judge him by his results, has a very poor report card to show his voters; it has four zeros on it. He had good intentions, but we all know what the road to hell is paved with.
The draft issue is a serious one-Israelis are tired of seeing the Haredim be moral hypocrites, advocating policies that lead to violence-while getting a free pass to have to not have to deal with the consequences; this in order to study the Torah or other such nonsense.
Then again, the question has to be asked-what sort of accommodations can the IDF realistically make for the Haredim?
I can already picture military correspondent Carmela Menashe reporting on a yeshiva student-soldier whose young son fell ill, suddenly developed a high fever, and his wife summons her husband from the base to the hospital. She has left another two to three babies at home, her husband is no longer a child, he's at least 22. Someone has to help her, but the commander refuses to release her helpmate in the middle of a training exercise. Won't we all protest the hardheartedness? It's absolutely infuriating. After all, equality in sharing the burden of the family is also an important value.
And another yeshiva student will say he noticed a female soldier walking near the camp, he's almost certain it was a woman, he was even able to hear her voice from afar. Here's the proof: The IDF is not really interested in conscripting them, isn't willing to consider their feelings, and it's impossible to go on this way.
One scandal follows another, it's already the third case in one week: Another yeshiva student, who was hungry, got up at night to eat something in the brigade pantry. He became very upset: The kashrut stamp on the canned goods is an unacceptable one, and not from the proper Badatz (Haredi kosher certification ). True it's kosher, even glatt kosher, but it's someone else's seal of approval, not ours. As though bitten by a snake he runs outside to the parade grounds, and with a loud "gevalt" he wakes up his friends. Together they decide to phone the rebbe, to wake him up, too, so he can rend his clothes and raise a scandal. Here's additional proof of the non-Jewish nature of the Zionist army, which will soon be an army of Arabs, because Yisrael Beitenu ("Israel Our Home" ) is also Israel their home, until the voluntary transfer.
And what will happen on Shabbat? Who will measure 2,000 cubits and draw the Shabbat boundary? And who will rule on what constitutes pikuah nefesh (a danger to life ) that justifies desecrating the Shabbat, and who is worthy of having his life saved on the holy day? Soon there will be a heated debate over Jewish religious law between the rabbinical leaders of the Hardalim and those of the Haredim, whose disputes are always for the sake of heaven and never for earthly reasons: Who will bully the IDF more, who will prove to be the most important Jewish legal arbiter of the generation? In other words: Conscription for all, in the present situation, means dismantling the IDF.
In other words-the IDF would become the Jewish equivalent of the US Navy. Too willing to cave into the demands of a protected class to get any real work done. Only in the US Navy its women-in the IDF it would be the Haredim.
But don't kid yourself-with a collapsed government, new elections on the horizion forcing Bibi to get more hard line than he already is, and the fingerprints of Iran on this-stand the fuck by-the jets are going to roll.
Which will suck for the rest of us.