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February 4, 2009
Exclusive: Goodbye, Mr. Olmert – Israel needs a modern-day Levi Eshkol
According to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel's just-concluded military operation in Gaza was a tremendous success, because it re-established the Jewish's state's formidable military deterrent. Who is he kidding? To be sure, the Israel Defense Force did a tremendous amount of damage to Hamas' terrorist network during roughly three weeks of fighting. But the IDF leaves Gaza much as it left Lebanon following its 2006 war with Hezbollah: falling far short of a decisive victory over an Iranian terrorist proxy, which lives to fight another day (and in the case of the Gaza terrorists, continues to fire rockets into Israel.).
In Lebanon, UN peacekeepers were powerless to stop Iran and Syria from replacing the military infrastructure and weapons destroyed by the Israeli Army. The rearmament effort has been successful enough that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently reported that Hezbollah's military arsenal was triple its size at the conclusion of the 2006 war. All indications are that Hamas will try to follow this model.
On Sunday, Hamas boss Khaled Meshaal traveled to Tehran, where he met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and declared that Hamas had won a "victory" in the just-concluded war with Israel. "The Islamic Republic of Iran had a big share in our victory in the Gaza Strip," Meshaal said.
In the short run, at least, the critical military question is whether Egypt will finally act to seal its border with Gaza. Israeli officials profess guarded optimism that Cairo has finally come to realize how dangerous Hamas and its Iranian backers really are, and it will no longer seek to ignore or play down the terrorist storm on its northern border. Perhaps. But there is ample reason to believe that Egypt might learn a very different lesson. After watching Olmert talk for the second time in the past two and a half years about how he was going to strike a decisive blow against terrorists, they saw the Israeli Army moving back across the border in time for President Obama's inauguration, while Israeli diplomats touted this as a diplomatic "victory" – as if currying favor with the new American president was somehow more important than destroying a murderous enemy like Hamas. Given that reality, it would hardly come as a shock if Egypt simply decided it could afford to take Israel's concerns about terrorism a little less seriously.
Olmert once again failed to win the release of Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit, kidnapped from Israel in a June 2006 cross-border raid by Hamas. With an Israeli election scheduled for February 10th, Knesset members affiliated with Olmert's ruling Kadima Party have expressed the view that if they could somehow engineer Shalit's release, Kadima could win a come-from-behind victory for Olmert's designated successor, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Translation: Maybe, if Israel springs enough terrorist killers from jail, Hamas will free its Israeli captive. But if they were to win Shalit's release this way, it would be a Phyrrhic victory for Jerusalem.
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Like earlier prison releases, it would return Palestinian terrorists to the battlefield and reinforce the worst kind of message to the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and their state sponsors: Kidnapping Israeli soldiers is the way to get terrorists out of jail. Hamas leader Meshaal last week seemed to dash any hopes that Shalit might go free, when he rejected Olmert's reported offer to gradually open Gaza border crossings in exchange for Shalit's release.
In September 2005, as Israel completed its total withdrawal from Gaza, then Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz took defense reporters to a hill overlooking Gaza and declared that Israel would respond with full military force to the first rocket attack after the pullout. The reality, however, was totally different: Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and since January 2006 under Mr. Olmert, Israel's leadership refrained from undertaking such a response, even though Hamas and other terrorist groups fired thousands of rockets into the western Negev.
For almost three years, Israelis have listened to Ehud Olmert bloviating endlessly about all of the things he was prepared to do to Hezbollah and Hamas, and how Israel could never tolerate an Iranian nuclear weapon. In the end, he fell short in each of these areas. The one positive thing I would say about Olmert's performance on security issues was this: At least he had the good sense to ensure that the Israeli military retained freedom of movement against West Bank terror cells.
Nearly two decades ago, Olmert was known as one of Israel's right-of-center "princes" – the nickname for a group of young Likud Party members who patterned themselves after President Reagan. But in recent years, he drifted leftward, and prosecutors say he became mired in corruption that resulted in criminal charges and ended his political career.
In all likelihood, next Tuesday Israelis will select either Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu or Kadima Party leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni as their next prime minister. Whoever they select should govern as the antithesis of Olmert – a man of much bluster who constantly came up short. A far better model of leadership came from Levi Eshkol, who served as prime minister of Israel from 1963 to 1969 – presiding over the country's extraordinary victory in the Six-Day War in June 1967. Until a few years ago, Eshkol, the third prime minister in Israeli history, was relegated to obscurity. In the spring of 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, egged on by Moscow, closed the Straits of Tehran in an effort to strangle Israel economically. At 72, Eshkol seemed timid and hesitant. Well past his physical prime and nearing the end of his life (he would die in office in February 1969), he was the opposite of Ehud Olmert in practically every way. When it came to the history of the 1967 war, Eshkol is treated as a secondary figure, much less important than the likes of Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin.
More recent scholarship, however, shows that the prevailing wisdom about Eshkol was completely wrong. In the Autumn 2003 issue of Azureonline, Israeli historian Michael Oren published an eye-opening article titled "Levi Eshkol, Forgotten Hero," which shows how his quiet behind-the-scenes work helped pave the way for Israel's remarkable victory in the Six-Day War. Eshkol embarked on an accelerated military modernization plan that "transformed Israel's air and armored forces into rapidly deployable and potent weapons," Oren wrote. Wary of French efforts to distance itself from Israel, Eshkol reduced the Jewish State's dependence on French weapons in favor of American-made Skyhawk fighters and Patton tanks. Israeli intelligence officials told Eshkol that the Arab world was badly divided and incapable of waging war before 1970. Eshkol was skeptical of all of this reassuring talk, and made it his business to make sure that Israel was prepared for a simultaneous attack by Arab states – preparation that came in handy when Nasser blockaded Israel and kicked UN peacekeepers out of the Sinai. Oren also documents the incredible and conflicting pressures Eshkol was forced to deal with in the days and weeks leading up to the Six-Day War: pressure from Washington, Moscow and other international powers not to take military action on the one hand, and intense pressure from the Israeli people to launch a pre-emptive military strike on the other. In the end, Eshkol handled the crisis masterfully.
Contrast that with the departing Ehud Olmert, who blustered endlessly about destroying Israel's terrorist foes, but ended up launching two inconclusive wars ending in stalemate. Whoever Israelis elect next week, let's hope that leader is more Eshkol than Olmert.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Joel Himelfarb is the Assistant Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Times. The views expressed here are his own.
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