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May 06, 2007
Buh Bye
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel's defense minister said Saturday he will step down after an inquiry commission criticized his handling of the war in Lebanon last summer, but he will probably wait until his Labor Party has held its primaries at the end of the month.
The government probe found that Amir Peretz did not fulfill his duty as defense minister, in part due to his inexperience in military matters.
Peretz, who is under public pressure to resign, told Channel Two TV Saturday that he would leave his post, probably after primaries in the Labor Party which he leads.
"I have made my decision," Peretz said. "But I think if I decided from one day to the next to get up and flee the defense ministry, I would be doing something bad, bad for the security and the state of Israel."
About 100,000 people from across the political spectrum demonstrated Thursday in Tel Aviv to urge Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Peretz to resign.
Actually, that number was close to 200,000, but who's counting.
"The person who will inherit the defense portfolio from me will receive a ministry in better condition than the one I headed," Defense Minister Amir Peretz said in a Channel 2 TV interview aired on Saturday.
Peretz was responding to the Winograd Committee's interim report, published on Monday, which put the most of the blame for the outcome of the Second Lebanon War on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Peretz and former IDF chief of general staff Lt. -Gen. [res.] Dan Halutz.
This, from the man who, in February of this year, said that 'he plans to go all the way' in the the evacuation of what he calls "illegal" outposts. Because that's the single most important issue for Israel.
This weekend, palestinian terrorists operating out of Gaza, fired at least eight rockets at nearby Israeli towns and communities. In one attack, a rocket scored a direct hit on a family home in the working-class town of Sderot. The family was not in the house at the time.
After the barrage, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told reporters, "We are prepared for a war in Gaza... There is a plan."
Plan? You have a plan? Thousands of rockets have rained down on Israel since you turned Gaza over to the terrorists Amir, so what is this famous plan we keep hearing about?
IDF officials told the Yisraeli daily commuter paper that the Gaza region will be “heating up” in the coming months. They said that the government has operative plans ready, but will not allow the IDF to carry them out unless there are fatal injuries due to a Kassam rocket strike.
If this is true and you are waiting for Jewish blood to be spilled before you do anything, when that blood is spilled Amir, it will be on your hands, as surely as if you had killed them yourself.
Get out Peretz and take Ehud with you, you're both incompetent, inexeperienced and incapable of doing your job.
It is written in the Book of Proverbs "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth." Forgive me G-d, but today, there is joy in my heart to know that Halutz is gone, and soon Peretz will be gone. Two down, one to go. The future of Israel depends upon it.
Posted by LindaSoG at May 6, 2007 04:56 AM
Comments
There's hope Linda, I wish Americans would look at Israel's leadership for an example and the lesson of what incompetence and appeasement brings. They and we need more leaders with patriotic convictions like Golda Meir and Moshe Dyan.
Posted by: Jack at May 7, 2007 11:46 AM