Who said the home front isn't protected? People who have spoken in recent years with Defense Minister Ehud Barak know he's well aware of the suggestion that he take care of two things before a war with Iran: The return of Gilad Shalit and the sale of his home in the luxury Akirov Towers.
He had to take care of Shalit so he could look benevolent and patient before hundreds or thousands of lives are dumped. And the apartment? There's no better preparation for war than to sell. Because if "only" 500 people are killed, you can be sure thousands of apartments will be damaged. Barak's situation, in which he has sold his real apartment but his next one is still "on paper," is ideal. Apartments in the planning stage don't get destroyed. You can't compare Barak to former Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who sold only a few of his stocks before he ordered the Second Lebanon War to get underway.
These are good days for Barak. Ever since he returned to the Defense Ministry, most IDF operations have been well planned and frugal with Israeli lives. So it was with the Syrian reactor, Operation Cast Lead and the last round in the south, which is preparing us for the upcoming Israel-Iran War. Now anyone sitting in the bunkers in the heart of Tel Aviv or in the giant bunker under Jerusalem's Har Hamenuhot cemetery can be assured that their own personal real estate won't suffer any damage.
But Barak is just a footnote. Barak has no God. The thing is, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does. Not for nothing, many evangelist groups are enthusiastically supporting Netanyahu - evangelists who preach about an Israeli-Iranian war of Armageddon, which will wipe out most of the Jews, fulfilling the condition for Jesus' second coming.
So who is whose donkey? That we'll know soon. Not just about evangelists and AIPAC, but also in the Knesset.
On November 8, 1956, David Ben-Gurion, the victor in the Sinai, gave a speech in which he made clear he didn't give a damn what the United States thought. Within two days, his and Moshe Dayan's Third Kingdom of Israel backed down in the face of threats from the Russians and a U.S. president who had just won reelection.
But Netanyahu doesn't intend to back down. For Barak, the war Israel is planning is both real and a bluff to get the Americans moving. But not to Netanyahu, who decides. As far as he's concerned, there's only one script.
State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss did us a big favor when he slipped up on the job and didn't check whether the hundreds of millions being spent on propaganda at newspaper Israel Hayom were a violation of the Parties Funding Law. This was a favor because in a place where democracy is being trampled on, there has to be a Tishreen - the Syrian government newspaper. If not, how would we know what's really going on?
Last Thursday, the editor of Israel Hayom, Amos Regev, delivered an astounding attack on the Americans and their government. Maybe he didn't go so far as to say that the newspaper's backer, Sheldon Adelson, has determined that President Barack Obama's policies are liable to lead to Israel's destruction, but it came close to that.
Regev compared Israel to a man whose car breaks down on the road to Jerusalem. A driver who stops to help claims that he was a mechanic in the Armored Corps, but messes things up even more. According to Regev, writing in the party organ, Obama isn't even an army mechanic and his intentions apparently aren't good. His article didn't sling mud on Obama only. The United States, he said, hasn't been able to win a war in decades. The only ones who can win are the Israelis.
When hostile countries achieve a nuclear capability, a cold war begins. But a cold war has already broken out, only it's not between Israel and Iran. It's between Israel and the United States. The whole global drama taking place is essentially between Israel and the United States. Iran is just a chance remark in this confrontation.
Netanyahu - the commissioner of the generations that won't come after us - has a great fear, but it's not Iran. Netanyahu is afraid that the U.S. administration will cook up an agreement with Iran in an effort to prevent Israel from attacking in the summer. Since that's the case, Netanyahu is liable to push to attack quickly, before such talks even begin.
It's understood that if Netanyahu is really right about Obama, his policy ought to be reversed; he should seek Western support of Israel. That's what senior defense officials past and present have been arguing. One could assume this is how Barak would be proceeding if he were in charge.
But as one of the first Israelis who was a victim of kibbutzim's communal sleeping arrangements, with no parents present, Barak insists on having his own teddy bear. The leaders of the kibbutz are the ones with vision. The people who have God in them. The people who believe in their power to defeat America. This God is better not to trust in.
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