In all ways imaginable, the Israeli government failed its own citizens by leaving them to fend for themselves. They had military planners and the help of the White House when it came to launching their war, but they failed in the most basic of tasks: taking care of their own on the home front and leaving it to overwhelmed charity groups. In some ways, it reminds me of the exceptionally poor performance of the US government during Hurricane Katrina – a little bit a lot too late, shrouded in apologizes, excuses and promises to “do better the next time around” with all the “lessons learned” and no one actually held responsible. Those empty words ring hollow for every elderly and disabled person who was left in the northern part of the country to fend for themselves and is an experience they should've never went through in the first place.
The Israeli government seems to be in the same position every time: letting their citizens down. A case in point is a portion from a Letter to the Editor in the Jerusalem Post dated 9/04/06: “Israeli society seems to accept the hand-outs without embarrassment. The fact that our governments are incapable of taking responsibility for the most of human rights of any society is a given.” Where is all the money going with this government? Is it corruption or poor management?
To go back to the scene of the crime, we now know that Israel had approximately a $1.84 billion surplus thanks to higher tax revenues while during the same time, poverty experienced by those in Israel hit an all-time high. The average person who was below the poverty line to begin with will certainly find the various forms of assistance undoubtedly curtailed. Imagine what $1.84 billion could have done to positively impact the lives of these citizens?
- Better quality of healthcare.
- Medicine for the poor.
- Food assistance.
- Rent subsidies.
- Utilities subsidies.
I'm not big on social programs because they come at the expense of the middle class (the wealthy get the tax breaks and loopholes), but there comes a responsibility for every nation to care for those who through whatever set of unfortunate circumstances, cannot survive without additional help. Let's face it - with such a small amount put aside, it would've been better to have banked the surplus into “rainy day fund” to gather interest, or to reinvest it back into the social system to give these people a hand up, not a hand out.
Now the government is pulling a “Read my lips!: NO NEW TAXES !” routine. Oh, as if we haven't heard that line before, along with “the check's in the mail!” and “I'll call you tomorrow!” There are limited options for economic recovery:
- Restore confidence in the tourism trade that was destroyed. There are a few “enterprising” groups (if you can call them that) who have created a “terror tour” of sorts: they are taking tourists on the front lines and calling it the “Katyusha Trail”.
- Find a way to reconnect with the offended Christian pilgrimage population who accounts for nearly 20% of all tourist packages. This may be easier said than done.
- Get businesses back up and running so the state may begin to reap from a variety of business taxes.
- Ask Jews and Christians who supported the war effort to now send their checks as soon as possible.
- Raise taxes. Oops! I know the Minister of Finance said it wasn't going to happen, but the reality here is too high to ignore.
- Get the United States to pay all assorted war expenses since many in Israel feel it was the White House that “goaded” Israel into this mess in the first place.
Oh, you didn't hear the Israeli government is hoping to get the United States to pay for the war in addition to some “save face” cash for Lebanon
? I think the mentality is, “since you goaded us into this war, you need to pick up the check, friend!” Everybody's had one of those friends – they show up for dinner and run to the restroom just before the check arrives. It's been almost a month since Israel ran to the bathroom and hasn't come out.
The Jerusalem Post article states: “ According to ministry estimates, Israel spent close to NIS 30 billion ($6.84 billion) on ammunition, fuel and other expenses during the war.” Now let's do some basic math: deficit of $6.84 billion minus the surplus of $1.84 billion equals $5 billion in the hole. If I remember correctly, the war lasted 34 days, which means the Israeli Defense Force spent on average a little bit over $201,000 per day.
Ok, let's dig a little bit deeper into this picture for some fine tooth comb revelations that the average American hasn't been exposed to. Haaretz.com has an excellent article that was buried , but I stumbled upon it purely by accident during a keyword search on their site.
'Like everybody, our unit had been out of practice for more than six years,' he says. ‘Obviously, the soldiers needed some retraining, to fire their rifles, if only for the sake of calibrating them properly. And how many bullets were allocated for the purpose of training? A thousand, for the whole regiment .' Well, anecdotal evidence says that tens of thousands of mortar shells were fired into Lebanon , which killed about 200 Hizbullah people. You don't need to be a military strategist to realize that's a pretty poor efficiency level. Firing 100,000 shells and killing 200 terrorists did not maximally utilize the strategic and economic efficacy of his armaments, to be delicate about it. More directly, one might say that the Israeli army wasted 99.9% of its shells on wild firing that hit nothing but the rocky ground of Lebanon . ”
Imagine in the private sector world you screwed up 99.9% of whatever you touched. It wouldn't be long before someone in management would show you the door after a short period of time. Of course the first issue would be to give you refresher training. Since I've never served in the military, I did a google search to determine how many troops are approximately in a regiment. There were different figures on different sites, but the average ran between 500 and 1,000 troops. For argument's sake, let's use 500; this means an IDF refresher class with their rifles amounted to two bullets each. Two?! Who goes to war after firing two bullets, and what's left over to actually shoot at the enemy?
I admit this is a cheap shot (pun intended) right up front but…how does “the most moral army in the world” aim? A two-bullet allotment during retraining would definitely explain all the civilian deaths in Lebanon .
