Dan Halutz: Ignorance and Politics

Dan Halutz has announced his entry into politics. This former IDF lieutenant general distinguished himself through his disastrous and lethal incompetence in the last Lebanese War. He wasted no time in demonstrating his total ignorance of Israeli-US relations by opening his mouth.

Halutz opined that by refusing to extend the ban on housing starts in Judea and Samaria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would anger US President Obama, and the result would be to harm efforts to prevent a nuclear Iran. Halutz's abysmal disconnect with reality is remarkable, but not wholly unexpected.

As Jonathan Rosenblum pointed out so well in this week's Jerusalem Post Magazine, only an ignoramus regarding U.S. politics would assume that Israel has to placate the ego of the U.S. Commander in Chief in order to safeguard bi-national relations. And only a political imbecile would be blind to the fact that Barack Obama's demonstrated foreign policy incompetence has made him almost irrelevant to long-term U.S. foreign policy.

Israel has, for ten months, instituted a building freeze in Judea, Samaria, and parts of Jerusalem. In other words, Netanyahu gave in to Obama's initial demand to discriminate against Jews in their own land. In return, Mahmoud Abbas delivered Netanyahu's meeting his requests, even at significant political expense.

How fitting that an ex-general who bought into the concept of planned mediocrity when it came to his military decisions would hitch his wagon to the apex of Israeli political mediocrity, the Kadima party.

It is no anomaly that the left wing in Israel constantly seeks to ingratiate itself with the left wing in the U.S. and, of course, Europe. That is the way of political elites. They regularly seek to bolster their counterparts and, by so doing, cement the concept that elites should have disproportionate influence.