The First Punic War of Lebanon by Elyakim Haetzni (Israel National News)
When the complaints of reservists reached the media to the effect that the IDF was not able to supply them with, among other things, water, I recalled images from the nightmare of the expulsion from Gush Katif; images of policemen and soldiers wearing their best expulsion outfits, with a stylish, uniform water bottle clipped on their backs. It was another piece of equipment of an organized and well-equipped army – but only for the oppression and expulsion of “the enemy within,” the settlers.
A year has passed and that same army went to war against the real enemy, with supply containers half-empty, without sufficient supply of food, with even necessary battle gear missing or out-dated and ineffective. Soldiers were forced to purchase bullet-proof vests and other equipment with their own funds.
Whoever wants to understand the order of priorities of the leftist governments – the expulsion governments and the elites behind them – there is no better exemplification than the foregoing juxtaposition.
The campaign in Lebanon was the Yom Kippur War without the crossing of the Suez Canal, without a civilian leader like Golda Meir – whose iron character crushed Moshe Dayan’s hysteria – and without the young Arik Sharon.
Imagine that World War II was waged, throughout, by Neville Chamberlain, the peace criminal whose “peace now”-style appeasement fed the Nazi snake. And imagine that the British military campaign in Africa was led by the failed generals who were removed by Churchill – Ritchie, Auchinlek, Wavell – and not by Montgomery. Rest assured that the Second World War would have ended with Hitler’s regime intact, and only in France, or perhaps somewhere else, would there have been created a demilitarized buffer zone. And that cynical, mass-murdering liar would have signed a commitment, with his own impure and untrustworthy hand, to keep that zone free of soldiers and weapons.
Nasrallah will keep his ridiculous and meaningless commitments just as Hitler would have done so.
Who covered, analyzed and explained this war? That same media that is hostile to Jewish nationalism and that supports “Palestine”, that is defeatist and that led to this war, those same journalists and anchormen who demanded that the IDF budget “fat” be cut, until our sons were left prey to the enemy’s new anti-tank missiles. Rafael and the air industry have effective countermeasures, but it was too much money to develop and install them. It is said that experimental models that were given to the Americans were deployed successfully in Iraq.
Who will pay the penalty for the blood spilled needlessly because the corrupt, bought-out government, which was drowning in surplus funds, could not find the means to supply such a necessary defensive tool? And who will pay for the poisoned minds, including the minds that were placed in charge of the internal division of the defense budget; and the minds of the staff generals who believed, in their great blindness, that the period of large-scale wars is over and that the bank of appeasements, concessions, disengagements and self-degradations is endless, to the point that there will always be something else to throw the enemy in order to avoid war? And where hides the intellectual father of the “small, smart army,” that dream that crippled the military, the architect of the destruction in Lebanon – Ehud Barak?
Only the Israeli theater of the absurd could have created a scenario in which the war was run – at the military and civilian levels – by those who brought it about by their pathetic weakness and their twisted thinking, in which those who are analyzing the war contributed to its breaking out, and in which, most outrageously, it is now suggested that the war be investigated by the spiritual father of the ideological downfall at its foundation – Aharon Barak.
Carthage was not destroyed all of a sudden. For 200 years, it was fought by Rome, which eventually razed it to the ground and salted its earth. After the First Punic War came the Second Punic War, and the end came after 50 years. My friend Moshe Leshem brought to my attention the fact that the great Canaanite superpower – which ruled all of the western Mediterranean, North Africa and deep into the continent, as well as part of Sicily and Spain, and whose ships reached England, perhaps the leading economic power in the ancient world – was brought low, had its burial pit dug from within, by a faction known as “the Peace Party”. And it was also the party of the ruling elites.
In light of Arab-Iranian genocidal desires, whoever does not want this last war to be recorded as “the First Punic War,” Heaven forbid, is obligated to bring down our “peace government” and put an end to the malignant “peace-philosophy” in both the civilian and military establishments.
Why did Carthage fall? Because what primarily interested them was money. It was a trading superpower, a nation of millionaires that rejected any nationalist, militant, responsible approach, any proposal to preempt the clear and obvious danger, because even talk of danger was “bad for business” – never mind mobilization and preemptive war. Therefore, while in Rome Cato the Elder – like Ahmadinejad today – would end every speech with the phrase, “Moreover, I advise that Carthage should be destroyed,” the ruling elites in Carthage were busy counting money. Their thoughts were on the “stock market,” not on national survival. And with the end of national existence came the end of the stock market, as well.
As part of that disorder, Carthage was also filled with public corruption and irresponsibility in the affairs of state. How typical it is that all of those in the leading financial circles in Israel, almost without exception, leverage their powerful influence on politicians (and on the media, which they control) according to the premise that “peace” is good for business, while settlement of the liberated land of Israel is bad for business.
It is extremely worthwhile to study carefully the events of what the Romans called “the Punic Wars.” After all, the rulers of Carthage were related to us, as sons of Tyre and Sidon. Hannibal crossed Spain, crossed the Alps and defeated Roman armies on Italian soil in battles that are studied until today in military war colleges. Hannibal reached the gates of Rome, but was defeated by the Romans due to a lack of support from home and the undermining of the forces of “peace” and corruption. Rome was patriotic and militant until its last drop of blood and its last gold piece; whereas, the cynical, nihilist Carthagian men of disengagement and convergence sat back and watched from the side, letting Hannibal “play for them.” It was their failures and intrigues that sealed the fate of the city and the empire, which the heroism and self-sacrifice of the patriots could not save.
And what does the future hold for us?
Will we be able to produce a civilian leader and a military personality that the people can look up to, who will project character, charisma, incorruptibility and nobility, and most importantly, original and independent thinking that will get us out of the straits? Will the hostile media repent and return to being Jewish, Zionist, and supportive of the survival instinct of the society and the state?
Carthage could have been saved only by a speedy and timely fall of the “peace government.”