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Does the Government of Israel Protect its Own Population?, by David Bedein (Israel Behind the News)
Summary;
Bedein lists a summary of the State Comptroller’s recent report which evaluates “the dysfunctional behavior of the Israeli government during last summer’s conflict.” His introduction to the summary is based on his press coverage of last year’s Lebanon conflict where “4,000 rockets fell on population centers of more than 1.4 million Israeli citizens.”
His summary also reflects the perspective of; “the father of a young man who served in a sensitive Israeli army combat unit on the northern border between 2001 and 2004, a period when time the Hezbollah showed every sign that it was preparing for war, the attacks came as no surprise.”
Bedein writes background on the compilation of data for the report as well as a synopsis of it’s conclusions;
The majority of the Israeli population in the north was taken by complete surprise and, amazingly, – the Israeli government was even more surprised and totally unprepared to meet the challenge of protecting its population during a time of war.
For the past year, more than 500 staffers of the Israeli government’s State Comptroller’s office have worked hard to evaluate the dysfunctional behavior of the Israeli government during last summer’s conflict.
The conclusions were released… by the Israel State Comptroller in a scathing report of 692 pages.
The bottom line: the State of Israel gets a failing grade in everything having to do with the treatment of the home front. This includes Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, his ministers, the police, the IDF and the agencies responsible for taking care of the average citizen during an emergency.
No Israeli governmental agency emerged clean from the state comptroller’s report. The cabinet ministers did not take the home front into consideration when they decided to go to war, resulting in the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command failure to arrange for armored protection; to the Police, which it was determined operated without the proper tools.
Bedein comments at the conclusion of the piece on the Comptroller’s reports’ implications for Israel’s financial supporters abroad;
During the conflict on Israel’s northern border, Israel’s supporters throughout the world provided funds for the emergency services for Israel’s population then under siege. The follow up to the Israel State Comptroller’s report will undoubtedly examine the whereabouts of those funds, and how these philanthropic funds are being administered. Unfortunately, it would seem the word “accountability” does not translate into Hebrew.
To read the entire piece, click here.