The Pavlovian reactions from senior Defense Ministry officials to the mention of the name F-35 prove that the Prime Minister acted correctly when he maintained secrecy and compartmentalization throughout the peace process. • Also: Three protest leaders in Belarus lead a non-violent revolution
F-35 aircraft
Photography:
Reuters
Amos Yadlin was upset.
The spinologists from Eldad Yaniv's seminary rejoiced and said "liars."
Rina Matzliach won over a band of commentators who wore sackcloth and ashes.
It was last Saturday night.
A heavy catastrophe befell the world of the media and the defense establishment upon learning of the signing of another peace agreement - and this time something big.
Sudan.
And so, at the intersection with the Bnei Gantz trip to Washington, the F-35 affair returned.
This was the way the new peace was chosen to screen.
In some ways, the F-35 is more serious than the submarine affair, Amos Gilad stated.
A few days earlier, former security chief Aharon Zeevi-Farkash was interviewed in detail. He welcomed the possibility that with the rise of a democratic president like Joe Biden, he would return the United States to the (original) nuclear deal.
All of these are signs of the return of the constant, dangerous conflict, which has lasted for 11 years, over the question of who has authority and who is responsible in the Israeli administration for our national security.
This is probably one of the few times that the heads of the defense establishment, and especially senior IDF officials, encounter a strange creature headed by the Israeli government, which exercises its authority to lead and decide on national security issues.
The re-emergence of the F-35 affair indicates that Prime Minister Netanyahu weighed correctly when he made most of the peace moves in complete secrecy and secrecy.
One can imagine what would have happened if his opponents from the defense establishment, and especially Gabi Ashkenazi and Bnei Gantz, had known in real time what was brewing.
Together with allies from across the spectrum, they were able to torpedo peace moves with the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan.
We need to start with Nahum Barnea's big scoop.
The article he published in Yedioth Ahronoth on August 18 was not exactly a scoop.
Immediately following the declaration of peace on August 13, senior diplomat Dennis Ross published an article in the Washington Post: "... as senior officials in the Emirates explained to me following talks with the administration, their country realized that open and official peace would give them access to previously out-of-reach weapons systems. Their hand, "he wrote as the Messiah according to his innocence, while praising the agreement that Trump and Netanyahu drafted.
An example of such a weapon system are UAVs, Ross explained.
"Until now, such weapons systems have been denied to the Emirates because of the United States' commitment to maintaining the military quality gap between Israel and the Arabs.
While this superiority is essential to the realization of the needs of deterrence, peace also enters into the calculations.
The United States provided Egypt with advanced weapons after President Sadat made peace with Israel. Similarly, Jordan never received an F-16 (the most advanced aircraft in those years) until King Hussein signed a peace agreement. The equation to soften the demands of the military quality gap when an Arab country "A stamp of peace with Israel will be applied again and again to the United Arab Emirates. The idea is to convey a message that peace provides a long-term economic and security benefit."
Ross notes that it is the Emirates - not Israel - that will face new threats to their security from Iran as well as from extremist Islamist elements, and that it should be able to defend itself (the F-35 will be granted - if at all - only in at least six or seven years).
The F-35 shot does not put any normal U.S. observer in an epileptic seizure, as happened in Israel. Opponents of the agreement there are former Obama administration officials, such as Ben Rhodes and the Brookings Institution, as they think Israel receives an early reward without paying the Palestinians.
In Israel, this is a different story.
Here retired champions react in a pavlovian way.
It has nothing to do with reality.
Already a month and a half ago, on the eve of one of his trips to Washington, Defense Minister Ganz said that "agreements with the Emirates and Bahrain are of historical and strategic importance."
And about
the F-35 he said: "I do not remember when the US wanted to sell a particular weapon and failed."
You can mention here - why not actually?
- At the time, security chiefs relied on thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles to the PLO "security" forces when Arafat established the Palestinian Authority. Sometimes simple rifles become a much greater strategic threat than a modern aircraft in the hands of a distant country with no danger. .
But the interesting thing is that the same rebellious security system that fights for authority not hers, longed to sell advanced weapons systems to the same princesses of the UAE.
At the time, the New Yorker reported that the Emirates had asked Israel as early as 2010 to sell them armed UAVs (for attack).
But Israel refused.
The reason was that it would upset the White House, which opposed such weapons in the hands of the Emirates. "
Today it is already clear why President Obama's White House opposed.
Because shortly after taking office he created the conditions for rapprochement with Iran and the Muslim world at the expense of Israel.
An advanced Israeli weapons system in the hands of the United Arab Emirates would have greatly annoyed the new partner of the United States, Iran of the ayatollahs. Positions for Israel.
Destroyers of parties
It seems that Democratic parties in the United States are coordinating with circles at the top of our security (especially the former) to dictate their own policies in the important strategic areas.
In most enlightened countries, certainly in the United States, there is a lot of talk and endless writing about disinformation campaigns and foreign interference in domestic politics in the process of democracy and the regime. In Israel, people do not talk but do a lot. Information can certainly be based on true facts, and its goal is in the field of psychological warfare, to achieve exactly what we see today in Israeli media and politics.
Without using the phrase "dis-information," News 12 commentator Ehud Yaari noted this week on Fathi and Zimri's radio show that he knows who leaked the story.
"These are very certain democratic elements. Jews. They had a political interest in disrupting this agreement (peace with the Emirates). What you heard."
The two gaping interviewers interpret his words: Political factors that wanted to ruin Trump's celebration because Trump is Bibi?
"Exactly," says Yaari.
"Yes. I do not say who they leaked to and how they leaked. I say where it came from. It came from democratic elements who do not hate Israel, but they were in contact with representatives from the emirates, heard from them that they wanted to get an F-35 and took it out."
Dennis Ross quoted from representatives of the UAE that they want to get advanced weapon systems.
The Democrats did not just want to spoil the celebration.
They have wanted to spoil a certain policy and strategy, and in this matter they have been coordinated with circles at the top of the security, especially retired, for more than a decade.
The achievements of the Trump and Bibi duo are in stark contrast to the policies of Democrats, and so even if the two smallest, most modern and dynamic countries in the Middle East, decide to join hands and go together, some of the top Israeli defense officials, certainly the Defense Ministry and other democratic circles, try to spoil.
An alliance was formed between the Emirates and Israel.
Not only vis-à-vis Iran, but in many strata and non-security areas.
Yaari mentioned that the Emirates generally do business with Iran.
"They are much more troubled by Erdogan's Turkey," says Ehud Yaari.
The top Defense Ministry official, Amir Eshel - formerly of the IAEA - and below, was in Washington for about a month to receive some of the alleged improvements coming to Israel following the US arms deals with the United Arab Emirates. They anonymously blamed the prime minister for harming national security. We repaired the damage. And now Israel will get another half F-35 squadron and more helicopters and modern means that will strengthen its advantage and security for many years. There is nothing to admire. This is the perception. That expensive toys from the United States constitute Israel's security.
And if the whole business ran so fast and only needed the Secretary of Defense's signature in Washington, who would discuss that and decide on all this procurement?
And unlike submarines, which are a crucial and vital security factor - here really is the question: who benefits from more F-35s?
Retired security guards are challenging the prime minister's authority to determine national security policy.
By generating scandals around procurement issues they seek to create a lever that will allow them to take over policy in all important strategic areas: peace agreements, the Iranian nuclear issue, the question of the future of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, and of course equipping. The prime minister as a traitor and as someone who seriously harms "national security."
Wisdom of women
Three protest leaders in Belarus are leading a non-violent revolution. Faced with the provocations of the security forces, they demonstrate overwhelming creativity
In the current season of protests, the authentic mass protest in Belarus stands out.
On Sunday this week, 200,000 demonstrators gathered in Minsk demanding that dictator Lukashenko go home.
This was the ultimatum given to him by the three women at the head of the protest a few weeks ago.
Maria Klasnikova. Tore her passport on the way to the Ukrainian border point // Photo: EP
I spoke to Masha Boman, who has been following the uprising in Belarus for almost three months with bated breath and out of complete euphoria, and she said that these 200,000 - that is what the police also agree with.
I mean, this is an underestimation.
So let's agree that in a country of about 9.5 million people, about a quarter of a million people took to the streets in Minsk and throughout the country, in other towns and small towns, demanding that Lukashenko go home.
Boman, an intellectual of Russian descent who lives in Jerusalem, follows the events through the "Rain" channel broadcast from Moscow.
Most of the media in the world "knocks a card" of one report, among others by some senior writer like Masha Gassen in The New Yorker, and then goes down to wireless silence because there are more important uprisings.
Here the uprising seeks to oust a dictator, and in democracies there is an activist minority behind which the entire media stands, trying to overthrow a legitimate government.
The three most prominent leaders are Tikhonovskaya, Veronica Tespakalo, and Klasnikova.
Tikhonovskaya and Tespakalo left Belarus.
Tikhonovska is directing the action from neighboring Lithuania.
There was some criticism that she had left Belarus, but there is general agreement today that she had no choice as Lukashenko and Kalgasio threatened to harm her children.
It was Klasnikova who tore up her passport on the way to the Ukrainian border point.
So the cops had to make a back turn and throw her in jail.
The most prominent leader left to run the uprising council is Svetlana Alekseevich.
It is free because it is surrounded by a shell of human shields, foreign ambassadors and fans.
She is the only Nobel Prize-winning author in the history of literature who also leads a political campaign for democracy.
Alekseevich's great book ("Second Hand Time") is a collection of humane and moving testimonies of the communist era in the USSR.
Masha Boman marvels at the incredible creativity of the three women who turned out to be natural leaders while their husbands, who were thrown in jail on the eve of the August election, were almost forgotten.
They maintain in true faith a non-violent protest.
This is in the face of serious provocations from the police and from militias of thugs, who are trying to create an atmosphere of fear in the street.
So far, about ten people have been killed.
In the protests of Israel and America, the provocations are on the part of the demonstrators against the police and the civilian population in an attempt to create a violent spark.
Masha Boman, who grew up in the Khrushchev-era Soviet Union and later Brezhnev, believes Lukashenko is complete. "As for Putin, I think he was wrong.
He gambled on the wrong man, "she says." We had to keep quiet and consider what was going on there. "
Belarussian high-tech industry leaders support the uprising.
They are putting pressure and temptations on the army to come down from the fence and turn against Lukashenko.
How he will fall - it is not yet clear.
But such a regime does not have the flexibility and legitimacy that a democratic regime has in the face of a revolt against it.
The unparalleled wisdom of the three leaderships may lead to new, free elections.
