[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

Repeat after me: "I believe with a complete belief that withdrawal from the
Golan Heights will be rewarded with utopian peace"

Amen.

And welcome to the cult.

You are in good company.

No. I am not talking about Amir Oren.

I am referring to the brass who Amir Oren based this item on.

Here's the odd thing:

When lefties around the world - including in Israel - talk about the motives
of America when it goes to war, or for that matter the motives of almost any
leader outside of our neighborhood for going to war, they are more than
willing to entertain the possibility that what might appear to be secondary
or tertiary things are actually the real reason that these leader have gone
to war.

But when it comes to Syria there is one and absolutely only one reason that
Syria might attack Israel.

And that's to get back the Golan.

So if you are a member of this cult, the obvious policy recommendation when
facing the possibility that Syria may attack is to pre-empty the attack by
leaving the Golan.

And you can make this recommendation without having to seriously trouble
yourself with concerns for Israel's security after leaving the Golan since,
amen brother, Israel will have no security concerns once it leaves the Golan
because once we leave the Golan Syria will never ever ever attack.

Do you see the light?

It's OK if you don't.

Polls indicate that most Israelis don't.

Here is the scary thing: Do these brass cult members think that by
recommending withdrawal from the Golan that they are no longer obligated to
prepare solutions to address the Syrian challenge?]

Northern code
By Amir Oren Haaretz 26 January 2010
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145203.html

The last time Israeli and Syrian forces clashed at the level of
fighter-plane squadrons and ground divisions was in June 1982, apart from a
brief aerial encounter in November 1985. For a quarter century the Syrian
front has been quiet but volatile, as illustrated by the panic that seized
the government and military command in the tense summer of 2007. Regaining
the Golan Heights may not be Syrian President's Bashar Assad's top priority,
but Israel holds no copyright on productions titled "The boss has gone
crazy".

For the last three and a half years, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot has headed the
Israel Defense Forces' Northern Command. When Maj. Gen. Udi Adam resigned,
haunted by his failure in Lebanon, Eizenkot turned the post down. The
defense minister at the time, Amir Peretz, wanted to give the job to Maj.
Gen. Yoav Gallant, head of Southern Command. But chief of staff Dan Halutz
didn't agree, and Peretz came up with two retired generals, both over 60,
Ilan Biran and Amiram Levin. (He also wanted to appoint retired general Uzi
Dayan to head a supreme command at the Defense Ministry.) None of these
plans materialized, and when Eizenkot was summoned once again to Peretz's
office, in Halutz's presence, his objections to the appointment weren't so
strenuous.

Although both the current chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, and his
deputy, Maj. Gen. Benny Gantz, served as head of Northern Command during the
seven years before Adam's tenure, Eizenkot is now the IDF's top expert on
the northern front. He will have to command Israeli forces there if war
breaks out. His senior subordinate will be Maj. Gen. Gershon Hacohen, the
commander of Corps 446. On Sunday, Eizenkot and Hacohen expounded on their
views at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Both are
thoughtful, experienced commanders who are excellent at analyzing situations
and reflecting on their significance, but they are happy to make do with a
public image of being narrowly focused subcontractors.

This northern duo remains silent while the political duo, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leads Israel toward a
political and security catastrophe. The quiet on the borders is illusory,
similar to the quiet that put Israel to sleep in the early 1970s in the
three years between the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War. Barak, who
was defense minister in the government that negotiated with the Palestinians
on the Annapolis parameters, has now lent a hand to bury the process by
making it possible for Netanyahu to kill off what he is trying to revive.

Without progress with the Palestinians, there can be no progress with Syria.
The initiative has been abandoned to Assad, who could take military action
in a number of ways: surface-to-surface missiles, commando raids on Mount
Hermon or a Druze settlement in the Golan, or terror attacks by Hezbollah.
In the last resort, he could move tanks up to the border. Pandemonium would
break out, the Americans would intervene, and the process would resume with
the Syrians determined to restore their dignity and land.

From the lectures given by Eizenkot and Hacohen, it's clear that the IDF has
responses to various scenarios, but it doesn't have solutions. If Assad
decides to imitate Anwar Sadat, who was his father's partner in 1973, and to
strike Israel in order to wound it, its air bases, infrastructure and pride,
Israel will not be able to prevent him from gaining a psychological and
political victory, however heavy a military and economic price he must pay.

This is the code of the north that our commanders there are refusing to
decipher for the public, who will suffer the consequences. To their credit,
it may be said that the generals are unwilling to encroach on the
no-man's-land between the military and political echelons, and that they
fear divulging to the Syrians the IDF commanders' thinking. But on the
negative side, they are shirking their supreme duty - preventing an
unnecessary war.