This article is the second part of my report/critique of similar speeches given by professor Ralph Buultjens at Manhasset’s Temple Judea (Monday evening, April 4) and Great Neck’s Temple Emanuel (Friday night services on April 8).
Last week’s article described humorous Q&A, and the speaker’s tendencies to state the obvious and to view recent events with somewhat rose-colored glasses. The professor’s non-committal statements that recent Middle East revolutions may or may not would work out well seemed too optimistic in light of the Muslim Brotherhood’s likely significant role in the new Egyptian regime; the Muslim Brotherhood’s world domination goals, terrorist and political assassination tactics, and opposition to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty; likely Egyptian leader Mohammed el-Baradei’s threats to declare war on Israel; and the virtually unrestricted arms smuggling from Egypt into Gaza since Mubarak regime fell. Professor Buultjens’ speech ignored these alarming developments.
Last week’s article also expressed concern with President Obama’s favorable treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood during his 2009 Cairo speech. The Obama administration’s January 31 statement that the new Egyptian government would have to include “important non-secular actors” (obviously meaning the Muslim Brotherhood); and Obama’s recent announcements of billions of aid to such a new Egyptian regime. The speaker ignored this too.
Turning now to another instance of the speaker’s somewhat rose-colored view of the Middle East.
Buultjens touted experimental Israeli missile shield technology as a probable panacea, while neglecting to mention escalating destructive rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. On April 7 (the day before the professor’s Temple Emanuel talk), Hamas terrorists fired a rocket at an Israeli school bus, injuring the bus driver and mortally wounding a 16-year Israeli old boy, Daniel Viflic. (Sadly, the boy died 10 days later.)
This school bus attack followed weeks in which Gaza terrorists fired 120 rockets on Israeli civilians. On April 8, for the first time, an Israeli “Iron Dome” missile shield stopped one incoming rocket fired from Gaza at Israeli civilians. Buultjens touted the one rocket stopped by the missile shield, but never mentioned Hamas’s deadly escalating attacks on Israeli school children.
It is of course wonderful that the missile shield stopped a rocket (and several more since the Professor’s speech). Every life saved is a great gift, and every person injured or killed by Hamas terrorist rockets is a calamity. However, the missile shield is not a panacea – and Buultjens neglected to mention the shield’s serious limitations.
Technion University aeronautics lecturer Nathan Faber, a former Israeli military rocket scientist, has sounded “alarm bells” about the Iron Dome system’s weaknesses. The system has difficulty intercepting mortar shells and short-range rockets like Katyushas or Hamas’ homemade Qassam rockets. The system has not been tested against large salvos of rockets, and may be completely unable to cope with them. In the next war, Israel is expected to face sustained periods when thousands of missiles and rockets rain on Israeli cities – far worse than during the terrible 2006 Hezbollah-Israel War, when 4,000 rockets fell on northern Israel in 34 days.
The July 2006 Hezbollah rocket attacks killed 43 Israeli civilians (and many of the 120 Israeli soldiers killed in the war), injured 418 Israeli civilians, caused 875 Israeli citizens to go into severe shock requiring medical treatment, displaced 300,000 Israelis from their homes, destroyed 6,000 Israeli homes, caused over one million Israelis to have to live in bomb shelters, and completely disrupted normal life in Haifa and other northern cities.
Today, Hezbollah reportedly has 45,000 rockets and missiles, four times the number it had when the 2006 war erupted, and Hamas has another 12,000 or more missiles. If a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank, particularly along the 1967 borders that Obama has been demanding, tens of thousands of additional rockets will be placed along Israel’s longest border, aimed at every square inch of Israel.
Israel currently has only two operational Iron Dome shields, which can only cover limited areas. The Israeli government has warned Israelis under fire from Gaza that they are not completely protected.
According to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israel needs “tens of thousands of the short-range interceptors [Iron Dome], thousands of the David Sling [mid-range] interceptors and hundreds of the upper-layers (Arrow-2).” The cost of all this is astronomical. Barak estimated it at $7 billion to $8 billion.
It may run as high as $50 billion or more. Ha’aretz’s Reuven Pedatzur calculated that one David’s Sling system interception costs $1 million, and one Iron Dome interception costs about $100,000, while Hamas’s homemade Qassam rockets only cost at most $200 apiece, enabling the Palestinians in the South and Hezbollah in the North to defeat Israel at the bank. Pedatzur also noted that “the stock of Iron Dome missiles is liable to run out way before the rocket barrages end.”
Israel does not have $50 billion or even $7 to $8 billion in its budget for these systems. American aid to Israel is only a fraction of these costs ($3 billion per year), and most is already allocated for other purposes. Last year, representatives of Ashkelon Hospital spoke at Great Neck synagogues, seeking to raise the few million needed to harden the hospital facility against Hamas rocket attacks – funds not available from the government. And as mentioned in my recent article about the Mayor of Itamar’s speech at Great Neck Synagogue, the mayor reported that the modest funds needed for sufficient cameras on the security fence to prevent terrorist attacks are not even available.
Moreover, there are strong reported rumors that Obama’s ultra-leftist anti-Israel “senior advisor,” Samantha Power, will be the new Secretary of State if Obama is re-elected. Power favors cutting all aid to Israel and instead “investing” it in “Palestine.” (Obama is already sending billions to the Palestinians; more per capita than to any other group in the world.)
Power has also stated that America should send a “protection force” to “Palestine” to protect Palestinians against a purported genocide of Palestinians by Israel. (Power’s remarks can be viewed at: http://thewestislamandsharia.blogspot.com/2011/05/flashback-obamas-senior-adviser.html.)
Other potential replacements for Hillary Clinton if Obama is re-elected are also miserable. In other words, American assistance for a comprehensive missile shield cannot be expected, especially if Obama is re-elected in 2012. During Q&A, I brought up the issue of Samantha Power. Buultjens merely responded that she is “too young and too junior” to be Obama’s next secretary of state, ignoring the fact that Power is already the president’s senior adviser.
Buultjens also touted improved relationships between Russia and Israel, and China and Israel. He stated that both countries rarely criticize Israel these days – but neglected to mention that Russia and China continue to vote against Israel in the U.N.
Buultjens also praised dated Turkish-Israeli cooperation agreements – without mentioning the worsening relationship between the two countries under current Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, who frequently condemns Israel and recently refused to permit Israel to participate in what was supposed to be joint American-Turkish-Israeli military exercises. Buultjens also did not mention recent vicious anti-Israel Turkish television shows, and the Mavi Marmara flotilla organized by Turkish IHH (“a radical Islamist group masquerading as a humanitarian agency,” according to Richard Spencer).
Buultjens also claimed that anti-Americanism and anti-Israel sentiment had nothing to do with the Arab revolutions. This overstatement ignored events such the condemnation of America by Bahrain’s top Shia cleric (on the side of the Bahrain Islamist revolutionaries) and the brutal sexual assault and beating of American CBS reporter Lara Logan by 200 Egyptian “freedom revolutionaries” who were yelling “Jew! Jew!”
Unfortunately, Buultjens also engaged in some pro-Palestinian state, anti-settlement propagandizing, using the flawed demographic argument that West Bank Palestinians have more children that Israelis do.
The argument makes no sense for numerous reasons. First, if other people in Great Neck have more children than I do, does that mean that I must move out of my house? Of course not.
Second, the argument is factually highly questionable. Religious Israelis also have large families. Moreover, the same demographic argument was repeatedly used and debunked with respect to the areas of Israel within the green line.
For decades, the Arab population of Israel has remained a steady 19 percent of the country. Third, 99 percent of West Bank Arabs live under in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas (located in approximately 50 percent of the West Bank).
The Jewish “settlements” (towns of hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis comprising 3 percent of the West Bank; the remaining 47 percent of the West Bank is uninhabited) do not have any Arab population “time bombs” in their midst. There is thus no demographic (or other) reason to dismantle the settlements. Especially not to make way for another launching pad for rocket attacks on Israeli school buses.
In sum, although Buultjens’ talks provided a few good laughs and grist for my newspaper article, it was disappointing that Buultjens did not “tell it like it really is” when he graced the esteemed podiums at our local Temple Judea and Temple Emanuel.
Elizabeth Berney, Esq.
Great Neck
