We know that conservatism results in poor governance.
In the United States, we have the circus of the Republican Party to look at. Measured by its achievements under Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield over a century ago, today’s Republican Party is not really republican at all, but anti-republican. Further evidence: in the states controlled by the (anti)Republican Party, residents have more health problems, higher death rates, and significantly shorter life expectancies.
The same pathology of poor governance appears to be afflicting Israel under Netanyahu and the most conservative government in Israel’s history. The Times of Israel has reported that
an Egyptian intelligence official said that Jerusalem had ignored repeated warnings that the Gaza-based terror group was planning “something big.”
Netanyahu’s government reportedly ignored these warnings, partly because it’s political base is not southern Israel around Gaza, but the occupied West Bank. The Egyptian intelligence official
said Israeli officials were focused on the West Bank and played down the threat from Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is made up of supporters of West Bank settlers who have demanded a security crackdown there in the face of a rising tide of violence over the last 18 months.
“We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,”….
It also appears that Netanyahu’s conservative policies may have created institutional rot in the Israeli Defense Force. According to CNN, some Hamas militants penetrated 20 miles east, to the town of Ofakim. Other militants reportedly captured an IDF command base and an IDF general, but I have not seen confirmation of this. MSNBC last night showed pictures of a demolished Israeli police station, and reported it had been destroyed during a 20-hours of combat between Hamas invaders, and Israeli police and IDF troops.
Ian Welsh wrote that the IDF is now
weak and incompetent. This is not the military of 1967 or even 1980, when the legend of Israeli military brilliance was created.
This is due to serving primarily as an occupation army. All occupation armies, fighting against the weak, become weak, brutal bullies incompetent at fighting real opposition.
