President Barack Obama is the supreme commander of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which suspended flights to Israel Tuesday night, rescinded the suspension Thursday morning (in the middle of the night, Eastern Standard Time). Was this due to an aviation risk? An anxiety attack? A hasty clerical decision? Was it bureaucracy, technocracy, or the politics of threats? US law grants the FAA the authority to make decisions in professional matters. It usually confines itself to giving "advice" that amounts to a professional recommendation. This week, it issued a notice to airmen to refrain from landing in Israel. In a press release, FAA spokesperson Kristie Greco wrote that the decision was a response to the rocket that fell less than 1 km from Ben Gurion Airport. She was referring to the rocket that fell in Yehud. The instruction, however, was issued without checking the actual distance between the airport runways and where the rocket fell in Yehud. The official claim raised in the intensive talks conducted by Minister of Transport Yisrael Katz and Israel Civil Aviation Authority director Giora Romm was that the step was an automatic clerical measure that met the terms for authorization, with no ulterior motives. On Wednesday, the following day, while the ban and risk were in force, US Secretary of State John Kerry landed at Ben Gurion Airport. If a major US agency says the risk is clear, how did senior US security personnel allow him and themselves to land there? If the flight risk was so clear cut, how could major airlines like British Airways and Aeroflot continue their routine flights to Israel? This is where we get to the hot potato on which Israeli senior politicians are unwilling to be quoted on the record: whether there was political involvement in the decision.
It is believed that the decision was originally a hasty and unchecked clerical response. The later extension of the ban, however, was obviously politically motivated. Senator Ted Cruz (Rep., Texas) referred to this when he recently said, "The facts suggest that President Obama has just used a federal regulatory agency to launch an economic boycott on Israel, in order to try to force our ally to comply with his foreign-policy demands."
Post-war knives being prepared for IDF
When the fog of battle clears and the Knesset resumes its political routine, the IDF will have to answer some difficult questions:
1. If the IDF knew about the tunnels threat ahead of time, why was the threat not classed as strategic and handled accordingly?
2. Was former Knesset member Shai Hermesh from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, 1.5 km away from Sajiyah, right when he said this week that the tunnels threat may have been discounted because it concerned an extremely small group of people - those living in 17 kibbutzim (collective communities) and one moshav (cooperative community) close to the border fence?
3. Why did solders enter the field of fire on an old APC in poor mechanical condition with sides consisting of aluminum a few millimeters thick?
4. What were the defense establishment's (the IDF and the Ministry of Defense) considerations in choosing to respond to a budget cut by skimping on war equipment and vehicle armor, rather than welfare expenses, benefits, and employees?
5. Were IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon aware of the official response given to "Globes" on Tuesday to the effect that well protected APCs were not procured because of budget cuts?
Jabotinsky: A great, unjustly forgotten Jewish nationalist leader
Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky (1880-1940) was commander of the Irgun (a pre-independence underground organization), poet, author, translator, leader of the Beitar political movement, liberal, and opinion maker, who consistently said that independent action, not sympathetic outsiders, would save the Jewish people. His last request was that his remains be brought to Israel only on the orders of the Hebrew government. It took years before a Hebrew government agreed to do this, and many more years before a Hebrew Knesset declared a national day in his memory on the 29th of Tammuz in the Hebrew calendar. Unfortunately, the day always falls during school vacations, so Israeli children do not learn, or even know, about him. The official state ceremony in his honor will take place on Sunday, July 27.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 24, 2014
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2014