American President Lyndon Johnson called network head Frank Stanton and yelled: "Are you trying to screw us? Your boys spat on the American flag yesterday." It wasn't the soldiers who burned the huts down along with their inhabitants, nor was it the senior echelons that led the botched campaign – those who spat on the American flag were, according to Johnson, the media that reported the incident.
Forty-two years later, in Israel of 2007, it seems there are many advocates of this concept. Judging by the voices on the street, the prolonged silence on the part of top officials is being perceived as a successful patent for screwing the "hostile media:" Finally, someone has put the journalists where they belong. There are no holiday interviews, no answers to questions, no TV appearances. And the people of Zion are happy. We let them have it!
And thus, protected by the hearty support of the public, which is yet to pay the price, the political establishment is burying a host of existential topics in the all-encompassing swamp.
It refuses to explain what answer, if at all, Israel has in the face of the Qassam rockets in Sderot. It avoids making what may be the
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most obvious statement, that a conflict of this type has no crushing military answer; that perhaps an escalation in conducting targeted assassinations, as experience has shown, may exacerbate the rocket fire and increase the risk of a "strategic missile" feared by all – a missile that would, heaven forbid, hit a kindergarten; that the expectation for a solution in "one fell sweep" would have a reverse effect - see the Second Lebanon War.
The country's leaders say nothing about the security doctrine behind the colossal IDF budget, and this is taking place while an entire nation is reciting freshly baked new truths: That Israel will not operate in the south as long as there is unrest on the northern front.
And what has happened to the doctrine stipulating that the Israeli army is supposed to be capable of responding simultaneously on three fronts?
Why are we building nuclear bunker?
An entire people doesn't know why, and particularly for whom, billions are being invested in a nuclear shelter in the Jerusalem hills, what are the principles guiding the prime minister in his meetings with Mahmoud Abbas, and what exactly (or not exactly) is required in exchange for generous American support.
And we don't know how they plan to deal with the horror show staged by the parents of new IDF recruits outside the gates of the Zikim army base. Does anyone think that their prolonged silence, cunning as it may be, will indeed placate the parents of these soldiers? Will it put the minds of those who arrived at the Zikim gates at rest, including those who will come tomorrow?
No mind, however analytical, will be able to rectify the crisis of confidence that peaked with the gathering around the base's fence.
There are deeds that need not be discussed: We don't have to know what exactly happened in Syria (and whatever foreign sources have not yet told us.) However, we must hear what the prime minister, the defense minister and the IDF chief-of-staff are planning to do to prevent what happened at the Zikim army base from being repeated.
They too must realize that Thailand will not export troops to Israel, and that American money will not buy their parents. A responsible leadership talks to the nation, even if the nation doesn't want to listen.
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