Bibi Appoints Jack D. Ripper as Senior Security Advisor:Amidror's Position On Peace Mirrors Netanyahu's

Major General Jack D. Ripper was the ubber-hawk, paranoid head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command in Stanley Kubrick's satirical "Dr Stranglove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." He was not so loosely based on the real head of SAC, General Curtis LeMay. LeMay was the man who invented the term MAD - Mutual Assured Destruction - though in fact he always stove to assure that the U.S. could destroy the Soviets totally in a nuclear war, while suffering only "acceptable" damages at home. The basis of LeMay's strategic thinking was that the Soviets had no interest at all in peace or accommodation with America - any moves on their part in that direction were just tactical feints - that the only language they understood was force or the threat of force, and that any negotiations with them were dangerous illusions designed only to weaken American resolve.

Therefore, it is fair to say that Bibi Netanyahu's newly appointed National Security Advisor, Major General Yaakov Amidror, is the second coming of Curtis LeMay - but this time with a kippa. In an article earlier this month in the Israeli Daily Hayom, titled "Security is Better Than Peace", Amidror wrote,

" ... negotiations with the Palestinians and even an agreement with the Palestinians (…) will not benefit Israel in any way…"

According to analyst Ori Nir,

[Amidror's] approach to Israel’s national security attributes little value to political accords between Israel and its neighbors. In Amidror’s view, Israel’s chief national security asset in its relations with its neighbors is deterrence…Amidror wrote that…the Arab world “does not accept the very presence of a sovereign and independent Jewish state in the heart of the Middle East and will do its best to annihilate it.” Any other basic assumption, Amidror wrote, is “self deception.” Amidror repeated…that Israel’s goal should not be to change the minds and hearts of its Arab neighbors – such attempts would be in vain – but to deter them by force. “The processes taking place in the Middle East are leading it toward becoming more fundamentalist, less tolerant and less democratic.”

This is the kind of advice Bibi has chosen to receive on a daily basis. This is the man who will approve or not any plans to withdraw from parts of the West Bank to allow for a Palestinian State; who will approve or not loosening of the blockade on Gaza; and who will approve or not any peace plan with Syria. I think it is as a safe bet that the "not" option, in all cases, will win out.

But what moves Amidror from Curtis LeMay territory to Jack D. Ripper territory are some of his other recent comments. According to the Tikun Olam blog:

Amidror…told a conference last year that soldiers should kill anyone who gets in the way of completing their mission – and that soldiers who refuse ... should be shot,

…When journalist Haim Yavin, a fellow panelist, noted the army’s orders during the first Lebanon war were to “fight carefully,” Amidror responded: “That’s a totally illegal order. What should be said is ‘kill more of the bastards on the other side, so that we’ll win.’ Period.”

It would be satire if it were a movie. But its real, and therefore its just sad, scary and dangerous.