JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T
MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE
MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ISAIAH 31:5
5 As birds flying,(WAR PLANES WITH BOMBS) so will the LORD of hosts defend Jerusalem;(WITH PLANES) defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve it.(NUKE OR BOMB ISRAELS ENEMIES)
Israeli jets hit Gaza during unity deal celebrations-Strike reportedly aimed at terrorist about to launch rockets on Israel, but misses target; move comes as Hamas and PLO agree to reconcile-By AP and Times of Israel staff April 23, 2014, 6:14 pm 1
Israeli planes struck Gaza from the air Wednesday as Hamas and Fatah announced a historic reconciliation nearby in the Palestinian enclave.Reports said between three and seven people were injured in the attack, which targeted two people on a motorcycle in Beit Lahiya, in the northern strip.Medical official Ashraf al-Kidreh said the airstrike missed its target and wounded bystanders.The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement the strike was a “joint anti-terror operation” with the Shin Bet security service. It said “a hit was not identified.”The intended target — an Islamic Jihad operative — escaped unscathed, according to the Ynet news site. The site reported that the operative was en route to launch rockets at Israel.The wounded included a 50-year-old man and his two daughters, according to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, which put the injury toll at seven.The strike came as officials from the Hamas terror group and the Palestine Liberation Organization announced a historic reconciliation deal which would create a new unity government and allow for new elections.The announcement was met with celebrations on the streets of Gaza, AFP reported.Israeli officials have slammed the unity deal as pushing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas further from peace efforts.Earlier this week, Gazans attempted two attacks on Israeli soldiers followed by a rocket barrage on southern Israel.
Fatah-Hamas deal would end peace process, Liberman warns-Reported unity agreement between rival Palestinian factions slammed in Israel; Bennett says pact would create ‘unity government of terror’-By Spencer Ho April 23, 2014, 3:59 pm 3-The Times of Israel
A unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah would spell the end of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Wednesday in the wake of a report that the two factions had reached a reconciliation deal.“[PA President] Mahmoud Abbas must decide if he wants to make peace, and if he does, with whom,” Liberman said in a statement. “It’s impossible to make peace with both Israel and Hamas, a terror organization that calls for the destruction of Israel. The signing of an agreement for a unity government between Fatah and Hamas is a signature on the end of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”An agreement between members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas that would see a new government formed within the next five weeks was reached following talks in Gaza City that began on Tuesday evening, a member of the PLO who wished to remain anonymous told AFP, adding that the parties had also made progress in discussions on holding elections.A press conference was expected to be called in Gaza Wednesday afternoon to address the reports.Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and Abbas’s Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, have been at odds since 2007, when Hamas took over Gaza in a violent confrontation.Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been engaged in peace negotiations since July 2013, but the the parties have made little progress, and the talks have been in danger of falling apart completely since Israel refused to go through with the final phase of a four-stage prisoner release that it had agreed to before talks.Economy Minister Naftali Bennett called the reported alliance “a unity government of terror,” adding that “Hamas will continue to murder Jews and Abbas will continue to to demand the release of prisoners.“Whoever thought that Abbas is a partner [for peace] should reconsider his stance,” he added.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made comments similar to Liberman’s earlier in the day, although he did not state outright that a Fatah-Hamas deal would end the peace talks.“Instead of moving into peace with Israel, he’s moving into peace with Hamas,” Netanyahu said of Abbas. “He has to choose: Does he want peace with Hamas or peace with Israel? You can have one but not the other. I hope he chooses peace; so far he hasn’t done so.”Abbas told a group of Israeli journalists Tuesday that the Palestinians would agree to extend negotiations with Israel by nine months on the condition that Israel agreed to immediately commence discussing the borders of the future Palestinian state, and froze settlement construction, including in East Jerusalem.Raphael Ahren and AFP contributed to this report.
Netanyahu: Abbas must choose between Israel and Hamas-Amid reports of Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, PM says he hopes Palestinians opt for peace, even if ‘so far’ they haven’t-By Raphael Ahren April 23, 2014, 11:15 am 15-The Times of Israel
The Palestinian Authority can either make peace with Hamas or with Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, warning PA President Mahmoud Abbas that a reported reconciliation deal with the terrorist organization ruling Gaza would mean the end of the current, US-mediated effort to negotiate a peace deal.“Instead of moving into peace with Israel, he’s moving into peace with Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “He has to choose: Does he want peace with Hamas or peace with Israel? You can have one but not the other. I hope he chooses peace; so far he hasn’t done so.”During a meeting with Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said Israel was trying to extend peace negotiations with the Palestinians beyond their April 29 deadline, but blamed Abbas for “raising additional conditions” that he knows Jerusalem cannot accept.Abbas told a group of Israeli journalists Tuesday that the Palestinians would agree to extend negotiations with Israel by nine months on the condition that Israel agreed to immediately commence discussing the borders of the future Palestinian state, and froze settlement construction, including in East Jerusalem.Netanyahu’s remarks echoed statements made Tuesday by Israeli officials who wished to remain anonymous. They said Abbas was laying down unacceptable terms in order to allow talks to fail without taking the blame.“The meaning of all these things is that he’s not interested in peace,” one official was quoted by Ynet as saying. “Someone who wants peace does not present time after time conditions he knows Israel cannot accept.”Abbas also said that Ramallah was still expecting the release of 30 pre-Oslo prisoners as part of the agreement to hold peace talks, and that he had rejected an Israeli demand to deport a number of them — some of whom hold Israeli citizenship.Another Israeli official told AFP that settlement building in Jerusalem would not be frozen and that Israel had never agreed to discuss the border issue separately from other core issues.Those include Palestinians refugees, the fate of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as a capital, security and mutual recognition.“It is impossible to define borders before an agreement on the other issues,” the Israeli official said.He also reiterated that Israel planned on expelling toward the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, or abroad, some of the last batch of prisoners that Abbas wants freed.“This has been clearly explained to the Palestinians. Never has Israel committed not to carry out expulsions,” he said.Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the hawkish Jewish Home party, said Abbas’s threat that the collapse of talks would lead to the dismantling of the PA were nothing new.“We are hearing again and again the refrain of the same threat that if we don’t advance, if we don’t give him what he wants, then woe is us, he will dismantle the PA,” Bennett told a conference. “I suggest to Abbas, if you’re going to shoot, then shoot, don’t talk.”Opposition head Isaac Herzog, however, put the blame on Netanyahu, saying he had released prisoners without getting to an advance in peace talks, hurting Israel in the long run.“The time has come for Netanyahu to decide if he wants a Jewish state or a bi-national state,” Herzog wrote on his Facebook page.AFP contributed to this report.
Israel’s battered home front sustains another blow-The Home Front Defense Ministry is falling apart, underscoring how little has been done in the 7 years since the last war-By Mitch Ginsburg April 23, 2014, 1:50 pm 1-The Times of Israel
The Home Front Defense Ministry appears to be disintegrating. The current director-general announced his resignation on Monday. Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan followed suit later in the day, saying he would step down on May 31. And Israel’s civilians – the clear target of each of Israel’s current enemies – continue to suffer from what has developed into a perilous level of neglect.In July 2007, one year after the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss released a report about the readiness of the home front. During the course of the 34-day war, he wrote, “multiple failures, some of them most grave,” were apparent in the way the government and the various security forces addressed the ongoing attacks against Israel’s civilians. The remedy, he wrote, was for the government to establish “a central, national organization” that could “concentrate on the home front during ordinary times and times of emergency – including the formation of protocol, the building of troop structure and their training.”That war, the first in which Israel’s enemy focused primarily on inflicting civilian casualties, claimed 44 civilian lives, saw 350,000 people flee their homes in northern Israel, and, for a variety of reasons, has left in its wake seven years of quiet for Israel’s north.Aside from Israel’s reestablished deterrence, which was bolstered by the price Hezbollah was forced to pay during battle, another reason for the lasting calm is that the Shiite organization, never more closely aligned with Iran than now, has been given direct orders to amass arms and hold fire up until the hour of need – if and when Israel decides to strike Iran’s nuclear program.In such a scenario, which would surely trigger war with Hezbollah, Israel would face a combined 3,000 rockets a day, a senior officer recently told The Times of Israel.And yet, with the threats brutally clear and the repercussions nakedly obvious, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, in the face of quarreling home front rivals, refused to take a stand.To be fair, former defense minister Ehud Barak, Moshe Ya’alon, the current defense minister, and Prime Minister Netanyahu have come a long way in internalizing the potency of the missile threat facing Israel. Speaking earlier this month at a security conference in Tel Aviv, Barak underscored the importance of Israel’s multi-layered air defense system, dismissing the hefty price tag as insignificant in the larger scale, and scolding defense officials for their long-standing resistance to missile defense, which, he said, revealed “a lack of long-term vision.”Perhaps this seems obvious. But the army is hard-wired toward offense and, despite the achievements of its defensive systems, it rightly believes that success is measured by how long and at what cost the military is able to crush its enemy’s offensive capacity. Today, though, it recognizes that with Israel’s adversaries entrenched within their own civilian populations and investing almost exclusively in rockets and missiles and drones meant to strike at Israel’s civilians, the army, in order to achieve its goals, needs to buy time by keeping the home front quiet. This enables the government to employ its more precise tools against, say, a Hezbollah rocket launcher on the second floor of a three-story apartment building.Hence, Iron Beam, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 – addressing every curved projectile threat from mortars to ballistic missiles. But those systems, terrific feats of engineering and organizational efficiency though they are, will not address the problems the residents of Safed, for instance, faced during the summer of 2006. They will not determine how many bomb shelters there are in each town and village, or how well stocked they are, or how much generator fuel the local hospital has, or who the mayor might call to help an old lady trapped in a house, or who gives orders to, and prioritizes the missions of, firefighters and Magen David Adom paramedics once a salvo of missiles strikes, say, multiple population centers in Tel Aviv.This, ostensibly, was why the Home Front Defense Ministry was created. But its birth was hasty, the progeny of a political deal that saw Barak splinter off of the Labor Party along with several other MKs, including Maj. Gen. (ret) Matan Vilnai, who was given the new ministry. Equipped with a budget, a staff and offices, the ministry, created in 2011, was never given legislative authority.Even the outgoing director general, Dan Ronen, a former police major general, said in August 2012, one year before he was picked to head the ministry, that “There’s no use denying it: the Home Front Defense Ministry was established solely for political reasons. The ministry has not only failed to contribute to the readiness of the home front during a time of emergency,” he wrote in an op-ed on YNET, “but has bothered and hindered the bodies already engaged in this work.”The IDF and the Defense Ministry could not agree more. “Who functioned during the [snow] storm?” Ya’alon said several months ago. “The entire IDF was behind that thing. The tools belonged to the IDF’s Home Front Command. The bulldozers were the engineering corps’, the helicopters were the air force’s, the APCs [armed personnel carriers] were Golani’s. Is there something else being built? Where are the draftees? All this is just idle talk, talk without understanding.”Pointing to the rigid chain of command from the prime minister to the defense minister, the IDF chief of staff and the head of the IDF’s Home Front Command, Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg, Ya’alon said that the Home Front Defense Ministry was “a waste of the public’s money.”The Public Security Ministry, in charge of the police force and the fire department during ordinary times, wants its budget and authority increased so that it, a civilian organization, will be in charge of civilian matters during wartime. The head of the Emergency Services Directorate at the Public Security Ministry, Haim Cohen, told a Knesset committee in February that he sees no reason to differentiate between ordinary times and times of emergency. He did not note Israel Police’s 2010 debacle in dealing with the Carmel forest fire, which left 44 Israelis dead and was poorly handled from a command and control perspective.The National Security Council, according to its deputy director, Brig. Gen. (res) Ze’ev Zuk-Ram, has suggested that the IDF continue to train the Home Front Command soldiers but that it turn them over to the Public Security Ministry during a war. “I don’t want the minister of defense dealing with every missile that falls on Tel Aviv,” he told the same Knesset committee. “The defense minister should be focused on the front. What happens in Tel Aviv is the responsibility of the Public Security Ministry. It is not within the IDF’s focus.”The Home Front Defense Ministry, prior to Erdan’s bombshell letter to Netanyahu — “In order to avoid the continued overlap and the waste of public funds, it is advisable to place the full responsibility of the preparation of the home front, in both routine and emergency [situations], with the Defense Ministry”– sought a middle ground, where it would have regulatory authority during times of peace but not command control during times of war.Now, more than seven years after the Second Lebanon War, it is threatening to fold. And Israeli civilians are, minus the advances in air defense, back where they started.
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ISAIAH 31:5
5 As birds flying,(WAR PLANES WITH BOMBS) so will the LORD of hosts defend Jerusalem;(WITH PLANES) defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve it.(NUKE OR BOMB ISRAELS ENEMIES)
Israeli jets hit Gaza during unity deal celebrations-Strike reportedly aimed at terrorist about to launch rockets on Israel, but misses target; move comes as Hamas and PLO agree to reconcile-By AP and Times of Israel staff April 23, 2014, 6:14 pm 1
Israeli planes struck Gaza from the air Wednesday as Hamas and Fatah announced a historic reconciliation nearby in the Palestinian enclave.Reports said between three and seven people were injured in the attack, which targeted two people on a motorcycle in Beit Lahiya, in the northern strip.Medical official Ashraf al-Kidreh said the airstrike missed its target and wounded bystanders.The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement the strike was a “joint anti-terror operation” with the Shin Bet security service. It said “a hit was not identified.”The intended target — an Islamic Jihad operative — escaped unscathed, according to the Ynet news site. The site reported that the operative was en route to launch rockets at Israel.The wounded included a 50-year-old man and his two daughters, according to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, which put the injury toll at seven.The strike came as officials from the Hamas terror group and the Palestine Liberation Organization announced a historic reconciliation deal which would create a new unity government and allow for new elections.The announcement was met with celebrations on the streets of Gaza, AFP reported.Israeli officials have slammed the unity deal as pushing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas further from peace efforts.Earlier this week, Gazans attempted two attacks on Israeli soldiers followed by a rocket barrage on southern Israel.
Fatah-Hamas deal would end peace process, Liberman warns-Reported unity agreement between rival Palestinian factions slammed in Israel; Bennett says pact would create ‘unity government of terror’-By Spencer Ho April 23, 2014, 3:59 pm 3-The Times of Israel
A unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah would spell the end of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Wednesday in the wake of a report that the two factions had reached a reconciliation deal.“[PA President] Mahmoud Abbas must decide if he wants to make peace, and if he does, with whom,” Liberman said in a statement. “It’s impossible to make peace with both Israel and Hamas, a terror organization that calls for the destruction of Israel. The signing of an agreement for a unity government between Fatah and Hamas is a signature on the end of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”An agreement between members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas that would see a new government formed within the next five weeks was reached following talks in Gaza City that began on Tuesday evening, a member of the PLO who wished to remain anonymous told AFP, adding that the parties had also made progress in discussions on holding elections.A press conference was expected to be called in Gaza Wednesday afternoon to address the reports.Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and Abbas’s Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, have been at odds since 2007, when Hamas took over Gaza in a violent confrontation.Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been engaged in peace negotiations since July 2013, but the the parties have made little progress, and the talks have been in danger of falling apart completely since Israel refused to go through with the final phase of a four-stage prisoner release that it had agreed to before talks.Economy Minister Naftali Bennett called the reported alliance “a unity government of terror,” adding that “Hamas will continue to murder Jews and Abbas will continue to to demand the release of prisoners.“Whoever thought that Abbas is a partner [for peace] should reconsider his stance,” he added.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made comments similar to Liberman’s earlier in the day, although he did not state outright that a Fatah-Hamas deal would end the peace talks.“Instead of moving into peace with Israel, he’s moving into peace with Hamas,” Netanyahu said of Abbas. “He has to choose: Does he want peace with Hamas or peace with Israel? You can have one but not the other. I hope he chooses peace; so far he hasn’t done so.”Abbas told a group of Israeli journalists Tuesday that the Palestinians would agree to extend negotiations with Israel by nine months on the condition that Israel agreed to immediately commence discussing the borders of the future Palestinian state, and froze settlement construction, including in East Jerusalem.Raphael Ahren and AFP contributed to this report.
Netanyahu: Abbas must choose between Israel and Hamas-Amid reports of Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, PM says he hopes Palestinians opt for peace, even if ‘so far’ they haven’t-By Raphael Ahren April 23, 2014, 11:15 am 15-The Times of Israel
The Palestinian Authority can either make peace with Hamas or with Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, warning PA President Mahmoud Abbas that a reported reconciliation deal with the terrorist organization ruling Gaza would mean the end of the current, US-mediated effort to negotiate a peace deal.“Instead of moving into peace with Israel, he’s moving into peace with Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “He has to choose: Does he want peace with Hamas or peace with Israel? You can have one but not the other. I hope he chooses peace; so far he hasn’t done so.”During a meeting with Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said Israel was trying to extend peace negotiations with the Palestinians beyond their April 29 deadline, but blamed Abbas for “raising additional conditions” that he knows Jerusalem cannot accept.Abbas told a group of Israeli journalists Tuesday that the Palestinians would agree to extend negotiations with Israel by nine months on the condition that Israel agreed to immediately commence discussing the borders of the future Palestinian state, and froze settlement construction, including in East Jerusalem.Netanyahu’s remarks echoed statements made Tuesday by Israeli officials who wished to remain anonymous. They said Abbas was laying down unacceptable terms in order to allow talks to fail without taking the blame.“The meaning of all these things is that he’s not interested in peace,” one official was quoted by Ynet as saying. “Someone who wants peace does not present time after time conditions he knows Israel cannot accept.”Abbas also said that Ramallah was still expecting the release of 30 pre-Oslo prisoners as part of the agreement to hold peace talks, and that he had rejected an Israeli demand to deport a number of them — some of whom hold Israeli citizenship.Another Israeli official told AFP that settlement building in Jerusalem would not be frozen and that Israel had never agreed to discuss the border issue separately from other core issues.Those include Palestinians refugees, the fate of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as a capital, security and mutual recognition.“It is impossible to define borders before an agreement on the other issues,” the Israeli official said.He also reiterated that Israel planned on expelling toward the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, or abroad, some of the last batch of prisoners that Abbas wants freed.“This has been clearly explained to the Palestinians. Never has Israel committed not to carry out expulsions,” he said.Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the hawkish Jewish Home party, said Abbas’s threat that the collapse of talks would lead to the dismantling of the PA were nothing new.“We are hearing again and again the refrain of the same threat that if we don’t advance, if we don’t give him what he wants, then woe is us, he will dismantle the PA,” Bennett told a conference. “I suggest to Abbas, if you’re going to shoot, then shoot, don’t talk.”Opposition head Isaac Herzog, however, put the blame on Netanyahu, saying he had released prisoners without getting to an advance in peace talks, hurting Israel in the long run.“The time has come for Netanyahu to decide if he wants a Jewish state or a bi-national state,” Herzog wrote on his Facebook page.AFP contributed to this report.
Israel’s battered home front sustains another blow-The Home Front Defense Ministry is falling apart, underscoring how little has been done in the 7 years since the last war-By Mitch Ginsburg April 23, 2014, 1:50 pm 1-The Times of Israel
The Home Front Defense Ministry appears to be disintegrating. The current director-general announced his resignation on Monday. Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan followed suit later in the day, saying he would step down on May 31. And Israel’s civilians – the clear target of each of Israel’s current enemies – continue to suffer from what has developed into a perilous level of neglect.In July 2007, one year after the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss released a report about the readiness of the home front. During the course of the 34-day war, he wrote, “multiple failures, some of them most grave,” were apparent in the way the government and the various security forces addressed the ongoing attacks against Israel’s civilians. The remedy, he wrote, was for the government to establish “a central, national organization” that could “concentrate on the home front during ordinary times and times of emergency – including the formation of protocol, the building of troop structure and their training.”That war, the first in which Israel’s enemy focused primarily on inflicting civilian casualties, claimed 44 civilian lives, saw 350,000 people flee their homes in northern Israel, and, for a variety of reasons, has left in its wake seven years of quiet for Israel’s north.Aside from Israel’s reestablished deterrence, which was bolstered by the price Hezbollah was forced to pay during battle, another reason for the lasting calm is that the Shiite organization, never more closely aligned with Iran than now, has been given direct orders to amass arms and hold fire up until the hour of need – if and when Israel decides to strike Iran’s nuclear program.In such a scenario, which would surely trigger war with Hezbollah, Israel would face a combined 3,000 rockets a day, a senior officer recently told The Times of Israel.And yet, with the threats brutally clear and the repercussions nakedly obvious, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, in the face of quarreling home front rivals, refused to take a stand.To be fair, former defense minister Ehud Barak, Moshe Ya’alon, the current defense minister, and Prime Minister Netanyahu have come a long way in internalizing the potency of the missile threat facing Israel. Speaking earlier this month at a security conference in Tel Aviv, Barak underscored the importance of Israel’s multi-layered air defense system, dismissing the hefty price tag as insignificant in the larger scale, and scolding defense officials for their long-standing resistance to missile defense, which, he said, revealed “a lack of long-term vision.”Perhaps this seems obvious. But the army is hard-wired toward offense and, despite the achievements of its defensive systems, it rightly believes that success is measured by how long and at what cost the military is able to crush its enemy’s offensive capacity. Today, though, it recognizes that with Israel’s adversaries entrenched within their own civilian populations and investing almost exclusively in rockets and missiles and drones meant to strike at Israel’s civilians, the army, in order to achieve its goals, needs to buy time by keeping the home front quiet. This enables the government to employ its more precise tools against, say, a Hezbollah rocket launcher on the second floor of a three-story apartment building.Hence, Iron Beam, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 – addressing every curved projectile threat from mortars to ballistic missiles. But those systems, terrific feats of engineering and organizational efficiency though they are, will not address the problems the residents of Safed, for instance, faced during the summer of 2006. They will not determine how many bomb shelters there are in each town and village, or how well stocked they are, or how much generator fuel the local hospital has, or who the mayor might call to help an old lady trapped in a house, or who gives orders to, and prioritizes the missions of, firefighters and Magen David Adom paramedics once a salvo of missiles strikes, say, multiple population centers in Tel Aviv.This, ostensibly, was why the Home Front Defense Ministry was created. But its birth was hasty, the progeny of a political deal that saw Barak splinter off of the Labor Party along with several other MKs, including Maj. Gen. (ret) Matan Vilnai, who was given the new ministry. Equipped with a budget, a staff and offices, the ministry, created in 2011, was never given legislative authority.Even the outgoing director general, Dan Ronen, a former police major general, said in August 2012, one year before he was picked to head the ministry, that “There’s no use denying it: the Home Front Defense Ministry was established solely for political reasons. The ministry has not only failed to contribute to the readiness of the home front during a time of emergency,” he wrote in an op-ed on YNET, “but has bothered and hindered the bodies already engaged in this work.”The IDF and the Defense Ministry could not agree more. “Who functioned during the [snow] storm?” Ya’alon said several months ago. “The entire IDF was behind that thing. The tools belonged to the IDF’s Home Front Command. The bulldozers were the engineering corps’, the helicopters were the air force’s, the APCs [armed personnel carriers] were Golani’s. Is there something else being built? Where are the draftees? All this is just idle talk, talk without understanding.”Pointing to the rigid chain of command from the prime minister to the defense minister, the IDF chief of staff and the head of the IDF’s Home Front Command, Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg, Ya’alon said that the Home Front Defense Ministry was “a waste of the public’s money.”The Public Security Ministry, in charge of the police force and the fire department during ordinary times, wants its budget and authority increased so that it, a civilian organization, will be in charge of civilian matters during wartime. The head of the Emergency Services Directorate at the Public Security Ministry, Haim Cohen, told a Knesset committee in February that he sees no reason to differentiate between ordinary times and times of emergency. He did not note Israel Police’s 2010 debacle in dealing with the Carmel forest fire, which left 44 Israelis dead and was poorly handled from a command and control perspective.The National Security Council, according to its deputy director, Brig. Gen. (res) Ze’ev Zuk-Ram, has suggested that the IDF continue to train the Home Front Command soldiers but that it turn them over to the Public Security Ministry during a war. “I don’t want the minister of defense dealing with every missile that falls on Tel Aviv,” he told the same Knesset committee. “The defense minister should be focused on the front. What happens in Tel Aviv is the responsibility of the Public Security Ministry. It is not within the IDF’s focus.”The Home Front Defense Ministry, prior to Erdan’s bombshell letter to Netanyahu — “In order to avoid the continued overlap and the waste of public funds, it is advisable to place the full responsibility of the preparation of the home front, in both routine and emergency [situations], with the Defense Ministry”– sought a middle ground, where it would have regulatory authority during times of peace but not command control during times of war.Now, more than seven years after the Second Lebanon War, it is threatening to fold. And Israeli civilians are, minus the advances in air defense, back where they started.
