Self-styled genius Ehud Barak ordered the betrayal of SLA to Hezbolla. This lead to Syrian/Hezbolla hegemony in Lebanon, Israel's defeat in the Second Lebanon War, the failed Cast Lead operation and made Lebanon a strategic threat to the civilian population in the north and to Israel's energy reserves in the Mediterranean. Can someone explain why Barak is still in power?

1. A call to replace Barak is meaningless WITHOUT a recommendation as to WHO will replace him. 2. What Defense Minister of Israel has been better in your eyes? state W H Y . moshe

Historically, Israel's best DM was Moshe Ahrens. Currently, Gideon Sa'ar is the best candidate for DM, although we need him in Education. Israel Katz would probably also make an excellent DM. Both have proven themselves excellent managers of large organizations, both care about the little people (and not just the people who live in Akirov), neither has any record of corruption or failure (like the current DM). Importantly, both have the ability to outline what the IDF (not Ehud Barak) needs, and make a multyear plan to fix the damage caused by Halutz and Barak.

Co-egsistence skills - Bullying is costly, for instance Norway, Brasil don't spend a dime to protect their platforms,...

I understand they need manpower too Does anyone know how we CAN help!

>> Norway, Brasil don't spend a dime to protect their platforms,... They have direct satellite hot lines with their respective national Navies.

The navy has traditionally been treated as a poor relative of the IDF every year getting the leftovers after the much more glamorous ground and air forces get the lions share of the budget and if it wasn't for mostly German money & US military aid the navy wouldn't even get what it does have. If Germany wasn't covering two thirds of the cost there would be no Dolphin submarines. If the SAAR 5 hadn't been built in US shipyards with military aid they wouldn't have them. Neither the IDF top brass or the politicians have ever realized the value of a strong navy, they think all that matters are F16s & Merkavas. Right now the navy needs these new toys because its surface fleet is aging with the three SAAR 5 being 20 years old and the rest of them closer to 30 years. Saudi Arabia has the biggest and most modern surface fleet in the region, Iran is sending ships through the Suez Canal, Turkey isn't exactly our best buddy and we are no match for them and Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt also has a bigger and more advanced surface fleet than Israel. The ideal way to spread the military budget is for each year the biggest piece of the pie to go to a different service and that way everybody gets money they need and so no need to have big one off payouts like the navy needs now. The government should though be asking the multi billion dollar corporations whose rigs are being protected for a contribution as the navy protects the privately owned rigs. We can't act like a private security company but its not unreasonable to ask a one off donation towards the purchase of new ships which will be used to protect their rigs.

Those two countries and a bunch of others didn't ask or have a need for a specially designated forces just to protect their platforms ,... By the way if I'm not mistaken those platforms are a private enterprise. If that's the case why do the taxpayer have to pay for their safety ? ,...

...which partially overlap Israel's recent proposal for maritime borders. Gaza also claims an overlapping maritime border with Israel.

As in, key economic items? Such as the coal fields of pre-WWII. And the oil of pretty much anywhere. These usually get special protection because the national economy depends on them, regardless on whether or not the actual day to day operations of the sites are civilian or not, private or state-owned. Further, as others have noted, the states you mentioned do not need special defense forces for these sites because they already have *navies*. Large navies. Israel, on the other hand, does *not* have a large navy, and never had to seriously consider defense of offshore sites before.

corrupt politicians like Olmert, Lieberman and the sorts...

Thanx for admitting Israel's defeat in the second Lebanon war.

I suggest that he be replaced by Ariel Sharon. Even in his current state, he will do a better job than the idiot in place today...

Countries you're talking about have thousands of miles of shoreline and millions, square miles of territorial watters still their navy is much smaller than Israeli one - Can you please enlight us how many Dolphin subs Israel owns and how many Brasil or Norway ? ,...

Marco Israel did lose Lebanon but it wasn't defeated by Hezbollah. For well over a decade the IDF budget was getting cut year in year out so they were using outdated equipment whilst Hezbollah was using the latest Russian & Iranian weapons. To save money reserves were not getting called up for regular training so skills lost and major exercises for even the regulars were few and far between. The war organization skills were awful with problems with basics like getting food & water to the troops. The politicians tried to micromanage the war rather than take notice of what the officers in Lebanon wanted. The officers on the ground were calling for more ground troops but Dan Halutz the chief of staff who sold his investments on the eve of war was convinced air power would win the day and so he refused to send the extra troops even when it was obvious air power was not achieving as much as he was convinced it would. It wasn't until the last days of the war Halutz finally agreed to send more men. The navy were negligent because they switched off the protection systems on one of the SAAR 5 corvettes and it was hit by a missile and lucky to stay afloat. George Bush was even doing his best to delay a ceasefire in the UN to give the IDF time to win the war but Olmert still screwed it up and then to make it worse he agreed to Resolution 1701 as the terms of the ceasefire. If the IDF had been well funded and didn't have incompetent crooked politicians the outcome would have been very different because Hezbollah were not a superior enemy.

Barak may not be a good defence minister, but cast lead was a success, not a perfect success, but it has brought very positive change to the south. Hamas works to prevent the lesser terror organization from firing rockets on our southern cities because it now fears us. It's far from perfect, but compared to 2007 and before? It's a near utopia. Lebanon was also always a threat, Barak didn't change anything there. We also did not lose the second Lebanon war. Even though we weren't prepared or met our unrealistic expectations from the war, the border has never been quieter in the last 60 years. For the first time we have an era of calm there for 6 years now, after 60 years of a war border.

To both sides. Norway doesn't live next to primitive third world states that have rogue, religious military juntas like Hamas and Hezbollah in control of their host states,who deny Norway's existence and announce weekly they plan to destroy her and take over. Israel does however.. Therefore, like in the last 60 years, we must continue to defend ourselves. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango.

And we have a total of four subs, Split. Four. Norway has three active subs, and more ships by the numbers than Israel, but *has* cut its navy personnel to the point where it can't quite staff all ships simultaneously. Seeing as they can always rely on British, French, and American ships to face off against any threat, I can understand the reasoning behind not maintaining a very active navy. Brazil, though? More than 60,000 personnel. More than a 100 active ships. An *aircraft carrier*. A navy with its own planes - more than 80 of them, to be precise. And they're constantly expanding their navy, too, refitting old ships and buying new ones. I repeat - Israel doesn't have much of a navy. It may have strategic subs, which are a key asset in and by themselves, but it doesn't have much of a navy.

things that have no relations to the subject. Jews can admit to their mistakes and learn form them. Do you? You can think we lost all day long and maybe twice on Sunday. It does not change a thing. We lost a lot of good men, but the majority of our goals were met. Now, go back to watching football and be happy that you won another trophy. Talk about having too much time on hand!!

The majority of your goals were met? Like getting back Regev and Goldwasser unconditionally in two black boxes? Like disarming Hezbollah? Don't you realize what kind of an idiot you are being with your stupid Zionist logic?

easy to destroy. The Germans found this out in WW2. Many other countries have also found this out since then. Just look at the gas pipeline from Egypt to Israel - how many times was it blown up before they just quit trying to fix it or protect it? NIS 3B is going to be just a first small down-payment. Enjoy your "abundant" energy (and the huge costs). And before all the armchair warriors come up with their imaginary solutions, in the real world, the only way to protect energy infrastructure is to not have anyone angry at you.

If energy infrastructure is so easy to destroy whats your solution? Missile boats and combat UAVS patrolling the skies 24/7 is at least making an effort. I imagine there are also probably submarines protecting the rigs as well to destroy any ship launched missiles. .. a sub can sink the ship before it can get off any missiles. I would also like to place missile defense systems on the rigs so they have at least a last line of defense but for now at least it seems neither the government or navy wants to do that. Hezbollah believe the gas is in Lebanese territorial waters and are not interested in any claims that say otherwise and they have said they will defend Lebanese gas from Israel so when the gas starts pumping commercially Hezbollah may well start a war. Sometimes no matter how hard you try to make people like you they won't and so you have to prepare for the worst hope for the best. Whilst you criticize the armchair warriors what about the armchair peacenicks like yourself? The peacenicks think its easy, just say we want peace give the arabs what they want and hey presto we are best buddies. Its not that simple and thats why there has been no progress on the palestinian front for nearly 20 years, Israel wants things, palestinians want things and the palestinians have been unwilling to compromise so there have been no deals done and the peacenicks continue to call for an end to occupation. Peace is about more than a piece of paper

Israel is the only country that drills horizontally!

The number of places where a missile could be fired on the drilling platforms is endless. Basically anywhere in a 100+ mile radius. Plus frogmen, high-speed boats, and a huge number of other methods that can be used to blow up the multi-million dollar platforms. As BP (and others) have very clearly demonstrated, drilling platforms are very easy to destroy. Besides there being no military solution to the problem of extremely vulnerable energy infrastructure, there is the problem of the extremely high COST of even trying. Note that Israel is the ONLY country that has so many enemies that they need to deploy an immense amount of military to try (and eventually fail) to protect their energy infrastructures. BTW - the real stumbling block to peace these days is Israelis hubris and stubbornness.