Historic trend of Israeli hawks turning to doves

Trend of Israeli hawks to doves
The right in Israel like Likud and Jewish home criticize Isaac Hertzog and Tzipi Livni’s Zionist Union for being anti Zionist due to its relative dovish stand. Yet nearly of Israel’s founders with exception of Yitzhak Shamir(only former prime minister that belonged to Stern Gang too) and Menachem Begin(regarding West Bank and Gaza Strip) moved to the left . One would think that the military and those in other security services would be hawkish yet that has not been the case. Although due to conscription nearly everyone in knesset with exception of Arab parties and hared parties like Shas has served in the military.
Yet the most decorated and most known Israeli generals have turned to the left. For example, the most widely decorated soldier in the IDF is considered Ehud Barak. He served in the army for 35 years obtaining rank of lieutenant general. He also served in the Israeli special forces known as Sayeret Matkal in operations like infamous Entebbe. He received 4 chief of staff citations and the medal of distinguished services. During his time in the military he reached the highest position; chief of staff. When he entered politics he joined the labor party viewing himself as successor to Yitzhak Rabin and was prime minister from 1999 to 2001. During his peace talks with the PA(Palestinian Authority) at camp david and camp taba he offered over 90% of West Bank, Gaza, and Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.
http://www.mideastweb.org/lastmaps.htm
http://articles.jerusalemprayerteam.org/israels-most-decorated-soldier-retires/
Ironically Barak,in an interview with Gideon Levy said If I was [a Palestinian] at the right age, at some stage I would have entered one of the terror organizations and have fought from there, and later certainly have tried to influence from within the political system. He was elected prime minister the next year.
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/mar/11/news/mn-27709

Moshe Dayan is Israel’s most famous general. Although Dayan was mapai(precursor to Israel’s labor party) he was known as a hawk by supporting reprisal raids against Arab villages in response to infiltration by Palestinian refugees during the 1950’s(some of them like the fedeyeen attacked civilians). While head of southern command of war after the end of Israel’s war of independence he ordered free fire policy against anyone crossing Israel’s borders in response to infiltration. He also helped expel bedouin in demilitarized zones. Strangely despite his harsh policy against Arabs he personally respected Arabs and was one of the few founders to know Arabic. Dayan was chief of staff from 1953 to 1958 and commander of the Jerusalem front during the war of independence. Dayan was defense minister from 1967 until he resigned after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. During his time as defense minister Dayan issued open borders in the West Bank and Gaza between Israel. Dayan ended joining Menachem Begin’s right wing government in 1977 as foreign minister. During that time he helped negotiate peace with Egypt despite earlier saying that he preferred Sharm-al-Sheikh (an Egyptian town on the southern edge of the Sinai Peninsula overlooking Israel's shipping lane to the Red Sea via the Gulf of Aqaba) without peace, to peace without Sharm-al-Sheikh. Dayan resigned from the government after disputes with Begin over the issue of Palestinian autonomy. Shortly before his death in 1981 in he established Telem which called for a withdrawal from the territories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/153126/Moshe-Dayan

David Ben Gurion was Israel’s first prime minister from 1948-1953,1955-1963 and also turned from hawk to dove. Although during Israel’s war of independence he ordered retreat from sinai and he stopped the palmach(branch of Haganah prestate militia for the Jewish state) from conquering the West Bank. Shortly after the war of independence while speaking in the knesset he noted “We could have occupied [the West Bank]. And then what would happen? We would become one state. But that state would want to be democratic, there would be general elections - and we would be in the minority. Thus, when the question arose of the wholeness of the land without a Jewish state, or a Jewish state without the wholeness of the land, we chose a Jewish state without the wholeness of the land”. David Ben Gurion was leader of the activists as prime minister(also defense minister while prime minister) by supporting reprisal raids against Arab villages in response to infiltration. His hawkish view continued until the 1956 suez war. On November 7, 1956 Moshe Dayan read a letter sent from Ben Gurion to congratulate the military’s recent victory against Egypt. In the letter, Ben Gurion promised to annex Sharm el-Sheikh in the Sinai to Israel. The next day he ended up announcing the withdrawal of Israel from Sinai and Gaza Strip. Shortly before the 1956 Suez war Ben Gurion told French president Guy Mollet his vision of a new Middle East that consisted of Jordan being dissolved with West Bank being controlled by Israel and Jordan/East Bank controlled by Iraq. In another of Ben Gurion’s changed mindset was when during the 1960’s chief of staff; Moredechai Gur tried to present the operational plan on file for taking the West Bank Ben Gurion refused to listen. When Ben Gurion’s grandson asked him what are the borders of Israel shortly before the six day war he replied with The borders of your homeland, my grandson, are the borders of the State of Israel as they are today. That's it. Before he died in 1973, he called for withdrawal from all of the territories except for Golan heights and East Jerusalem. Despite supporting reprisal raids during the 1950’s shortly before the six day war he criticized IDF actions like the 1966 Samua raid and opposed going to war(something even leftists like Uri Avnery supported).
http://youngcontrarian.tumblr.com/post/6245246844/tzipi-livni-israels-latest-dove
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/what-turned-ben-gurion-from-a-hawk-into-a-dove-1.365716
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4605192,00.html

It’s very ironic that the closest negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis was between Ehud Olmert(with Tzipi Livni on the negotiating team) and Mahoud Abbas. Both sides agree that they were months away from a deal. Olmert was in Likud form the 1970’s until he joined Kadima when Sharon left Likud to pursue the disengagement and mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003. At the camp david accords with Egypt he voted against it and later said he regretted it in 2005 during the disengagement. As mayor he opposed dividing Jerusalem. Ironically in Olmert’s 2008’s offer he offered Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and 95 percent of West Bank in addition to land swaps and Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/magazine/13Israel-t.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/12/AR2005081201546.html
Tzipi Livni is another example of hawk turned dove. She is a former Mossad spy and daughter of Irgun fighters. Irgun was a terrorist group formed during the 1930’s that broke off from the pre state militia Hagana for their policy of restraint during the 1936-1939 Arab rebellion. The Irgun also rejected the UN partition plane and called for a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan river. During the rebellion it conducted market bombings against Arabs and during the intercommunal conflict before Israel declared independence conducted attacks against civilians like Damascus gate bombing and grenade thrown at Arab workers outside Haifa oil refinery. Like Olmert, she was in Likud until Sharon created Kadima. She was involved with negotiations with Palestinians in Olmert’s government and during Bibi’s third term.
Ezer Weizmann is a prominent example of a hawk that turned dove. He is the nephew of Israel’s first president Chaim Weizmann. From 1944 to 1946 he was a member of the Irgun. He was known as the founder of Israel’s air force. During the war of independence he was a pilot for the Haganah. As deputy chief of staff during the six day war he organized Israel’s surprise air attack that knocked out Egypt’s air force. After he retired from the military in 1969 he joined right wing Gahal(merged with other parties to form Likud in 1973). He left Gahal in 1972 and joined Likud four years later. In his On Eagles’ Wings memoir in 1975 he called for the annexation of Gaza Strip and West Bank. Initially after becoming defensive minister in Begin’s first government he argued for the need for sinai,gaza, west bank to be retained. He helped negotiate Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt and was very close to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. He resigned as defensive minister in 1980 due to failing to get government support for autonomy for Palestinians in the West Bank. During 1982, in his The battle for peace memoir he sympathetically reported Sadat’s assertion that West Bank and Gaza belong to the Palestinians. During the 1980’s he switched to the Labor party. After he switched he described Yitzhak Shamir and Benjamin Netanyahu as borderline fascists. He was president from 1993 to 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/obituaries/25weizman.html?pagewanted=3&_r=0
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/600128957/Israeli-ex-president-Ezer-Weizman-dies.html?pg=all
Ariel Sharon known as father of the settlements is another example of an Israeli turning left when as prime minister he implemented the disengagement in 2005 which saw Israel dismantle the settlements in Gaza despite saying the fate of netzarim(former settlement in Gaza)is the same as Tel Aviv three years before along with four small settlements in the West Bank. Before the disengagement, he was the hawk of the hawks. He abstained on voting on the Jordanian peace treaty, voted against Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt,voted against withdrawing from most of Hebron in 1997, and voted against Israeli withdrawal to southern Lebanon in 1985.
In 1953 he became head of the newly formed commando unit 101 created to combat infiltration. His brutality became known first when the unit attacked bureij camp targeting Mustafa Hafez head of Egyptian intelligence in Gaza. In the camp his unit was discovered causing his unit to indiscriminately fire its way through the camp killing 20 civilians. The mixed armistice commission described it as One of the latest and gravest incidents in the Gaza Strip has been the attack upon several houses and huts in the Arab refugee camp of Bureij on the night of 28 August. That camp, organized and administered by United Nations Relief and Works Agency, is situated about 2 kilometres west of the demarcation line. Bombs were thrown through the windows of huts in which refugees were sleeping and, as they fled, they were attacked by small arms and automatic weapons. The casualties were twenty killed, twenty-seven seriously wounded and thirty-five less seriously wounded. The next attack was the Qibya massacre in response to infiltrators throwing a grenade at a house in Yehud, Israel killing 3 civilians. In response Sharon’s unit 101 raided the West Bank village of Qibya causing 69 civilians 2/3 women and child to be killed. Sharon claimed that he was unaware of civilians hiding in the forty-five houses he demolished. However, UN observers sent to Qibya after the raid described Bullet-riddled bodies near the doorways and multiple bullet hits on the doors of the demolished houses indicated that the inhabitants had been forced to remain inside until their homes were blown up over them. Witnesses were uniform in describing their experience as a night of horror, during which Israel soldiers moved about in their village blowing up buildings, firing into doorways and windows with automatic weapons and throwing hand grenades. A number of unexploded hand grenades, marked with Hebrew letters indicating recent Israel manufacture, and three bags of TNT were found in and about the village. Reprisal against civilians discontinued after Qibya with reprisals afterwards conducted against military and police bases. Ben Gurion would later write in his diary of Sharon an insightful young man, innovative; if he were to surmount his weakness of not telling the truth in his reports he could be an exemplary military leader.
He was made leader of Southern Command in 1969. During his time as leader he conducted a brutal counterterrorist campaign that resulted by terror ending by 1972. The campaign consisted of army unit locating alleged fedyeen terrorists and executing them. Many houses were demolished to widen roads and create fields of fire. All lower branches of orchards were cut to eliminate cover. Random searches of males were conducted and family members of alleged fedyeen were detained. During 1972 Sharon ordered the explosion of 3,000 Bedouin in the Sinai to conduct a military training exercise. It resulted in 40 people mainly children,babies, and old people in dying.
When Sharon was defense minister in 1982 he deceived the cabinet by presenting operation peace for galilee as a limited operation to advance 25 miles from the southern Lebanese border to stop PLO rocket fire against the Galilee. Instead the IDF reached Beirut and after a prolonged siege the PLO was expelled from Lebanon. The operation nearly cost 20,000 Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrian lives with 43% civilians according to Lebanese authorities(not including Sabra and Shatila massacre which took 800-3,500 lives) and 80% civilians according to International Red Cross and 657 Israeli soldiers. The war was initially supported by the public but became heavily criticized after heavy causalities with 400,000 protesting after the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Sharon resigned as ministry of defense after the Kahane commission found him indirectly responsible for Sabra and Shatila massacre by not foreseeing the possibility of a massacre after letting Phalange fighters into the camp.
Given his record, I can’t say that Sharon if didn’t go into a coma in 2006 would have made peace with the Palestinians or probably didn’t intend to end the occupation . Dov Weisglass his former chief of staff in an interview said he significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process.... When you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Disengagement supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians. In the interview he also notes the disengagement was influenced by some of the public supporting the Geneva Accords said that letters of officers and letters of pilots and letters of commandos [letters of refusal to serve in the territories]. These were not weird kids with green ponytails and a ring in their nose who give off a strong odor of grass. These were people like Spector's group [Yiftah Spector, a renowned Air Force pilot who signed the pilot's letter]. Really our finest young people.” Ironically at a Likud conference he stated that its occupation and there is no other word for it and that it can’t go on forever and that its a bad thing and rhetorically asked if Israel wants to stay in Nablus, Jenin indefinitely. How can anyone stay that the West Bank is not occupied when even Ariel Sharon the hawk of hawks for most of his life and himself played an important rule in expanding the occupation deny that its occupied?
http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/6BD4ECB150D067A5052567240073C87F
http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/017EEFB458011C9D05256722005E5499
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War#Casualties
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/11/opinion/ariel-sharon-the-warrior-who-could-have-made-peace.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=F...n squares southern command gaza strip&f=false
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...on-ordered-the-expulson-of-3000-Bedouins.html
http://www.jmcc.org/Documentsandmaps.aspx?id=698
http://www.ariel-sharon-life-story.com/08-Ariel-Sharon-Biography-1971-War-against-Terrorism.shtml
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSHyny7Ia8k
Shimon Peres is another example of a hawk turned dove and is the last foundering fathers of Israel remaining. Today is known as one of the architects of the Oslo Accords and supporter of two state solution. During the war of independence he was responsible for arm procurement for the Haganah. During the 1950’s he was director-general of the ministry of defense and was a strong support of reprisal raids. Initially during the 1970’s he supported the settlements. He became a dove after Sadat visited Israel in 1977 which led to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. Before the Oslo Accords in 1987 in a secret meeting with King Hussein of Jordan he reached a framework agreement for a peace treaty that would have resulted if some or most West Bank going back to Jordan. However, the agreement was blocked from then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir in being implemented. The next year during the first intifada, Jordan renounced any claims to the West Bank.
http://washingtonjewishweek.com/19678/pols-of-a-feather/

The film gatekeepers was resealed in 2013. In the film, the then six living(one of them Avraham Shalom died last year) ex Shin Bet heads(Shin Bet is Israel’s domestic intelligence service, is comparable to the FBI). All of them harshly criticized the occupation. Shalom even stated "We've become cruel. To ourselves as well, but mainly to the occupied population." Our army has become "a brutal occupation force, similar to the Germans in World War II. Similar, not identical."—Shalom, who clarifies that he is referring to the Nazis' persecution of non-Jewish minorities. Another former head stated We are making the lives of millions [of Palestinians] unbearable, into prolonged human suffering, [and] it kills me."—Carmi Gillon (1994-96). Another one stated We are taking very sure and measured steps to a point where the State of Israel will not be a democracy or a home for the Jewish people.”—Ayalon. The right likes to potray the left as being weak on security yet ironically former head Yaakov Peri stated After retiring from this job, you become a bit of a leftist," Yaakov Peri, who ran the Shin Bet during the First Intifada, says with a sad smirk. The same could be said with the military with cases like Ezer Weizmann and Dayan and former Labor hardliners like David Ben Gurion and Shimon Peres. In 2003 during the second intifada four ex Shin Bet heads in an interview condemned Sharon’s policies.
http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-me...keepers-documentary-israel-shin-bet-palestine
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/15/international/middleeast/15MIDE.html

Mattiyahu Peled is another case of high ranking military officer that joined left. He served in the Palmach during the war of independence. During the six day war he was on the general staff and was part of the general’s protest which they strongly urged then prime minister Levi Eshkol to launch a pre-empitive strike or they would resign. Sharon and major general Israel Tal was also in the protest. Tal would become a dove, though a less radical one. Peled retired from the military in 1969 and reached the rank of major general. After he retired he joined Labor. He founded Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace in 1975. He was a strong supporter of Israeli soldiers who refused to serve in the 1982 Lebanese war. Disillusioned with Labor he helped found Jewish-Arab party Progressive List for Peace in 1984. The party last served in the Knesset elected in 1992 with 1 seat. In 1993 he established the peace group Gush Shalom. He would die two years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattityahu_Peled

Likud and Jewish Home would like to claim they and not Labor/Zionist Union represent Zionism. Yet all of Israel’s founders that originated in the mainstream pre state Haganah or Maipa(ruled Israel until 1977) turned left and against the occupation(Sharon rhetorically). As mentioned before its with great irony that the closest negotiations were conducted by a former Likudnik with one of the negotiators (Livni) daughter of Irgun fighters. The only founders that stick to their hawkish ways was Yitzhak Shamir only prime minister that use to be a member of the Stern Gang and Begin regarding West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, if a senator said what Barak said in 1998 they would be condemned by everyone. Sharon of all people even realized that its occupation and that there can be no another word for it and that its a bad thing. Again if a senator said it they would be sharply criticized for not being loyal to Israel. When you have six former heads of Shin Bet harshly criticizing the occupation even repeating what those on the far left have said that Israel has become a We've become cruel. To ourselves as well, but mainly to the occupied population." Our army has become "a brutal occupation force, similar to the Germans in World War II. Similar, not identical.” its clear that the occupation is immoral and shouldn’t continue let alone encouraged to continue through billions of dollars in military aide.

 

This is an interesting study and IMO accurate, but its too long and needs some paragraphs.

 

I wonder what some of them would think of……

http://www.godspeaceplan.blogspot.ca/2014/07/gods-peace-plan-for-holy-land-peace.html