September 23, 2012-Israeli Border Attacked Soldier Killed, New Iranian Threats

The quiet of the New Year ended on Friday morning when a group of Israeli soldiers providing water to African refugees on the Sinai border were ambushed by terrorists. The attack took place in an area where the final part of the border fence has yet to be completed. One soldier was killed. Unfortunately, the group of soldiers were not an elite ground force unit, but the artillery corps who were spending their time patrolling. Having served in reserve duty with the artillery corps and having been put into a few places that required us to act as highly trained ground forces. I can honestly say that this is one of the IDF's weak spots. In a time of war artillery forces soldiers do not act as infantry soldiers. They know how to defend themselves but they spend most of their time training how to aim and fire artillery pieces and not how to be infantry soldiers.

A unit of Caracal soldiers located in the area killed the terrorists. Caracal is an infantry battalion that has men and women soldiers serving together. Some of my daughter's friends are in the unit and they are quite impressive.

A new terrorist group claiming to be Salafist, associated with Al Qaeda, carried out the attack. During the election campaign in Egypt everyone claimed that the Salafists on one hand are more fundamentalist than the Muslim Brotherhood, but on the other hand, peaceful. It turns out that at least half of the expert opinions turned out correct.

I wish I had a clear opinion of what to make of the demonstrations against the anti-Muslim film. Clearly, the actions in Libya yesterday and today forcing the militias to at least temporarily disband, are a positive move. It should not surprise anyone that there is a lot of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world.

Meanwhile, today Iran upped its rhetoric on a number of fronts. It threatened to launch a preemptive strike on Israel and/or on the United States and warned that attack on Iran would start World War III. It is mostly rhetoric, but as we have learned from history, sometimes you begin to believe your own rhetoric and that could be dangerous. In the meantime Ahmadinejad is at the UN and somehow receives attention he does not deserve. Besides being behind the threats, Ahmadinejad is the one who brutally ended the Iranian Spring.

It became dark in Israel an hour earlier today. Summer time ended and winter time began, timed for Yom Kippur. The inability to change something ( delay the moving of the clock) is a symbol of all that wrong with the political system in Israel. 80% of the population wants summer time to end a month from now, but somehow the religious parties keep getting their way.