Yesterday I had this flashback: In mid-1981, just before Shavuot, then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin instructed the IDF to bomb Iraq's nuclear reactor before it was too late. The decision to strike Iraq was made at the height of an election campaign, with Israelis scheduled to go to the polls three weeks later. As soon as the news spread, then-Opposition Leader and Labor Chairman Shimon Peres led a chorus of detractors who faulted Begin for using Israel's air force as a campaign tool. Ezer Weizman, who had stepped down as Begin's defense minister a year earlier, joined Peres. Begin's predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, did not. Neither did Chaim Herzog, who was competing for a Knesset seat on the Labor ticket. I can recall how, shortly after the airstrike, Begin appeared before his supporters and rallied the troops: "My fellow Jews, you have known me for the past 40 years, do you really think I would put a Jew's life on the line -- or worse, have him captured and tortured -- because it would serve my election campaign-" The crowd responded by booing Peres and Weizman. Last Sunday night was a repeat of that long ago night. MK Yifat Kariv (Yesh Atid), a loose-tongued lawmaker who has virtually zero name recognition among the general public, essentially echoed what Peres said in 1981. So did Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) and Issawi Frej (Meretz). MK Nachman Shai (Labor) was more reserved in his criticism. They all asked, rhetorically, whether the decision to bomb the Damascus environs was designed to boost Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election prospects. Israel made the right call by not claiming responsibility for the attack. This will help Syrian President Bashar Assad save face. Hopefully he will not feel compelled to retaliate. But the Kariv-Zandberg-Frej coalition was all too eager to snitch on Israel. Channel 2's Ehud Yaari reported Sunday that Hezbollah had a field day when it heard Kariv's comments. Kariv's statements are all the more surprising in light of the fact that she sits on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Do those MKs really think this is how our system works? That Netanyahu just calls up Defense Minster Moshe Ya'alon and tells him he needs an airstrike because he is going to commission a poll in a few hours? Nonsense. Once there is actionable intelligence, the Israeli Air Force devises a plan. The decision on whether to greenlight a mission follows a very clear template set by Ya'alon a long time ago. According to that template, Israel is to use force only when its sovereignty is threatened or when Hezbollah lays its hands on game-changing weapons (including chemical weapons). That these backbenchers chatter incessantly is one thing. They have every right to do so. Similarly, we understand why the military has not responded to their claims, since Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack. But what is intolerable is the cynical outlook and distrust these MKs are disseminating among our grandchildren in uniform and among the general public, which simply inflicts damage on all of us.
