The former Israeli Ambassador to Georgia Shabtai Zur says that Georgia modeled its army after Israel’s. This is reported by Israel’s news agency Ynetnews.com in an article where he reveals that “Georgian government officials used to tell me that they wanted to model their army after the IDF.”

The IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, is widely seen as one of the worst most brutal and repressive armies, in particular as an occupying force against the would-be state of Palestine which unsuccesfully has sought independence and recognized statehood for the past fifty years in the face of Israeli and American opposition.

The ex-Ambassador also confirms that Israeli Brigadier General Gal Hirsch (Galilee Division commander during the Second Lebanon War) “has been operating in Georgia for some time now and is providing consultation to the Georgian army.”

In 2006 Israel’s IDF launched an invasion of Lebanon. Despite repeated calls for a ceasefire at the UN-level, an American veto at the Security Council blocked a ceasefire resolution and allowed the Israeli invasion to go ahead unimpeded for the better part of a month, causing heavy Lebanese losses. This post is filed in the “Dept. of Double Standards” because they are now quickly calling for a UN ceasefire resolution to save the miscalculated Georgian attack, forgetting their obstructive stand in a similar situation just two years ago.

But it turns out that the links are even tighter. Soldiers from U.S.-proxy Israel also participated in the attack on South Ossetia, writes the-exile:

When Georgia mounted her ferocious attack on South Ossetia early on Friday morning she didn’t just have tanks, artillery and infantry, she had Israeli military advisers as well. According to Debka.com up to a 1,000 Israelis were training the Georgian forces and many of those men were directly involved with the attack.

However, Douglas Farah’s respected Counterterrorism Blog points out that -

It is not wise, strategically, to open a military front -via proxies- against the Russian Federation in the Caucuses.

- adding that “many in Washington and Brussels are still in Cold War mood.” That mood leads to a one-sided black and white view of events which is wrong, warns Georgetown University professor Charles King, author of “The Moldovans” and an expert on Transdniestria. He has previously argued that independence is the best solution for Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdniestria. And after the recent events there are no other options left. In the words of Charles King:

For Georgia, this war has been a disastrous miscalculation. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are now completely lost.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Dept. of Double Standards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.