July-August 2006 
Year 12    No.117

War on terror


From mania to depression

Israel’s failed military offensive in Lebanon is proving surprisingly costly at home

BY URI AVNERY

August 16, 2006

Thirty-three days of war. The longest of our wars since 1949.
On the Israeli side: 154 dead – 117 of them soldiers; 3,970 rockets launched against us, 37 civilians dead, more than 422 civilians wounded.
On the Lebanese side: About a thousand dead civilians, thousands wounded. An unknown number of Hizbollah fighters dead and wounded.
More than a million refugees on both sides.
So what has been achieved for this terrible price?

"Gloomy, humble, despondent," was how the journalist Yossef Werter described Ehud Olmert a few hours after the ceasefire had come into effect. Olmert? Humble? Is this the same Olmert we know? The same Olmert who thumped the table and shouted: "No more!" Who said: "After the war, the situation will be completely different than before!" Who promised a "New Middle East" as a result of the war?

The results of the war are obvious:

The prisoners, who served as casus belli or pretext for the war, have not been released. They will come back only as a result of an exchange of prisoners, exactly as Hassan Nasrallah proposed before the war.

Hizbollah has remained as it was. It has not been destroyed nor disarmed nor even removed from where it was. Its fighters have proved themselves in battle and have even garnered compliments from Israeli soldiers. Its command and communication structure has continued to function to the end. Its TV station is still broadcasting.

Hassan Nasrallah is alive and kicking. Persistent attempts to kill him failed. His prestige is sky-high. Everywhere in the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, songs are being composed in his honour and his picture adorns the walls.

The Lebanese army will be deployed along the border, side by side with a large international force. That is the only material change that has been achieved.

This will not replace Hizbollah. Hizbollah will remain in the area, in every village and town. The Israeli army has not succeeded in removing it from a single village. That was simply impossible without permanently removing the population to which it belongs.

The Lebanese army and the international force cannot and will not confront Hizbollah. Their very presence there depends on Hizbollah’s consent. In practice, a kind of coexistence of the three forces will come into being, each one knowing that it has to come to terms with the other two.

Perhaps the international force will be able to prevent incursions by Hizbollah, such as the one that preceded this war. But it will also have to prevent Israeli actions, such as the reconnaissance flights of our air force over Lebanon. That’s why the Israeli army objected, at the beginning, so strenuously to the introduction of this force.

In Israel there is now a general atmosphere of disappointment and despondency. From mania to depression. Its not only that the politicians and the generals are firing accusations at each other, as we foresaw, but the general public is also voicing criticism from every possible angle. The soldiers criticise the conduct of the war, the reserve soldiers gripe about the chaos and the failure of supplies.

In all parties there are new opposition groupings and threats of splits. In Kadima. In Labour. It seems that in Meretz, too, there is a lot of ferment because most of its leaders supported the war dragon almost until the last moment when they caught its tail and pierced it with their little lance.

At the head of the critics are marching – surprise, surprise – the media. The entire horde of interviewers and commentators, correspondents and presstitutes who (with very few exceptions) enthused about the war, who deceived, misled, falsified, ignored, duped and lied for the fatherland, who stifled all criticism and branded as traitors all who opposed the war – they are now running ahead of the lynch mob. How predictable, how ugly. Suddenly they remember what we have been saying right from the beginning of the war.

This phase is symbolised by Dan Halutz, the chief of staff. Only yesterday he was the hero of the masses, it was forbidden to utter a word against him. Now he is being described as a war profiteer. A moment before sending his soldiers into battle, he found the time to sell his shares in expectation of a decline of the stock market. (Let us hope that a moment before the end he found the time to buy them back again.)

Victory, as is well known, has many fathers, and failure in war is an orphan.

From the deluge of accusations and gripes, one slogan stands out, a slogan that must send a cold shiver down the spine of anyone with a good memory: "the politicians did not let the army win".

Exactly as I wrote two weeks ago, we see before our very eyes the resurrection of the old cry: "they stabbed the army in the back!"

This is how it goes: At long last, two days before the end, the land offensive started to roll. Thanks to our heroic soldiers, the men of the reserves, it was a dazzling success. And then, when we were on the verge of a great victory, the ceasefire came into effect.

There is not a single word of truth in this. This operation, which was planned and which the army spent years training for, was not carried out earlier because it was clear that it would not bring any meaningful gains but would be costly in lives. The army would indeed have occupied wide areas but without being able to dislodge the Hizbollah fighters from them.

The town of Bint Jbeil, for example, right next to the border, was taken by the army three times and the Hizbollah fighters remained there to the end. If we had occupied 20 towns and villages like this one, the soldiers and the tanks would have been exposed in 20 places to the mortal attacks of the guerrillas with their highly effective anti-tank weapons.

If so, why was it decided, at the last moment, to carry out this operation after all – well after the UN had already called for an end to hostilities? The horrific answer: it was a cynical – not to say vile – exercise of the failed trio. Olmert, Peretz and Halutz wanted to create "a picture of victory", as was openly stated in the media. On this altar the lives of 33 soldiers (including a young woman) were sacrificed.

The aim was to photograph the victorious soldiers on the bank of the Litani. The operation could only last 48 hours, when the ceasefire would come into force. In spite of the fact that the army used helicopters to land the troops, the aim was not attained. At no point did the army reach the Litani.

For comparison: in the First Lebanon War that of Sharon in 1982, the army crossed the Litani in the first few hours. (The Litani, by the way, is not a real river any more but just a shallow creek. Most of its waters are drawn off far from there, in the north. Its last stretch is about 25 km distant from the border, near Metulla the distance is only 4 km.)

This time, when the ceasefire took effect, all the units taking part had reached villages on the way to the river. There they became sitting ducks, surrounded by Hizbollah fighters, without secure supply lines. From that moment on the army had only one aim: to get them out of there as quickly as possible regardless of who might take their place.

If a commission of inquiry is set up – as it must be – and investigates all the moves of this war, starting from the way the decision to start it was made, it will also have to investigate the decision to start this last operation. The death of 33 soldiers (including the son of the writer David Grossman, who had supported the war) and the pain this caused their families demand that!

But these facts are not yet clear to the general public. The brainwashing by the military commentators and the ex-generals, who dominated the media at the time, has turned the foolish – I would almost say "criminal" – operation into a rousing victory parade. The decision of the political leadership to stop it is now being seen by many as an act of defeatist, spineless, corrupt and even treasonous politicians.

And that is exactly the new slogan of the fascist Right that is now raising its ugly head.

After World War I, in similar circumstances, the legend of the "knife in the back of the victorious army" grew. Adolf Hitler used it to carry him to power – and on to World War II.

Now, even before the last fallen soldier has been buried, the incompetent generals are starting to talk shamelessly about "another round", the next war that will surely come "in a month or in a year", god willing. After all, we cannot end the matter like this, in failure. Where is our pride?

The Israeli public is now in a state of shock and disorientation. Accusations – justified and unjustified – are flung around in all directions and it cannot be foreseen how things will develop.

Perhaps, in the end, it is logic that will win. Logic says: what has thoroughly been demonstrated is that there is no military solution. That is true in the north. That is also true in the south where we are confronting a whole people that has nothing to lose anymore. The success of the Lebanese guerrilla will encourage the Palestinian guerrilla.

For logic to win, we must be honest with ourselves: pinpoint the failures, investigate their deeper causes, draw the proper conclusions.

Some people want to prevent that at any price. President Bush declares vociferously that we have won the war. A glorious victory over the Evil Ones. Like his own victory in Iraq.

When a football team is able to choose the referee it is no surprise if it is declared the winner. n

(Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.)

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1155756075

 

About Gush Shalom

Gush Shalom was founded in 1993 as a new peace movement, which came into existence because the other Israeli peace movements had decided not to criticise the new Labour government. Gush Shalom is founded on three principles:

Ø Israeli withdrawal from all the Occupied Territories.

Ø Recognition of the PLO as the Palestinians’ representative.

Ø Recognition of the right of Palestinians to establish their own independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside Israel.

Gush Shalom is a wholly voluntary organisation with no hierarchy. All its members simply refer to themselves as ‘activists’. Since its foundation in 1993, Gush Shalom has organised hundreds of demonstrations, protests and actions in line with its three objectives. The actions include rebuilding the demolished houses of Palestinians, demonstrating against the expropriation of Palestinian land for the establishment or enlargement of settlements and generally giving support to the Oslo peace process and moves towards the establishment of a Palestinian state. Other initiatives have included:

Ø Boycott of the products of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

Ø Symbolic marking with green paint of all the points where roads cross the ‘Green Line’ between Israel and the Occupied Territories to signify to
travellers that ‘At this point you are leaving your country and entering the country of your neighbours’.

Ø Placing peace advertisements in the newspaper Haaretz. On one occasion, a published statement signed by 500 prominent Israelis supported the establishment of the state of Palestine in "All the territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip", with Jerusalem as the joint capital of the two states, Israel and Palestine.

Most importantly, Gush Shalom has been campaigning, along with other Israeli peace organisations, against the further extension of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories and, in particular, against the continuing demolition of Arab houses that is intended to make that extension possible.

Since the end of the ‘peace process’ and the upsurge in violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories, Gush Shalom has persevered in its pursuit of what it perceives as the only road to peace. Gush Shalom activists are regularly arrested and abused although as Israelis their treatment is far better than that meted out to Palestinians and their presence in situations of conflict undoubtedly does much to prevent the mistreatment of Palestinians.

Two of the main founders of Gush Shalom were Uri and Rachel Avnery.

Rachel Avnery was born in 1932 and was first a schoolteacher and then a photographer. Since 1993 she has worked as the full-time unpaid administrator and organiser of Gush Shalom

Uri Avnery was born in 1923 in Germany but moved in 1933 with his family to Palestine. He sustained severe wounds fighting in the Israeli-Palestinian War in 1948. Since then he has dedicated his life to campaigning for peace between Israelis and Palestinians: as an author and magazine editor, as a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and as an indefatigable peace activist.

"Ours is but a small part in a worldwide struggle for peace, justice and equality between human beings and between nations, for the preservation of our planet. It can all be summed up in one word, which both in Hebrew and in Arabic means not only peace, but also wholeness, security and well-being: Shalom, Salaam."

Uri Avnery

Contact Details:

Uri & Rachel Avnery

Gush Shalom

P.O. Box 3322, Tel Aviv 61033, Israel

Phone: +972 3 522 1732; Email [email protected]

Website: www.gush-shalom.org

 

 

 

 


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