The Prime Minster, the Defense Minister and the former Chief of Staff are still desperately trying to get out from under an avalanche of censure and condemnation that came down on them when the blue ribbon Winograd commission of inquiry gave the government and its leaders a failing grade for their performance during last summer’s war in Lebanon. This is a serious affair for Israel’s citizens, since another war does not seem to be too far over the horizon.
Unsurprisingly, neither the government nor the commission contemplated reevaluation of Israeli policies. It is these policies which place Israel in the center of Bush’s ‘southern tier’ in the Middle East. In the absence of minimal readiness to reexamine a growingly dangerous policy, the commission restricted the scope of its criticism to mismanagement, incompetence, negligence, and irresponsible haste, all of which they discovered in abundance. From that point of view, the Olmert, Peretz, Halutz trio seemed to have achieved a total mess with a horrific cost.
The Israeli debacle was so bad that many of the experts suggested a need to reevaluate the balance of forces in the region and to downgrade the Israeli army – which performed more like a schlemiel than a Samson.
Thomas Friedman is unhappy about this new state of affairs. So recent history – though fresh in everybody’s mind, must be urgently rewritten. Israel is stronger today, explains Friedman. (NYT, May 10, 2007). And Lebanon is weaker. In order to put a pro-Israeli shine on things, Friedman goes on to distort almost every element of the real story, blaming the war on Hezbollah. Who started the war? Everyone knows that Israel exploited a Hezbollah miscalculation to open the war by initiating a protracted, massive aerial attack showering death, destitution and destruction over most of Lebanon. Thomas Friedman really doesn’t need to worry about the facts. He can totally ignore the findings of the Winograd commission, which has almost completely justified Nasrallah’s miscalculation regarding Israeli’s intentions, which were, in and of themselves, based on Israeli miscalculation. There is no need to justify Nasrallah’s adventurism, but one has to indulge in craven distortion to equate a local provocation by a guerilla leader to the decision of a major armed player in the Middle East to rush to unleash its massive war machine to satisfy an urgent and dire need of the US success for a success in the region.
The real war aim was to destroy, displace and dismember Hizbollah. This was of course difficult to do by air power – however deadly and overwhelming. So a sick and perverted strategic conception dominated the Israeli plans. Bomb and destroy Lebanon, piece by piece until it understands that it must take on and destroy Hizbollah. Believe it or not, this ugly scheme was designed by the geniuses in the Israeli intelligence community to force the Lebanon government to eliminate Hizbollah from the Lebanon equation. Israel tried to present the United States with a unique present – the resolution of the internal Lebanon crisis along lines dictated by Condoleezza Rice, who blocked a cease fire in order to give Israel more time (more bombs, including clusters of clusters) to pulverize the pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian Hizbollah – even if half of Lebanon had to be destroyed to so.
The NATO size, hi-tech- plasma-screened Israeli juggernaut unleashed on the Hizbollah and the civilian population of Lebanon came to naught. A few thousand Hizbollah irregualars fought the IDF to a standstill. But according to Friedman, this is pure gain for Israel, because now it knows that it must concentrate on its ground forces. But alas, ground forces are made up of soldiers and citizens. Thus, the Winograd commission’s real goal was to restore the faith of the average Israeli that this sort of thing can be prevented the next time around.
Hizbollah is today, more than ever, mobilized politically as a major force in Lebanon’s complex political arena. Masses of the Shi’ite and sections of the Sunni populations have rallied to the Hizbollah flag raised by Nasrallah, while Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz compete with George Bush’s disapproval rating in their race to the bottom. Nasrallah has solidified his public standing, but Ehud Olmert, completely isolated in Israel, has one last friend, Thomas Friedman.
