[lit-ideas] Israel's most unsuccessful war
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 15:24:44 -0700 (PDT)
I endorse this article except for the bit that: "The
Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War were wars of survival"
for Israel; I don't think that the Six-Day War was.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745313.html
The most unsuccessful war
By Ze'ev Sternhell
No situation can continue to exist for long without an
ideological reason. That's how when once it was clear
that it was not achieving its aims, an unsuccessful
military campaign was upgraded with the wave of a
magic wand to the level of a war of survival. When
everyone understood that a moral reason had to be
found both for the dimensions of the destruction sowed
in Lebanon and the killing of the civilian population
there, and for the Israeli dead and wounded (nobody is
even talking about the exposure of the entire civilian
population in the North of Israel to enemy fire while
people are kept in disgraceful conditions in bomb
shelters), a war of survival was invented, which by
nature must be long and exhausting.
That is how a campaign of collective punishment that
was begun in haste, without proper judgment and on the
basis of incorrect assessments, including promises
that the army is incapable of fulfilling, turned into
a war of life and death, if not some kind of second
War of Independence. In the press there have even been
embarrassing comparisons to the struggle against
Nazism, comparisons that are not only a crude
distortion of history, but disgrace the memory of the
Jews who were exterminated.
The architect of this unsuccessful campaign has
outdone himself: In order to cover up his failures, he
delivered a poor man's pseudo-Churchillian speech, and
promised us more "pain, tears and blood." There really
is no limit to shamelessness. It must be said in favor
of the government spokesmen who are in greatest demand
on the foreign stations, from the Israel Defense
Forces Spokesman to Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog and
former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- that none
of them has stooped to propaganda of this kind.
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At the same time, the campaign's goals have been
reduced and shrunk during these three weeks. From
restoring Israel's power of deterrence, eliminating
Hezbollah, and disarming it immediately -- after three
weeks we have arrived at the present goal, which is
the dismantling of the forward outposts of Hezbollah
and the deployment of an international force to defend
the North of Israel from the possibility of a repeat
attack.
At this point, the average citizen, who is not working
day and night in the corridors of power and is not
sunning himself near the generals' command rooms, is
at a loss. Is this how we are restoring the IDF's
power of deterrence? Haven't we accomplished exactly
the opposite? Hasn't it become clear to the entire
world that our "invincible" air force not only failed
for three weeks to end the barrage of rockets, but
also even needs an emergency airlift of war materiel,
as during the 1973 Yom Kippur War?
Moreover, the ordinary citizen is asking himself
another question: If several thousand guerrilla
fighters do constitute an existential danger to a
country with a strike force and weaponry that are
unparalleled in this part of the world, how is it that
during the past five or six years we heard nothing to
that effect from government leaders?
It is true that since 2000 we have not been
preoccupied with anything except the Palestinian
issue. Hypnotized by the "Palestinian danger," Israel
turned its back during the past two years on all
national efforts that preceded the disengagement from
Gaza, and then the split in the Likud and the
establishment of Kadima, as a prologue to the second
major campaign, "convergence" behind the separation
fence. And when the present government was formed, a
national agenda was formulated for the next two, if
not four, years, whose main component is fulfillment
of the "Sharon legacy": a unilateral drawing of
borders in the territories, pulverizing them into
cantons and in effect eliminating the possibility of
establishing a Palestinian state in them. This led
citizens to understand that this is the issue that
will determine Israel's future.
The clearest evidence of the national order of
priorities is the situation in which the IDF's
fighting units find themselves. It was no secret that
the army almost stopped training in large units and
complex operations, and became totally immersed in the
struggle against the Palestinian uprising. When
infantry brigades turn into a police force
specializing in breaking down doors and walls in
refugee camps, or in pursuit of groups of terrorists
in olive orchards, when the criterion for the success
of a senior officer is the number of wanted men he has
managed to catch rather than his operational talents
and ability to command large units -- the army
deteriorates.
I cannot recall that the reserve divisions that were
drafted on Yom Kippur in 1973, or the Israelis who
returned as individuals from abroad in order to join
the fighting, were in need of training and refresher
exercises. Nevertheless, the Agranat Commission of
inquiry was established to investigate, among other
things, the level of the forces' battle preparedness.
The Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War were wars of
survival, and through them the IDF was revealed in all
its greatness. The present war is the most
unsuccessful we have ever had; it is much worse than
the first Lebanon War, which at least was properly
prepared, and in which, with the exception of gaining
control over the Beirut-Damascus highway, the army
more or less achieved its goals as determined by
then-defense minister Ariel Sharon.
It is frightening to think that those who decided to
embark on the present war did not even dream of its
outcome and its destructive consequences in almost
every possible realm, of the political and
psychological damage, the serious blow to the
government's credibility, and yes -- the killing of
children in vain. The cynicism being demonstrated by
government spokesmen, official and otherwise,
including several military correspondents, in the face
of the disaster suffered by the Lebanese, amazes even
someone who has long since lost many of his youthful
illusions.
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