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Israelis dithering about war

Like never before since Israel’s violent birth nearly 58 years ago, the Zionist state is dithering about a self-initiated war Israeli leaders thought would end in a few days with T’zahal (the Israeli army), crushing Hizbullah to smithereens and then declaring an astounding victory. Indeed, after 30 painful, bloody days of rampant death and destruction, coupled with daily menacing, arrog

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Like never before since Israel’s violent birth nearly 58 years ago, the Zionist state is dithering about a self-initiated war Israeli leaders thought would end in a few days with T’zahal (the Israeli army), crushing Hizbullah to smithereens and then declaring an astounding victory.

Indeed, after 30 painful, bloody days of rampant death and destruction, coupled with daily menacing, arrogant statements from Israeli politicians and military leaders, promising a swift victory and heralding the formulation of a “new Middle East,” the Israeli army is still unable to achieve any of its declared goals in South Lebanon.

These goals, voiced ad nauseam by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tsibi Livini, included the crushing of Hizbullah, the assassination of its top leaders, including Sheikh Hasan Nasrullah, and putting an end to Hizbullah’s offensive ability to hit Jewish settlements in northern Palestine.

For many Israelis, including top military leaders, the unusually high toll of losses on the frontline and the army’s utter failure to stop the firing of rockets onto Israel’s main population centers represent a clarion fiasco of the current campaign against Lebanon.

True, the Israeli army, faithful to its barbaric nature, has been carrying out daily massive urban bombing of Lebanese civilian targets and infrastructure, killing and maiming thousands of innocent civilians, very much like the Luftwaffe, the imperial Nazi air force, did to Britain during WWII.

However, the Nazi-like bombing has apparently failed to seriously weaken Hizbullah’s will to fight on and inflict unprecedented human and material losses to Tel Aviv.

Moreover, the continued firing of Katyusha and other medium-range missiles by Hizbullah fighters onto Israeli cities and settlements , including Haifa, the third largest, and Bisan, the farthest town to the south to be hit, is proving that Hizbullah is able to achieve a semblance of deterrence vis-à-vis the Israeli army, the Wehrmacht of our times.

This reality, to which Israelis are utterly unaccustomed and unprepared to cope with, especially psychologically, has generated widespread nervous reactions within the Israeli society.

True, most of these reactions are censored by the Israeli government and media, but one thing can’t be censored, namely the fact that hundreds of thousands of Israelis have abandoned their homes and towns, leaving en mass southward to Tel Aviv, Bir al Sab’a and Eilat.

This had never occurred before which testifies to a new political and psychological reality that is being asserted, namely that that Israel can be defeated and that its erstwhile perceived invincibility was actually more psychological than substantive.

Predictably, Israel is making desperate efforts to suppress and cloud the new reality in the hope of maintaining a fearsome image of Israel, an image that a relatively small force of well trained and valiant guerillas has successfully eroded despite the American airlift of smart bombs and bunker busters.

Recriminations

The post-war recriminations inside Israel as to who is responsible for the “new debacle” and the “mistakes” have already begun, even before the end of hostilities in Southern Lebanon.

Israel, which lost at least 15 soldiers on Wednesday, 9 August, bring the total death toll of soldiers killed since the outbreak of the war to nearly 100, has reportedly privately asked its guardian ally, the United States, to initiate a diplomatic effort that would lead to an early face-saving ceasefire.

Other signs of desperation was a proposal by the Israeli chief of staff, Dan Halutz, a certified war criminal by any conceivable standard, to destroy more of the Lebanese infrastructure, like power stations and government buildings.

During a war cabinet session Wednesday, an acrimonious argument erupted between Peretz and Shaul Mofaz, the former defense minister.

According to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, 10 August, Mofaz remarked that “when I asked on Saturday whether the intention was to reach the Litani River, the defense minister said no. Now it is late. We don’t have two months to complete the operation, and I think it will take longer.”

“You can get there in 48 hours and say we won, and south Lebanon is surrounded. If you want, clean the area from south to north.” Mofaz said

At this point, Peretz reportedly interrupted: “why didn’t you do anything when you were chief of staff and defense minister? Where were you when Hizbullah created this deployment?”

An Israeli journalist, Jonathan Ariel, reported on 9 August, that relations between Israel’s political and military leadership “are at the lowest point in the country’s history, on the verge of a crisis.”

“According to informed sources, there is an almost total breakdown in trust and confidence between the General Staff and the Prime Minister’s Office.

“They have described the situation as even worse than the crisis that followed Ben Gurion’s decision to disband the Palmach, and Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan’s cynical decision to place all the blame for the Yom Kippur fiasco on the IDF’s shoulder.”

This is obviously the background of Halutz decision to effectively dismiss Northern Commander of the Israeli army Maj. General Udi Adam.

What is certain though is that the upcoming weeks will witness more political beheadings in Israel, a country whose “most moral army” had long become inured in murdering innocent men, women and children in Gaza and calling the murder “war against terror.”