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Hezbollah's Rise,
Israel's Fall
Peggy
Thomson visits Hezbollah's southern commander. Guerilla warfare Comanche-style: The greatest
light cavalry since Ghenghis Khan; How the whites got the Texas
that the Bush family moved to. Alexander Cockburn
on why Israel lost. What you just missed, but can still get,
in our last newsletter: Paul Craig Roberts on the Collapse of
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Now!
Ehud Olmert has found a convincing proof
of his great victory over Hassan Nasrallah: "I am touring
the country freely while Nasrallah is hiding in his bunker!"
It is said that "the style
is the man," and by these words Olmert shows his quality
(or lack thereof). At the moment, dozens of Israeli airplanes
and helicopter gunships are standing by, ready to kill Nasrallah
if he as much as shows himself. Nasrallah does not have a single
airplane or helicopter to kill Olmert. The vast material superiority
of the Israeli army over a guerilla organization is no achievement
of Olmert - but Hizbullah's ability to survive the massive onslaught
of our army is certainly the achievement of Nasrallah.
And, by the way, why would
Nasrallah want to kill Olmert? After all, why should he mind
Israel being led by a failed politician, whose incompetence has
been proved and who most Israelis say should go?
A cynic might say: Nasrallah
wants Olmert to stay, and that's why he hurried to help him out.
When everyone in Israel believed that Olmert had failed miserably,
Nasrallah said, this week, in an interview: "If I had known
that Israel would react as it did, I would not have captured
the two soldiers."
As could be expected, Olmert's
men pounced on this sentence. Look: Nasrallah is apologizing!
That proves that he has been beaten! So Olmert won after all!
* *
*
BUT MOST Israelis do not buy
this spin. They still believe that we did not win the war, that
the deterrent power of the Israeli army has been hurt, that the
Lebanese army and the International Force that will be employed
along the border will not do our job for us after our own army
failed to do it.
So what to do when the public
believes that it is being led by a group of political and military
failures?
That is the great question
that is now occupying the entire nation. A few dozen reserve
soldiers and civilians demonstrate opposite the Prime Minister's
office, others sit at home and gripe. They know that Olmert,
Peretz and Halutz must be removed. But how can this be done?
The obvious answer is to get
out into the street and demonstrate. If hundreds of thousands
filled the squares, perhaps Olmert would resign, as Golda Meir
did in her day. However, Olmert is no Golda, and even Golda clung
to office for half a year after her dismal failures of the Yom
Kippur War. And where are the hundreds of thousands?
Another possibility is to appoint
a State Inquiry Commission, which could dismiss the trio. That's
good, that's even very good, but that's difficult. According
to the law, only the government can decide to set up such a commission,
and only the government can decide on the commission's terms
of reference. Only after such a decision is made, does the matter
pass into the hands of the President of the Supreme Court, who
then decides upon the composition of the commission.
Such an inquiry demands, of
course, time. Before it can accuse anyone of failure, it must
warn them, allow them to be represented by lawyers, to cross-examine
witnesses and provide documents, and that's a slow process. In
the meantime, the incompetents will continue to rule and perhaps
even start another war, in order to make us forget the last one.
Even if the commission were to publish an interim report, that
would take half a year at least.
But Olmert & Co. are not
prepared to risk even that. That's why they appointed two inquiry
committees this week that are not State Inquiry Commissions,
allowing them to decide their membership themselves. No inquiry
committee demands the dismissal of the people who appointed them.
* *
*
WHAT OTHER way is there to
get rid of this trio?
The simplest thing is to have
new elections. But that is not as easy as it sounds. Only the
Knesset can decide to do that. Meaning, the Knesset Members must
decide to dismiss themselves. Fat chance.
Moreover, as things look now,
if elections were to take place in the present situation, the
Right would win big. The voice of the peace camp was completely
silenced during the war, and now, too, it has no exposure in
the media. As a result, the criticism of the war that is being
heard comes almost entirely from the Right. The public is not
asking: Why did we start this war? It asks: Why did we not win?
And it answers: The corrupt politicians did not allow the army
to win. A new government is needed, a rightist and patriotic
one, in order to rehabilitate the army and start another war
to finish the job.
The setting up of a new government
without elections, in the present Knesset, would lead to the
same result, because the only alternative to the current setup
is a coalition that would include the Likud and at least one
of the two fascist parties. No good.
Another possibility: to leave
the present coalition in office but to replace Olmert and Peretz.
How? By a revolt in Kadima that would replace Olmert and a revolt
in Labor to replace Peretz. In Labor there is indeed such a possibility.
But who would revolt in Kadima, a fictitious grouping that has
no party institutions at all?
To resume: there are in theory
several options - all of them bad. This fact splits the "protest
camp". Some protesters demand a State Inquiry Commission,
whatever the cost. Others want the Gang of Three - Olmert, Peretz
and Halutz - to resign without any inquiry. What the two groups
have in common is that they are supported by the extreme Right,
and especially the settlers, who declare, according to the best
tradition of the inventors of the "stab-in-the-back"
legend in Germany after World War I: "The treasonous politicians
have stabbed the victorious army in the back!"
By the way, the total number
of demonstrators is very much smaller than the thousands that
the peace camp mobilized in the middle of the war to protest
against it.
* *
*
SO WHAT will happen? One can
only answer with the saying: The art of prophecy is difficult,
especially with respect to the future.
It is impossible at this moment
to know what is going to happen in the near future. But it is
worthwhile to think about the impact of the war on public opinion
in the longer run.
When Samson the Hero saw a
swarm of bees making honey in the carcass of a lion he ramarked:
"Out of the strong came forth sweetness." (Judges 14).
(That's the same Samson who was abducted by the Philistines and
became the first suicide bomber in the history of this country.)
Can this phrase become true this time too? Can something good
come out of this horrible war?
Perhaps. True, for the time
being the result of this war in Israel has only been feelings
of anger, frustration, insult and humiliation: Why couldn't we
overcome a small "terror organization"? Our political
leaders have proved to be foolish, our military leaders incompetent.
Things must be put in order.
But I believe that gradually
a new conviction will form in the public mind: that this war
marks the end of the days of easy victories. That from now on,
in any new war our rear will be exposed. That our army is not
almighty, as we were led to believe. And mainly: that the war
did not solve anything, that perhaps the solution is not military
and we would do better talking with our neighbors.
True, it is not easy to arrive
at such a conclusion, which demands an emotional and ideological
revolution. That will take time. But one need not be a university
professor to get there. Simple common sense is enough, as well
as the experience that has accumulated during the last decades.
Many people, including those usually described as "the common
people", have both, thank God.
Those who complain that the
Second Lebanon War was stopped before it was finished, should
note the success of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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