[LCM Articles] From Mania to Depression

[Abdallah Jabbour]

*By Uri Avnery*

*08/17/06 "**Information Clearing House*<http://informationclearinghouse.info/>
*" -- -- Tel Aviv. **---* Thirty three days of war. The longest of our wars
since 1949.

On the Israeli side: 154 dead--117 of them soldiers. 3970 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 Hizbullah 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 cease-fire 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.

* Hizbullah 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 stucture 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 honor 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 Hizbullah. Hizbullah will remain in the area, in every
village and town. The Israeli army has not succeeded in removing it from one
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
Hizbullah. Their very presence there depends on Hizbullah's consent. In
practice, a kind of co-existence 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
Hizbullah, 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. It's 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 criticize 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 Labor. 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 symbolized 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 cease-fire 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 Hizbullah fighters from them.

The town of Bint Jbeil, for example, right next to the border, was taken by
the army three times, and the Hizbullah 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 twenty places to the mortal attacks of the
guerillas 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 cease-fire 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 anymore, 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 cease-fire took effect, all the units taking part had
reached villages on the way to the river. There they became sitting ducks,
surrounded by Hizbullah 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 brain-washing
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 up. 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
guerilla will encourage the Palestinian guerilla.

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.

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