Posted on 08/20/2006 5:28:21 AM PDT by SJackson
The lessons of Lebanon - I
By AMNON RUBINSTEIN
The trauma we've undergone must serve as a driving force to bring about fundamental societal change.
We've only begun debating the war with Hizbullah, how it was handled and the implications of how it ended. It's a debate that will continue to preoccupy the media, academia and the public for a long time to come.
A long litany of mistakes on the military, media and diplomatic fronts have already come to light and others are yet be revealed and argued about.
One shudders, for instance, at the prospect of hearing what reservists will have to say about lack of equipment and food supplies and a slew of other failures in the field. It will be difficult to believe that they're talking about the Israel Defense Forces.
THE WAR refuted a number of deeply held views:
The belief that Israel is a military superpower and nothing can stand in our way.
The view on the Right that Israel is a "nation that dwells alone and will not be reckoned among the nations" has been incontrovertibly disproved. The second Lebanon War in fact demonstrated Israel's enormous dependence on the much-disparaged United Nations, as well as on world opinion - an arena we had virtually abandoned to Arab propagandists.
This turnabout mandates a different kind of attitude toward public diplomacy by future Israeli governments. No other country is so dependent on external factors as Israel.
• Our exclusive reliance on military might - the product of the intoxication with our imagined strength after the Six Day War - is gone. On the contrary, in view of the danger from Iran, Israel's dependence on the UN will further increase in the coming years.
• On the Left, a number of firmly held views have been proven false. For example, the claim that eliminating the occupation, on its own, would resolve Israel's existential dilemmas. The occupation is harmful for lots of reasons, but hatred for Israel and opposition to our very existence is not related to the occupation - unless Haifa is viewed as "occupied territory."
Defense Minister Amir Peretz was among those who long held that Israel could obtain "peace now" by offering concessions. This outlook has been dealt a major blow, leaving some on the far-Left viewing Peretz as a "war criminal."
My own belief, that Nazi-like anti-Semitism was limited to the extremist Muslims, has also been proven wrong. I never imagined that a respectable Norwegian newspaper would publish an article by a well-known author that could have been at home in Der St rmer back in the 1930s.
WITH THIS in mind, here are some preliminary suggestions that can drawn from events surrounding the war.
Israel must prepare itself for a combined attack from an almost-nuclear Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah. Preparations should include developing anti-missile missiles as well as constructing nuclear shelters.
The sense of shared solidarity between Israel and the Diaspora must be renewed - and not only for economic reasons.
Let's stop coddling entertainers and others artists who dodge the draft.
The way national government services are delivered in wartime needs to be re-thought. Public services, at the national level, practically collapsed during the crisis despite the fact that this was a war of choice, and that the emergency was not unexpected. Fortunately, local governments, volunteer organizations and ordinary citizens stepped into the fray.
For years, we've witnessed government and the media undermining the civil service. The outcome is that the simplest decisions, the kind that any reasonable person might make in half-an-hour are dragged out or postponed indefinitely.
Even worse - those with authority - ministers and bureaucrats - have become accustomed to not having to decide, in order to avoid becoming targets of criticism. Public administration is in a deep coma with civil servants resembling a huge giant whose arms have paralyzed one another.
Young and talented people don't want to become part of this paralyzed body - and this comes at a time when other sectors of the economy are energetic and filled with initiative and activity.
What, for example, kept the welfare and finance ministries from deciding within days of the start of the shelling on a comprehensive plan to evacuate the North; why couldn't they help those remaining in the places targeted by the Katyusha rockets?
It was governmental coma that prevented it - not an act of God.
Even worse, this disease has taken hold of the army too. In a country where it's become routine to cover your ass, keep your head down and wait for the courts to decide really tough policy questions, it is only natural for that outlook to filter into the IDF.
It is urgent that the bureaucracy undergo a major overhaul. This was true before the war; it is even truer now.
All these conclusions require moral and psychological changes, but the trauma that we have undergone must serve as a driving force to bring about a sea-change in Israeli society.
The writer is president of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.
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The lessons of Lebanon - II
By LENNY BEN-DAVID
I have always opposed airing Israel's dirty laundry in public, but perhaps it is time to do it.
The war did not go well. It's easy to point to Hizbullah's six years of preparations, its fanatic devotion to death, and an endless supply of technologically advanced Iranian and Syrian weapons. But the analysis of what went wrong must first be focused on ourselves.
Five of my sons and sons-in-law fought in this war. Now coming out of Lebanon and surviving some of the bloodiest fighting, they are filled with anger. Their short-term and long-term orders were confused and ever-changing. The emergency stocks for their reserve units were in horrible condition. One reservist special forces unit lacked basic communications equipment, they were provided guns that they had never trained on, and their rushed training was done in conditions unlike anything they would see in Lebanon.
Truly by the grace of God, one son missed his death by a few seconds and yards. Instead he had to evacuate dozens of dead and wounded under fire. The evacuation force never came, and the survivors had to carry the dead, wounded and themselves miles back to the Israeli lines.
Over the course of the war soldiers were held back for weeks when they were ready to charge. When they were finally dispatched, they were given unachievable missions in impossible time constraints. Soldiers were sent on daytime missions that should have been carried out only under the cover of darkness. Some died as a result.
My generation has failed our sons. Not because we failed to give them the proper equipment. We failed to provide them and ourselves with proper leadership. At the start of this war I never felt such a lack of confidence in our national and political leadership. At this point in the war - and I suspect it is only half-time - I feel despair.
Last week, the commander-in-chief of the IDF admitted that at the moment Israeli soldiers were chasing after their abducted comrades and engaged in fighting Hizbullah on July 12 - on the eve of the war - he was busy selling his stock portfolio. The police meanwhile charged a senior Kadima Member of Knesset, Tzahi Hanegbi, with bribery and a handful of other crimes. And today, the police announced that they would charge Minister Haim Ramon with sexual abuse.
What shame! Did we receive the leaders we deserve?
ALL OF this has been a long time coming. There was no public outcry when aides to Israeli prime ministers made fortunes in under-the-table kickback deals with Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian cronies. Why, for instance, were the Palestinians paying high prices for cement and gasoline from Israeli companies when they could have gotten the products at a fraction from Arab companies? Why were Israeli officials and their relatives involved in the Palestinian casino?
What Israeli officials profited from the disengagement from Gaza? Is there any truth to the claim by the eccentric Israeli-French billionaire, Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, that the northern Gaza Jewish settlements were demolished to make way for a Palestinian casino with a silent Israeli partner? We dismissed it then as a crank claim, but today, who knows? Palestinian rockets are now fired from those sites.
We were silent when senior IDF officials were allegedly fired and replaced by army friends of Ariel Sharon's sons and cronies. Are we paying the price today in the army's malfeasance, nonfeasance and misfeasance?
Columnists in the Hebrew press are questioning where in the war are the sons of the `branja, Israel's political, media and financial elite. Their sons don't seem to show up in the casualty lists, because, as one columnist charged, their children are overseas, do not serve, or sit at cushy office jobs in the army.
We stood quiet while the civil rights of thousands of Jews from Gaza were trampled by the police. We didn't realize that the government's abandonment of these citizens in 2005 would be a precursor to the neglect of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens in the bomb shelters of the north in 2006.
How much IDF and government planning, manpower and resources went into the disengagement last year that could have been expended on preparing for the Hizbullah war this summer?
I have always opposed airing Israel's dirty laundry in public, but perhaps it is time to do it. Israel's supporters are pouring out their sympathy and dollars to help rebuild Israel's north. They must make sure the millions of dollars are not going to be funneled through the companies of political cronies and party hacks.
I know of what I speak. After the December 2004 Tsunami, I was approached by American sources looking for immediate supplies of water for Asia. Water from Israel could expedite delivery considerably. I approached an Israeli minister for assistance. The call back came from a political party hack who had already figured out the percentage that would go to political purposes.
The great political sage from Okefenokee Swamp, Pogo, expressed Israel's predicament best some 30 years ago when he proclaimed, "We has met the enemy, and he is us!"
Israel has another war on its hands. In the Hizbullah war, our citizens performed unselfishly with extraordinary valor, patriotism and volunteer spirit. They reacted in ways their leaders did not deserve.
Now Israel's citizens must battle again, this time in Israel's own political arena.
The writer served as Israel's deputy chief of mission in the Washington Embassy. Today he is an international consultant to corporations and foreign governments.
If that's true, smart Israelis will start planning to leave.
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I suspect that is already happening.
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo!)
Yes, I believe Nasrallah has described that (net emigration) as his desired end-state.
No Nasserite "driving the Jews into the sea". Just make their existence intolerable.
ping
In all the time I was a kid, my father spanked me twice. I remember those lessons far, far more graphically than any others of my youth.
Well, they will figure it out- say, in 6 mos to a year.
I also hope that all those westernized secularized Jews who are too sophisticated and urbane to care about Israel and who vote accordingly, will get a serious headache. And Israel will stop gaming the US and realize that the UN will bury it, while the US will not.
"The view on the Right that Israel is a "nation that dwells alone and will not be reckoned among the nations" has been incontrovertibly disproved. The second Lebanon War in fact demonstrated Israel's enormous dependence on the much-disparaged United Nations, as well as on world opinion - an arena we had virtually abandoned to Arab propagandists. "
Still dreaming Rubinstein, formerly of the left wing Meretz party.
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