My greengrocer was an anomaly in more than his deviation from ethnic voting patterns. During the first week of last summer's war, polls showed that 80 to 90 percent of the Israeli public supported the military response to Hezbollah's cross-border attack of 12 July. That was the week I interviewed several prominent figures from the moderate left - people who write and demonstrate against the occupation, social critics, and a woman who during the 1990's spearheaded the grassroots movement to withdraw the Israeli army from southern Lebanon - and all of them said they supported the decision to go to war. One or two criticized the nature of the response (the civilian casualties in Lebanon), but none opposed the invasion of ground troops. Pretty much the only people who expressed loud opposition to the war from the beginning were the usual suspects - the Arab citizens of Israel, the extreme Left and the anarchists. With the exception of a couple of columnists for Haaretz newspaper and Hebrew portals like Nana and Walla, the media's reporting was pretty gung ho on the war, too. Along with reports about battles in Lebanon and rocket attacks in the north, Yedioth and Maariv were full of sentimental articles about mothers of soldiers who cooked huge pots of couscous and went up to the front to feed the hungry boys, or about wealthy ex-pat Israeli businessmen who abandoned their lucrative businesses in Hong Kong or Singapore and flew back to Israel to join their reserve units and fight Hezbollah.
I did know a few Israeli reporters who thought going to war was a mistake - not because they were pacifists or leftists, but because they were pragmatists who knew well the complex reality behind the received narrative of Bad Guys v. Good Guys. But they were the kind of reporters who are paid to report just the facts, ma'am, and to keep their opinions to themselves. I don't know Ofer Shelach (a political and military commentator for Channel 10) or Yoav Limor (military correspondent for Channel 1), but after reading their book Prisoners in Lebanon: The truth behind the Second Lebanon War (Hebrew only) I suspect they were less-than-optimistic from the beginning about the IDF's chances of routing Hezbollah.
The cover of Prisoners of Lebanon.
According to this review the book explains in horrifying detail the many reasons the war was a disaster. I was particularly interested in Chapter 15, which explains factually that the army was severely weakened as a result of the occupation. Instead of training to fight wars it was, particularly since the second Intifada began in 2000, engaged primarily in asymmetric battles against poorly armed militants, or in controlling the civilian population of Gaza and the West Bank. As a result, proper training for a real war was neglected. Of course the war was badly bungled on a tactical level, and this too is detailed in the book. As are the mistakes that were made due to hubris.
Of course, few people knew these things last summer. All they knew was that the Hezbollah raid was an unprovoked act of aggression - certainly not the first since the IDF withdrew in 2000 - and that the northern border must be protected once and for all. But the war did not accomplish any of the goals set out by Olmert: the captive soldiers were not recovered, and the Hezbollah was not routed. In other words, failure.
On Monday afternoon, when the Interim Winograd Report was finally released, I was sitting in a cafe with a veteran Israeli reporter who has known Ehud Olmert for more than 20 years. After describing the prime minister as a "scumbag," he told me with absolute certainty that, as someone who has been covering Olmert since he was mayor of Jerusalem, he knew he would never resign. Never.
The Hebrew version of the report is 150 pages, but there's a summary in English of the main points here.
Excerpt from the report (my emphasis added):
"12. Let us start with the Prime Minister.
a. The Prime Minister bears supreme and comprehensive responsibility for the decisions of 'his' government and the operations of the army. His responsibility for the failures in the initial decisions concerning the war stem from both his position and from his behavior, as he initiated and led the decisions which were taken.
b. The Prime Minister made up his mind hastily, despite the fact that no detailed military plan was submitted to him and without asking for one. Also, his decision was made without close study of the complex features of the Lebanon front or of the military, political and diplomatic options available to Israel. He made his decision without systematic consultation with others, especially outside the IDF, despite not having experience in external-political and military affairs. In addition, he did not adequately consider political and professional reservations presented to him before the fateful decisions of July 12th.
* * *
Four hours after the report was released, Olmert, whose popularity rating was already hovering around a brutal 3 percent for several weeks, addressed the nation on a live television broadcast. He declared that he had no intention of resigning. The people objected most strongly to this statement.On Thursday night, between 100,000 (police estimate) and 200,000 (organizers' estimate) Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square to call for Olmert's resignation. Rinat observed that she hadn't seen so many foreign reporters covering an event since Sharon's stroke in January 2006. Neither had I. But most of the demonstrators - and most of the speakers - seemed to think that if we had had a different prime minister during the war, we could have "won." I'm not so sure that's accurate. I'm sure that few people read the whole report, but the bits that were excerpted in the media focused more on the committee's conclusion that Olmert didn't have a good plan to win the war, and much less on the part about him not having explored diplomatic options - in other words, that it might have been possible to avoid war altogether.
Also, most people seem to be ignoring the rather plentiful evidence pointing to the fact that the ground was laid for the failure of that war long before Olmert took office. For example, Aharon Ze'evi Farkash, who headed military intelligence until January 2006, told Yedioth on Monday that he warned former PM Ariel Sharon of a high risk of kidnappings on the northern border six months before the war, and that Sharon - who certainly had plenty of military experience - brushed his concerns aside. When I tagged along with Michael Totten on his April 2006 trip to the northern border, a young IDF captain told us very soberly that we really shouldn't be there, because "everything could explode at any moment." It's worth going back to read Michael's report to see that there's no way the army could have been unaware that Hezbollah was preparing to attack. And it's simply not credible to contend that the army didn't report what it saw in front of its eyes - a massive buildup of Hezbollah military force on the border - to the prime minister.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Olmert fan. I just don't see any point in his resigning, because he's no more of a liar and a pathological narcissist than pretty much every other prominent Israeli politician (there are few less prominent politicians that I like and respect, but they're too principled and uncharismatic to go far in the shark-infested waters of high-profile politics). And besides, who would replace Olmert? The leader of the opposition, Bibi Netanyahu? Surely not!
A lot of people called Thursday's demonstration a great example of democracy in action. I saw it as a populist event without much purpose beyond the immediate goal of getting rid of the government. Finally, an issue that Left and Right could agree on! Everyone wanted Olmert out, everyone loved their country, let's forget that we usually disagree vehemently on the most fundamental issues affecting the state and go for a big group hug. I would be much more impressed if 200,000 people showed up to protest the fact that one-third of Israeli children live in poverty, or to support the striking university students who are expected to pay higher tuition whilst working for a living, after serving three years in the army, even as academic institutions are starved of funds.
I don't know what the solutions are to Israel's problems. There are lots of people who know much more about these matters than I, and they get paid to look for creative solutions. I do know that I get nervous when analysis and thought invested in long term consequences are suspended in favour of outpourings of uncritical emotion. I felt the same way during the war, when the few people who dared to say that maybe we should think before acting, or that maybe war was not the right course of action, were condemned as stupid at best or traitors (Hebrew link) at worst. I just don't think that the best evidence of democracy is found in mass demonstrations. After all, Hezbollah staged some pretty impressive demonstrations in Beirut a few months ago, and they're not exactly rah-rah on democracy. I think a well-functioning democracy is best evidenced in intelligent voting and tolerance for diverse opinions - even when those opinions deviate from mainstream views.
P.S. Daniel Levy wrote an excellent piece on the Winograd Report, here.
