What is the change, and how is it being brought about?
The wind is starting to blow in Ma'aleh Levona and the wind of change is coming over the land. The issue is what is the change, and how is it being brought about?…
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
— go to most recent comments76 - Les Slater
Clavos #73
"Don't know where you got the idea that Bbsnews, the site you cite in #72 is conservative."
The masthead. Most media and politicians have been moving to the right for some time. Did this BBSNews not move right fast enough for you to consider it conservative?
Les
77 - Dave Nalle
Clavos, a hint for dealing with Les. When your mainstream is Castro and Hugo Chavez then anything in the US is right-wing.
Dave
78 - Les Slater
DAVE #77
I would consider Bush mainstream. He is a moderate Republican.
Les
79 - SHARK
Hi kids and comrades!
I've been missing in action lately -- and I'll be darned --
...I start to go on a news diet and a Blogcritics fast (not as significant and meaningful as Ruvy's silly prehistoric little tribal rituals described at length in his irritating article above (James Joyce meets Isaac Bashevis Singer... oy!), but still, I was doing without input and output -- and lo and behold, a preview of the FRIGGIN' APOCALYPSE once again rears its ugly head!
What the fuck?!
The little dark-skinned, big-nosed FIRST COUSINS in the Middle East are fighting again!?
~AGAIN?!
noooo, say it ain't so!
============
God: Um... am I going to have to separate you two?!
Jews: He started it. He hit me first!
Hebollah: He took my toy! It's MINE!
[Cut to mushroom cloud over planet Earth]
============
For the intellectually curious -- and before I punch out of the internet and return to what's known in the non-virtual world as "A LIFE" -- I thought I'd share...
...da-ta-daaaaaaaa!
SHARK'S THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST:
1) The history of Mankind is the story of a retarded ape playing with matches in a dynamite factory. Intelligent people discussing a solution to the problems of the Middle East is sorta like going over the grooming options for a dead dog.
2) I ain't pickin' sides. I don't have to pick sides. If everybody's right, then everybody's wrong.
3) Israel and The World: I have a few suggestions:
a) Let's extend that WALL blocking the Palestinians from crossing into what was recently their land -- let's extend it from say.... oh, the ground to about... oh, the FUCKING TOP OF THE STRATOSPHERE.
b) Then we extend the wall horizontally to include... oh... say THE ENTIRE FUCKING MIDDLE EAST.
c) Then we make ONE DOOR as the only IN & OUT.
d) Then we lock it.
e) Then we wait 25 or 30 years.
f) Then one day, we open the door, glance inside and say, "WHOOPS. You're still fighting?! See ya!"
g) Then we lock the door again.
f) repeat until End of Time.
=========
There. Hope that helps. And Have a Nice Day!
oh, and by the way, I'll be announcing my candidacy sometime in the fall.
xxoo,
SHARK
80 - Clavos
Les 76:
Obviously, you missed the last half of my 73--too eager to get back to your zillionth reading of "Revolution At The Gates", I guess.
Anyway, as a public service, here it is again:
Despite its claim on its masthead, even a cursory reading of some of its posts reveals it to be anything but conservative.
Humbug.
Spasebo, Comrade. We now return you to your regularly scheduled brainwashing.
81 - Clavos
Shark 79:
Very funny! Really!
Cynical.
But funny. :>)
82 - troll
Les - consider your audience
pearls before swine and all...well maybe it's zircons but the principle is the same
troll
83 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Clavos,
What is the big deal over BBS News anyway? If they provide something that looks like the truth, does it matter what their orientation is?
84 - Clavos
I'm not objecting to their orientation, Ruvy. Only to their deceptive self-characterization as being conservative, and Les' perpetuation of that deceit in his comment that cited them.
Mas nada.
85 - Clavos
Troll,
Considering the source, more like fool's gold...
86 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Looks like the Shark came up for air and discovered that some not so favorite people were killing each other again. Next time war breaks out here, I'll have to send him a nice tasty bass to let him know... That way he can eat the messenger as he chews over the message.
I don't really care what you think bout the fightin' in this neck of the woods. Nobody invited you to join in (even though your little tin shit emperor and his noisy little snatch from Alabammy can't seem to keep their noses out), so don't worry about it. It's just us Jewboys and A-rabs getting our asses killed. Just open up the nozzle on the keg, have a few and kick back and cheer when one of us drops dead from a bullet, a bomb or a missile. You're footing the bill, so you might as well enjoy the entertainment. There's a belly dance later on in the show, by the way...
But keep the crap about my prehistoric rituals to yourself. You weren't invited to them either, and when it comes time, you'll understand just how the leviathan relates to the shark...
By the way. This was just the opener to the show. There's gonna be lots of fireworks for you to enjoy later on after the belly dance. I'd move that lawn chair back some, little fishy. Them boys with the fireworks have itchy fingers...
Ruvy,
the Leviathan from Ma'aleh Levona
87 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Some of the fallout from Mr. Olmert's Little War
Olmert faces rebellion over Lebanon
EHUD Olmert is likely to face a "second war" to force him to resign as Israel's Prime Minister as soon as a lasting ceasefire in the Lebanon conflict takes effect.
A political and military rebellion is growing over what is seen as his catastrophic handling of the war against Hezbollah.
"The day after this war, there will be a second war " that of the opposition against Olmert," one senior Israeli politician said.
"We will launch a huge inquiry into the way this war was handled. During war you support the Prime Minister, but we have all seen his mistakes."
The Deputy Prime Minister, veteran Israeli politician Shimon Peres, is the highest profile figure to have fallen out publicly with Mr Olmert, having already broken ranks in a crucial security cabinet vote on broadening the ground offensive in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, the hawkish opposition Likud Party, led by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has ended its wartime political truce, with senior members privately condemning Mr Olmert, 61, for his "massive mistakes".
Critics have accused his Government of entering the war blindly, waiting too long to launch the ground operations and depending instead on air strikes that failed to stop more than 1000 Hezbollah missiles hitting Israeli towns.
Likud's former foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, said Mr Olmert's strategy had left northern Israeli residents "hostages" to Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader.
"Not disarming Hezbollah is a tremendous prize to extremists in the Arab and Muslim world and a death blow to moderates," Mr Shalom said. "We will work to bring down the Government."
Likud may team up with the influential far-right Yisrael Beitenu ("Israel is our home") party to form a unified opposition bloc.
Yisrael Beitenu politician Esterina Tarman said Mr Netanyahu, rather than Mr Olmert, had proved the country's true leader during the crisis. "The words of Netanyahu have been inspirational to many during this time of war, and the nation appreciates his leadership," she said.
Mr Olmert, a career politician with little military experience, has suffered by comparison with his hawkish predecessor Ariel Sharon, who suffered a catastrophic stroke in January.
A professional soldier and hero of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Mr Sharon had won the confidence of a security-obsessed nation.
The crisis has caused Mr Olmert's public approval rating to plummet in recent polls. In one, fewer than half of those questioned said he was doing a good job, down from more than three-quarters at the beginning of the fighting a month ago.
88 - Christopher Rose
Hey Ruvy, now you and Ahmadinejad can duke it out blog to blog, lol! From a BBC news report:
89 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Received by e-mail, courtesy of Steve Klein...
The following are the final paragraphs of Anshell Pfeffer's article in today's J. Post. If there is any reason to be at least temporarily hopeful, it is this:
....Meanwhile, it's hard to see where Olmert goes from here. Save for a dramatic military operation, perhaps a well-deserved attack on the Iranian nuclear project, he has no way to regain his lost credibility.
A month and a half ago, the IDF and police were preparing to dismantle three settler outposts, a dress rehearsal for Olmert's master-plan, realignment. Few believe that in the current public climate, especially since the settlers' share in the war's death-toll has been so high, Olmert can go ahead with what was the main plank of his electoral platform.
Painful retreats and peace-plans are only possible under popular prime ministers - Menachem Begin with the Egyptian treaty, Yitzhak Rabin at Oslo and Ariel Sharon and his disengagement. A discredited prime minister going ahead with such a controversial plan, whatever its merits, is a recipe for chaos and even civil war. And without realignment, the entire justification for Olmert's premiership will have dissolved. Less than six months since the election and once this war is over, Olmert's sole aim will be to survive as PM. The moment that happens to a prime minister, it's a sure sign that the countdown to his departure has begun.
The full article can be read here.
90 - Les Slater
Clavos #80
I read your whole #73, both first, and last halfs, including your humbuging.
The point of my #76 is that the term 'conservative' is nebulously subjective.
Humbug?
I consider myself conservative and that article did not seem out of place.
Les
91 - Dave Nalle
I'm not objecting to their orientation, Ruvy. Only to their deceptive self-characterization as being conservative, and Les' perpetuation of that deceit in his comment that cited them.
Well Clavos, Les now maintains that HE is conservative, so that explains a lot. I actually agree. Dogmatic adherence to Marxism can certainly be seen as a conservative position.
Dave
92 - Les Slater
Dave #91
Thanks for your wisdom.
Judging by your remarks in #53, you ain't got a clue what communism or Marxism are, dogmatic or otherwise.
No working class in the Middle East, sheesh!
Les
93 - Dave Nalle
Les, unlike you, I've actually lived under communist rule, and I've certainly read all the basic literature. So I know both what communism is supposed to be and what it becomes in reality.
As for the lack of a working class in the middle east, that certainly remains true in the sense that Marx used the term. There's too much autonomy and tribalism for most middle eastern people who are not part of the ruling elite to function as the revolutionary class you'd like to see there.
Dave
94 - Les Slater
Dave #93
Your first paragraph is contradictory. You say that you lived under 'communist' rule. You say that you read all the basic literature and concluded that what it was supposed to be and its reality were not the same.
Did it ever occur to you that in reality they were not the same? That what you were living under was not communism?
Les
95 - Dave Nalle
You need to read a bit more precisely, Les. What I said is that having lived under communist rule AND read the literature, I know BOTH what it is supposed to be and what it really turns into.
Obviously Soviet Russia was not real communism by the time I lived there, but no other state has been able to impose communism without rapidly becoming a dictatorship of some sort.
Dave
96 - Victor Plenty
Communism has a lot in common with today's faux-conservative movement. Both are obsessed with "family values" such as persecuting homosexuals and outlawing recreational drugs. Both destroy natural resources with thoughtless disregard (Communists in their pursuit of ideology, capitalists in their pursuit of short term profit). Both consider themselves the one true and right system for governing all human relationships everywhere.
BBSNews strikes me as more conservative (in the old fashioned sense of actually wanting to CONSERVE something) than any of the right-wing engines of destruction that like to drape themselves in flag-pattern towels these days.
97 - Les Slater
Dave #95
"Obviously Soviet Russia was not real communism by the time I lived there,"
So, you were taught what communism is by an entity that you understand not to be communist but claimed to be just that.
Who guided you in reading the basic literature? Not only was the state not communist but there were no communists.
Where did you get the idea that Russia was ever a communist state? You claim to know that Russia was not really communist. When did Russia become not really communist?
Russia never claimed that they had achieved a socialist, nevermind a communist society, until ...
Stalin was the first to PROCLAIM that Russia was communist. Anybody that objected was shot.
Les
98 - SHARK
Ruvy: "...It's just us Jewboys and A-rabs getting our asses killed."
SHARK: True, but once again... there goes the neighborhood!
Ruvy: "Just... cheer when one of us drops dead from a bullet, a bomb or a missile. You're footing the bill, so you might as well enjoy the entertainment."
SHARK: "one -- I would never cheer death. two -- I didn't pay for shit. And three: interesting how Ruvy blames Americans for BOTH interfering and footing the bill. WHAT'S YOUR [Israel's] FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY IN ALL THIS?
Ruvy: "...But keep the crap about my prehistoric rituals to yourself."
SHARK: "Your prehistoric rituals are PART OF THE PROBLEM, Brother. Same with yer wife-beating, hand-chopping, suicide-loving, heavenly-virgin lusting, five head-butts toward Mecca per day COUSINS ACROSS THE BORDER. YALL ARE LOCKED IN A FUCKED-UP FAITH-BASED MUTUAL ASSURED ANNIHILATION. If you and those prehistoric Arab assholes cared more about your kids' futures than you do about your fucking egos, things might could improve. But I wouldn't bet on it.
RUVY: "...when it comes time, you'll understand just how the leviathan relates to the shark..."
SHARK: "Cool. I just love the tough-guy talk/death-threats wrapped up in Biblical analogies. Yall are good at that. How fucking admirable. That must have been written by that Wrathful Guy, right?"
RUVY: "...There's gonna be lots of fireworks for you to enjoy later on... I'd move that lawn chair back some, little fishy. Them boys with the fireworks have itchy fingers..."
SHARK: "Tell that to all the dead innocent Lebanese women and children. Bub."
99 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
SHARK: "one -- I would never cheer death. two -- I didn't pay for shit. And three: interesting how Ruvy blames Americans for BOTH interfering and footing the bill. WHAT'S YOUR [Israel's] FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY IN ALL THIS?"
My my, in all the snarkiness lies hidden an intelligent question. You're falling down on the job, Shark.
Our responsibility - our shameful responsibilty - is that we haven't hung the bastards who have allowed us to get into this sick situation - namely Mr. Olmert and his "cabinet."
I can blame your government for both interfering and footing the bill in a war where Jews die, and I'll be right. But I can't slide out of the responsibility that we Israelis all share for not having executed traitors with no balls and having allowed them to continue in office. We could have had leaders who said "no!!!" and who employed a truly disproportionate response - one to teach not merely Arabs but the entire world not to fuck with our nation and kill our people.
There is no reason why a single building should be standing in Anjar or Damascus, Syria, or a single bunker left undestroyed. There is no reason that an Israeli force should not have attacked HizbAllah from the north or east or west, NOT along the line of expected atttack like they did, and creamed the bastards - no matter how many civilians died in the process. There is no reason not to teach Arabs to run for their lives when they see terrorists. This is the bsasic lesson they need to learn in HizbAllahland.
That way, we live and they die. I can scream all I want, but the blood of my fellow jews is on my hands as well...
Jews died for nothing. That is my responsibility in all this.
100 - Dean
Ruvy dons his ten-gallon hat and solemnly announces to his crew, as the soundtrack plays a snare-drum accentuated theme song: "When Johnny Comes Marching Home":
Well, boys, I reckon this is it. Nuclear (pronounced 'nookular') combat, toe-to-toe with the A-rabs.
Over the intercom, Ruvy delivers a memorable, patriotic speech to his men - a parody of the totally-loyal Israeli sent on a glory mission:
Now look, boys. I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches. But I got a pretty fair idea that somethin' doggoned important's going on up there. And I got a fair idea of the kind of personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin'.
Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human beins if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat. But I want you to remember one thing - the folks back home is a countin' on ya, and by golly, we ain't about to let 'em down.
Tell ya somethin' else - this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions an' personal citations when this thing's over with.
That goes for every last one of ya, regardless of your height, weight, or your hat size. Now, let's get this thing on the hump. We got some killin' to do.
101 - Martin Lav
yippy kiA motha fucka
102 - JustOneMan
Well well well...another fine mess youve gotten us into!
Dont worry the US will once again clean up mess due toe Israeli incompentence....within the next 12 months the US will be forced to bomb Iran beacuse Isreal doesnt have the balls...cut the head of the snake not the tail!
103 - The Fifth Dentist
Ruvy--
The world isn't going to end. It may end for you unfortunately, but it's not going to end for the rest of us, despite your fondest hopes. Now you want Damascus to be leveled, Olmert and his cabinet to be hanged, and all the Palestinians on the West Bank to be forcibly expelled? Granted, things look bad now, but I assure you that if any of your medieval-style solutions were implemented, things would look considerably worse: that is for the vast majority of us who don't desire to act out a real-life version of "The Road Warrior."
Sharon's unilateral disengagement strategy was far from stupid. In fact, I'd say it was pretty fucking brilliant. You can tell that from the Palestinians' negative and scared response to it. No doubt, Israel is susceptible to missile attacks. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about that except retaliate. That's what Olmert did. He also appears to be smart enough to disengage before things got completely out of hand.
I still haven't heard any reasonble alternatives to Sharon's plan. In particular, your crazy-assed end of days bullshit is not what I'd call a reasonable solution to the present crisis.
104 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
First, let's look at the news.
From Israel National News:
IDF Begins Withdrawal from Lebanon; Hizbullah Refuses to Disarm
15:01 Aug 15, '06 / 21 Av 5766
by Hillel Fendel
Paratrooper brigade reservists began returning to Israel this morning. Hizbullah fired rockets at them, but missed; Israel did not respond. UNIFIL chief says he can only "beg" sides not to shoot.
The trek home along dusty roads and brush in southern Lebanon began a short while after midnight. Around the same time, other Israeli forces began reducing their presence and taking up positions overlooking villages used by Hizbullah.
One unit brought with it, on a stretcher, the body of the only female IDF casualty in Lebanon - 26-year-old Keren Tendler of Rehovot, a flight mechanic who was one of five soldiers killed when Hizbullah downed an Israel Air Force helicopter on Saturday night. Her body was recovered only late last night, in an emotional mission, because of heavy fire rained on the area by Hizbullah.
The Lebanese Army says it will begin deploying its forces in the south of the country in the coming days. Israel fears, however - and this is confirmed by Lebanese officials' statements - that Hizbullah terrorists will try to both return to the villages as early as today, and to integrate into the Lebanese Army. It has been said in Beirut that because of Hizbullah leader Nasrallah's refusal to disarm - in violation of the ceasefire agreement - the Lebanese Army may not be able to deploy in the south. The two Hizbullah ministers in the Lebanese Government also said that the terrorist organization would not disarm.
The London-based Al Hayat newspaper reports that a "compromise" agreement being worked on in Lebanon would allow the terrorists to keep weapons - but only in a concealed manner.
Given Hizbullah's refusal to abide by the disarming clause, as well as "the previous poor performance of UNIFIL, it is difficult to envisage a situation in which international peacekeepers would act vigorously to force the disarmament of Hizbullah south of the Litani." This understatement sum-up was penned by commentator Dominic Moran for the Zurich-based ISN (International Relations and Security Network) Security Watch.
UNIFIL Can Only Beg
UNIFIL's helplessness was confirmed by its chief, Maj.-Gen. Alain Pellegrini of France, speaking on BBC last night. Asked what action UNIFIL takes if it sees a ceasefire violation, Pellegrini said, "I try first to make them stop - I call both parties... and I explain to them the situation and I beg them to cease their fire; I am not strong enough to enforce any cessation of confrontation in the field."
Pellegrini, a former French military attache in Beirut who headed the Middle East Division of French military intelligence, said it is "urgent" that the international forces come to support the Lebanese army and reinforce UNIFIL.
As of Tuesday, 118 Israeli soldiers and civilians remained in northern hospitals with wartime wounds. Of them 32 are in serious condition. In Rambam Hospital in Haifa alone, 26 are in serious condition. The hospital absorbed nearly 800 patients throughout the month of fighting.
IDF Northern District Commander Brig.-Gen. Alon Friedman estimates that the reserve soldiers who were called up at the beginning of the warfare will be released in the coming days.
Thousands of northern residents are beginning to stream home. They will be treated to free flights and bus rides home from today until Friday, at government expense. In addition, the Israel Construction Center is offering free expert advise in construction and finance to all those whose homes were damaged by Katyusha rockets.
105 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Now, for some news analysis - from, of all places, Haaretz. Let's all bear in mind that destroying the "settlement enterprise" in Judea and Samaria formed the core of the plank of the person called prime minister here, Ehud Olmert. Further, let's all bear in mind that Haaretz has been pusing just this for over a decade.
Let's all watch as Aluf Benn devours a plateful of crow...
Last update - 15:54 15/08/2006
West Bank withdrawal panel: No solution to rocket threat
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent
The realignment committee set up to evaluate the idea of a unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank presented senior political officials with its report in which they raised legal, security and economic difficulties that are likely to inhibit the plan's implementation.
A source with access to the report said its main conclusion is that Israel has no security solution to the threat of rockets launched from the West Bank against population centers. The report's authors assume that following a unilateral Israeli pullout from the West Bank, Hamas will takeover and deploy rockets. Currently, the only solution to the missile threat that the Israel Defense Forces has to offer is its actual presence in the territories and control of the high ground.
Another conclusion is that Israel will not gain international recognition for an end to the occupation if it continues to hold significant portions of the West Bank. Similarly, it is doubtful whether such recognition would be forthcoming even if it unilaterally withdraws to the Green Line.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appointed the committee late last year during her tenure as justice minister. The committee was instructed to delineate Israel's interests in the West Bank and the considerations that need to be considered for a unilateral pullout and evacuation of settlements. The committee was not instructed to examine how a pullout following an agreement with the Palestinian Authority would look, nor was it ordered to evaluate the impact of an internal rift with settlers.
Former director general at the Justice Ministry, Aharon Abramovitch, was appointed to head the committee. Abramovitch is now the Foreign Ministry's director general.
The voluminous report was presented to Livni several weeks ago, and since then, Livni and Abramovitch held two or three meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert regarding its findings. Their last meeting took place before the outbreak of war.
The committee showed that Israel's two main interests are contradictory: on the one hand, Israel wishes to relinquish responsibility over the Palestinians as an occupying force; on the other, it would like to ensure that the territory it pulls out from is demilitarized. Controlling an "external envelope" of the West Bank borders will make it easier for Israel to prevent the transfer of weapons into the area, but will increase the level of responsibility vis-a-vis the Palestinians.
A compromise solution examined by the committee is for the Allenby crossing on the Jordanian border to be opened to Palestinian traffic, under international supervision, similar to that which exists at the Rafah crossing on the border of Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
Another possibility is for the Palestinian Authority to establish a state on territory evacuated by Israel, and Israel would reach an agreement with it on demilitarization.
According to the committee, the government's first decision will have to be the line to which it is willing to pull back. This will determine the legal (degree of Israel's responsibility), security (IDF repositioning and demilitarization), and economic implications (compensation to settlers that would be evacuated) of such a move.
In examining whether the model used in the disengagement from the Gaza Strip could be adopted in the case of the West Bank, the committee found there are about 20 substantive differences between the two cases.
One of the differences is the impact on neighboring countries. Egypt agreed to participate in the disengagement, and deployed forces along the border with the Gaza Strip. Jordan, meanwhile, considers the unilateral withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank a grave threat to its national security.
One of the alternatives examined by the committee is transfering the territory to international responsibility. Another is for the evacuation of all Israeli citizens, but maintaining an IDF presence there. A more limited settlement evacuation was also discussed.
The committee assessed that the state economy can sustain compensation for 15,000 settler families, even though the cost would be "astronomical."
106 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Fifth Dentist,
If you wish to defend an idiot, be my guest. Take the plane over here and explain to the families of the soldiers who died, why their deaths weren't in vain. While you are at it, you should explain why kicking out 10,000 Jews from their homes in Gush Qatif was such a fantastic idea and why kicking me out of my home in Samaria is a great idea too. You will get a less than sympathetic hearing from the many families in Judea and Samaria. I'll come along and translate the Hebrew if you need it, But I won't defend you when the bereaved fathers, mothers, wives, brothers and sisters of the deceased try to tear you to pieces. Even the peaceniks I know here have no use for Olmert.
Elsewhere, I have presented a plan for peace. And I reiterate that it appears to me that any plan for peace will have to be faith based, rather than based on the bought out politicians of Israel and the Arab countries. Part of that solution will have to be based on gutting Islam of the Wahhabi influence that tales it to extremes of violence and threatens to lead all of us to a nuclear conflict.
A second part will have to be based on taming Iran. Part of that effort will have t include destroying HizbAllah. A failure to do so will certainly lead to a nuclear conflagration. This war has done more than destroy the economy of the northern third of the country. It has placed huge obstacles in front of my own plans for peace. Destroying HizbAllah will require a disciplined force of soldiers with the kind of equipment and training using that equipment that only this country can supply.
107 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
An FREE Israeli newspaper that has popped up at the Egged Central Bus Station in Jerusalem lately had in today's issue a caricature of Narallah celebrating as he came out of his bunker, while showing Olmert descending into one in fear...
The Olmert government must go
Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST
Aug. 14, 2006
Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post
From all sides of the political spectrum calls are being raised for the establishment of an official commission of inquiry to investigate the Olmert government's incompetent management of the war in Lebanon. These calls are misguided.
We do not need a commission to know what happened or what has to happen. The Olmert government has failed on every level. The Olmert government must go.
The Knesset must vote no confidence in this government and new elections must be carried out as soon as the law permits. If the Knesset hesitates in taking this required step, then the people of Israel must take to the streets in mass demonstrations and demand that our representatives send Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and their comrades out to pasture.
Every aspect of the government's handling of the war has been a failure. Take relief efforts as an example. For five weeks the government ignored the humanitarian disaster in the North where over one million Israelis are under missile assault. The government developed no comprehensive plan for organizing relief efforts to feed citizens in bomb shelters or for evacuating them.
And then there is the military failure. The IDF suffers from acute leadership failures - brought to Israel courtesy of Ariel Sharon who hacked away at the General Staff, undermined its sense of mission and treated our generals like office boys just as he decimated the Likud by undermining its political vision and promoting its weakest members.
Yet, guiding the generals to make the right decisions and finding the generals capable of making them in wartime is the government's responsibility. It was the government's responsibility to critique and question the IDF's operational model of aerial warfare and to cut its losses when after two or three days it was clear that the model was wrong. At that point the government should have called up the reserves and launched a combined ground and air offensive.
But the government didn't feel like it. It wanted to win the war on the cheap. And when the air campaign did not succeed, it abandoned its war goals, declared victory and sued for a cease-fire. When the public objected, after waiting two precious weeks, the government called up the reserves but then waited another unforgivable 10 days before committing them to battle.
All the while, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni did her best to demoralize the IDF and the public by publicly proclaiming that there is no military solution to what is clearly a military conflict.
OLMERT'S DECISION Friday to begin the ground offensive was by all accounts motivated not by a newfound understanding that this is a real war, but by the headlines in the newspapers that morning calling for his resignation. Yet, by Friday, the IDF had only 48 hours to achieve the objectives it had waited a month to receive Olmert's permission to accomplish.
Diplomatically, in the space of five weeks the government managed to undermine Israel's alliance with America; to hand Syria, Hizbullah and Iran the greatest diplomatic achievements they have ever experienced; and to flush down the toilet the unprecedented international support that US President Bush handed to Israel on a silver platter at the G-8 summit.
The UN cease-fire that Olmert, Livni and Peretz applaud undercuts Israel's sovereignty; protects Hizbullah; lets Iran and Syria off the hook; lends credibility to our enemies' belief that Israel can be destroyed; emboldens the Palestinians to launch their next round of war; and leaves IDF hostages Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in captivity.
Israel's diplomatic maneuvers were cut to fit the size of our Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni who believes that her job is limited to being nice to other foreign ministers when they call her up on the telephone. In an interview with Yediot Aharonot over the weekend, Livni defended her decision not to engage in public diplomacy by claiming that this is not an important enough task for the foreign minister. It makes sense that this would be her view because as one who understands neither diplomacy nor English, she is incapable of conducting public diplomacy.
Livni argued that the job of the foreign minister is "to create diplomatic processes" - whatever that means. She also claimed that the best way to gain international support is not by publicly arguing Israel's case, but through back door discussions devoted to developing good relations with other foreign ministers. This is ridiculous. The job of the foreign minister is to defend Israel and advance Israel's national interests to foreigners, not to be their friend.
ASIDE FROM the fact that the government's bungling of the military mission meant that Olmert and Livni sprinted to the negotiating table empty handed, the reason that the UN Security Council cease-fire resolution ignores every single Israeli demand is because Israel didn't aggressively pursue its goals. While the Lebanese and the Arabs massed all their forces and pressured the UN, the Foreign Ministry asked US Jewish leaders to say nothing about the draft resolution and to make no public objections to that diplomatic process Tzipi and Ehud "created" with their "friends." And so Israel's positions were ignored.
Yet the reason that this incompetent, embarrassment of a government must go is not simply because it has delivered Israel the worst defeat in its history. This government must go because every day it sits in power it exacerbates the damage it has already caused and increases the dangers to Israel.
Iran has been emboldened. Its success in the war is now being used by the ayatollahs to support their claim of leadership over the Arab world. In evidence of Iran's success, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met in Cairo with Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. So now, after 27 years of official estrangement, Egypt is moving towards establishing full diplomatic relations with Teheran.
The Palestinians have been emboldened. Hamas leaders and spokesmen are openly stating that just as Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 precipitated the Palestinian terror war in September 2000, so Israel's current defeat in Lebanon will spur the outbreak of a new Palestinian terror war against Israel today.
THE AMERICANS have lost faith in Israel as an ally. After he gave Israel every opportunity to win this war, even signaling clearly that Israel should feel free to go as far as Beirut if necessary, President Bush was convinced that Olmert simply didn't want to fight. The Americans were shocked by Israel's performance. They know that we can win when we set our mind to it and were flummoxed when presented with an Israeli leadership that refused to even try.
Today we have 30,000 soldiers in Lebanon with an unclear mission. Because of the failure of this government, Israel now needs to contend with an emboldened Hizbullah protected by Kofi Annan. Already on Sunday, Annan sent a letter to Olmert instructing him that once the cease-fire is put into effect, the IDF will be barred from taking action even if it comes under attack. As far as Annan is concerned, resolution 1701 says that if Israel is attacked, all it is allowed to do is call his secretary.
Given that both the Lebanese army and the countries which plan to send forces to Lebanon all say that they will not deploy to the south until after Hizbullah is dismantled, it is clear that the military mission is still to be accomplished.
In its helter-skelter offensive over the weekend, the IDF performed brilliantly as it tried to accomplish in 48 hours what it had been denied permission to accomplish for an entire month. Still now, in the diplomatic minefield this government set for it, the IDF remains the only military force capable of fighting and dismantling Hizbullah. But there can be no doubt that it will not be accomplished under this government.
There will be time to inquire into what has gone wrong in the IDF. There will be time to fire the generals that need to be fired. But we don't need a commission to determine what we need to do. Because of the Olmert government's failures, ever greater battles await us. As the dangers mount by the hour, we must replace this misbegotten government with one that can defend us.
This article can also be read here.
108 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
More fallout from Mr. Olmert's Little War
From: IMRA
Date: 15 August 2006 00:25:17 GMT+03:00
Globes poll shows drastic fall in support for gov't
Only 6% of those polled think that the agreement achieves most of Israel's
goals.
Globes [online], Israel business news correspondent 14 Aug 06 17:12
The first political outcome of the 33 days of war has been a drastic drop in support for Kadima and Labor, according to a "Globes-Smith" poll conducted by Rafi Smith.
The survey, which was conducted just before the ceasefire went into effect, reveals that were elections held today, Kadima would win less than 20 Knesset seats (compared with 29 in the last election in February), while Labor would get 12 seats only. This result represents a marked change from the trend during the past month of war in the north, when the public expressed its support for the government and the IDF, with views that could be described as "patriotic."
The poll also reveals that around half the public think the ceasefire will hold up for a month, while 35% think it will last no more than a week.
Only 6% of respondents think that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 is good and achieves most of Israel's goals, and only a quarter of those polled think that this is the best agreement Israel could achieve, under the
circumstances. 38% feel the agreement is not good but that there is no alternative but to accept it. In all, 66% think the agreement is not a good one.
58% of respondents feel that Israel achieved only a few of its goals, or achieved nothing at all, against 16% who thought so 11 days ago. Only 3% feel that Israel has achieved all, or most of its goals, against more than a third who thought so a week ago.
August 14, 2006
109 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
This was received via e-mail courtesy of Aryeh Zelasko.
This was received by the coordinator for an organization trying to help the internal refugees created by Ariel Sharon's "brilliant" strategy of making settled people homeless and jobless, a "brilliant" strategy of sacrificing Israel's security for a few pleasant slaps on the back - a lot of good that will so a man with a rotting brain, eh?
-------------------------------------------------
Subject: confession - must read!!
Enclosed is the translation of the letter I got today.
Friends and family members are being injured and killed.
Some of us are without a roof on our heads.
I closed my business since the beginning of the battle and I don't know what will happen.
We are wandering between family and good people.
Our family life has been impaired.
I never thought that I, a Haifa resident for 30 years, would be a refugee in my own land.
Every thing sound so familiar from the close past.
During 5 years you coped with bombs " and I didn't care.
You buried family and friends - and I was indifferent.
You found yourselves without a home, like that and you never had someone that listened to you.
Even when you came to visit me to my house, to explain, to convince, to share your feelings with me " I refused to listen to you.
It has already been a week. I am out of my house, without my regular routine, it is very hard to me " but the empathy, the support, and people identifying with our plight helped me go on.
You , don't even have that.
You " In guest houses, hotels and even in tents- It's not easy to say: "Who cares?!"
People from Gush Katif and the Shomron!
Forgive me!
Forgive us for letting you on your own.
Forgive us for not understanding you.
I am not a religious man, and not a mystic person.
But we cannot ignore the deep relation between my attitude towards you And the price that I am paying now for my understanding.
110 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Arutz Sheva reports:
Manhigut Yehudit: Chief of Staff Corrupt and Unfit to Lead IDF
Tuesday, August 15, 2006 / 21 Av 5766
(IsraelNN.com) The Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) movement, led by Moshe Feiglin, has issued a call for the immediate dismissal of IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.
“An investigative committee is not needed in order to expose the moral decay of he who accepted his position in order to expel thousands of Jews from their homes, and thereby abandoned the country to be existentially threatened,” Manhigut states. “One who deals with selling his private financial portfolio, at a time when he is supposed to be leading the army to war, is a man who is corrupt to the core, and is unfit to stand at the head of the Israel Defense Forces.”
The Maariv newspaper revealed Tuesday that just three hours following the kidnapping of two IDF soldiers and amidst the discussion of the start of the war, Chief of Staff Halutz instructed that 120,000 shekels worth of stocks of his be sold off. In the following days, the stock exchange fell by 8%. Halutz says the sale followed previous losses and was not connected to the threat of war.
111 - The Fifth Dentist
Ruvy: "Elsewhere, I have presented a plan for peace."
For those of us who missed it, what exactly is your plan for peace?
112 - Dean
A piece of Egypt, a piece of Jordan, a piece of Syria, a piece of Lebanon. Most of all, the West Bank and Gaza.
113 - Dean
I can no longer sit back and allow Islamic infiltration , Islamic indoctrination, Islamic subversion, and the international Islamic conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids...
--Base Commander Jack E. Ripper, a.k.a. Ruvy
114 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Fifth Dentist;
I'll get to that, but first I need to post news and news analyses.
I gotta tell y'all, favorable comment on Olmert and company is hard to find.
This first piece deals with our beloved neighbor, Bashir Assad of Syria.
These are excerpts from the article, which can be read in full here.
The president slammed out at the suggestion that "Israel has the right to
defend itself" as a reaction due to the attack staged by the resistance
noting" had we applied this through a math equation on the Palestinians,
this would mean they had the right to react in a way they destroys or kills
in Israel."
The president underlined the recent aggression was "premeditated" in light
of three tracks, the first is the UNSC resolution 1559 and the assassination
of President al-Hariri as well as pressures put on Syria, and the
resistance for the subjugation.
He added the second track is the failure of the US occupation in Iraq, and
the third is the burying of the peace process and transforming it into a
military option as to overcome the Arabs and then exempt Israel from every
commitment towards the Arabs.
He noted that before this tragic situation, resistance emerged in the Arab
arena as the only solution to restore usurped rights.
President Assad said that Israel tried many times and is still trying to
become part of the Great Middle East depending on a main idea that every
Arab generation to come will show more acceptance to Israel from the
previous ones and therefore more compliance; then the issue is that of time
which is in Israel's interests.
"What Israel should know is that every generation has more hatred towards it
than the generation before. Hatred is not a good word. We don't hate and we
don't encourage hatred but Israel did not leave room in our region except
for hatred, "the president added.
115 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
The next two pieces are analyses, taking two differing views of how the HizbAllah and the Iranians have come out of this conflict.
The first is from Stratfor Strategic Forecasting Inc.
GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT
08.15.2006
Cease-Fire: Shaking Core Beliefs in the Middle East
The emphases in the Stratfor article are mine (RiJ).
By George Friedman
An extraordinary thing happened in the Middle East this month. An Israeli army faced an Arab army and did not defeat it -- did not render it incapable of continued resistance. That was the outcome in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. But it did not happen in 2006. Should this outcome stand, it will represent a geopolitical
earthquake in the region -- one that fundamentally shifts expectations and behaviors on all sides.
It is not that Hezbollah defeated the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It did not. By most measures, it got the worst of the battle.
Nevertheless, it has been left standing at the end of the battle. Its forces in the Bekaa Valley and in the Beirut area have been battered, though how severely is not yet clear. Its forces south of the Litani River were badly hurt by the Israeli attack. Nevertheless, the
correlation of forces was such that the Israelis should have dealt Hezbollah, at least in southern Lebanon, a devastating blow, such
that resistance would have crumbled. IDF did not strike such a blow -- so as the cease-fire took effect, Hezbollah continued to resist,
continued to inflict casualties on Israeli troops and continued to fire rockets at Israel. Hezbollah has not been rendered incapable of
continued resistance, and that is unprecedented.
In the regional equation, there has been an immutable belief: that, at the end of the day, IDF was capable of imposing a unilateral
military solution on any Arab force. Israel might have failed to achieve its political goals in its various wars, but it never failed to impose its will on an enemy force. As a result, all neighboring nations and entities understood there were boundaries that could be crossed only if a country was willing to accept a crushing Israeli response. All neighboring countries -- Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, prior to the collapses of central authority -- understood
this and shaped their behavior in view of it. Even when Egypt and Syria initiated war in 1973, it was with an understanding that their
war aims had to be limited, that they had to accept the probability of defeat and had to focus on postwar political maneuvers rather than
on expectations of victory.
The Egyptians withdrew from conflict and accepted the Sinai as a buffer zone, largely because 1973 convinced them that continued
conflict was futile. Jordan, since 1970, has been effectively under the protection of Israel against threats from Syria and internal
dangers as well. Syria has not directly challenged the Israelis since 1973, preferring indirect challenges and, not infrequently,
accommodation with Israel. The idea of Israel as a regional superpower has been the defining principle.
In this conflict, what Hezbollah has achieved is not so much a defeat of Israel as a demonstration that destruction in detail is not an inevitable outcome of challenging Israel. Hezbollah has showed that it is possible to fight to a point that Israel prefers a cease-fire and political settlement to a military victory followed by political accommodation. Israel might not have lost any particular battle, and a careful analysis of the outcome could prove its course to be reasonable. But the loss of the sense -- and historical reality -- of the inevitability of Israeli military victory is a far more profound defeat for Israel, as this clears the way for other regional powers
to recalculate risks.
Hezbollah's Preparations
Hezbollah meticulously prepared for the war by analyzing Israeli strengths and weaknesses. Israel is casualty-averse by dint of demographics. It therefore resorts to force multipliers such as air power and armor, combined with excellent reconnaissance and tactical intelligence. Israel uses mobility to cut lines of supply and air power to shatter centralized command-and-control, leaving enemy
forces disorganized, unbalanced and unsupplied.
Hezbollah sought to deny Israel its major advantages. The group created a network of fortifications in southern Lebanon that did not
require its fighters to maneuver and expose themselves to Israeli air power. Hezbollah stocked those bunkers so fighters could conduct
extended combat without the need for resupply. It devolved command to the unit level, making it impossible for a decapitation strike by Israel to affect the battlefield. It worked in such a way that, while the general idea of the defense architecture was understood by Israeli military intelligence, the kind of detailed intelligence used -- for example, in 1967 -- was denied the Israelis. Hezbollah acquired anti-tank weapons from Syria and Iran that prevented Israeli
armor from operating without prior infantry clearing of anti-tank teams. And by doing that, the group forced the Israelis to accept
casualties in excess of what could, apparently, be tolerated. In short, it forced the Israelis to fight Hezbollah's type of war, rather than the other way around.
Hezbollah then initiated war at the time and place of its choosing. There has been speculation that Israel planned for such a war. That might be the case, but it is self-evident that, if the Israelis wanted this war, they were not expecting it when it happened. The opening of the war was not marked by the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Rather, it was the persistent and intense bombardment of Israel with missiles -- including attacks against Israel's third-largest city, Haifa -- that compelled the Israelis to fight at a moment when they obviously were unprepared for war, and could not
clearly decide either their war aims or strategy. In short, Hezbollah applied a model that was supposed to be Israel's forte: The group prepared meticulously for a war and launched it when the enemy was unprepared for it.
Hezbollah went on the strategic offensive and tactical defensive. It created a situation in which Israeli forces had to move to the
operational and tactical offensive at the moment of Hezbollah's highest level of preparedness. Israel could not decline combat, because of the rocket attacks against Haifa, nor was it really ready for war -- particularly psychologically. The Israelis fought when Hezbollah chose and where Hezbollah chose. Their goals were complex,
where Hezbollah's were simple. Israel wanted to stop the rockets, break Hezbollah, suffer minimal casualties and maintain its image as
an irresistible military force. Hezbollah merely wanted to survive the Israeli attack. The very complexity of Israel's war aims, hastily
crafted as they were, represented a failure point.
The Foundations of Israeli Strategy
It is important to think through the reasoning that led to Israeli operations. Israel's actions were based on a principle promulgated by Ariel Sharon at the time of his leadership. Sharon argued that Israel must erect a wall between Israelis and Arabs. His reasoning stemmed from circumstances he faced during Israel's ccupation of Lebanon:
Counterinsurgency operations impose an nnecessary and unbearable cost in the long run, particularly when designed to protect
peripheral interests. The losses may be small in number but, over the long term, they pose severe operational and morale challenges to the
occupying force. Therefore, for Sharon, the withdrawal from Lebanon in the 1980s created a paradigm. Israel needed a national security
policy that avoided the burden of counterinsurgency operations without first requiring a political settlement. In other words, Israel needed to end counterinsurgency operations by unilaterally ending the occupation and erecting a barrier between Israel and
hostile populations.
The important concept in Sharon's thinking was not the notion of impenetrable borders. Rather, the important concept was the idea that Israel could not tolerate counterinsurgency operations because it could not tolerate casualties. Sharon certainly did not mean or think that Israel could not tolerate casualties in the event of a total conventional war, as in 1967 or 1973. There, extreme casualties were both tolerable and required. What he meant was that Israel could tolerate any level of casualties in a war of national survival but, paradoxically, could not tolerate low-level casualties in extended
wars that did not directly involve Israel's survival.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was Sharon's protege. Olmert was struggling with the process of disengagement in Gaza and looking toward the same in the West Bank. Lebanon, where Israel learned the costs of long-term occupation, was the last place he wanted to return to in July 2006. In his view, any operation in Lebanon would be tantamount to a return to counterinsurgency warfare and occupation.
He did not recognize early on that Hezbollah was not fighting an insurgency, but rather a conventional war of fixed fortifications.
Olmert did a rational cost-benefit analysis. First, if the principle of the Gaza withdrawal was to be followed, the last place the Israelis wanted to be was in Lebanon. Second, though he recognized that the rocket attacks were intolerable in principle, he also knew that, in point of fact, they were relatively ineffective. The number of casualties they were causing, or were likely to cause, would be much lower than those that would be incurred with an invasion and occupation of Lebanon. Olmert, therefore, sought a low-cost solution to the problem of Hezbollah.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz offered an attractive alternative. Advocating what air force officers have advocated since the 1930s, Halutz launched an air campaign designed to destroy Hezbollah. It certainly hurt Hezbollah badly, particularly outside of southern Lebanon, where longer-range rocket launchers were located.
However, in the immediate battlefield, limited tactical intelligence and the construction of the bunkers appear to have blunted the air
attack. As Israeli troops moved forward across the border, they encountered a well-prepared enemy that undoubtedly was weakened but
was not destroyed by the air campaign.
At this point, Olmert had a strategic choice to make. He could mount a multi-divisional invasion of Lebanon, absorb large numbers of
casualties and risk being entangled in a new counterinsurgency operation, or he could seek a political settlement. He chose a compromise. After appearing to hesitate, he launched an invasion that seemed to bypass critical Hezbollah positions (isolating them),
destroying other positions and then opting for a cease-fire that would transfer responsibility for security to the Lebanese army and a
foreign peacekeeping force.
Viewed strictly from the standpoint of cost-benefit analysis, Olmert was probably right. Except that Hezbollah's threat to Israel proper
had to be eliminated, Israel had no interests in Lebanon. The cost of destroying Hezbollah's military capability would have been extremely
high, since it involved moving into the Bekaa Valley and toward Beirut -- let alone close-quarters infantry combat in the south. And
even then, over time, Hezbollah would recover. Since the threat could be eliminated only at a high cost and only for a certain period of
time, the casualties required made no sense.
This analysis, however, excluded the political and psychological consequences of leaving an enemy army undefeated on the battlefield.
Again, do not overrate what Hezbollah did: The group did not conduct offensive operations; it was not able to conduct maneuver combat; it
did not challenge the Israeli air force in the air. All it did was survive and, at the end of the war, retain its ability to threaten
Israel with such casualties that Israel declined extended combat.
Hezbollah did not defeat Israel on the battlefield. The group merely prevented Israel from defeating it. And that outcome marks a
political and psychological triumph for Hezbollah and a massive defeat for Israel.
Implications for the Region
Hezbollah has demonstrated that total Arab defeat is not inevitable -- and with this demonstration, Israel has lost its tremendous
psychological advantage. If an operational and tactical defensive need not end in defeat, then there is no reason to assume that, at some point, an Arab offensive operation need not end in defeat. And if the outcome can be a stalemate, there is no reason to assume that
it cannot be a victory. If all things are possible, then taking risks against Israel becomes rational.
The outcome of this war creates two political crises.
In Israel, Olmert's decisions will come under serious attack. However correct his cost-benefit analysis might have been, he will be attacked over the political and psychological outcome. The entire legacy of Ariel Sharon -- the doctrine of disengagement -- will now
come under attack. (it's about time! RiJ) If Israel is thrown into political turmoil and indecision, the outcome on the battlefield will have been compounded
politically.
There is now also a crisis in Lebanon and in the Muslim world. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has emerged as a massive political force. Even in the multi-confessional society, Hezbollah will be a decisive factor.
Syria, marginalized in the region for quite a while, becomes more viable as Hezbollah's patron. Meanwhile, countries like Jordan and
Egypt must reexamine their own assumptions about Israel. And in the larger Muslim world, Hezbollah's victory represents a victory for
Iran and the Shia. Hezbollah, a Shiite force, has done what others could not do. This will profoundly effect the Shiite position in Iraq
-- where the Shia, having first experienced the limits of American power, are now seeing the expanding boundaries of Iranian power.
We would expect Hezbollah, Syria and Iran to move rapidly to exploit what advantage this has given them, before it dissipates. This will
increase pressures not only for Israel, but also for the United States, which is engaged in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in a vague confrontation with Iran. For the Israelis and the Americans, restabilizing their interests will be difficult.
Now, some would argue that Israel's possession of weapons of mass destruction negates the consequences of regional perception of
weakness. That might be the case, but the fact is that Israel's possession of such weapons did not prevent attacks in 1973, nor were those weapons usable in this case. Consider the distances involved: Israeli forces have been fighting 10 miles from the border. And if
Damascus were to be struck with the wind blowing the wrong way, northern Israel would be fried as well. Israel could undertake a nuclear strike against Iran, but the threat posed by Iran is indirect -- since it is far away -- and would not determine the outcome of any regional encounter. Certainly, the possession of nuclear weapons provides Israel a final line from which to threaten enemies -- but by the time that became necessary, the issue already would have shifted massively against Israel. Nuclear weapons have not been used since World War II -- in spite of many apparent opportunities to do so -- because, as a weapon, the utility is more apparent than real. Possession of nuclear weapons can help guarantee regime survival, but
not, by itself, military success.
As it stands, logic holds that, given the tenuous nature of the cease-fire, casus belli on Israel's part can be found and the war
reinitiated. Given the mood in Israel, logic would dictate the fall of Olmert, his replacement by a war coalition and an attempt to
change the outcome. But logic has not applied to Israeli thinking during this war. We have been consistently surprised by the choices Israel has made, and it is not clear whether this is simply Olmert's problem or one that has become embedded in Israel.
What is clear is that, if the current outcome stands, it will mean there has been a tremendous earthquake in the Middle East. It is cheap and easy to talk about historic events. But when a reality that has dominated a region for 58 years is shattered, it is historic. Perhaps this paves the way to new wars. Perhaps Olmert's restraint opens the door for some sort of stable peace. But from where we sit, he was sufficiently aggressive to increase hostility toward Israel without being sufficiently decisive to achieve a desired military
outcome.
Hezbollah and Iran hoped for this outcome, though they did not really expect it. They got it. The question on the table now is what they
will do with it.
© Copyright 2006 Stratfor Strategic Forecasting Inc.
All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------
The second analysis comes from Debkafiles and gives a very different take in the conflict.
Tehran Takes Gloomy View of the Lebanon War and Truce
August 14, 2006, 3:35 PM (GMT+02:00)
While the damage caused Israel's military reputation tops Western assessments of the Lebanon war, DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report an entirely different perception taking hold in ruling circles in Tehran.
After UN Security Council resolution 1701 calling for a truce was carried Friday, Aug. 11, the heads of the regime received two separate evaluations of the situation in Lebanon - one from Iran's foreign ministry and one from its supreme national security council. Both were bleak: their compilers were concerned that Iran had been manipulatively robbed of its primary deterrent asset ahead of a probable nuclear confrontation with the United States and Israel.
While the foreign ministry report highlighted the negative aspects of the UN resolution, the council's document complained that Hizballah
squandered thousands of rockets - either by firing them into Israel or having them destroyed by the Israeli air force.
The writer of this report is furious over the waste of Iran's most important military investment in Lebanon merely for the sake of a
conflict with Israeli over two kidnapped soldiers.
It took Iran two decades to build up Hizballah's rocket inventory.
DEBKAfile's sources estimate that Hizballah's adventure wiped out most of the vast sum of $4-6 bn the Iranian treasury sunk into building its military strength. The organization was meant to be strong and effective enough to provide Iran with a formidable deterrent to Israel embarking on a military operation to destroy the Islamic regime's nuclear infrastructure.
To this end, Tehran bought the Israeli military doctrine of preferring to fight its wars on enemy soil. In the mid-1980s, Iran decided to act on this doctrine by coupling its nuclear development program with Israel's encirclement and the weakening its deterrence strength. The Jewish state was identified at the time as the only country likely to take vigorous action to spike Iran's nuclear aspirations.
The ayatollahs accordingly promoted Hizballah's rise as a socio-political force in Lebanon, at the same time building up its military might and capabilities for inflicting damage of strategic
dimensions to Israel's infrastructure.
That effort was accelerated after Israeli forces withdrew from the Lebanese security zone in May 2000. A bunker network and chain of fortified positions were constructed, containing war rooms equipped with the finest western hi-tech gadgetry, including night vision gear, computers and electronics, as well as protective devices
against bacteriological and chemical warfare.
This fortified network was designed for assault and defense alike.
Short- medium- and long-range rockets gave the hard edge to Hizballah's ability to conduct a destructive war against Israel and its civilians - when the time was right for Tehran.
Therefore, Iran's rulers are hopping mad and deeply anxious over news of the huge damage sustained by Hizballah's rocket inventory, which
was proudly touted before the war as numbering 13,000 pieces.
Hizballah fighters, they are informed, managed to fire only a small number of Khaibar-1 rockets, most of which hit Haifa and Afula, while nearly 100 were destroyed or disabled by Israeli air strikes.
The long-range Zelzal-1 and Zelzal-2, designed for hitting Tel Aviv and the nuclear reactor at Dimona have been degraded even more. Iran sent over to Lebanon 50 of those missiles. The keys to the Zelzal stores stayed in the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers who were in command of Hizballah. Nasrallah and his officers had no access to these stores.
But Tehran has learned that Israel was able to destroy most of the 22 Zelzal launchers provided.
That is not the end of the catalogue of misfortunes for the Islamic rulers of Iran.
1. The UN Security Council embodied in resolution 1701 a chapter requiring Hizballah to disarm - in the face of a stern warning issued
by supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in person in the early days of the war. Revolutionary Guards commanders went so far as to boast: "No one alive is capable of disarming Hizballah."
The disarming of Hizballah would therefore be a bad knock to the supreme ruler's authority and prestige as well as a disastrous blow for the deterrent force so painstakingly and expensively fashioned as a second front line to protect the Islamic republic from a safe distance.
2. Hizballah's ejection from South Lebanon, if accomplished in the aftermath of the ceasefire, would moreover deprive Tehran of the sword hanging over Israel's head of instantaneous attack.
For the sake of partial damage control, Tehran handed Nasrallah a set of new instructions Sunday, Aug. 13:
First, to find a way of evading the ceasefire and keeping up war operations against Israeli forces.
Second, to reject the proposal to disarm before the Lebanese government meets on this Monday afternoon. In fact, that meeting was called off after Hassan Nasrallah sent a message to the Lebanese ministers flatly refusing to have Hizballah give up its weapons in the south. He also turned down a compromise proposal handed him later, whereby the Lebanese army's first mission after deploying in the south would be to help Hizballah evacuate its fighters with their
arms to positions north of the Litani River.
The strategy evolving in Tehran since the ceasefire went into effect Monday morning requires Hizballah to employ a range of stratagems - not only to prevent the truce from stabilizing but to stop the Lebanese army from deploying - the south and, above all, the entry of an effective international force.
Furthermore, Hizballah is instructed to stretch the military crisis into the next three of four months, synchronously with the timetable for a UN Security Council sanctions-wielding session on Iran.
According to exclusive reports reaching BKAfile's sources, the Iranian government believes that Israel and the United States are
preparing a military operation for the coming October and November to strike Iran's nuclear installations. It is therefore vital to keep
the two armies fully occupied with other pursuits.
Iranian leaders' conviction that the Lebanon war was staged to bamboozle them rests on certain perceptions:
As seen from Tehran, Israel looked as though it was carrying out a warming-up exercise in preparation for its main action against Iran's
nuclear program. The Israeli army was able to explore, discover and correct its weak points, understand what was lacking and apply the
necessary remedial measures. They therefore expect the IDF to emerge from the war having produced novel methods of warfare.
They also have no doubt that the United States will replenish Israel's war chest with a substantial aid program of new and improved
weaponry.
From the Iranian viewpoint, Israel succeeded in seriously degrading Hizballah's capabilities. It was also able to throw the Lebanese Shiite militia to the wolves; the West is now in a position to force Nasrallah and his men to quit southern Lebanon and disarm. The West shut its eyes when he flouted the Resolution 1559 order for the disarmament of all Lebanese militias. But that game is over. The Americans will use Resolution 1701 as an effect weapon to squeeze
Iran, denied of its second-front deterrence, on its nuclear program.
Tehran hopes to pre-empt the American move by torpedoing the Lebanon ceasefire and preventing the termination of hostilities at all costs.
116 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
This column is an opinion piece by former member of the Knesset, Moshe Arens, one of the few American immigrants to become successful politicians in Israel. After leaving his post as Security Minister in the Netanyahu cabinet, he wrote an analysis in the J-lem Post of how American military aid in fact damaged this country's economy by stripping it of its self-reliance. It was not hard to see from his article in the Post six years ago, how American "aid" is used as a policy to force Israel's dependency on the United States.
Minister Arens' article can be read in
Haaretz.
13/08/2006
Let the devil take tomorrow
By Moshe Arens
To lead the nation in a war to victory was just too much for them. Too heavy a burden for their narrow shoulders. That trio - Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz and Tzipi Livni - asked and received a mandate to lead the people of Israel, promising to take our fate into our own hands and unilaterally establish Israel's borders by evacuating Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria, and turn Israel into a country "in which it will be a pleasure to live." We do not know and probably will never know if they would have been up to that task, but we now know they are not fit to govern Israel in these trying times.
They had a few days of glory when they still believed that the IAF's bombing of Lebanon would make short shrift of Hezbollah and bring us victory without pain. But as the war they so grossly mismanaged wore on, as northern Israel received its daily dose of 150-200 rockets, the Galilee was destroyed and burned to the ground, over a million Israelis sat in shelters or abandoned their homes and both civilian and military casualties mounted - gradually the air went out of them. Here and there, they still let off some bellicose declarations, but they started looking for an exit - how to extricate
themselves from the turn of events they were obviously incapable of managing. They grasped for straws, and what better straw than the
United Nations Security Council. No need to score a military victory over Hezbollah. Let the UN declare a cease-fire, and Olmert, Peretz,
and Livni can simply declare victory, whether you believe it or not.
An almost audible sigh of relief could be heard from the Prime Minister's Office as the negotiations that were supposed to lead to a
cease-fire began at the UN. The appropriate rhetoric has already started flying. So what if the whole world sees this diplomatic arrangement - which Israel agreed to while it was still receiving a daily dose of Hezbollah rockets - as a defeat suffered by Israel at
the hands of a few thousand Hezbollah fighters? So what if nobody believes that an "emboldened" UNIFIL force will disarm Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah with thousands of rockets still in its arsenal and truly emboldened by this month's success against the mighty Israel Defense Forces, will now become a partner for peace? Does a cease-fire that will avoid further casualties among the IDF's soldiers not outweigh these concerns over future events?
Many politicians are notorious for preferring short-term considerations over a long-term view. Examples abound of the dangers of such myopic policies. From Munich in Europe of 1938 that set the stage for World War II, to Oslo in 1993 which brought Arafat and his cohorts from Tunis here, to the disengagement from Gush Katif last
year that brought Hamas to power, and Barak's hasty withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, which sowed the seeds of the latest intifada and is
the root cause of the current war - the rotten fruits of that withdrawal we have been reaping this past month.
The long-term implications of an Israeli agreement to a UN brokered cease-fire at this time are obvious. Israel's enemies, and they are
many, will conclude that Israel does not have the stamina for an extended encounter with terrorism. You do not need tanks and aircraft
to defeat Israel - a few thousand rockets are enough. Katyushas today and Qassams tomorrow. Don't let Olmert, Peretz and Livni fool you:
These rockets will keep coming after Israel is seen as not only punished but also defeated in this month-long war.
"Yesterday is dead and tomorrow's out of sight," Dean Martin used to sing. Olmert may be humming this song as he agrees to the UN cease-fire resolution, and Peretz and Livni can sing the refrain "let the devil take tomorrow." But tomorrow will come much sooner than they expect. And it will find Israel with nothing left of its
deterrent capability that used to keep its enemies at bay. The war, which according to our leaders was supposed to restore Israel's
deterrent posture, has within one month succeeded in destroying it. That message will not be lost on Hamas, the Syrians and the Iranians, and possibly even some of our Arab neighbors who for many years had forsworn belligerence against Israel.
The task facing Israel now is to restore its deterrent posture and prepare for the attacks that are sure to come. But not with this
leadership. They have exhausted whatever little credit they had when they were voted into office.
117 - Les Slater
Ruvy,
Thanks for all the information and opinion that you have been posting, as well as your views too.
Les
118 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Fifth Dentist,
Now to answer you. My proposal is to go forward from the 1919 agreement between Sherif Feisal and Haim Weitzmann.
But the going forward is to be done by religious leaders rather than politicians. In the final analysis, it is the religious faith that has brought jews home, and IMO it is the Islamic religious doctrine that is the key to the possibility of reconciliation between the Children of Abraham.
The concept is simple. There is to be a Kingdom of Arabia and a Kingdom of Israel. The borders of the Kingdom of Israel would be roughly the borders of the present state from the sea to the Jordan River with territory up to the Litani River added in the north and east, and with the Sinai divided, not where it is now, but at El Arish, with the Kingdom of Israel conrolling the eastern third of the Sinai.
The Kingdom of Arabia would be ruled by Abdallah II initially from Amman, and would include Jordan, Syria (except for the Golan), and if posible, the Sunni territory of Iraq. The goal of the Kingdom of Arabia would be the reconquest of the Arabian peninsula and the reestablishment of Abdallah as Sherif of Mecca and Medina.
The irony of all this is that there are Arabs willing to negotiate somthing like this with Jews. The Jews who can lead and pull this plan off have yet to have yet to identify themselves...
119 - Christopher Rose
And who would be the King of Israel in this fanciful daydream of yours, Ruvy?
Oh, and you still haven't explained what a chap has to look forward to or beware of in 2026-2030?
120 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Thanks, Les for the kind words.
Fifth Dentist, Looks like I need to take a nap. I'm falling asleep at the keyboard and need to present my views in a clear and not hazy form, with greater completeness. My apologies...
Later
121 - Les Slater
Ruvy,
From the second piece of your 115:
“Tehran Takes Gloomy View of the Lebanon War and Truce
August 14, 2006, 3:35 PM (GMT+02:00)”
If what debkafiles reports from Iran are true then I believe that the two reports from inside Iran are nonsense, at least the parts that were highlighted by debkafiles.
I think that those reports do reflect nervousness within ruling circles inside Iran but I don’t think the real cause is what happened to a few rockets or the weakened position of Hezbollah’s military strength. I think their biggest concern is the expectations of many in the Middle East of Iran’s leadership role.
No regime in the area wants to destroy Israel, least of all Iran. The destruction of Israel would require the mobilization of the masses in ALL of the countries of the region. None of the regimes would dare resort to that, at least not if they.
Les
122 - Les Slater
Also, if there were a mobilization of the masses in the Middle East, I do not think there would many Jews living inside Israel willing to pick a fight.
123 - Les Slater
Not from Israel, but otherwise fits in this thread.
From New York Times
August 16, 2006
THE OVERVIEW
Hezbollah Leads Work to Rebuild, Gaining Stature
By JOHN KIFNER
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 15 " As stunned Lebanese returned Tuesday over broken roads to shattered apartments in the south, it increasingly seemed that the beneficiary of the destruction was most likely to be Hezbollah.
A major reason " in addition to its hard-won reputation as the only Arab force that fought Israel to a standstill " is that it is already dominating the efforts to rebuild with a torrent of money from oil-rich Iran.
Nehme Y. Tohme, a member of Parliament from the anti-Syrian reform bloc and the country’s minister for the displaced, said he had been told by Hezbollah officials that when the shooting stopped, Iran would provide Hezbollah with an “unlimited budget” for reconstruction.
In his victory speech on Monday night, Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, offered money for “decent and suitable furniture” and a year’s rent on a house to any Lebanese who lost his home in the month-long war.
“Completing the victory,” he said, “can come with reconstruction.”
On Tuesday, Israel began to pull many of its reserve troops out of southern Lebanon, and its military chief of staff said all of the soldiers could be back across the border within 10 days.
Lebanese soldiers are expected to begin moving in a couple of days, supported by the first of 15,000 foreign troops.
While the Israelis began their withdrawal, hundreds of Hezbollah members spread over dozens of villages across southern Lebanon began cleaning, organizing and surveying damage. Men on bulldozers were busy cutting lanes through giant piles of rubble. Roads blocked with the remnants of buildings are now, just a day after a cease-fire began, fully passable.
In Sreifa, a Hezbollah official said the group would offer an initial $10,000 to residents to help pay for the year of rent, to buy new furniture and to help feed families.
In Taibe, a town of fighting so heavy that large chunks were missing from walls and buildings where they had been sprayed with bullets, the Audi family stood with two Hezbollah volunteers, looking woefully at their windowless, bullet- and shrapnel-torn house.
In Bint Jbail, Hezbollah ambulances " large, new cars with flashing lights on the top " ferried bodies of fighters to graves out of mountains of rubble.
Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network " as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well " was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.
“Hezbollah’s strength,” said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University here, who has written extensively about the organization, in large part derives from “the gross vacuum left by the state.”
Hezbollah was not, she said, a state within a state, but rather “a state within a nonstate, actually.”
Sheik Nasrallah said in his speech that “the brothers in the towns and villages will turn to those whose homes are badly damaged and help rebuild them.
“Today is the day to keep up our promises,” he said. “All our brothers will be in your service starting tomorrow.”
Some southern towns were so damaged that on Tuesday residents had not yet begun to return. A fighter for the Amal movement, another Shiite militia group, said he had been told that Hezbollah members would begin to catalog damages in his town, Kafr Kila, on the Israeli border.
Hezbollah men also traveled door to door checking on residents and asking them what help they needed.
Although Hezbollah is a Shiite organization, Sheik Nasrallah’s message resounded even with a Sunni Muslim, Ghaleb Jazi, 40, who works at the oil storage plant at Jiyeh, 15 miles south of Beirut. It was bombed by the Israelis and spewed pollution northward into the Mediterranean.
“The government may do some work on bridges and roads, but when it comes to rebuilding houses, Hezbollah will have a big role to play,” he said. “Nasrallah said yesterday he would rebuild, and he will come through.”
Sheik Nasrallah’s speech was interpreted by some as a kind of watershed in Lebanese politics, establishing his group on an equal footing with the official government.
“It was a coup d’état,” said Jad al-Akjaoui, a political analyst aligned with the democratic reform bloc. He was among the organizers of the anti-Syrian demonstrations after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri two years ago that led to international pressure to rid Lebanon of 15 years of Syrian control.
Rami G. Khouri, a columnist for The Daily Star in Beirut, wrote that Sheik Nasrallah “seemed to take on the veneer of a national leader rather than the head of one group in Lebanon’s rich mosaic of political parties.”
“In tone and content, his remarks seemed more like those of a president or a prime minister should be making while addressing the nation after a terrible month of destruction and human suffering,” Mr. Khouri wrote. “His prominence is one of the important political repercussions of this war.”
Defense Minister Elias Murr said Tuesday that the government would not seek to disarm Hezbollah.
“The army is not going to the south to strip the Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not,” he said, showing just how difficult reining in the militia will most likely be in the coming weeks and months. He added that “the resistance,” meaning Hezbollah, had been cooperating with the government and there was no need to confront it.
Sheik Nasrallah sounded much like a governor responding to a disaster when he said, “So far, the initial count available to us on completely demolished houses exceeds 15,000 residential units.
“We cannot of course wait for the government and its heavy vehicles and machinery because they could be a while,” he said. He also cautioned, “No one should raise prices due to a surge in demand.”
Support for Hezbollah was likely to become stronger, Professor Saad-Ghorayeb said, because of the weakness of the central government.
“Hezbollah has two pillars of support,” she said, “the resistance and the social services. What this war has illustrated is that it is best at both.
Referring to Shiek Nasrallah, she said: “He tells the people, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to protect you. And we’re going to reconstruct. This has happened before. We will deliver.’ ”
Hassan M. Fattah contributed reporting from Sreifa, Lebanon, for this article, Sabrina Tavernise from Taibe and Robert F. Worth from Jiyeh.
124 - The Fifth Dentist
Ruvy--
I very much enjoyed reading your plan for peace. (#118) Israel gets the west bank, the gaza strip, Lebanon up to the Litani river, and 1/3 of the sinai. Jordan gets Syria, the sunni part of Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. You know, it just might work. And t probably wouldn't take more than 200 years and 50-100 million dead to implement. Well, it's a small price to pay for peace. Great work.
Shark, what was your idea again about sealing all these motherfuckers in a pit and checking in on them every 30 years to see who was still alive ...
125 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
This came in my inbox, courtesy of Aryeh Zelasko.
A Truckload of Goodwill
Zalmi Unsdorfer
Undeterred by the Heathrow shutdown I turned up for last Thursday’s night flight to Israel. I had no business there and no formal holiday plans. I just felt I needed to be there, perhaps to help out friends and family whose breadwinners had been called up for reserve duty.
On the trek to the El Al gate it was bizarre not see or hear a single cellphone. In this respect at least, the Islamists were succeeding in their assault on Western freedoms and turning the clocks back on progress. Calling home, I couldn’t remember the last time I had used a normal payphone. The Chassidim looked forlorn without their oversized tallis bags and had to conform with the rest of us and our clear plastic bags.
By the following evening I was enjoying a Friday night meal with my cousins in Jerusalem. Ronit and her son-in-law Adi are paramedics in Magen David Adom. They told me of the plight of besieged families in the North and how grateful they were for the few supplies that MDA and others were able to bring. Home Front Command seemed about as unprepared for citizens in shelters as the IDF Command were unprepared for terrorists in bunkers.
One remarkable thing about Israel is the leverage of personal power. The vast majority of private aid organizations and soup kitchens that have helped the nation survive suicide bombings, recession and the Gaza expulsions have been created by very ordinary people with resources measured in love rather than money or influence. This week, in a small but special way, I joined that exclusive club, working with my cousins on the plan we hatched that Friday night.
At 8 am, on the first morning of the ceasefire, we turned up at a wholesale meat plant in Jerusalem’s Romema district to load up 700 kilogrammes of pre-packed chicken and meat meals into a rental van donated by a hi-tech company. Then, on to the supermarket to fill the remaining space with diapers, rice, canned foods, sugar, oil and any other essentials we could think a family might need after a month of siege. And, for good measure, we stocked up with drinks, cookies and snacks for any soldiers we might meet along the way.
Against a steady stream of homebound troops in their armoured vehicles, we wound our way up to Kiryat Shemona by midday, heading for the home of Ofer, an army reservist and local community volunteer. There we unloaded the perishables into ice-cream freezers Ofer had rigged up in his backyard. Within a couple of hours, 18 families had already been allocated their food and necessities.
With the soldiers’ goodies still on board, we pressed northward towards Metulla and " what used to be called " The Good Fence. Apart from the odd Katyusha craters in the roads, damage was surprisingly light. But on closer inspection it could be seen that the rocket payloads were lethal, with signs of ball bearings having torn through even the metal barriers at the roadside. We passed an open field in which some 40 tanks were parked. Their lowered gun barrels seemed to reflect the exhaustion of their crews, tasked with vanquishing in 48 hours an enemy they were held back from engaging for over 3 weeks.
Standing on a Metulla street corner, you can literally see into the front rooms of Lebanese houses on the opposite hillside. It was hard to believe Israelis here had been living tooth by jowl with feral Hizbullah neighbours for so many years. Pressing further we reached the Lebanese border and parked at a 100 metre gap in the fence beyond which an unmanned IDF tank stood in a ploughed-up field. I stepped into Lebanon.
But just one step.
Around the corner we delighted an IDF camp with gifts of drinks, cookies and snacks together with packets of wet towels to clean themselves up. Patting tankists on the back often raised a plume of dust. “From London??” they marvelled. Many just couldn’t believe that sane people would choose Israel as a destination in wartime, let alone bring goodies all the way up to the front line.
Our cargo hold finally emptied, we headed back down towards Kiryat Shmona. But there was to be an unscheduled stop. Adi turned the van into the empty car park of Tel Chai cemetery. In the centre of the car park was a pile of rocks surrounded by memorial candles topped with a blue and white flag. This was the spot where 12 army reservists were horrifically killed by a Katyusha which landed in the middle of their briefing assembly. It was a truly heartrending scene, surrounded by bare and blackened trees scorched by the explosion. Wedged in between the rocks of the makeshift memorial I noticed the charred remnant of a pair of spectacles.
As we wound our way back through Kiryat Shmona and Afula, the sadness of Kfar Giladi soon gave way to the heartening sight of makeshift banners on the roadside welcoming the troops on their homeward journey. An outpouring of goodwill as spontaneous as our own private mission that day.
Whilst many soldiers will be back with their families this Friday night, the vast majority have remained on station, with few illusions about the ceasefire lasting very long.
Over the past four weeks we may have seen the worst of Hizbulla.
But we have also seen the best of the ordinary citizens of Israel.
www.zalmi.net