Beilin's Open Letter to World Union of Meretz

August 29th, 2006
Dear Friends,

The second Lebanon war lasted 33 days and took its toll in the form of some 160 Israeli fatalities -- civilians and soldiers -- and some 1,000 Lebanese civilian casualties [i.e., deaths]. The tranquility and blossoming that have characterized the Galilee for the past six years were suddenly disrupted. Approximately one-quarter of Israel's citizens found themselves in bomb shelters (that is, those who had access to them) and travel from Tel Aviv to Haifa practically became an act of bravery. It was truly surrealistic.

Back in the '90s we led the call for a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon after 18 pointless years in which we lost close to 1,500 people, many of them civilians. When we were asked what Israel would do if, despite its withdrawal from every last centimeter up to the international boundary, it were to come under attack from Lebanon, our unequivocal answer was that, in such a situation, we would support a military response -- and we kept our word.

When the moment came and Hizbullah crossed into sovereign Israeli territory, kidnapped two soldiers and killed eight others who were trying to secure their release, there was almost complete consensus within Israel and among the international community regarding Israel's right to react. We felt that suitable objectives had been defined: the release of the kidnapped soldiers, an end to Hizbullah rocket attacks on Israel, and the deployment of the Lebanese Army in southern Lebanon in order to put an end to the armed, autonomous state Hizbullah was operating within Lebanon.

Had it been a short military campaign that made do with precision aerial attacks on Hizbullah targets, Israel's situation today would have been different. The government, however, chose to wage a progressive [i.e., escalating] war in which more and more means were brought into play, believing at each stage that the next stage would bring Israel the hoped for "victory" and failing to comprehend that in a war against a militia, there can be no victory.

Meretz-Yachad was the only party that abstained in the Knesset votes on no-confidence motions and the government's weekly announcements regarding the war. In the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, we were the only ones who opposed the call-up of the reserves and the ground operation in south Lebanon. We did not participate in the demonstrations against the war organized by the non-Zionist left, and we held our own demonstration when the government decided, after some time, to expand the ground operation up to the Litani River.

The stand we adopted, which defended Israel's right to react but criticized the harm done to innocent civilians and opposed the ground operation, lent credence to the positions we voiced the day after the war and readied the Knesset, the public, and the media to listen to what we have to say. We demand the establishment of a state commission of inquiry to investigate the way the war was conducted and what preceded it, and we call for exploiting the new diplomatic situation to convene a second Madrid conference with the participation of the Syrians, the Lebanese, and the Palestinians in order to try to achieve peace agreements with our neighbors.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for the deployment of the Lebanese Army and a large international force in southern Lebanon, is an important achievement for Israel, but it involved a very heavy -- in fact, too heavy -- price. I am also aware of the consequences for the Jewish communities around the world, as illustrated by the clash in front of the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires between Jewish protestors and an Argentine group which violently disrupted their demonstration.

The outcome of the war has left Israel gripped by a sense of despondency. All the coalition parties suffered a political blow, the right-wing parties emerged stronger, and the political and diplomatic confusion is tangible. Meretz-Yachad was not hurt politically, and it is our belief that a time of uncertainty can provide an opportunity for those who know their way and who have concrete proposals to make their voices heard and to lead.

Israel and Lebanon: An anti-Zionist View

The writer, David McReynolds, was on the staff of the War Resisters League for many years and has been active in the democratic socialist movement, twice running as the Socialist Party candidate for president. This is an occasional column that the author calls “Left Edge.” He writes, in part, of the same APN forum that I attended and wrote about; I had guessed wrong that he was hostile toward this gathering, but he expresses an ideological antipathy toward Zionism and a distaste for Israel. Among his comrades, most (but not quite all) of whom are anti-Israel, he’s considered moderate, because unlike most anti-Zionists, he tries to humanize Israelis; some of his colleagues criticize him for this “sin.”

He exaggerates the extent to which the IDF was “defeated” in Lebanon and clearly his anti-Zionist perspective is at odds with Meretz USA principles. I make some bracketed comments where I could not restrain myself. Maybe I was wrong to include this in our blog, but I found it of interest. – R. Seliger

The tragic events of recent weeks, which saw the killing of three [eight] Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of two of them by Hezbollah, on the border between Israel and Lebanon, and then saw the Israeli attack on Lebanon, with the loss of over a thousand lives, brings a number of things to mind.

First, I've realized ... that there is something unique about Israel which applies to no other country I can think of: it is referred to not as Israel, but as the State of Israel. France is France, Germany is Germany, Italy is Italy, but Israel is the State of Israel. The more I've heard this phrase, the more I realize it indicates a basic insecurity in the Israeli psyche....

There are times when, in the heat of the discussion on listserves, that I find the "stateness" of Israel, and all that goes with it - the armies, the lies, the politicians, so that Israel can be a state like all other states - like a chill knife that separates me from the historic culture of Judaism, from the comfort I've always felt among Jews, so different from the cold silence of WASP culture.... [Better "stateness," than stateless – editor.]

Last week, I went to a forum organized by American for Peace Now, with Jo-Ann Mort and Mark Rosenblum as speakers. It was a good meeting. What a relief to escape, for an evening, from the endless yelling of listserves, to listen, and to think.

Where does Israel go now? First let's begin with something we need to understand, just as we need to understand Sheik Hassan Nasrallah - not to agree with something, but to understand it. Israel calls itself The State of Israel because it is deeply uneasy. It has fought several wars - some of which were launched against it, some of which it started - but it remains without secure borders. I don't mean "insecure" borders, as the US has "permeable" (and demilitarized) borders with Mexico and Canada, but angry, hostile, insecure borders. Only with Jordan and Egypt has Israel been able to establish "secure internationally recognized borders." But the border with Syria and with the Palestinians is in dispute.

The Israelis had thought the border with Lebanon was "secure and internationally recognized." It was for this reason that almost the entire Israeli Left, with the exception of some marginal saints, who are to Israel as the Catholic Worker is to the US, supported the war when it began. We now know that Israel (and Washington, DC) had been waiting to strike. [Which I suppose is why Israel’s conduct of the war was so “flawless” – editor.] The US idea was that if Hezbollah could be neutralized it might be a good trial run for an air attack on Iran. (A recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh documents this.)

But what was in the minds of the Israeli government and of Bush's war cabinet was not in the minds of the Israeli public. They saw the Hezbollah attack across the border as a violation of what they had come to believe was "secure and internationally" recognized, that following the Israeli withdrawal (under the steady pressure of Hezbollah attacks), after the ill-advised Israeli invasion of 1982, the border was secure. The feeling among the majority of Israelis was "what good does withdrawal do - we withdrew from Gaza and we are attacked, we withdrew from Lebanon and we are attacked." Let's leave to one side how unjustly the Israelis make this arguement - my point is that they believe this. For a moment suspend judgement - just try to understand....

But then two things happened for which nothing had prepared the Israeli public (or the hawks in Washington). First, Hezbollah beat the pants off the invading Israeli army, one of the best trained armies in the world. Instead of sweeping forward like a knife through warm butter to the Litani river, Israeli tanks were blown up, troops killed, and the invasion ground to a virtual halt. For the first time in any of the wars Israel had waged, it was beaten on the ground by what it had assumed was a "mere guerrilla force".

Second, the Israeli military launched a most extraordinary series of air strikes across Lebanon, aiming at civilian targets in violation of the laws of war, destroying bridges, blockading harbors, taking out apartment complexes, and in the process killing a thousand civilians. One must assume the Israeli government had thought such massive strikes would break the back of Lebanon, causing it to turn on Hezbollah. (I can't think of any other reason for air strikes which so precisely struck non-military targets). Every day, on American TV news, where we are used to seeing pro-Israeli material, we were seeing instead the horrific devastation of an entire people. And we saw Hezbollah supported by the population, which, far from rejecting it, rallied to it. The world cried out for an immediate cease fire but Tony Blair, that contemptible British politician, and George Bush, who is almost too dense to be worthy of contempt, urged a wait, so that Israel could finish its job (though they didn't say that in so many words).

Except that Israel, the designated hitter in the game, blew it. They couldn't finish the job. And the world had had enough of seeing children's bodies pulled from the rubble in Beirut. The ceasefire marked a sharp Israeli military defeat. What is most remarkable is what I think has been largely missed - Israel (and the US) suddenly turned to the United Nations, so recently the object of their contempt (and in the case of Israel, the object of a deliberate and lethal attack early in the war), and called for it to come in. The Europeans, who had been locked out of the Middle East, have now been brought in. The Israelis are hoping that, having failed on their own to secure their border with Lebanon, the United Nations can do it for them.

It is not likely that the UN can disarm Hezbollah, or will even try. And it is not likely that the flow of arms from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah can be blocked - anymore than the flow of US arms to Israel can be blocked. But for the time being the border may be secured. Not by Israeli military power, but by an international force of the United Nations.

What next? The view of Jo-Ann Mort at the forum I attended was that all three of the leading figures in the Israeli government will be forced to resign. There had been hopes, particularly among left-Zionists, for the role Amir Peretz might play but in the end, Peretz, of the Labor Party, was trapped by his entering this government, and he will go down with it. Olmert is discredited, with Israeli troops calling for his resignation. And General Halutz who sold his stock? He is history. The problem is what waits in the wings. One of the figure most likely to emerge is Netanyahu, an Israeli politician who gives opportunism a bad name, and makes Tony Blair look like a statesman.

But most interesting, out of that evening, came the suggestion by Mark Rosenblum that all roads now lead to Syria. Syria had put forward some suggestions in 1999 about getting back the Golan Heights in return for a secure border. Israel dismissed those suggestions out of hand, as it dismissed the earlier Arab League proposals of 2002 for recognition of Israel within its 1967 borders in return for a genuine Palestinian state. But it seems that the US has opened some very unofficial doors to Syria, and that Israel has also opened a quiet probe. Would Assad settle?

The chance of stopping the flow of arms to Hezbollah may well depend on Syria's role. And Syria might play that role in exchange for the return of the Golan Heights. If such a settlement occurs, it would mean a secure, internationally recognized border for Israel.

What does seem certain (or relatively certain) is that Israel now realizes it cannot achieve "peace and security" with Lebanon or Syria by military means. The fallback on the UN is one step toward securing the border with Lebanon. A deal with Syria would be a second step. Both would require diplomacy, not a military solution. US plans to launch air strikes on Iran seem to be on hold - in large part because Hezbollah showed how ineffective such air strikes are.

However hostile one may be to the Israeli State, and I'm fed up with it and want the US to end all economic and military aid to Israel, it is necessary to understand both Hezbollah and Israel. The hatred Hezbollah feels toward Israel is rooted in its long and bloody struggle to drive Israel out. That hatred is genuine and deep.

So too the statements from Iran reflect in the Israeli minds a fear that not only Hezbollah but also Iran holds an "annihilatory" view of Israel. We know that some of the statements of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme leader, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are deeply troubling (even though in fairness, some of Ahmadinejad's statements have been carelessly or deliberately mistranslated) and if I lived in Israel I would certainly find them troubling. What is necessary, both for us, and for at least some people in Israel and in Iran, is to see things in more than one dimension. We must try to understand better the basis for some of the Iranian statements, even as we reject the fundamental Islamic religious positions from which they flow. We must try to understand the Israeli fears, even if they flow from equally flawed positions.

One final possibility, raised in several quarters, is for a new international conference - in Spain, it Italy, in Finland - which would bring together all the parties which might be willing at least to speak to each other. This is an idea that has been raised by Yossi Beilin, chairman of Meretz. An international conference, in Beilin's view, that brought together Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian authority might open the door. The problem, of course, is that Bush has sided so openly with the Israeli hawks that the Arab world has good reason to distrust him. [This is precisely why Beilin suggests an international conference – editor.] But the irony is that Nasrallah has now said he would not have ordered the capture of the Israeli soldiers if he had known the Israeli intention to launch the devastating attack on Lebanon, and Israel knows that it lost the war. Out of this defeat one may hope to find the seeds of peace. – David McReynolds

Seliger: My statement on Lebanon

I’ve been a little disappointed with Meretz USA statements reacting to this summer’s Lebanon war. (Our statement of August 4 can be accessed here.) In particular, I thought them deficient on the question of damage and casualties inflicted upon Lebanon’s non-combatant population and its civil infrastructure.

In executive committee discussions on our statement, I was impressed at the protectiveness and compassion evinced toward Israel’s difficult situation at this time. I would not have felt comfortable with a typical left-wing one-sided denunciation of Israel, exonerating Hezbollah’s acts of aggression and ignoring Lebanon’s failure to act as a sovereign state controlling its borders. Yet I felt that a bolder statement, questioning some of Israel’s behavior, was in order. This is basically what I submitted for consideration on July 27. I think it’s still applicable and one that in principle most activists in Meretz USA would agree with, but please understand that it’s my statement and not that of Meretz USA. – Ralph Seliger

We stand with Israel in its struggle to secure the northern border against aggression. At the same time, we are troubled with the catastrophic damage to civil infrastructure and the widespread suffering inflicted upon Lebanese civilians, which strengthen Hezbollah politically and divert world attention from Israel's legitimate security objectives. And we affirm that only an internationally-supported diplomatic agreement will effectively end this conflict.


We believe that Israel’s stated aims – the return of the two kidnapped IDF soldiers, safe and sound, and the removal of Hezbollah’s military threat – are entirely justified. In May 2000, Israel fully withdrew from Lebanese territory, fulfilling its obligation under United Nations Security Council resolution 425.

Since that time, however, Hezbollah has contravened UN resolutions, undermined the Lebanese government’s exercise of authority along its border with Israel, and instigated ongoing regional tension. Although Hezbollah claims to be seeking the "liberation" of the Shebaa Farms area for Lebanon, the UN has determined it to be Syrian territory. Hezbollah is clearly using this as an excuse to justify retaining its heavily-armed militia and its huge arsenal of rockets and missiles to continue to threaten Israel.

Israel has no reason to expect less than what the UN Security Council has already demanded in Resolution 1559: the “disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese militias.” Israel’s internationally-recognized border with Lebanon should no longer be plagued by periodic threats and spasms of violence.

That being said, from a moral standpoint, not every act of war is acceptable, no matter how legitimate the aim. Although we recognize that Israel does not wish to unnecessarily put its soldiers at risk in a ground war, its aerial bombardment of Lebanon is leaving far too much civilian death and destruction in its wake.

We recognize Israel’s right to take action in self-defense and in response to provocation, but an injudicious use of force is self-defeating, as it undermines the moral high-ground that Israel must maintain if it is to achieve its diplomatic ends. Israel should also not make the mistake of believing that it can single-handedly wipe out Hezbollah’s fighting force. Similarly, Israel must not entertain the idea that collectively punishing the Lebanese people will cause it to turn against Hezbollah. If anything, the opposite is the case. Indeed, as with the Palestinian question, the only true solution will be a political one.

Although the Israeli public’s desire to hit back hard is understandable, we remain convinced that Israel will never be able to achieve enduring security by force alone. Consequently, we reaffirm our support for a comprehensive diplomatic arrangement, under which the an international force will assist the struggling Lebanese government to remove the Hezbollah from the border zone and assert its authority over all Lebanese territory. Such an arrangement would also guarantee the return of the kidnapped soldiers, a general cease-fire, the release of prisoners, and the diplomatic resolution of the Shebaa Farms dispute.

Lurie: Iran Will Get Lebanon and the Bomb

First, a preface from NY Times report, “Iran Exhibits Anti-Jewish Art” (Aug. 25):

Mr. Shojaei [curator of Tehran exhibit lampooning the Holocaust] said none of the images were intended as anti-Jewish, only anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli — and of course, anti-American and anti-British. As evidence, he said Iranians lived peacefully with this country’s Jews.

But Morris Motamed, the one Jewish member of Iran’s Parliament, said he had not gone to the show, because “it was in line with anti-Semitism and aimed at insulting Jews.”

He added, “I felt if I went, I would get insulted and get hurt.”

It’s interesting to note that Iran has one Jewish member of its parliament and that he’d feel secure enough to make this statement to the American press. This reveals a complex truth about Iran: it is not a true democracy, it provides official license to anti-Semitism and terrorist violence, but is not totalitarian. In the meantime, our khaver, J. Zel Lurie, sums things up with alarm in his latest column, excerpted below, in the South Florida Jewish Journal:

The first skirmish in Shiite Iran's declared war to eliminate Israel and take over the Middle East has ended in a tenuous cease-fire.

Iran is the only Shiite dominated country in the world. There are strong Shiite minorities in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. In Iraq, the Shiites are a 60 percent majority with ties to neighboring Iran.

Iran has found Lebanon to be ripe for take over. It invests heavily in the Shiite minority: training Hezbollah young men in guerilla warfare, paying Syria to transport tens of thousands of powerful Russian-made anti-tank missiles and Katyusha rockets....

On the Israeli side, 117 soldiers were killed and about a thousand suffered wounds; 3,970 rockets fell in Israel, killing 43 civilians and doing considerable property damage. The property damage will be repaired quickly and by 2007 it will be a sad memory.

In Lebanon, however, the accurate Israeli bombs were dropped on bridges, utilities and other infrastructure, It will take years and billions of dollars to fully repair.... Hezbollah is putting up temporary bridges and handing out $10,000 to those who have lost their homes. The take over will be gradual, but Lebanon is destined to be an Iranian satellite, threatening Israel to the south and Southeastern Europe to the West.

As for the atom bomb, Iran has refused the Security Council's injunction to stop making enriched uranium.... How can they be stopped?

President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert can take a huge... step in the right direction by opening talks with Syria. Such a move won't be easy for President Bush who classifies Syria with Iran and North Korea as rogue nations.

Rogue nation or not, Syria is a secular Moslem nation which is not Shiite. For years it has been willing to make peace with Israel if the Golan Heights were returned....

Education Minister Yuli Tamir, a Labor stalwart with a Peace Now background, advises Olmert to call Fouad Siniora, the prime minister of Lebanon, and invite him to a summit meeting. She writes: “We must take advantage of the earthquake to rescue Lebanon from the jaws of Iran and try to get Syria out of there as well."

While Israeli ministers and journalists are tossing ideas back and forth Hezbollah is acting with almost limitless Iranian funds. Iran is well on its way to taking over Lebanon and becoming a nuclear power.

APN leaders reflect on war & peace

On August 21, a liberal pro-Israel audience at the Manhattan JCC eagerly listened to Mark Rosenblum – a professor of history at Queens College/CUNY and a founder of Americans for Peace – along with Jo-Ann Mort, a journalist who is also high in the councils of APN, recently returned from a month in Israel. One exception in the audience was David McReynolds, the retired head of the War Resister’s League and a former presidential candidate of a tiny group that claims the noble lineage of the Socialist Party USA.

McReynolds is a well-meaning guy who was pro-Zionist in his youth but came decades later to view Israel as a “mistake” – but stops short of advocating its destruction. (I’ve had the “pleasure” of debating with him and some of his comrades recently. These comrades are venomously anti-Israel; one, Seth Farber, the author of an anti-Zionist book, regards the late Israeli hater of Judaism and Zionism, Israel Shahak, as his “mentor,” and is also an admirer of Rabbi Elmer Berger, founder of the anti-Zionist American Council on Judaism.) McReynolds left early; he had to be uncomfortable with Mark Rosenblum's mention of “demography” and the need for Israel to remain a Jewish state as justifications for Israel to withdraw from West Bank territory.

I was gratified to find that both Rosenblum and Mort share my conviction that engaging Syria in a peace process to attempt to peel it away from the Hezbollah-Iran axis is Israel’s best option. Rosenblum cited interior minister Avi Dichter’s statement of that day that peace with Syria is possible and that Israel can leave the Golan Heights as the price of that peace. Rosenblum also emphasized that it is an important precedent, and a hopeful sign of maturity, that Israel has (for a change) demanded a “robust” international force to intervene to help establish security along its border with Lebanon. (That France has tried to undermine the very force it has advocated, is another matter.)

Jo-Ann Mort found in her travels in the West Bank that Palestinians close to Abbas are eager to re-engage Israel in peace negotiations. And Rosenblum sagely suggests that Israel needs to test out the hypothesis that the split between Hamas prime minister Haniyah in Gaza and Meshal in Damascus is real, with Haniyah now pragmatically favoring a two-state solution.

The only thing I find unsettling about Prof. Rosenblum is that he seems to be an incurable optimist – or maybe he’s just appearing optimistic to maintain his mental health. But both he and Mort feel that the tenures of defense minister Peretz and IDF chief of staff Halutz are unlikely to be long. They may have differed in how they viewed Olmert’s fortunes, but I don’t recall exactly. At least one saw Olmert as dead meat politically, but it’s hard to envision who would pick up the pieces in his absence.

(Polls suddenly show Netanyahu's Likud and Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party as finishing first and second if an election were held immediately, but neither with more than 20 seats. Amusingly, when Rosenblum mentioned Netanyahu and then Lieberman as contenders for power, the crowd laughed – thinking that he had meant US Senator Joseph Lieberman.)

Curiously, Rosenblum has a verbal style that’s very reminiscent of NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman – with the latter’s habit of repeating words and phrases as ironic counterpoints to illustrate his thinking. I mean no disrespect for either personage, but the real irony here is that Rosenblum was particularly critical of Friedman in the fall of 2000 and after, when Friedman placed the total blame for the breakdown of the peace process on Arafat.

Rosenblum found plenty to implicate ex-Prime Minister Barak in that failure, and he was correct in this; but I felt at the time that Rosenblum was missing the far more central fact that – although Barak was overly confrontational and undiplomatic in his approach at Camp David and after – it was Arafat who fatally wounded the peace process by openly inciting violence and attempting to orchestrate that violence as a means of advancing his negotiating posture. Arafat’s strategy totally backfired, undermining Barak politically and electing Sharon overwhelmingly instead – and the memory of Arafat’s perfidy inhibits substantive negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to this day. – R. Seliger

Lebanon: Right vs. Wrong, Not Right vs. Left

The following is an abridged version of a submission by Ami Isseroff, editor/director of “Mideast Web – Middle East News and Commentary” and a founder of “Zio-Nation – Progressive Zionism and Israel Web Log.” As with all postings, this does not necessarily reflect the views of Meretz USA.

The failure of the Lebanon war must not be regarded as an ideological issue, nor is the failure confined to the problem of beating Hezbollah. Most failures are orphans, but this failure has many proud fathers from all parts of the political spectrum, who cannot disavow their paternity. Ehud Barak left Lebanon without proper international guarantees. Bibi Netanyahu prepared penny-pinching budgets that scrimped on defense. Now he is offered, ironically, as a "savior." Amir Peretz made vainglorious boasts with no backing. We “won't forget the name of Amir Peretz,” [as he boasted Nasrallah wouldn’t] but we won't forget Bibi Netanyahu either.

The Likud ignored the threat of the Hezbollah rockets for six years, and the unity government made a corrupt and shameful deal with Nasrallah in 2004, the last time the Hezbollah kidnapped soldiers. This signaled to them that their method worked and could be repeated. Abraham “Bogey” Ya'alon, the former chief of staff, must be held responsible in part for the state of preparedness of IDF units and the state of IDF logistics. These problems did not develop over night, yet he is offered as another "savior."

The difference between the Israeli right and the left was never about defense preparedness or support for the army. Every Zionist understands that without the IDF, Israel would not exist. In this failure, the problem is not "right versus left" but "stupid versus smart" and "good judgement versus bad judgement."

Hassan Nasrallah is not a great resistance hero. He is a medieval religious fanatic who heads a reactionary genocidal organization that is a threat to both Israel and Lebanon. If this war had succeeded in ridding the Middle East of Nasrallah, then nobody would say that Israel places too much reliance on force. There would be celebrations in Tel Aviv, in Beirut and, perhaps more discretely, in the government buildings in Riyadh, Cairo and Amman. That would have been true even if the price in lives had been much higher. The Six Day War cost many more lives than this abortive unnamed Lebanese war. The problem was not that we went to war, but that at the end of a month of fighting, we gained nothing. This was exacerbated by the juvenile boasting of Peretz, Olmert and various self-important military honchos.

Very likely the war could have been won, if the IDF did what it has always done. Instead, every rule in every military doctrine book went out the window from day one, and especially all the IDF rules. Every rule in the diplomatic book was thrown out too. The first Lebanon war was run badly and was unnecessary, but next to this war, it looked like it was run by geniuses.

The sensible and obvious thing to do in such a situation, when you have been attacked but there is no immediate threat, is to issue an ultimatum and explain your terms. Use the time to gather world sympathy and to very visibly mobilize the reserves. The threat alone might have produced results, especially before massive bombings hardened hearts.

Then, if war became necessary, carry the war to the enemy immediately and make sure the goals can be achieved in a brief time. Don't count on the US to prevent an early cease-fire. Israeli troops should have entered Lebanon with a massive armor and artillery push and raced to the Litani, and then used the captured territory as a lever for bargaining.

The safe return of the soldiers and disarmament of the Hezbollah should have been unbreakable conditions for a cease-fire. If we could not make these conditions and hold to them, we should not have gone to war. For what was "achieved" in this war, it was not worth sacrificing a hair on the head of a goat, let along 150 Israelis and about a thousand Lebanese.

Believe it or not, that is not the really bad news. The real threat is not Nasrallah, a minor gangster after all. The big problem is that Nasrallah's puppet-master in Teheran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is preparing atomic weapons, and there is every indication that he will have them in a few years, notwithstanding American protests and French hand-wringing to the contrary. Countries that are not willing to send a few hundred soldiers each to disarm some gangsters in Lebanon, won't stop a country of 80 million from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The misjudgements of this Israeli government show that the government and the military brass are dangerously incompetent. That reserves were not trained, and went to war without proper supplies, shows that the previous government and military brass were also incompetent.

These failings must be corrected quickly. It is obvious to me that they cannot be corrected by the people in charge, who showed themselves totally incompetent in every field. Asking for their removal from office is not a political act and should not be based on political motives, nor is it a punishment. Nobody has the "right" to be prime minister or defense minister of the State of Israel, nor is it a "reward" to be given out as political patronage. – Ami Isseroff

Thoughts on how to help Lebanon & Israel rebuild

Arieh Lebowitz here. As the fighting between Hezbullah and Israel began a few weeks back, mainstream Jewish groups, from a number of the alphabet soup of Jewish organizations to local Jewish community federations, began special campaigns to raise funds for Israel, which was being hit in the north by Hezbullah rockets being shot somewhat indiscriminately from Lebanon. A few weeks back, I attended a meeting of liberal / progressive American Jews where someone said that it would be a good thing if American Jews assisted in the rehabilitation of some of the damage wrought by Israel in Lebanon as part of its attempt to weaken Hezbullah forces in that country. The idea was discussed, but not acted upon at that time.

Matching Grant of a sort for Lebanon and Israel
An aquaintance who operates another weblog, The Head Heeb, thinking it through, decided to act on his own. On August 16th, I read this item:

It's time, I think, to put my money where my mouth is.
The next task in the Middle East is to rebuild what has been destroyed and to heal what can't be rebuilt: to restore the houses and the roads, to comfort and provide for the bereaved families. Rebuilding northern Israel is an urgent priority, reconstructing southern Lebanon much more so. Lebanon sustained more damage than Israel - environmental as well as structural - and it has fewer resources to rebuild. Lebanon, has also been under a blockade for the past month and is running short on humanitarian supplies in addition to its longer-term needs.
Some, Shimon Peres included, have proposed a massive international effort to rebuild Lebanon - a Marshall Plan of sorts. It's important, for both political and moral reasons, that this happen and that Israel take part in it. Such a program would be both a way to ensure that the south is rebuilt by someone other than Hizbullah, and a chance to make good on the promise that Israel is not at war with the Lebanese people. But aid programs, especially major ones, always take time to plan and implement, and there's a great deal that can't wait for the international community to get its act together.
For this reason, I will match up to US $1250 in reader donations for reconstruction of southern Lebanon and up to US $750 to rebuild northern Israel. I strongly encourage Israeli and Jewish readers to donate to Lebanese charities and vice versa, but that isn't mandatory; I will match all donations to non-extremist-controlled charities up to the stated sum. For those who may not be sure where to contribute, this portal, which links to charities helping both countries, may provide a starting point.
I also make another pledge: five days. I've done disaster relief before, when my reserve unit was called up for the 1998 ice storm, and I'm willing to do it again. If someone can help out with the immigration formalities and tell me what to do in a language I understand, I'll go spend five days on the ground helping to dig out. This isn't something I can do right away - it will probably be early next year before I can put aside my other commitments and plans - but I'm unfortunately certain that there will still be work to do by then. In the meantime, I've made the promise here on the record.

Let me add that the comments posted in response to this statement are worth reading, to give a sense of what people are thinking.

August 28: Concert for Northern Israel and Lebanon
Then I learned that - from all sources an article in Arutz Sheva -- that "A group of young people from Jerusalem and the Judean Hills have organized a concert to provide aid to residents of both northern Israel and southern Lebanon. They hope to beat Hizbullah to it."

Jewish Students Raise Funds to Aid Israelis and Lebanese
by Ezra Halevi / August 20, 2006 - 26 Av, 5766
A group of young people from Jerusalem and the Judean Hills have organized a concert to provide aid to residents of both northern Israel and southern Lebanon. They hope to beat Hizbullah to it.
Shimshon Siegel, a rabbinic student at the Bat Ayin Yeshiva in Gush Etzion; Amy Kaplan, a student at Simchat Shlomo, a yeshiva in Jerusalem’s Nachlaot neighborhood adhering to the tradition of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach; and Dan Sieradski, an increasingly observant left-wing anarchist who also studies at Simchat Shlomo and directs the non-profit Jewish organization Matzat, have embarked on an effort to raise money to support war victims on both sides of the border. The three emphasize the need to “have compassion for all civilians who have suffered, as well as the need to circumvent Hizbullah's leadership in reconstruction efforts.”
“Even though we each have different opinions on the war and the Middle East, we are joined together in the conviction that concern for human beings should transcend politics,” said Dan Sieradski, known for his left-wing politics and blogs.
Sieradski, though driven by concern for the suffering of those on both sides of the border, believes providing relief to Lebanese civilians is critical. “With Hizbullah's dominance of relief efforts in Lebanon, we will not stand idly by while the Lebanese become further indebted to Hizbullah,” Sieradski said.
The concert, called Acharei HaMilchama (After the War), will feature both Jewish and Arab musicians, religious and secular, and will take place Monday, August 28th at Jerusalem’s Yellow Submarine (13 HaRechavim street). The concert will begin at 8 PM and last until 1 AM, featuring Eden Mi’Kedem, Sagol 59, Samech “SAZ” Zacuth and others.
Funds raised by the concert will be split between Lebanese and Israeli aid efforts. Table-to-Table’s Northern Relief Campaign is providing displaced Israeli families with needed supplies such as food, clothes, diapers, toys, and other essential goods. They are working with the Welfare Department to determine the most urgent needs of communities in the north, including rebuilding wrecked homes, volunteer help for farmers, restoring businesses, and sending school supplies for the upcoming academic year.

For more information about the concert, email director@matzat.org.il

And most recently, I learned of a thoughtful article by a third aquaintance [Dan Sieradski being the second one, one of the folks involved in organizing the concert, mentioned above] that appeared on Ynet News: A new solidarity needed amid ceasefire

Before the bombs begin to fly again, American Jews, Arabs and Muslims, should use the current ceasefire to consider how our communities can provide a more constructive response to the latest, and future, Middle East crisis [sic].
Soon after the last fighting began organizations representing each community quickly mobilized to stand in solidarity and support of Israeli or Lebanese victims, and the actions of their respective governments.
It is, of course, only natural for each community to be worried first and foremost about friends and relatives caught in the line of fire, and the many humanitarian relief efforts launched in the war’s wake will surely help innocent victims on each side of this conflict begin to rebuild their lives.
At the same time, with sectarian differences tearing countries apart the all too tribal nature of these solidarity campaigns — and the often sweeping, empty rhetoric that accompanies them — comes at the expense of recognizing our neighbor’s pain, and falls far short of what we could offer our troubled brethren philanthropically, symbolically and politically if we sought common ground and responded together.... Read it all here.

Again, the comments posted in reponse to this opinion piece are worth reading, to give a sense of what at least some people are thinking.

Uri Avnery on the '155th Victim'

R. Seliger comments: Our inclusion of this or any piece on our weblog does not imply the endorsement of Meretz USA or my personal agreement. But I see Uri Avnery, the hoary head of the Gush Shalom radical peace movement (closer to Hadash – the former Communist party – than to Meretz, but likewise favoring a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians) as on to something with this article (Aug. 19) on the Lebanon crisis. He begins by quoting a Lebanese army commander suggesting that its national army is allied with Hezbollah, rather than marching into the south to confront or contain it. Pro-Hezbollah rhetoric is very much in vogue in Lebanon today, but time will tell how truthful the officer was. Avnery goes on to question the role of the to-be-reinforced UN force (UNIFIL) and to make further remarks as excerpted below:

.... As the days pass, it becomes increasingly clear that this [UN] force will be, at best, a mishmash of small national units, without a clear mandate and "robust" capabilities.... So what remains of all the "achievements" of this war?....

AFTER EVERY failed war, the cry for an official investigation goes up in Israel. Now there is a "trauma", much bitterness, a feeling of defeat and of a missed opportunity. Hence the demand for a strong commission of inquiry that will cut off the heads of those responsible.... If indeed such a commission is set up, what will it investigate?

The politicians and generals will try to restrict the inquiry to the technical aspects of the conduct of the war:
- Why was the army not prepared for a war against guerillas?
- Why were the land forces not sent into the field in the two first weeks?
- Did the military command believe that the war could be won by the air force alone?

- What was the quality of the intelligence?
- Why was nothing done to protect the rear, when the rocket threat was known?
- Why were the poor in the North left to their fate, after the well-to-do had left the area?
- Why were the reserve units not ready for the war?
- Why were the emergency arsenals empty?
- Why did the supply system not function?
- Why did the Chief-of-Staff practically depose the Chief of the Northern Command in the middle of the war?
- Why was it decided at the last moment to start a campaign that cost the lives of 33 Israeli soldiers?

The government will probably attempt to widen the investigation and to put part of the blame on its predecessors:
- Why did the Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon governments just look on when Hezbollah was growing?
- Why was nothing done as Hezbollah built up its huge stockpile of rockets?

All these are serious questions, and it is certainly necessary to clear them up. But it is more important to investigate the roots of the war:
- What made the trio Olmert-Peretz-Halutz decide to start a war only a few hours after the capture of the two soldiers?
- Was it agreed with the Americans in advance to go to war the moment a credible pretext presented itself?
- Did the Americans push Israel into the war, and, later on, demand that it go on and on as far as possible?
- Was it Condoleezza Rice who decided in fact when to start and when to stop?
- Did the US want to get us entangled with Syria?
- Did the US use us for its campaign against Iran?....

THIS WAR has no name. Even after 33 days of fighting and six days of cease-fire, no natural name has been found. The media use a chronological name: Lebanon War II.

This way, the war in Lebanon is separated from the war in the Gaza Strip, which has been conducted simultaneously, and which is going on unabated after the cease-fire in the North. Do these two wars have a common denominator?.... The answer is certainly, yes. And the proper name is the War for the Settlements.

The war against the Palestinian people is being waged in order to keep the "settlement blocs" and annex large parts of the West Bank. The war in the north was waged, in fact, to keep the settlements on the Golan Heights.

Hezbollah grew up with the support of Syria, which controlled Lebanon at the time. Hafez al-Assad saw the return of the Golan to Syria as the aim of his life - after all, it was he who lost them in the June 1967 war, and who did not succeed in getting them back in the October 1973 war. He did not want to risk another war on the Israel-Syria border, which is so close to Damascus. Therefore, he patronized Hezbollah, so as to convince Israel that it would have no quiet as long as it refused to give the Golan back. Assad jr. is continuing with his fathers legacy.

Without the cooperation of Syria, Iran has no direct way of supplying Hezbollah with arms.

The solution is on hand: we have to remove the settlers from there, whatever the cost in wines and mineral water, and give the Golan back to its rightful owners. Ehud Barak almost did so, but, as is his wont, lost his nerve at the last moment.

It has to be said aloud: every one of the 154 Israeli dead of Lebanon War II (until the cease-fire) died for the settlers on the Golan Heights.

THE 155TH Israeli victim of this war is the "Covergence Plan" – the plan for a unilateral withdrawal from parts of the West Bank.

Ehud Olmert was elected four months ago (hard to believe! only four months!) on the platform of Convergence, much as Amir Peretz was elected on the platform of reducing the army and carrying out far-reaching social reforms.

In the course of the war, Olmert still announced that he would implement the "Convergence." But the day before yesterday he conceded that we could forget about it.

The Convergence was to remove 60 thousand settlers from where they are, but to leave the almost 400 thousand settlers in the West Bank (including the Jerusalem area). Now this plan has also been buried.

What remains? No peace, no negotiations, no solution at all for the historic conflict. Just a complete deadlock for years, at least until we get rid of the duo Olmert & Peretz....

Superpower or small country? By R. Seliger

An ongoing tragedy of Israel is that so small a country (with no more than seven million citizens) must remain a major military power in order to survive. It pays a high price to do so, with most Israeli men spending three years of their youth as regular conscripts and then one month of each year until the age of 50 in active reserve units and subject to unlimited emergency call-up.

Anti-Israel critics like to minimize Israel’s urgent security needs by referring to it, rather abstractly and without real analysis, as the fourth greatest military power in the world. I’m guessing that the three countries thought of as more powerful are the United States, China and Russia. Does this mean that Britain, France and Germany (to name but the most obvious) are less powerful than Israel? Each have eight to ten times the population, comparable technological knowhow, greater economic capacity, as large or larger standing armed forces and with great military traditions that go back centuries.

And what about the two Koreas – with the South possessing about 700,000 and the North one million or more men, armed to the teeth? Or what of India, a vast country, also with about a million men under arms, veterans of as many wars and struggles against guerrillas/terrorists as Israel? Even Taiwan, the Nationalist Republic of China, has more than twice Israel’s population, is technologically advanced and has standing and well-equipped armed forces that are larger than Israel’s. And what of Japan? Getting closer to Israel’s neighborhood, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran each have larger military establishments than Israel.

Both Israel and its critics need to see Israel for what it is – a small country, forced into an unnatural situation of being the region’s most potent military power. The Jewish people have tried it the other way, with the defacto passivism of living as a defenseless minority. The Israeli habit of perhaps over-relying upon force is a reaction to those long centuries of oppression and humiliation.

Yet at bottom, Israel has limited military capacities. It must attempt innovative means – including diplomacy and international assistance – to augment its odds for security. This may involve, at times, swallowing instances of hurt pride, or even injustice – a lesson the Arab world would also do well to learn – in the interest of avoiding mutual escalations of violence.

It should not surprise us that a guerrilla enemy, fighting on its own soil and glorifying the “martyrdom” of its men, along with the civilians among whom they are embedded, has placed Israel in a strategic quagmire in Lebanon, for a second time. The Romans confronted an equally determined foe in the Jewish people of 2,000 years ago, who were equipped with some of the same advantages. But Rome had the will and capacity of the world’s greatest empire – immune from the pressures of a well-informed public and democratic opposition, and facing no simultaneous strategic threat elsewhere – to systematically crush the heroic Judean rebellions in the first and second centuries. As a small country, modern Israel almost certainly lacks the capability to do something similar to the Hezbollah.

It was the path of Yohanon Ben-Zakai, convincing the Romans to allow him to set up his yeshiva, that saved the Jewish people at that time. I’m not arguing pacifism versus self-defense, but as Kenny Rogers’ “Gambler” advises: “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run.....”

Still, the Western world seems to have gone too far in a pacifist direction. The enhanced UN international force is beginning to look stillborn – with France effectively wimping out and both Lebanon and the UN still uncommitted to a real effort to curtail Hezbollah as an armed threat.

R. Rosenberg: Strategic debris and political scandal

The following is excerpted from Robert Rosenberg’s “Today's Situation" column, "Just a lull in the fighting," Friday, August 18, 2006, posted from Tel Aviv at http://www.ariga.com.

There is almost nobody... who objects to the view that the last month of fighting against Hezbollah was interrupted and that sooner or later, whether next month or next year, another round will erupt.... [A]nd very few are suggesting any steps to take to prevent that war from breaking out by trying diplomacy with the Lebanese leadership or even engaging the Syrians.

The entire focus is on how the Lebanese Army, deploying some 15,000 troops in south Lebanon for the first time since the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the ‘new UNIFIL' – which suddenly is going to have only 200 new French troops, and not the 2,000 that had been touted by a variety of sources, including the French, for the past month – will not dare confront Hezbollah; how Hezbollah will keep its arms and probably acquire more through Syria; and how Hezbollah is preparing for the next round.

.... The latest political map shows Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert against IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, Halutz against everyone and Peretz and Olmert either standing together or hanging together. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who wanted a cease-fire the third day of the fighting is against Olmert, who was against her for wanting the cease-fire; and Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz... [who] was chief of staff and then defense minister and though he was against the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, did nothing during the last six years to stop the Hezbollah buildup....

One national level politician – Peretz – this week proposed trying to engage Syria in some form of way to pry it out of the grip of its Iranian masters. But he was immediately put down -- including by party colleagues -- with critics saying his call was just more proof of his incompetence as defense minister. True, former ambassador to Washington, Itamar Rabinovich, and former Military Intelligence chief Uri Saguy, who under Ehud Barak conducted the ultimately failed negotiations with Bashar Assad's father, Hafez, both say that Israel should be trying secret -- or not so secret -- diplomacy with the Syrians....

Olmert has meanwhile finally admitted that his unilateral convergence/realignment plan for the West Bank has been shelved.... nobody nowadays in Israel is buying the idea of another unilateral withdrawal.

Although the media keeps saying the public has turned sharply Rightward, polls so far do not show any dramatic rise for the parties to the Right of the Likud, like Yisrael Beitenu or the National Union-National Religious Party.... The occupation remains unpopular, but Palestinian issues are barely mentioned in the press, and when mentioned, it is mostly to emphasize the failures of PA President Mahmoud Abbas – like today, after Abbas announced a new tahadiye [lull or truce] had been reached among all the Palestinian factions, and within hours, Islamic Jihad and Hamas' military wing denied it. Ismail Haniye and his Hamas government remain beyond the pale – but there is a consistent thump of reports about negotiations underway for the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, in exchange for a few hundred Palestinian prisoners. But those reports are almost exclusively in the Arab press, and when noted by the Israelis, official reactions here are to deny it. After all, both the military operations in Gaza that began with Shalit's kidnapping and which so far have killed more than 200 people, and the Lebanon war, which began with the capture of soldiers Goldwasser and Regev, were touted by Israel's establishment as a way to get back the soldiers without any preconditions, and without any negotiations.

And late this afternoon, Justice Minister Haim Ramon announced he would resign on Sunday to face charges of sexual harassment in a criminal proceeding. Ramon's latest defense (starting from it never happened) is that a '2-3 second' kiss cannot be considered sexual harassment. President Moshe Katsav is also deep in a sexual scandal, with at least one woman detailing her complaint against Katsav to the police.... And other women are being questioned....

And there is still the state comptroller's investigation into the purchase of the Olmert family home, bought for a reported half million dollars under the market value from a contractor Olmert is alleged to have helped out when he was the mayor of Jerusalem.

Baskin: Strategic debris and political scandal

The following is most of Gershon Baskin’s opinion piece – “The war is over, the in-fighting is beginning” – published in the Jerusalem Times, August 20, 2006. The Jerusalem Times is published by Baskin’s partner, Hanna Siniora; both are co-CEOs of IPCRI – the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, P.O. Box 9321, Jerusalem 91092 Tel: 972-2-676-9460 Fax: 972-2-676-8011 http://www.ipcri.org

With the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, the cease fire came into effect and the Israeli troops began heading home. The last 30 hours of the war that the government implemented while the Security Council was already in session brought about no military achievement and only led to more than 30 additional, unnecessary casualties. It has been reported that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was against launching the expanded ground operation up to the Litani, yet he gave in to the pressure of the military and of Minister of Defense Amir Peretz.. Olmert, as Prime Minister, as he himself stated in his last Knesset address, bears full responsibility for the decisions made by the government. This was one of the most foolish and costly decisions taken by his government.

The investigation committee established by Peretz to assess the operational aspects of the war (headed by former Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shakhak) has no authority to judge the decisions made by the politicians. Olmert and Peretz should also have to answer to the public for leading the country into a war without achievable goals, with faulty tactical plans, and without taking into account the huge price that the home front would have to pay. Olmert’s taking responsibility has to be more than just words. Peretz must also stand before a real investigation, so that the public can understand how and why he made the decisions that he did that cost so many human lives, so much physical damage in Israel and in Lebanon, and so much suffering.

It is still too early to determine who won and who lost this war. The outcome and the balance of accounts will only come in the aftermath in the months to come. If the Lebanese army is capable of deploying, as it has begun, and if it keeps armed Hizbollah combatants away from the south, then Israel and the Lebanon will have both won, and that is good. Hizbollah will not simply go away, nor will we probably ever know what losses Hizbollah really suffered in the war, because they simply do not publish the truth.

The Government of Fouad Siniora (no relation to Hanna Siniora) seems to be coming out on top fully backed by Saad Hariri and even Walid Jumblat – this is good for Lebanon and good for the region. Israel suffered damages to more than 1,500 apartments and homes with massive damage to the forests and open spaces. Lebanon suffered damage to more than 15,000 apartments (some people are saying up to 30,000). The international community is now directing itself to raise funds for the reconstruction of Lebanon, while the government of Israel and the Jewish agency are doing the same for the north of Israel. Shimon Peres is off to the States on a fund-raising tour. The losses, reconstruction costs and rebuilding the army will probably come to more than $2 billion. There go all of the budgetary reserves that were supposed to be invested in education, health and welfare.


A problem with the concept

Many people are blaming the lack of experience of Olmert, Peretz and Halutz for the less than satisfactory results of the war. The problem is, however, one that developed way before these gentlemen were sitting at the helm. In my assessment, the problem rests with the concept of what the Israeli army is and what kind of wars it was prepared to face. The problem’s roots can be found in the policies that were developed and implemented in the days of Chief of Staff Ehud Barak (1991-1995). Barak’s concept, mirroring what he saw in the United States following the first Gulf war was that Israel needed a small, intelligent and sophisticated fighting force. Translating that concept into policy and planning meant investing huge sums first and foremost in the air force, in modern technologies, and in scaling down the reserve forces, depending on elite units of the regular army. Since 1991, Israel invested the major parts of its military budgets into these areas and scaled down the dependence on ground infantry units. The overall dependence of Israel on the air force during the beginning of this war was not because the Chief of Staff came from the air force, but because that was the entire military concept of the IDF since Barak’s time. This concept is good perhaps for the United States when it attacked Kosovo, or even when they launched the attack against the Saddam Hussein regime, but is it the right concept for Israel? Perhaps, if Israel had to go to war against another army it would be right, but it appeared to the quite wrong regarding a war against a guerilla fighting force. Now, in the aftermath of the war, the army needs to be re-equipped and serious re-evaluation of the future needs of the army must be undertaken. The IDF needs to be prepared for a war against another army, but it also needs to be prepared for a possible second round.


The Government in shambles

Unconnected to the war, but in addition to it, the government seems to be coming apart. Olmert is under investigation for an alleged bribe concerning real estate; the Minister of Justice Haim Ramon is resigning over an alleged sexual abuse charge, the Chief of Staff was accused of selling his stock portfolio on the day the war began (although not illegal – it stinks), Shimon Peres is under investigation for illegal campaign funds, and the cherry on the cake concerns the sexual harassment charges against the President, Moshe Katzav who will probably have to resign before his term of office ends.

It has also been reported that since the beginning of the war, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs were hardly speaking with each other. According to the reports, Tzipi Livni was opposed to many of the government decisions concerning the war and chose to take a low profile. When the diplomatic efforts were launched and negotiations were underway on the text of the UN Resolution, Livni wanted to go to NY to be there, but Olmert prevented her from going. Olmert controlled all of the negotiations on the UN text by himself with his top advisors, leaving Livni out of the loop.

Today it was reported that Livni appointed her chief political advisor, Yaki Dayan, to begin investigating and assessing the possibilities for opening up the Israeli-Syrian track. It is not clear if she made that decision with the agreement of the Prime Minister or perhaps despite his possible disagreement.

Today even Olmert is admitting that his realignment plan is off the agenda. The main aim of the government for the coming year will be the rebuilding of the north of the country. If it wasn’t so sad, it might be funny. Olmert, who came into office with his great promises of reshaping the country and setting Israel’s final boundaries, is now busy rebuilding what should not have been destroyed from the first place. The reason for going to war was the Hizbollah unprovoked attack against Israel, the killing of eight soldiers and the kidnapping of two others. Israel certainly had a causus belli - the question is whether or not it was wise to launch such a massive attack in order to achieve what has been achieved. Perhaps a more tempered response and a massive diplomatic offensive could have achieved the same or better results, and with a lot less damage?


New elections? – not now

The Government has a lot to answer for and the loss of support for the leaders in the public opinion polls is completely understandable (Olmert and Peretz are both in the mid to low 20’s approval rating after reaching the 70’s at the beginning of the war a few weeks ago). If the government wasn’t so young and if there weren’t so many new MKs, the talk about early elections might have to be taken more seriously. But other than a few of the parties in the opposition, no one wants to go to new elections – they haven’t yet heated up their new seats and they are not get ready to take the risk of not returning to them. Olmert will probably try to expand his government, but it doesn’t seem that there are too many parties or opposition MKs who are running to step on what now appears to be a sinking ship....


Gaza next?

I visited Gaza last week. Many people there believe that Israel will take its Lebanese frustrations out on Gaza. Already severely hit and suffering, Gaza is mentally preparing itself for a new Israeli onslaught. There has been no real progress in freeing the kidnapped soldier Gilead Shalit. Israel is still looking for the address that is in charge of the soldier. The assessments from senior Hamas personalities in Gaza and from senior Israeli officials are that Gilead Shalit is alive and well. But in both camps, no one is sure who and where the decisions are being made about his future. In the meantime, it can be expected that Israel will prepare for a massive ground offensive in the coming weeks if the soldier is not returned to Israel. The Government needs an achievement and needs to rebuild the morale of the country. Finding the soldier and punishing the Palestinians at the same time would boost support for the government which only gives more reason to believe that this is in the plans. If this is the path taken, the chances of survival for Shalit are probably less than 50:50, there will most likely be Israeli casualties and there will certainly be massive Palestinian casualties. This is not the path that should be taken, but if there will be no progress on the issue of Shalit, it seems that it is inevitable, unfortunately.

Syria to the Rescue? by Ralph Seliger

The following has been published simultaneously in a slightly different version at the Campaign for American Leadership in the Middle East (CALME) Online Journal. Overnight, since I wrote this piece, the world has been surprised and I’ve been shocked to learn that France has reneged on its responsibility to put its money and soldiers where its mouth was in supplying a sizable contingent to the UN international force – which it struggled mightily to create as a cornerstone of Security Council Resolution 1701. That France’s fecklessness may undermine the deployment of a strengthened UN military presence and therefore the entire structure of the cease-fire in Lebanon, reinforces my conviction in the importance of my notion about Syria. – R. Seliger

I’ve had this seemingly outlandish idea for over a month now, even before it was proposed in articles in Haaretz, Ynet and elsewhere by such leading Zionist doves as Yossi Beilin and Gershon Baskin: The one silver lining to the Lebanon war, and the best solution for Israeli security, is the renewed possibility of a peace treaty with Syria.

We should recall that Israel and Syria came close to a peace agreement two or three times in the 1990s, with the most recent failure being the breakdown of negotiations between Ehud Barak and the elder President Assad over a sliver of a few meters one way or the other at the eastern edge of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). This was the great failing that led to the unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon and its transformation into a bastion for Hezbollah aggression. Yet, later entreaties from the younger Assad for new negotiations were ignored by Prime Minister Sharon.

On July 20th, Meretz USA hosted a frequent visitor to its Manhattan headquarters, Meretz MK Avshalom (Abu) Vilan. Abu hinted at leverage on Syria in that as many as one million Syrians have been working in Lebanon’s vibrant pre-war economy; remittances to their families have been a valuable subsidy for the stagnant Syrian economy.

There is enormous strategic value for both Israel and the United States to an agreement with Syria. Israel would require an end to Syria’s role as a conduit for arms (including missiles) and money – mostly from Iran – to Hezbollah and a cutoff of all sanctuary and supply for such other violent forces as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The United States could demand an effective sealing of Syria’s borders against further infiltration by foreign jihadis into Iraq.

Importantly, Syria would be peeled away from its deadly embrace with Iran, an unnatural alliance not truly reflecting Syria’s interest or its cultural reality. Syria is mostly Sunni, Arab and secular, whereas Iran’s regime is Shiite, Persian and theocratic.

In return, Syria would benefit from an end to the threat of military attack from Israel, the US or both. And the prospect of a new peace descending upon Lebanon, would again trigger a strengthened economy for this resourceful nation, benefitting Syria anew with jobs for Syrian workers. But such an agreement would require of the United States a sustained diplomatic engagement with the Israeli-Arab conflict that has not characterized the current Bush administration to date.

Israel’s cost for a breakthrough with Syria would be steep and obvious – the loss of the Golan Heights. But even in this, I would suggest a counter-offer that, however unlikely to be accepted by Syria, would be of mutual benefit to both countries: Israel should acknowledge Syrian sovereignty and then advance two options short of abandoning the territory outright; one would be a long-term leasing arrangement, say 50 or 99 years, with the Golan becoming a small Middle Eastern Hong Kong. The other would be to offer a return to Syrian sovereignty but negotiating to find another way for Israelis and their commercial enterprises to remain, perhaps dangling the prospect of jobs for Syrian laborers and partnerships for Syrian business people.

As has been widely noted, the approximately 15-20,000 Israelis who have made the Golan their home are not the uncompromising hardliners who constitute a prominent element of the West Bank settler population. For example, the Golan is the only area beyond the pre-1967 Green Line in which members of the left-wing and very dovish Kibbutz Artzi or National Kibbutz Federation (now merging with the United Kibbutz Movement) established new kibbutzim. Although these kibbutzniks have from the outset declared a willingness to leave their homes in return for a real peace with Syria, peace would only be strengthened if Israelis and their businesses were allowed to remain.

It is not clear that many would choose to remain under any form of Syrian rule, but this concrete fact of Israeli-Syrian co- existence would greatly improve the new post-war climate and provide a significant boost to the stagnant Syrian economy. There is no inherent reason why the highly successful Golan Heights Winery, or the ski resort at Mt. Hermon and the other enterprises of 24 factories and 28 kibbutzim and moshavim, could not benefit both Israelis and Syrians. Syria could derive benefit through taxation, rent payments (if the territory is leased), and through a spate of employment and investment opportunities for its people. And the region as a whole would fruitfully observe a new model of cooperation, for a change, between Arabs and Jews. – R. Seliger

Israel mourns son of David Grossman

Young Uri Grossman’s death has affected many of us – both because of his father and that he symbolizes the tragic cost of this and of all wars. Our blog posting today involves three interesting reactions. The first is by Paul Usiskin, chair of Peace Now-UK and a former officer in the IDF, who introduces his broader political analysis with this remembrance:

Why I ask myself. Why does the death of a twenty year-old Israeli soldier who I never knew have such an overwhelming impact on me? Why out of all the deaths in the second Lebanon war does the loss of Uri Grossman bring tears to my eyes? Why is it the same for people across the world, from America through Europe to Israel? I haven't found anyone who is unmoved by this, and all of them, like me, never knew Uri....

I had the great fortune to meet and spend a little time with his father this year, when David came to London. I found an instant rapport with a complete stranger.... Click here to read its entirety at MidEastWeb for Coexistence, and to link to the text of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

In a challenging posting at the London Guardian’s “Comment is Free” weblog (“As the smoke clears”) (which I appreciate but disagree with), Tel Aviv freelance journalist Arthur Neslen lays out a dovish critique of the left-Zionist perspective represented by David Grossman and his colleagues:

.... Over the years, Grossman positioned himself as a kind of bellwether of conscience in the dangerous cross winds of Israel's national consensus. He was forever warning of the dangers of not listening to the pilots who refused to serve in the army; of not seeing the damage inflicted by rampant militarism; of not waking up from national slumber.

For some Israelis, he represents all that was wholesome and moral about the intellectual Zionist tradition.... the boundary line of acceptable discourse in Israel, beyond which lie dragons.

... Grossman wrote of the invasion of Lebanon that Israel had "launched a counter-attack and it has every right to do so,".... Two days before the death of his son, he, Oz and Yehoshua called for a diplomatic solution to prevent Israel from "sinking deeper into the Lebanese swamp," but they never retreated from their belief in the justness of the war....

This is from our khaver, Hillel Schenker’s “Comment is Free” blog entry, also on August 16:

Sometimes the terrible tragedy of war is encapsulated in a single lost life. Such a moment happened on Saturday evening, when it became known that Staff Sergeant Uri Grossman, 20, had been killed when his tank was hit by an anti-tank missile in southern Lebanon. He was one of the last Israeli casualties before the cease-fire was declared.

Just two days earlier, his father, the novelist David Grossman, together with his colleagues Amos Oz and AB Yehoshua, had convened a press conference to protest against the Israeli cabinet's decision to expand ground operations, and called for an immediate cease-fire and the start of negotiations.

Here in Israel, the sense of shock and tragedy when it became known that Grossman's son had been killed reverberated beyond the sense of individual loss. The story of Uri's death was featured on the front pages of all of Israel's dailies, and was a topic of discussion and commentary on many topical radio and TV talk shows.

Clearly we have a blending of the image of father and son, which enhanced this feeling, and a little bit of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac as well. David Grossman is one of Israel's most beloved and respected novelists, and his persona is the essence of anti-machismo: he is softly spoken but with strong principles. Although initially a supporter of the war in Lebanon, he later called out firmly and courageously for it to stop. But the fighting didn't stop in time to save his son.

My feeling is that many Israelis are viewing the personal tragedy of the parents, David and Michal, as a way of expressing their profound sense sadness at the loss of so many other young lives. Uri Grossman was a graduate of the progressive Jerusalem Experimental high school, together with many other children of the city's intellectual, artistic and political elite, including the children of (prime minister) Ehud Olmert. He wanted to travel abroad to see the world after his release from the army, and he intended to study theater.

David Grossman himself has been silent; but his literary words speak for him: "I once thought of teaching my son a private language, isolating him from the speaking world on purpose, lying to him from the moment of his birth so he would believe only in the language I gave him. And it would be a compassionate language. What I mean is, I wanted to take him by the hand and name everything he saw with words that would save him from the inevitable heartaches so that he wouldn't be able to comprehend the existence of, for instance, war. Or that people kill, or that this red here is blood. It's a kind of used-up idea, I know, but I love to imagine him crossing through life with an innocent trusting smile - the first truly enlightened child".

Hillel Schenker is co-editor of the Palestine-Israel Journal.

Like in 1948, It’s Victory or Else

In his August 15 column for the South Florida Jewish Journal, our friend J. Zel Lurie reveals an expected turn in his thinking. This war has done that for a number of stalwart peaceniks, among whom Zel has always been counted.

I find myself in an uncomfortable position. I am supporting the government of Israel in its difficult war against the katyusha-firing Hezbollah, an action that is foreign to my dissident soul. I haven’t supported the government since [the time that] Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

I have willy-nilly joined with the vast majority of Jews in Israel – 93 percent according to Tel Aviv University’s Peace Index [conducted July 31 and Aug. 1] – who view the campaign in Lebanon as justified....

I am uncomfortable because my good friends, the majority of the Jews and Arabs who live in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, are on the minority side. On Saturday evening, August 4, many of them trooped down to Tel Aviv to participate in a large protest march....

“At the demonstration,” one NSWAS resident reported, “some, like Yael Dayan called to “END THIS JUST WAR, but the majority called to “just end the war.” Based on our experience as a bi-national community, we join those who call for an immediate end to the violence, as well as a determined effort to address the focus of the conflict. Without the latter, we will be needing that banner again in future years, long before the colors fade.”

Gush Shalom, which publishes an ad every day in Ha’aretz, put the case for negotiations succinctly. The ad for August 8 was three sentences;

“This war is against Hezbollah. The cease-fire must be with Hezbollah. A settlement without Hezbollah and Syria will not be worth the paper it is written on.”

... I would add Iran to the equation. Hezbollah fighters were trained by Iranian Shiite officers. Hezbollah arms come from Iran and Syria. Hezbollah hospitals were built by Iran. Most important, Hezbollah started the war at the direction of Iran to take the heat off its nuclear ambitions.

Hezbollah... doesn’t give a damn about the destruction of Lebanon’s civil society, Hezbollah, acting as Iraninian proxies, will find excuses to delay and postpone a cease-fire until it has fired its last katyusha.

My friends, the Jews and Arabs of NSWAS, are appalled at what the katyushas have done to northern Israel and at what Israeli bombers have done to Lebanon. End the war now, they say. Withdraw from Lebanon.... My friends, the Jews and Arabs of NSWAS, are wrong.

What would happen if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Kadima and Defense Minister Amir Peretz of Labor followed their advice? What would happen if they withdrew from Lebanon without the assurance that the Hezbollah militia would be disarmed in accordance with the two-year-old Security Council Resolution 1559?

What would happen is that Iran would rearm Hezbollah with new and better missiles. More powerful missiles that could be precisely targeted, for instance on the oil tank farm in Haifa Bay, or might carry gas and biological weapons.

Israel cannot live under this threat. That is why the war must continue until Hezbollah is defeated, or as Condi Rice said, “’a sustainable cease-fire” can be achieved.

This war is a continuation of Israel’s War of Independence. Once more Israel is fighting those who openly declare their objective to wipe out Israel.

The casualties in 1948 were catastrophic. One percent of the population, 6000 young men and women were killed. Now the population has grown ten times; the army is much better armed and more cautious.

And in the words of my Israeli granddaughter: “Why doesn’t the world see how humanitarian we are, sending messages to civilians to leave before we bomb while the Hezbollah fire katyushas to kill Israeli civilians including Israeli Arabs.”

I hope Israel will fight on until Hezbollah is permanently defeated, until the hypocritical members of the UN Security Council take steps to implement their two-year-old resolution calling for disarming the Hezbollah militia.

War Divides Israel’s Left

Now retired from the Knesset, the former Meretz party leader Yossi Sarid is activating his considerable writing talents full-time as a news commentator. His column in Haaretz, August 15, scathingly examines divisions within Israel’s left in the wake of the Lebanon war. His acerbic take-no-prisoners wit is entertaining but also unfair to those who struggle with the complexities of the issue. Among those who have publically made both pro-war and then dovish arguments are the three great writers mentioned in this article, excerpted below, from the LA Times. Within days of their support for the mainstream peace rally held on August 10 to demand a cease-fire, one of the three, David Grossman, suffered the loss of his 20 year-old son in a tank destroyed by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Faced with the prospect of a bloody, drawn-out conflict, mainstream peace groups that had refrained from criticizing the war effort are urging a diplomatic resolution.... On Thursday, organizers of an antiwar rally in Tel Aviv for the first time brought in what are regarded in this bookish country as big guns: a trio of Israel's best-known authors. The three — Amos Oz, David Grossman and A.B. Yehoshua — have all spoken out strongly against past conflicts and wield considerable moral authority here.

"The use of more force now is not in Israel's best interests," Oz told reporters before the rally in front of the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. "The time has come to resolve this through diplomatic means."

.... up until now, the antiwar movement had been mainly the province of what are generally considered to be splinter groups: Arab parties, communists and anarchists. Yael Dayan, the daughter of iconic general and politician Moshe Dayan and a doyenne of the Israeli peace movement, found that out the hard way last week when she tried to address a Tel Aviv antiwar rally organized by a far-left coalition. Stepping up to the microphone, Dayan — an imposing, deep-voiced woman who bears a striking resemblance to her famous father — told the crowd it was important to support Israel's troops even while opposing the war.
Her listeners responded by hurling invective and debris, with some shouting that Israeli soldiers were baby-killers. Dayan was forced to relinquish the microphone and leave the stage.

"At that juncture, people who were protesting against this conflict simply did not want to hear the message that the war was a just one, at least initially," said Dayan, a former lawmaker who is now the [Meretz] deputy mayor of Tel Aviv. "Even if we have the common ground of believing that now is the time to stop."

The encounter, while extreme, was emblematic of sensitivities among Israelis who want to speak out against the war without appearing unpatriotic at what is felt to be a time of grave national crisis.... Prominent peaceniks make a point of doing their army reserve duty, believing it gives them greater moral authority to speak out against a given conflict. And some of those who identify with Israel's dovish left say that circumstances change, and actions must be altered accordingly.

Yosef Sendik, a captain in the army reserve, spent three months in jail because he refused to serve in the West Bank at the height of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada. That decision, he said, was due to his strong belief that Palestinians' rights were not being respected. But he says he would go willingly to Lebanon if called.... "This is a war of our survival — I believe that."

Similar soul-searching has taken place within the venerable Peace Now movement.... The group's secretary-general, Yaariv Oppenheimer, said he believed in the war's first weeks that Israel was correct and justified in striking hard at Hezbollah after the group staged a cross-border raid last month that captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others. But Oppenheimer said he had deep qualms about the wide-ranging ground offensive authorized by Israel's "security Cabinet" on Wednesday....

How war began and how to end it Part 2

Here are additional responses from leading Meretz activists. From Susie Becher, a member of the Meretz-Yahad party executive:
I have to say that I find the question irrelevant. Regardless of whether the Israeli Government was indeed responding to the border incident and the capture of the two soldiers or exploiting them as an excuse to try to eliminate Hezbollah, the fact is that its response was excessive, visceral, and – as it now appears – ineffective. After a month of fighting that left hundreds dead and paralyzed half the country, that highlighted the shameful inequality in the protection of Israel's Arab population and exposed the socio-economic disparity that turned our northern cities into ghost towns inhabited only by the poor and elderly who lacked the means or the strength to relocate, we are doing what we should have done to begin with – negotiate.

While nothing comes close to the terrible price paid in the tragic and futile loss of human life, the erosion in Israel's deterrent power is another worrisome outcome of this war. Not the deterrence lost by the success of the initial Hezbollah operation, but the deterrence lost through four weeks of military ineptitude, government indecision, and constantly changing objectives. No variation on the much-touted "we will win," "we are winning," and even "we won" will convince our enemies that Hezbollah did not bring the neighborhood bully to its knees.

The war has proven to be a military fiasco. Let us hope that the government wises up and uses the opportunity that has opened to turn it into a diplomatic success.

From Meretz-Yahad Knesset Member Chaim Oron (aka, Jumes):
I think that Israel has the right to act through self-defense in response to the Hezbollah attack on Israel. From the beginning of the war, Meretz called upon the Israeli government to reach an agreed cease-fire in which the kidnaped Israeli soldiers will be returned to Israel, the Lebanon army will be in charge in south Lebanon and all the terror acts will stop. This act should be parallel to accelerated political activity to achieve peace agreements with Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority. Meretz protested against a long war of attrition, drafting thousands of soldiers and expanding the ground activity in South Lebanon.

And from Mossi Raz, a former Meretz candidate for Knesset, a veteran organizer for Shalom Achshav and administrator for Givat Haviva:
Yes, I do accept the government assertion that the current Lebanon war is a response to the border incident. Yes, it does affect my view that the government overacted and caused many casualties on both sides.

Schenker: How war began and how to end it

The following was asked of khaverim in Israel: “Do you accept the government assertion that the current Lebanon war is a response to the border incident or do you feel that the government used the opportunity to attack and eliminate the Hezbollah threat? Does this affect your view of how the crisis should be resolved?” This is a detailed response from Hillel Schenker, co-editor of the Palestine-Israel Journal:

My basic view is that the government — i.e., Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz — did not seriously weigh the implications of what they were getting into when they ordered a major military response to the attack on the northern border. While I think in principle that it's extremely important for the fundamental health of Israeli society, that civilians should control the defense ministry and provide a counterpoint to the military high command, in this case, Peretz's inexperience in military affairs was detrimental. The same could be said for Olmert — though he has had more experience in senior government positions.

It wasn't the civilian government, but the IDF high command, which quickly placed a plan on the table to use the incident as a basis for trying to eliminate the threat of the 12,000 Hezbollah Katyusha missiles that had accumulated in Southern Lebanon. Here, in addition to Olmert and Peretz's inexperience, we are faced with a structural and a cultural problem.

The structural problem is that Israeli prime ministers don't have substantial alternatives to the military establishment when making decisions that potentially involve the use of serious military force. The civilian national security council, usually headed by a graduate of the security services, was supposed to fulfill that function, but it has never been taken seriously by any prime minister. We should have a situation where the head of the national security council can be consulted as to whether the proposals emanating from the IDF are the only or best alternatives. Even senior Haaretz security commentator Ze'ev Schiff, who is usually extremely protective of the military, noted (in Haaretz, Aug. 11 ) that Chief of Staff Dan Halutz's comment that "It's the IDF plan or nothing!" is "a strange statement for a military figure to make at a cabinet meeting." Dr. Reuven Pedhazur, the astute security affairs commentator, has written frequently about this problem in Haaretz.

The cultural problem, since the establishment of the State of Israel, is that the government leadership has developed an excessive reliance on the use of military force to solve security problems. Given the experience of the Holocaust and the difficult neighborhood that we live in, this is perhaps understandable, but that doesn't make it wise.

We have, as we should, a very powerful army. But we also have to cultivate diplomatic skills, which were dormant during the 2,000 years of living in an un-sovereign Diaspora, when such diplomatic skills were unnecessary. We need a powerful army to defend our right to exist, but we will only resolve our problems with the Lebanese, the Palestinians and the Syrians, via diplomatic means.

As to my view about how the crisis should be resolved: The fundamentalist Hezbollah movement is unfortunately an integral part of the Shiite component of Lebanese society. According to some estimates, the Shiites will soon (or may already) be a majority within Lebanese society; yet it should be noted that the Shiite Amal movement led by Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Beri does not agree with Hezbollah's fundamentalist ideology. As an integral part of Lebanese society, which also has a significant social arm, Hezbollah cannot be defeated by force alone. This was one of the mistakes of the initial Israeli government policy.

Thus, we must come to an overall arrangement with the Lebanese government, which can only be achieved via the aid of the international community. The French-American-British resolution that was brought before the Security Council is a step in the right direction. It has to be followed by an immediate cease-fire in the field, to save both Israeli and Lebanese civilian and military lives - they are all human beings - to be followed by the rapid arrival of an effective international force that will separate between the IDF and Hezbollah.

This has to be followed by serious political attempts to resolve the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. That is essential for quiet on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

As the only superpower in the post-Cold War world, it would be extremely helpful if the US were seriously engaged in the quest for a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace. There are many building blocks for this, including UN Resolution 1559, the previous Israeli-Syrian-American negotiations, UN Resolution 242 and 338, the Oslo Accords, the Road Map, the Clinton Parameters of December 2000, the Geneva Accord of 2003 and the Arab (Saudi) peace plan. What has been missing, until recently, has been an American administration that would be ready to lead the international community in the direction of constructive conflict resolution.

Israeli-Arab journalist speaks out

The following article, “In the name of Allah” by Riad Ali, an Israeli Arab who is a reporter for Israel’s Channel 1, was published in Haaretz, August 9.

It tears one's heart and stills one's breath to see the images coming from Lebanon. The same goes for the images in Israel, and this is not added for the sake of balance.

But sorrow and grief over the war's victims shouldn't blur its prime objectives, both in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories. When the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza adopted suicide bombing as their strategy in fighting Israel, I concluded that their war against the occupation is over, and an indiscriminate war on Jews has begun. I was convinced then, as I am now, that at that moment, the Palestinians lost the war, at least in the moral sense.

In one of my reports from Gaza, I talked to a Palestinian boy by the name of Haled. He was 10 years old at the time. He said he wanted to be a teacher. When we switched to the topic of the intifada, Haled said that he had another dream - to be a shahid. I asked him how could he be a teacher and a shahid at the same time. Ten-year-old Haled had no answer. He was only a child. It was then I realized that the Palestinian people have lost their inner compass. A whole generation of children was born and reared in their midst, and all their hopes and aspirations are to die a holy death.

A Palestinian moral-ethical debate on the status of the suicide bomber never took place. The saboteur was and remained a shahid, with all of the positive attributes that the word carries in Islamic terminology. Palestinians who still opposed the bombings did so on tactical grounds; that is to say, if it had furthered their cause, they would have seen no wrong in it.

A similar process happened with Hezbollah. If before 2000 the organization could have had the benefit of the doubt and claim it is fighting Israeli occupation of Lebanon, today it is clear to see that its war is against Jews wherever they may be. You have to be deaf in order not to hear the voice of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as it emerges from Nasrallah's throat, and naive in order to believe that the purpose of the arsenal Nasrallah has accumulated is the release of prisoners and the liberation of the Shaba Farms.

This is the time to address the Arab citizens of Israel, and tell them that the time has come for them to decide where they stand. And they should do so for their own sake, and not for the sake of the Jews. For the sake of the values they want to instill in their children. For the sake of retaining their intellectual dignity. It is clear to all that a Hamas-led Palestinian government and a Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon will not bring democratic societies with a flourishing political and social pluralism. It is clear that in regimes such as those, the rule of law, human rights, the freedom of religion and worship, women's rights, the freedom of creation, the freedom of movement, the freedom of expression and thought - all will be alien, ridiculed concepts, to say the least.

Ideological Islam has long been master of the Palestinian society's agenda in the West Bank and Gaza. But what worries me is that the same Islamic agenda that rules there rules also here in Israel, and crosses all parties and movements including those who consider themselves to be secular. The spirit of battle has overtaken the believers, and all who consider themselves as part of the Islamic nation also have to take part in its war. If not with guns, then with funds, and if not with funds, then through words, and if not through words, then in heart, as the Muslim preachers tell the masses.

I am not at war with the Jews, nor with the people of Israel. I have an argument with the Jews, and I have an argument with the State of Israel. On one point I do not argue, and that is the right of the Jewish people to their own independent state. To the best of my understanding, this war, as with the intifada, has to be judged from this perspective.

Arab citizens of the state who truly believe in the principle of two states for two peoples and those who believe in a democratic liberal society must ask themselves if the Islamic ideology that is leading the war today against Israel and the West in the guise of a war against the occupation and heathens is representative of their ambitions. We must separate the pain and sorrow for the innocent victims from the purpose of the war, as seen by those who lead it - in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and in any place where people seek to liberate land in the name of Allah.

"War is a gender thing" Part II

Leah Shakdiel, the first woman to serve on a regional religious council in Israel, is a well-known Orthodox advocate for women’s rights within Judaism, as well as a dedicated Zionist peace activist. She was featured prominently in Lilly Rivlin’s film, “Can You Hear Me?”

One less predictable and more complex reaction to this war is in today's [Fri., Aug. 4] Haaretz weekly supplement, p. 20, by Salmann Matzalha.... He analyzes the present intra-Muslim competition between Sunni and Shiite extremists as to who can be more violent in fighting the non-Muslim world, and how our corner of the world fits into this.

I have offended some of my best friends by expressing my reservations regarding what I call "the automatic Left" in Israel (and Palestine, and the wide world out there), which I define as "the Left that blames *only* Israel, and *all* the time, *only* Israel." I have also stated that if feminist critique of war is automatically identified with that sort of reaction, it is not good for the feminist claim that women have added value to the anti-war and pro-peace much needed work, because it only makes feminism/women irrelevant to any serious peace process.

BTW, I have had the "honor" of displeasing colleagues at work in various jobs I have held over the years, by claiming that if feminist style in management is identified with "a mess" and "general inefficiency, just because it's "informal," it's a misreading of feminist claims against patriarchal hierarchies.

Let's stay away from oversimplifications please. Yes all wars are macho and this one too, yes women suffer more because they are victimized in the front and back home and excluded from decision making, but none of this is an excuse for not going into the complexities of every single war anew.

Iran's present regime and Hezbollah rank no 1 on the "evil scale" here. Yes I am all for replacing the stupid illusion that war can provide us security, with the realization that only the political process will do this, and I am all for driving home the idea that it is not possible to conduct any war without killing and maiming and destroying innocent lives, but I think we do need a language that will differentiate between wilful killing of innocents (Hezbollah, suicide bombers, 9/11, etc, and yes there were Israelis who did the same, such as Baruch Goldstein), and the irresponsible unethical conduct of military actions (some of Israel's actions in all its wars).

If we use the words "war crimes" for the second kind, then we have no more words for the first kind, and the result of course is that we don't mention them at all, or that we tolerate the pathological reaction of Palestinians who support Hezbollah [actions or intentions], as they supported Saddam Hussein at the time, as if THOSE genocidal war crimes have anything whatsoever to do with the JUSTIFIED struggle of Palestinians for a state of their own.

One side effect of this "automatic Leftism" is that instead of helping the Palestinians get there it actually sets them back because it blurs their issue and sends it back to the back burner. In my opinion all this has a lot to do with the fact that we Israeli Jews don't use the self appellation, "Jews," often enough, as if we have internalized the Palestinian lie that Israel is a colonialist fiction and we are only here to steal their land, but that's a whole other chapter in my politics, there is no Israel unless we admit that we are here as Jews, in a state that is both a safe haven for Jews in their historical ancient homeland, and a modern democracy for all its citizens.

Meretz oppposes expanded offensive

As reported in Haaretz today, Meretz Knesset Members oppose the cabinet decision to widen the ground campaign:

The political left in Israel slammed the Wednesday afternoon cabinet decision to widen the military ground offensive in Lebanon.

Meretz MK Ran Cohen called the move "unfortunate and dangerous." He said continued operations will "increase the large number of victims and will not solve the problem."

Meretz MK Zehava Gal-On added the decision "will distance the chances of a cease-fire and of quiet in the northern communities."

Meretz Chairman MK Yossi Beilin said the cabinet "made a tragic mistake that is liable to unnecessary lengthen the war? Rather than taking advantage of the opportunity to leave Lebanon and let its army deploy in the south, Israel is entering deeper into Hezbollah's trap on the verge of a war of attrition on the ground."

Galia Golan: “War is a gender thing”

We have the privilege of eavesdropping on an e-mail discussion of the Lebanon war by feminist peace activists. Galia Golan is a professor of political science associated with Peace Now and the Meretz party executive.

War is always a gender thing - as the guys play with their machines and try to prove their masculinity. But this war especially is. My first response the day the war started in the north was that the Israeli reaction was a male pride thing. Coming just after the incursion and capture of the soldier at Karem Shalom, the Hizbollah turns around and captures two more Israeli soldiers on its front. Our guys went beserk - insulted, their manhood humilated. And then begins the insane escalation with the two boys, IDF and Hizbollah daring each other, you hit Beirut, I'll hit Haifa, and so it went.

And all this talk of restoring deterrent power - what it really translates to is “they only understand force,” and if they haven't gotten the point yet, we'll use more force. If that isn't a gender thing, I don't know what is.

And look at the reaction on the home front - granted some men are protesting, and some women are part of the "consensus," but on the whole, at least in my impressionistic view, it is mainly women who see the insanity of all this, the futility and the tragedy. Add to this the media coverage - male, male, male with only an occasional woman brought on to give the emotional side (whether on morality in war or protesting in war time...).

Only men know how to analyze. Militarism is a male thing, though many women buy into it, and Israel is clearly a militarized society, with a culture of war or force - that's our natural response, unfortunately, unless serious factors restrain us.

A dissenting response follows....

“Something is wrong in Galia's feminist narrative” By Frances Raday

Galia is of course right that a certain form of macho aggression lies at the roots of war. There is also no doubt that some women buy into it and some men buy out of it. However her application of this perfectly good feminist analysis to Israel's response in Lebanon is perverse.

The description of Israel's reaction to the Hezbollah provocation as "our guys going bezerk" is, at best, wilful naivety and, at worst, a dangerously distorted narrative. Israel's reaction is a response not only to the capture of two soldiers, as claimed by Galia. Even as regards the immediate and local provocation, it seems Galia Golan has forgotten that several Israeli soldiers were also killed (are their lives not to be brought into the reckoning?) and several rockets were fired on civilian settlements in the Western Galilee. On a less immediate level, the Israeli reaction was to the collection in Lebanon of 12,000 missiles, which were supplied by Iran after Israel withdrew behind the internationally recognized border with Lebanon. These missiles were supplied by Iran whose President Achmedinajad has repeatedly stated that his aim is to wipe Israel off the map.

The feminist dilemma is how to break out of the circle of violence created by warfare in general and in the Middle East in particular. Raising a white or a pink flag might be a great strategy in some circumstances but scarcely can it be regarded as such in the environment described above. Indeed Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, which I fully supported and continue to regard as the right thing to have done (we should never have stayed embedded in Lebanon for 20 years in the first place), is close to such a strategy in the Middle East context .... and it evidently did not work, in view of the Iranian/Hezbollah rhetoric and provocation.

I do not know if Israel's response was the wisest way of dealing with the local and regional threat and I do not know if we will succeed in surviving such threats in the long run. I do know that the simplistic presentation of Israel's reaction as totally disproportionate aggression is a distortion of the facts. Indeed, it is not in accordance with international law as seen by a critical mass of international law experts in Israel and as clarified by international authority. International law recognizes Israel's initial decision to respond with military force as self-defense.

As regards the proportionality of the means used in Israel's military reaction, we will only know when we have the full facts, and not just media reports, whether Israel has or has not fully implemented the norms of international humanitarian law as regards Lebanese civilians. This too is a complex question in a situation in which the Hezbollah is embedded in civilian population centers and uses homes, hospitals and mosques as shelter for their military actions.

Beilin: Get out of Lebanon via Damascus

Between Gershon Baskin and Yossi Beilin, I can't say who's echoing whom, but Beilin, the Meretz party chair and MK, argues in the Jerusalem Post, August 8 ("Lebanon - the way out"), for peace with Syria as a potential solution, excerpted below:

.... In the past two years, ... Assad has called for negotiations with Israel without preconditions a number of times.

Israel, under the leadership of Ariel Sharon, rebuffed these appeals.... Sharon could do that, without holding a serious political discussion and without any real public debate on the subject, only because President Bush -- because of American interests -- took a dim view of Israeli-Syrian negotiations.

Late last week, the Syrian ambassador in the US was interviewed by Orli Azulay for the Yediot Aharonot weekend supplement. Among other things, Dr. Imad Mustapha said, "We will say to the Israelis: .... Stop the occupation; let us establish full peaceful relations and normalization in the region- enough with these wars.

"We have adopted the peace initiative put forward by Saudi King Abdullah, who proposed peace with Israel in return for the occupied territories...."

Baskin: Syria is the key

I’ve meant to write something called “Syria to the Rescue” for a while now, but Gershon Baskin, co-CEO of the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), is stealing my thunder in advocating “The Syrian option,” in his recent article on Ynet, excerpted below:

.... An end to the conflict in Lebanon that will not lead to the next round of fighting or to the internal destruction of Lebanon... is bringing Syria into a peace process with Israel. Syria must be brought... in [also] to end the Iran-Syria alliance.

Syria must be brought into the process ... to allow the government of Lebanon to rein in Hizbullah and allow Hizbullah to become another political movement that is not a “state within a state.” The government of Lebanon will not be able to rein in Hizbullah without Syria’s backing....

Syria can be brought into the process if the United States provides Syria with sufficient assurances that it will gain significantly, both in terms of US and Western financial support and investments in Syria and by knowing that the Golan Heights will be returned to Syrian sovereignty in exchange of peace with Israel.

The United States should indicate its willingness to support Syria through public and private diplomacy. Syria should demonstrate its intentions by closing its border with Iraq preventing insurgency there, it should immediate stop the flow of weapons to Hizbullah and it should close the offices of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Damascus....

Israel should receive US assurances that the Golan will remain demilitarized and that an effective and robust multinational force will guarantee the peace of the Golan.

These steps would allow Israel and Lebanon to reach a cease fire and a peace deal that will include the Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s seven points plan and the UN Security Council Resolution for a long term cease fire, an effective and robust multinational force in south Lebanon and the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559....

Yossi Beilin: Test of the Zionist Left

This is from Haaretz, Aug. 8, by the head of Meretz, Israel's left-wing opposition in the Knesset. I don't agree with Beilin that it was wrong to call up the reserves, but he rather breathlessly summarizes many problems with current and previous policies of recent Israeli governments, which have habitually resisted making efforts to reach agreements with Arab leaders and governments.– R. Seliger

There are those who expect the Zionist left to join in the revelry of war, in the pathetic slogans such as "We will win" and in the fiery comments such as "Nasrallah will remember who Amir Peretz is."

There are those who expect us to join the non-Zionist left, which is calling for a unilateral cease-fire, accuses Israel of war crimes, demands that Hamas and Hezbollah be given what they want, and opposes all use of force. Both sides say this is the test of the Zionist left - and they are right.

We have a deep belief in the right of the Jewish people to a democratic and secure state, which has a stable Jewish majority: the state of the Jewish people and all of its citizens. We are convinced our national interest is in completing the moves toward peace with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon, and that there is no alternative to an agreement.

If it were up to us, we would have reached a peace agreement with the Palestinians in May 1991, as was promised in the interim agreement with them. If it were up to us, the Shepherdstown peace talks involving Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Farouk Shara would have ended in December 1999, with an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement that would have led to an Israeli-Lebanon deal and prevented the need for a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon six months later. If it were up to us, we would have renewed the peace negotiations when Mahmoud Abbas was elected Palestinian Authority chairman in 2005, preventing the need for a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip only a few months later.

But our feeling that peace could have been reached long ago and that Israel has played a not insignificant role in the fact that this has not happened does not justify, in our eyes, the behavior of our enemies. It doesn't justify the Qassams Palestinians continued to fire on us from Gaza after we dismantled the settlements, or Hezbollah's major arms buildup, or the concealment of rockets in the homes of innocent Lebanese civilians, or the irresponsible excitement and baseless territorial claims of Hassan Nasrallah, even though we withdrew from Lebanon to the last millimeter.

The military response in Gaza is justified in our eyes, and the response in Lebanon is no less justified - but that is not reason enough to support all aspects of the war. Brief military activity, followed by an ultimatum for the release of our abducted soldiers, would have been far more proper in our eyes. In any case, it was not right to get drawn into the trap set by Hezbollah - into an extended war of attrition, continued exposure of the Israeli home front to rocket fire and a ground operation involving tens of thousands of soldiers, at a very heavy financial cost.

A formal change in the attitude toward noncombatants led to hundreds of Lebanese civilian casualties. We cannot justify such a change, even if it came from the mouth of someone who does not stop glorying in being a man of peace. Amir Peretz's dovish past does not grant him a license to violate ethical norms that have guided us for many years.

A few days after the fighting broke out, we called for a mutually agreeable cease-fire to achieve the goals Israel has set for itself: the return of the abducted soldiers, a total halt to all hostile acts and the deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon. We did not believe for a moment that these legitimate goals could be reached by another few days of combat, the control of a few more kilometers, a massive call-up of reservists or the heavy bombardment of an Arab capital.

Therefore, we were the only ones who abstained in the Knesset, both in the no-confidence vote and in the vote on the government's announcements over the course of the war. We were the only ones in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee who opposed the call-up of tens of thousands of people for emergency reserve duty. We were the only ones who appealed to the High Court of Justice against the prime minister over the government's failure to declare war, despite the requirements stated in the Basic Law on government. We see our role over the course of the war as warning against Israel's lapsing into situations that it did not anticipate at the beginning of the war and warning against acts that contradict the values of Israeli society, while demanding that we reach the negotiation table as soon as possible to discuss a cease-fire.

After the war, when Ehud Olmert once again talks about unilateral convergence as a wonder drug and the right speaks out against agreements with our neighbors as well as against any unilateral move, we will need, with all our might, to present the agreement option as the path that is all the more necessary following the conflict in Gaza and the war in Lebanon.

The test of the Zionist left will be in its ability to come out of this war without losing its designation as the group that warns the public and suggests realistic solutions, as the group that does not become inured to the world or set itself up as the judge in the conflict between us and our neighbors, but presents its positions from within the heart of Israeli society, for the sake of its safety and prosperity.

Film on feminist peace activists

A Haaretz review, July 14, paired this film with “Encounter Point,” a film that was co-produced by a participant in the 2003 Meretz USA Israel Symposium, Nahanni Rous. Both documentaries were screened at this July’s Jerusalem Film Festival. “Encounter Point” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and I wrote about it for the May 16 posting of “The SITUATION.”

I saw a pre-screening of “Can You Hear Me” in Jerusalem with other colleagues at the World Union of Meretz. Our Meretz USA colleague, Lilly Rivlin, starts with the hopeful premise that if women were more involved in running the world, it would be a more peaceful place. This is not born out by history, but it can certainly be argued that recent female national leaders who were not known as peacemakers — including Israel’s own Golda Meir, Britain’s Maggie Thatcher, India’s Indira Ghandi, and more than one female leader of Sri Lanka — were forced to play by male rules due to the fact that they were exceptions to the prevailing male dominance of world politics. But at the film’s dramatic high point, Lilly duly documents the manifest failure of two women activists to successfully reach beyond their ethnic boundaries to achieve a personal understanding, a small manifestation of peace. The following is the segment of Ira Moscowitz’s Haaretz review that deals exclusively with Rivlin’s film:

Lilly Rivlin, who wrote, directed and produced "Can You Hear Me?" traces the rift between Arabs and Jews to the biblical story of Sarah and Hagar - a story she began to film over 20 years ago. "In 1984," she recalls, "10 good women gave me $1,000 each because I had a good story. I said: If women had rewritten the story of Sarah and Hagar, would it be different? I came here and shot a recreation, and went on for a few years filming women who had a cultural and dramatic take on the story of Sarah and Hagar."

Rivlin is a seventh-generation Jerusalemite who has spent most of her life in America. She began filmmaking in 1981, documenting a Rivlin family reunion with some 2,500 participants. (Likud MK Ruby Rivlin is one of her first cousins. "We don't agree on politics," notes the filmmaker, who also serves as president of Meretz USA.)

In 2002, she began filming Israeli and Palestinian women involved in peace advocacy and tried to combine their narratives with the story of Sarah and Hagar. In the end, the biblical story plays only a cameo role in "Can You Hear Me?". Instead, the two main characters are Leah Shakdiel, an Orthodox Jew from Yeruham, and Maha Abu-Dayyeh, a Christian Arab from Beit Hanina.

The emotional climax of the film comes during a visit by Shakdiel to Abu-Dayyeh's home. When the discussion turns to Zionism and the Palestinian right of return, the two peace activists find themselves unable to communicate. A tearful Shakdiel accuses Abu-Dayyeh of demagoguery. Abu-Dayyeh shakes her head, a stony expression on her face.

The narrator of the film, Hollywood star Debra Winger, concludes that "the meeting turned out to be a microcosm of the conflict. Both want something from the other that they can't or won't give." The narrator offers some consolation: "Though Leah and Maha argue, they don't pick up guns."

The film also introduces viewers to a number of women's peace organizations and activists. One of the most striking personalities is Abu-Dayyeh's mother, Wedad. The silver-haired grandmother (who reminds Rivlin of her aunts in Jerusalem), remains charming while delivering a dire prognosis: "I don't remember anything as bad as it is now. It will be a massacre, I tell you, for both sides."

What if women were in decision-making roles regarding war and peace? Israeli peace activist Alona Barkat has a simple answer: "If women ruled the world, we wouldn't have wars."

Rivlin is more equivocal: "I'm throwing out the question. I'm encouraging others to think about what it would be like if women were in decision-making positions."

Meanwhile, Rivlin's film concludes with another question: "The sons of Sarah and Hagar only come together for their father's funeral. Is it only death that can bring reconciliation?"

The other ‘fronts’ — Syria and Gaza

The following is excerpted from Gershon Baskin's column in the Jerusalem Times, Aug. 6. Baskin is co-CEO of IPCRI – the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information:

The Israeli public has ... not seen much of the tremendous destruction in Lebanon. My sense is that the Israeli media is a full partner in the military campaign and the level of self censorship by the media reached new heights. Perhaps that explains, at least in part, why more than 80% of the public has backed the government. From the Israeli side there is a clear reality of being under attack. The civilian population was never so attacked as it was in this war. More than half a million Israelis are displaced people, having to leave their homes and communities which are under Hezbollah rocket fire. More than 500 Israeli homes have been destroyed by those missiles and the civilian and military casualty rate is climbing by the day.

It is also interesting to note the high level of civilian casualties amongst Israel’s Arab population – some one-third of the civilian casualties have been Arabs, and there is great concern that very few of those citizens blame Hezbollah and Nasrallah for their bad fate....

... it would be wise for Israel to use the new opportunities for renewing the Israel-Syria track, but this is only possible if the United States decides to offer Syria an opportunity of being pulled away from Iranian influence. It has been said that there are signals from Damascus that Assad would like to move in this direction. Syria’s price to pay would be the sealing of its border to Iraq, the end of weapon shipments and financial flows to Hezbollah and the closing of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad offices in Damascus. In exchange, Syria would get the Golan Heights (which would be demilitarized and an international force would be stationed there) and massive western and US financial aid. This seems to be the right hour to move in that direction, but it depends first and foremost on US diplomatic finesse and political will, both of which seem to be in short supply.

The Palestinian front....

The war in Gaza, called Summer Rain, is continuing without anyone paying attention. Palestinians are being killed everyday and the southern part of Gaza is being destroyed by Israeli bombs and bulldozers. Gaza is completely out of the news. The kidnaped soldier in Gaza, Gilead Shalit, is believed to be alive, but there have been no signs of life from him since his abduction more than a month ago. There have been a lot of negotiations between the parties, mostly through the Egyptians, that include a mutual cease fire and a prisoner release, after Shalit is released. Israel has made it clear that there are no negotiations with the Hamas leadership in Gaza or Damascus and all contacts with the Palestinians are through Mahmoud Abbas. Israel has made it clear that any release of prisoners would be “given” to Abbas. Recent reports have spoken about some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners being considered for early release, including the minors and women prisoners number over 400. Israeli sources have stated that a large scale prisoner release was already in the works prior to the kidnaping of Shalit. The release was going to take place after the Olmert-Abbas summit that never took place. It is still completely unclear to me why that summit has not yet taken place. Olmert and his ministers still talk about the need to strengthen Abbas, but they seem to be doing nothing to work in that direction.

The November 2005 agreement on access and movement has largely not been implemented – something that would help to strengthen Abbas and the Palestinian economy as well as other steps that could help to rebuild an Israeli-Palestinian track through Abbas. The approval of the Palestinian conciliation document between the Palestinian factions empowers Abbas to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians with the approval and recognition of all of the factions....

Sounds & Emotions of War in Galilee

A short e-mail from Aaron who lives in Gesher Haziv in the north. Aaron describes how he copes with "anxiety." This is reality for people in the North. — Lilly Rivlin.
Gesher Haziv is across the road from my cousin Gila’s home in Kibbutz Kabri; both are next door to the hard-hit coastal resort town of Nahariya. In a phone conversation last week with Gila, she counted four rocket hits landing within her sight, as we spoke! Yesterday, I learned that her son has been called up for reserve duty. He, like his father before him, is a combat soldier. He was away from home when the call came; Gila refused to provide his cell number, delaying his service by one day. — R. Seliger

Yesterday was a trying day. Katyusha rockets at various intervals all day long. And sirens. Yes, contrary to what you may have thought, the first three weeks of this war had no sirens. We had loudspeakers from Nahariya and local. We also had an SMS system (95% are with cell phones). Army notifies us, we take to the horn while simultaneously sending about 600 SMS messages to those here and to the many who have migrated south. That’s also (SMS) how we notify about one or another happening that’s going on in an underground shelter: e.g., crafts and games for children, movies, visiting celebs and such.

As of the day before yesterday – sirens were connected to a national network. As soon as army technology spots a rocket lifting off in our direction, the siren goes off and we have some time (seconds) to get into a shelter or safe-room. Iris and I scamper (no panic) into our three by three square meter bedroom, hear the explosions in the area, wait a while and then leave to once again hear the constant rumble of big guns far and near.

Just as yesterday, today was also a trying day. Probably tomorrow the same. But tomorrow we won’t be here; [we’ll be] away for the week-end. (This sounds so peaceful and suburban). We’re off to visit children and grandchildren spread around Kfar Yedidya, Tel-Aviv and Kibbutz Givat-Brenner. Friday I’ll spend some time in Saálem, that Palestinian town near Shekhem [Nablus] where I help the farmers avoid harassment by Jewish criminal fundamentalists who set their eyes on Saalem’s lands. From there I’m off to meet Iris and see the family.

We need the week-end vacation. Three weeks of “here” and probably more to come. It’s tiring, at times exhausting, and allows for creeping anxiety.

Here and there over the years we meet up with it. Here’s what I’ve found: Anxiety is a state of mind that starts somewhere deep in the stomach, swells up through the lungs, chokes up the esophagus, dizzies the brain and stumbles back down to the stomach in a nauseating never-ending loop. Getting out of it takes concentration and the ability to relax. It means recognizing what’s happening and grasping hold of our primitive ability to control mind over body. Well, lately we’ve gotten some more practice.

All in all, we and our friends in Gesher Haziv, who haven’t (yet?) migrated southward are fine, and our little town has been luckier than others around us.

Across the border things are not [going] so well — mainly for civilian life and also for the hopes of changing the situation we’re in. Sometimes I see a faint light at the end of the tunnel, but am unsure yet whether it’s daylight or the headlights of an oncoming tank, or maybe just another lost person with a flashlight.

Obviously we’re sitting at the border of a global conflict between a Western open society and a fundamentalist Islamic “something-or-other.” Mel Gibson was “almost” right: Before the West wakes up we’re right up front in THIS ONE, somewhat like we were in the last BIG ONE. But this time is different.... During some intermission I may bother you again by expanding on this. Meanwhile I’m getting up to expand on some midnight snack. — Aaron.

Avnery and Eliav disagree on war

Our colleague, Zel Lurie, wrote of his recent experience in Israel, during the current crisis, in his Aug. 1 column for the Jewish Journal of South Florida:

The war was up north in Haifa, Nahariya and Kiryat Shmona.... The war was also in the Israeli Arab city of Nazareth, where two children were killed by a Katyusha rocket, and also in Mughar, my favorite Arab village on a cliff overlooking the Sea of Galilee, where a teen-age girl was hit by a rocket.

About 60 percent of the 1.3 million Israeli Arab citizens live in Haifa and Northern Israel. They are almost all opposed to the war. About 20 percent of Israel’s 5.5 million Jews live in Haifa and Northern Israel. The vast majority support the Israel Army’s attempt to wipe out Hezbollah’s stock of over 10,000 missiles.

All together over 1.5 million Jews and Arabs from Haifa and the Galilee have fled to relatives and hotels in the south or have been living in dank shelters used only for storage for decades.

I spent two weeks in the safety of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv areas where most Israeli Jews live.... I found peace and tranquility in the guest house of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, the “Oasis of Peace” where about 200 Jews and Arabs live together. On the lawn beside the pool, Jewish and Arab mothers watched their children playing together....

A couple of carloads of adult residents of the village went down to Tel Aviv one evening to join 5,000 protesters against the war. They heard Uri Avnery, the 80-year-old peacenik... accusing the Israel Government of repeating the unprovoked assault on Lebanon in 1982. Ehud Olmert, Avnery declared, was repeating the plan of his mentor, Ariel Sharon, to destroy the Muslims in Lebanon and set up a friendly Christian government. About 40 percent of the Lebanese are Christians.

Avnery’s conspiracy theory fails to take into account that this war was provoked by Hezbollah’s capturing two Israeli soldiers [and killing eight] and demanding a ransom of hundreds of Arab prisoners being held by Israel.

Olmert refused to play by the rules. Instead of negotiating the number of prisoners to be released as Sharon had done before him, Olmert ordered a massive attack on Hezbollah and its lines of reinforcement, including trucks from Syria and cargoes by air to the Beirut airport and by sea to Lebanese ports....

In contrast to Avnery, Lova [Arie] Eliav, the 84-year-old veteran peacenik, finds this war similar to the 1947-48 War of Independence.

In my last day in Israel, I spent a pleasant hour with Lova drinking tea and eating Tanya Eliav’s famous tiny apple pancakes. Lova Eliav lost his position as [general secretary of the Labor party] some thirty years ago for daring to talk about peace with an aide to Yassir Arafat, Issam Sartawi. (I have founded the “Eliav-Sartrawi Pioneers of Peace” Journalism Prizes which are awarded annually by Search for Common Ground.)

Eliav told me that like Israel’s fight for freedom in 1947-48, this was a war that was forced on Israel. The rockets aimed at Israel had to be eliminated (in accordance with the UN resolution) if the Jews and Arabs in the Galilee and Haifa are to continue to live in peace.

Eliav had a message for the powers that are discussing a NATO force to patrol the Lebanese-Israel border similar to the NATO force in Kosovo. “It is imperative,” said Lova, “that this force include Arab elements, primarily from the well-trained Bedouin army of Jordan and from Egypt. Moroccans and Tunisians might also be added. Only Arabs can keep Hezbollah disarmed.”

I only hope that Lova’s vision of Arab armies controlling Hezbollah will have a better fate than his talks with Sartawi for peace with the Palestinians [Sartawi was assassinated by another Palestinian].

Israel’s Fear of Showing Weakness

Paul Scham is an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute and formerly a Research Associate at the Truman Institute for Peace of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is co-editor of “Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue.”

Anyone familiar with Israeli foreign and defense policy will frequently have heard the justification: “We had to --- [fill in the blank]. Otherwise we would have appeared weak”. Certainly, this is a significant rationalization for the current campaign in Lebanon. It is repeated by everyone from the person in the street to top policymakers.

The argument is not without justification. Israel is a small country that cannot afford to lose territory, let alone a war. If its many enemies get the idea that it is weak and can be pushed around, its strategic position can quickly erode.

This is combined with an oft-repeated analysis of the “Arab character” or "Arab mentality," on which Israelis usually consider themselves experts. It is claimed, “Arabs only respect force.” Parenthetically, it is remarkable how often I hear the identical phrase from Arabs in speaking of Israel, who are astonished to learn that it is an Israeli mantra as well.

While one can find some traces of this policy in the raids and tactics emanating from the iconic British commando officer, Orde Wingate, who fought the Palestinian revolt in the 1930s, the strategy first became entrenched in the retaliatory raids against targets in Jordan and Gaza in the 1950s. The policy was particularly connected with a young officer named Ariel Sharon, who was both the despair and delight of David Ben-Gurion for going beyond his orders, often resulting in the killing of munerous Palestinians, most notably at Kibiya in 1953. In fact, the 1956 Sinai campaign was originally intended as a mega-retaliation for fedayeen attacks from Gaza.

It is still debatable how effective these tactics were. After the Sinai campaign, the border with Gaza was far quieter. But historian Avi Shlaim makes the argument that these raids were instrumental in convincing Egyptian President Nasser that it was impossible to make peace with Israel.

The logic behind retaliation is two-fold. First, it stems from the fear of showing weakness. This argument was far stronger in the early 1950s, when the Israeli victory in 1948 was seen as an aberration by many Arabs, the idea of Israel as a regional superpower was inconceivable, and the Arab world eagerly proclaimed its desire for a “second round” against Israel, to finish it off.

The second justification is the belief that if enough pain is inflicted on a society, its people will pressure their government to force those doing the raids to cease their provocations. Again, this fit the situation in the 1950s, when raids were carried out by Palestinian fedayeen groups, and eventually both King Hussein of Jordan and President Nasser found it in their interest to stop them.

Fast forward to the last few years. Israel is now generally recognized as the regional superpower, far stronger, qualitatively, than any combination of its potential enemies, and resting on a solid economic and political base. As everyone knows, it also possesses a nuclear capability, though it has chosen not to announce this formally. It also has the strong support of the United States, and a fair amount of Arab and Muslim opinion sees the tail as wagging the dog, i.e., Israeli policy controlling American actions, not vice-versa. While I do not accept that analysis, perceptions do matter in policy formulation.

Equally important, there is little evidence that the Arab world, whether on the “street,” among terrorist groups, or in the palaces of its rulers, considers Israel weak. Of course, every once in a while there is jubilation at a weak point being penetrated, as in the two separate abductions of Israeli soldiers in June and July. But this is a tribute to strength, that even pinpricks are cause for celebration. Rather, a general perception, and not only among Arabs, is that Israel is a bully, considering Jewish life sacred and Arab life inconsequential. There is no indication that any significant faction or leader considers Israel suffering from weakness.

Realization of this perception has significant implications for Israeli policy. First, Israel does not have to keep “proving” itself. That does not mean it can, or should, ignore provocations. But an enormous burden is lifted if it is recognized by Israeli citizens and leaders alike that Israel is not seen as weak.

Second, it calls into question the basic assumption that “Arabs only respect force.” Of course, Israel’s force is respected, even if hated. But once the fact of Israeli power has been established (and that has been an irrefutable since at least the Six Day War of 1967), then the question arises: how to use the perception of that force in a manner that avoids using it, when possible? Israel has not been very successful in this regard.

It is now clear that most of the Arab regimes are sick and tired of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and seriously worried about its ongoing consequences. Egypt and Jordan have long since made their peace with Israel’s existence. Saudi Arabia has also done so tacitly, but the Lebanon crisis, to the astonishment of many, caused the Saudi regime, always ultra-careful not to criticize other Arabs publicly in almost any context, to strongly criticize Hezbollah. This is unprecedented, and is only the most recent evidence that most Arab regimes realize the danger that the new Islamism poses to their survival, and that continuation of the conflict only strengthens the radical Islamists.

Moreover, it is also clear, with the ubiquitous image of dead children and fleeing refugees broadcast everywhere, that attacks usually strengthen resolve, rather than weakening it. This is certainly true in Israel, where the fractious population is unusually united thanks to Hezbollah’s rockets. It is equally true in Lebanon, where the significant majority that opposes Hezbollah and were fairly neutral about Israel, now hates it.

The regional effect of Israel’s actions is to inflame huge numbers of Arabs and Muslims and to destabilize precisely those regimes that have come to terms with Israel’s existence. Israelis dismiss the idea that, after the abduction of two soldiers, it could have built a coalition against Hezbollah. Even some who are uncomfortable with the current campaign claim “it would have shown weakness.” Yet building a coalition against aggressors, as President Bush’s father did so successfully in the first Gulf War, does not preclude the use of force, but rather makes it more acceptable if it must be used.

It is appropriate now that Israelis realize that the time to prove their strength is past. Now is the time to use it wisely to conserve it as much as possible.

Years ago, Abba Eban, who was more respected abroad than in his own country, urged Jews to “take yes for an answer.” This, of course, requires compromise. But compromises are best made from strength, which Israel now has. This is precisely the time to revisit some of the proposals from the recent past, most notably the Arab League initiative of 2002. This will enable Israel to build a coalition with Arab regimes against those who reject Israel’s existence, rather than rejecting those who have already come to terms with it.

We Must Never Be Silent

The following is excerpted from a piece published on July 27, by Jonathan Tasini, at Common Dreams.org. It turns out that Mr. Tasini, Senator Clinton’s Democratic primary opponent, has a deep family background in Israel, and argues passionately both against Israel’s current military campaign and for a secure future for Israel in a two-state solution. He has attempted to take on this issue in a nuanced way, in contrast to the stance of most American politicians. Even Ned Lamont, the dovish challenger to Sen. Lieberman in Connecticut, has voiced uncritical support for Israel in the current war. This is not meant as an endorsement of Mr. Tasini’s candidacy, nor even necessarily of his position on this issue, but only food for thought. – R. Seliger

.... while people view talking about Israel- Palestine as the 'third rail' of politics in New York, the
more I think about it, the more I realize that there are a growing number of people in the Jewish community who are willing to speak up, out of love for Israel, about the dreadful occupation and the never-ending violence that is spinning out of control, in large part because the United States-and politicians like Hillary Clinton, continue to blindly pursue a one-sided policy in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a policy that is causing more death and sorrow for
civilians on all sides of the conflict....

It's worth voters in New York knowing a little about where I come from on the issue of Israel-Palestine and the raging conflict engulfing the region today. I speak about Israel out
of love and pain....

My father was born in then-Palestine. He fought in the Haganah in the war of independence; my father's cousin, whose name I carry as a middle name, was killed in that war. I lived in Israel for seven years, during which I went through the 1973 war: a cousin of mine was killed in that war, leaving a young widow and two children, and his brother was wounded. My step-grandfather, an old man who was no threat to anyone, was killed by a Palestinian who took an axe to his head while he was sitting quietly on a park bench. Half my family still lives in Israel. I have seen enough bloodshed, tears, and parents burying their children to last many lifetimes.

For that reason, I believe passionately in a two-state solution, which includes a strong, independent, economically viable Palestinian state existing alongside a strong, independent, economically vibrant Israel. It is the only solution that will bring peace to the civilians who now live in fear of death raining down from above-either because of the missiles of Hezbollah or the bombs of Israeli aircraft.

So, here is what I said – and did not say – that has touched off this discussion and the press coverage (I certainly hope there is such interest when I release my economic program). I did
not say that Israel is a terrorist state. I did say – and have said for a long time – that Israel has committed acts that violate international standards and the Geneva conventions. In Israel, my statement that the military has committed acts that violate the Geneva convention and international standards and has also engaged in torture (or, as it is called, 'moderate pressure') would be a subject of debate but hardly considered novel or particularly radical. Among the many sources for the truth, beyond my personal experience, is the English/Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem. If you visit the organization's website, you will find condemnation of both Israeli and Palestinian violence against civilians of each side.

Here is what B'Tselem says about the current escalation:
“…the organization reiterates that international humanitarian law (IHL) obligates all parties taking part in hostilities to refrain from launching attacks against civilians or against civilian objects. IHL requires that the combating sides direct their attacks only against specific military objectives, take cautionary measures to prevent injury to civilians, and refrain from disproportionate attacks, i.e. attacks directed against legitimate targets, but that are likely to cause excessive harm to civilians. Furthermore, IHL clearly forbids the intimidation and terrorising of civilians, as well as collective punishment.

“Over the past week, Israel has killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians in its attacks against targets in Lebanon. There is a concern that at least some of them were disproportionate
attacks, which constitute war crimes. In addition, Israel has launched deliberate attacks against civilian infrastructure throughout Lebanon, such as bridges, the Beirut international airport , the electricity supply and fuel reservoirs. There is a concern that such attacks are intended to put pressure on the Lebanese Government and not to obtain a specific military advantage. If this is the case, these attacks constitute collective punishment and a grave violation of IHL. Moreover, even if these targets constitute legitimate military objects, or civilian objectives that may be used for military purposes, Israel must respect the principle of proportionality and refrain from attacks that would cause excessive harm to civilians.”

The problem is not the debate in Israel. The problem is the debate – or lack thereof – in the United States. We should not allow the power brokers in Washington, DC to silence the voices of people who love Israel but are willing to stand up and be critical of its policies.

Senator Clinton's spokesperson has called my comments 'beyond the pale.' With all due respect, it is Senator Clinton's behavior, lack of leadership, and failure to call for a respect for international law that should be questioned by the press, the Jewish community, and the voters of New York. At a time when the violence against people on both sides of the border has killed hundreds of innocent people (mostly Lebanese), Hillary Clinton has fanned the flames of the
conflict by recognizing and condemning the violence only against Israelis and effectively encouraging military action.

I, too, have stated clearly, from the outset, that Hezbollah's actions violate international law. But, to ignore Israel's actions is abhorrent, weak, and cowardly....

Beilin's letter to friends of Meretz

Yossi Beilin outlines a Gaza/Palestine peace plan on BitterLemons.org, which you might wish to look at. The following is the latest, dated August 1, of a series of letters addressed by the Meretz-Yahad party chair to friends of Meretz around the world:

.... The eruption of two nearly-simultaneous crises-one in Gaza, the other in the north, has been a painful reminder that stability and calm can only be temporary in the absence of agreements, and that agreements are as necessary with Lebanon and Syria as they are with the Palestinians. Since, moreover, on both its northern and southern fronts, Israel has opted for unilateral withdrawals, the two crises thus touch upon a sensitive nerve in the Israeli political psyche-namely, the sense shared by many Israelis that we can achieve security single-handedly and in defiance of an agreement with our neighbors.

This is not to say that Israel was wrong, or had no just basis, to retaliate. The attacks against Israeli troops on June 25 (on the Gaza-Israel border) and on July 12 (on the Lebanese-Israeli border) were an aggressive act of unjustified provocation, and Israel had every right to retaliate. That said, I have to add that I am highly uncomfortable with the acts of retaliation that Israel chose to undertake. My discomfort has to do with my sense that Israel's military actions are unlikely to achieve Israel's stated objectives-in Gaza, the release of the abducted solider and the cessation of Qassam rocket fire on Israeli towns; in Lebanon, the release of the abducted soldiers and a military and (no less important) political crush of Hizbollah, if not its outright destruction.

In other words, justification does not amount to wisdom, and is certainly not a sufficient criterion for responsible policy. Israel had very right to retaliate, but that does not automatically mean that it should necessarily have opted to retaliate, or that the way it opted to retaliate was the only way to do so. Alas, several weeks into the fighting, the sense of achievement is limited, and the costs that civilians on all sides have paid are overwhelming.

What is needed right now, and urgently, is a cease-fire. The parameters for a sustainable cease-fire, on both fronts, are already more or less known. In Gaza, such a cease-fire would mean the release of the abducted soldier and the cessation of rocket fire on Israel, the cessation of Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip (including targeted killing), the release of the Hamas legislators and ministers recently arrested by Israel as well as of a certain number of Palestinian prisoners. As for Lebanon, the U.S. Secretary of State began to outline a feasible plan, whose basic features would include the cessation of all hostilities, the release of the abducted Israeli soldiers, the deployment of an international force in southern Lebanon and along the border with Israel, and the removal of Hizbollah militants north, if not their disarmament or integration into the Lebanese Army.

This is perhaps not the time and place to outline what Israel should have done differently. The fighting continues, and as a member of the Israeli parliament and leader of the only leftist Zionist party outside the government, I must reiterate that I share Israel's goals, even if I am skeptical about it has chosen to achieve them. To the Israeli government's goals, however, I would also like to add my own: a comprehensive political agreement with the Palestinians, and comprehensive political agreements with both Syria and Lebanon. Until we achieve these, our accomplishments will be limited in scope and temporary in nature.

One final note: in the kind of globalized world we live in, the effects of these recent crises, especially the one in Lebanon, are felt by people far away from Israel. For that reason, I feel that we in Israel cannot turn a blind eye to the risks that our actions carry for Jewish communities worldwide. The tragic incident in Seattle a few days ago sent shivers to all those who remember (and who can forget?) the bombing of the AMIA (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) building in Buenos Aires in July 1994. Such attacks are a powerful reminder of the shared fate of Jewish people everywhere, and the awesome responsibility that political leaders carry in dealing even with seemingly local conflicts.

Yours as always, Yossi Beilin

Israel Endorses International Force

As Robert Rosenberg notes in his “Today” column, August 1, Hezbollah threatens to attack such an intervention force, but nevertheless:

The international force under discussion is the first that Israel has ever asked for. Indeed, traditionally, Israel has never trusted international forces, except the American-backed multinational force in Sinai, there by virtue of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. True, the UNTSO forces on the Golan Heights have never given Israel a reason for anger -- and have even facilitated some interesting cross-border communications over the years.

But UNIFIL, the blue-helmeted troops in south Lebanon since the late 1970s, after the [1978] Litani Operation, an essentially unsuccessful Israeli ground invasion meant to push PLO guerillas out of south Lebanon's 'Fatahland' have been a symbol not only of UN ineffectiveness, but indeed of its complicity with Israeli enemies. The UNIFIL troops were the kind of watchdogs that watch as the robbers come and go – they carry small arms, but have never been known to draw their weapons and often provided shelter-by-proximity to anti-Israeli forces operating in south Lebanon. Indeed, the deaths of four UNIFIL troops during the current campaign was explained by Israel by pointing out that the Hizbollah had a major encampment right next door to the albeit well-marked UN positions hit by Israel Air Force missiles.

But for the first time, Israel is actually asking for an international force, for the first time, ready to put at least some of its defense in the hands of strangers. Except the Israeli demands for the force, which U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls a 'stabilization' force, go way beyond blue-helmeted 'peacekeepers.' The international force envisioned by Israel – and perhaps the Lebanese government, which knows it needs help if it still wants to disarm Hizbollah..., includes at least 10,000 battle-ready troops, led by a Western power, to be deployed not only on the Lebanese-Israeli border, but also on the Lebanese-Syrian border, to prevent arms deliveries to Hizbollah. Indeed, it's impossible not to wonder if the Israeli enthusiasm for an international force might end up being one of the reasons for knee-jerk Arab rejection of the force.

Israel: We’re sorry but not apologizing

Robert Rosenberg’s July 31 “Today” column (entitled, “Green Light to Yellow”) recalls that Qana (or Kana) is the same village where 120 Lebanese were killed by Israeli artillery ten years ago – an incident which forced then Prime Minister Peres to end his “Grapes of Wrath” campaign against Hezbollah and prompted Israeli Arabs to boycott the polls in large numbers, probably leading to the election of Benjamin Netanyahu:

There was something familiar in the Israeli rhetoric yesterday and this morning in the press.... it was the same 'we're sorry but not apologizing' that was heard after an explosion on a Gaza beach that had been targeted by Israeli warplanes killed seven members of a Gazan family, earlier this summer.

Israel's basic argument when charged with causing civilian deaths in its combat against guerrilla and terrorist groups, is that when Israeli fire harms civilians, it is by accident, or because the terrorists hide behind the civilians, while the terrorists deliberately target Israeli civilians.
The IDF had plenty of footage yesterday showing Katyusha-launcher mounted pickup trucks in Qana firing rockets into Israel and then being driven into residential areas, hiding inside garages. According to Peretz, whenever possible, Israeli intelligence calls the civilian residents of such buildings, to warn the non-combatants to get out of the building, 'two hours in advance.'

Indeed, south Lebanon villages and towns were covered with leaflets over the last two weeks, warning people to get out of the area. But Israel had bombed roads leading in and out of south Lebanon, trying to prevent Hezbollah from smuggling the kidnapped soldiers out of south Lebanon.

And just as tens of thousands of people in northern Israel are unable to get out of the area that is being targeted by Hezbollah rockets because they cannot afford to go anywhere else, there might be tens of thousands of south Lebanese trapped in the area....

Defeating a guerrilla group requires a political adroitness that neither Israel nor the Americans have successfully demonstrated in the last few years. For example, Israel could easily have cornered Syria, Lebanon and Hizbollah by simply announcing its plan to withdraw from the Shaba Farms area, captured from Syria in the 1967 war, but laid claim to by Hezbollah – and lately Lebanon – as Lebanese.

True, the area has some strategic importance but of no less strategic importance is neutralizing Hezbollah's claims to Shaba, or at the very least pitting Hezbollah against Syria by forcing Syria to accept responsibility for Shaba.