Olmert
Agonistes
By Uri Avnery
02 September, 2006
Gush Shalom
Ehud
Olmert has found a convincing proof of his great victory over Hassan
Nasrallah: "I am touring the country freely while Nasrallah is
hiding in his bunker!"
It is said that "the
style is the man," and by these words Olmert shows his quality
(or lack thereof). At the moment, dozens of Israeli airplanes and helicopter
gunships are standing by, ready to kill Nasrallah if he as much as shows
himself. Nasrallah does not have a single airplane or helicopter to
kill Olmert. The vast material superiority of the Israeli army over
a guerilla organization is no achievement of Olmert - but Hizbullah's
ability to survive the massive onslaught of our army is certainly the
achievement of Nasrallah.
And, by the way, why would
Nasrallah want to kill Olmert? After all, why should he mind Israel
being led by a failed politician, whose incompetence has been proved
and who most Israelis say should go?
A cynic might say: Nasrallah
wants Olmert to stay, and that's why he hurried to help him out. When
everyone in Israel believed that Olmert had failed miserably, Nasrallah
said, this week, in an interview: "If I had known that Israel would
react as it did, I would not have captured the two soldiers."
As could be expected, Olmert's
men pounced on this sentence. Look: Nasrallah is apologizing! That proves
that he has been beaten! So Olmert won after all!
* * *
BUT MOST Israelis do not
buy this spin. They still believe that we did not win the war, that
the deterrent power of the Israeli army has been hurt, that the Lebanese
army and the International Force that will be employed along the border
will not do our job for us after our own army failed to do it.
So what to do when the public
believes that it is being led by a group of political and military failures?
That is the great question
that is now occupying the entire nation. A few dozen reserve soldiers
and civilians demonstrate opposite the Prime Minister's office, others
sit at home and gripe. They know that Olmert, Peretz and Halutz must
be removed. But how can this be done?
The obvious answer is to
get out into the street and demonstrate. If hundreds of thousands filled
the squares, perhaps Olmert would resign, as Golda Meir did in her day.
However, Olmert is no Golda, and even Golda clung to office for half
a year after her dismal failures of the Yom Kippur War. And where are
the hundreds of thousands?
Another possibility is to
appoint a State Inquiry Commission, which could dismiss the trio. That's
good, that's even very good, but that's difficult. According to the
law, only the government can decide to set up such a commission, and
only the government can decide on the commission's terms of reference.
Only after such a decision is made, does the matter pass into the hands
of the President of the Supreme Court, who then decides upon the composition
of the commission.
Such an inquiry demands,
of course, time. Before it can accuse anyone of failure, it must warn
them, allow them to be represented by lawyers, to cross-examine witnesses
and provide documents, and that's a slow process. In the meantime, the
incompetents will continue to rule and perhaps even start another war,
in order to make us forget the last one. Even if the commission were
to publish an interim report, that would take half a year at least.
But Olmert & Co. are
not prepared to risk even that. That's why they appointed two inquiry
committees this week that are not State Inquiry Commissions, allowing
them to decide their membership themselves. No inquiry committee demands
the dismissal of the people who appointed them.
* * *
WHAT OTHER way is there to get rid of this trio?
The simplest thing is to
have new elections. But that is not as easy as it sounds. Only the Knesset
can decide to do that. Meaning, the Knesset Members must decide to dismiss
themselves. Fat chance.
Moreover, as things look
now, if elections were to take place in the present situation, the Right
would win big. The voice of the peace camp was completely silenced during
the war, and now, too, it has no exposure in the media. As a result,
the criticism of the war that is being heard comes almost entirely from
the Right. The public is not asking: Why did we start this war? It asks:
Why did we not win? And it answers: The corrupt politicians did not
allow the army to win. A new government is needed, a rightist and patriotic
one, in order to rehabilitate the army and start another war to finish
the job.
The setting up of a new government
without elections, in the present Knesset, would lead to the same result,
because the only alternative to the current setup is a coalition that
would include the Likud and at least one of the two fascist parties.
No good.
Another possibility: to leave
the present coalition in office but to replace Olmert and Peretz. How?
By a revolt in Kadima that would replace Olmert and a revolt in Labor
to replace Peretz. In Labor there is indeed such a possibility. But
who would revolt in Kadima, a fictitious grouping that has no party
institutions at all?
To resume: there are in theory
several options - all of them bad. This fact splits the "protest
camp". Some protesters demand a State Inquiry Commission, whatever
the cost. Others want the Gang of Three - Olmert, Peretz and Halutz
- to resign without any inquiry. What the two groups have in common
is that they are supported by the extreme Right, and especially the
settlers, who declare, according to the best tradition of the inventors
of the "stab-in-the-back" legend in Germany after World War
I: "The treasonous politicians have stabbed the victorious army
in the back!"
By the way, the total number
of demonstrators is very much smaller than the thousands that the peace
camp mobilized in the middle of the war to protest against it.
* * *
SO WHAT will happen? One
can only answer with the saying: The art of prophecy is difficult, especially
with respect to the future.
It is impossible at this
moment to know what is going to happen in the near future. But it is
worthwhile to think about the impact of the war on public opinion in
the longer run.
When Samson the Hero saw
a swarm of bees making honey in the carcass of a lion he ramarked: "Out
of the strong came forth sweetness." (Judges 14). (That's the same
Samson who was abducted by the Philistines and became the first suicide
bomber in the history of this country.) Can this phrase become true
this time too? Can something good come out of this horrible war?
Perhaps. True, for the time
being the result of this war in Israel has only been feelings of anger,
frustration, insult and humiliation: Why couldn't we overcome a small
"terror organization"? Our political leaders have proved to
be foolish, our military leaders incompetent. Things must be put in
order.
But I believe that gradually
a new conviction will form in the public mind: that this war marks the
end of the days of easy victories. That from now on, in any new war
our rear will be exposed. That our army is not almighty, as we were
led to believe. And mainly: that the war did not solve anything, that
perhaps the solution is not military and we would do better talking
with our neighbors.
True, it is not easy to arrive
at such a conclusion, which demands an emotional and ideological revolution.
That will take time. But one need not be a university professor to get
there. Simple common sense is enough, as well as the experience that
has accumulated during the last decades. Many people, including those
usually described as "the common people", have both, thank
God.
Those who complain that the
Second Lebanon War was stopped before it was finished, should note the
success of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.