The
Junkies Of War
By Uri Avnery
08 August, 2006
Gush Shalom
Tel Aviv.
For me it was a moment of
shocking revelation.
I was listening to one of
the daily speeches of our Prime Minister. He said: "We are a wonderful
people!" He said: We have already won this war, it is the greatest
victory in the history of our state. He said: We have changed the face
of the Middle East. And more to that effect.
Well, I told myself, that's
Olmert.
I have known him since he
was 20-something. At that time, I was a member of the Knesset, and Olmert
was the book-carrier (literally) of another member. Since then I have
followed his career. He has never been anything but a party functionary,
a small-time politician special[ty] in manipulations, a run-of-the-mill
demagogue. On the way [he] changed parties several times and served
as a mayor with a grade of D minus, until he climbed on the bandwagon
of Ariel Sharon. More or less by accident he was given the empty title
of "Deputy Prime Minister", and when Sharon suffered his stroke,
something happened that took Olmert too by surprise: he became Prime
Minister.
Throughout his career he
has remained a complete cynic, basically a right-winger but willing
to pretend to be a liberal when faced with leftists.
So, I told myself, this is
just another cynical speech. But suddenly a ghastly thought struck me:
No, the man believes what he is saying!
Hard as it is to imagine,
it seems that Olmert really believes that this is a successful war.
That he is winning. That he has radically changed Israel's situation.
That he is building a New Middle East. That he is a historic leader,
far superior to Ariel Sharon (who, after all, was beaten in Lebanon
and who allowed Hizbullah to build up its arsenal of rockets). That
the longer he is allowed to go on with the war, the more his stature
in history will grow.
Ehud Olmert has obviously
cut himself off from reality. He lives in a bubble all by himself. His
speeches show that he has a very real problem.
Of all the dangers facing
Israel now, this is the most severe. Because this man is deciding, quite
simply, the fate of millions: who will die, who will become a refugee,
whose world will be shattered.
* * *
BUT OLMERT'S problem with
megalomania is nothing compared to what has happened to Amir Peretz.
Exactly nine months ago,
after his election as Labor Party chairman, Peretz made a speech in
Tel-Aviv's Rabin Square in which he revealed his dream: that in the
no-man's land between Israel and the Gaza Strip a football field will
be built, and a match between the Israeli children of Sderot and the
Palestinian children of nearby Bet-Hanoun will take place. An Israeli
Martin Luther King.
Nine month's later, a monster
has been born to us.
In the Knesset election campaign,
Peretz appeared as a social revolutionary. He announced that he would
change the face of Israeli society, set new national priorities, cut
billions from the military budget and transfer them to education, welfare
and measure to reduce the glaring gap between rich and poor. As a veteran
peace-lover, he would, of course, achieve peace with the Palestinians
and the entire Arab world.
This won him the votes of
many citizens, including many who would normally never consider voting
for the Labor Party.
What followed is history.
He seduced himself, when Olmert offered him the Ministry of Defense.
That was still Olmert the cynic. He knew, as we all did, that Peretz
was walking into a trap, that as a rank civilian without serious military
experience he would be easy prey for the generals. But Peretz did not
shrink back. The supreme aim of his life is to become Prime Minister,
and in order to become a credible candidate he believed that he must
present himself as a security expert.
Since then, Peretz has become
a rabid warmonger. Not only does he endorse all the demands of the generals,
not only does he act as their spokesman - he has also helped to push
Israel into war, and since then he has been demanding that it should
continue, enlarge, widen, kill more, destroy more, occupy more. He himself
declared, "Nasrallah will never forget the name Amir Peretz!"
- like a spoilt child inscribing his name on a tourist attraction.
At the moment, he is trying
to be more extreme even than Olmert. While the Prime Minister is afraid
of continuing to advance, fearing that too many casualties from the
rockets and the battle on the ground might cloud the brilliance of his
victory, Peretz wants to reach the Litani River, whatever the cost.
There's no other way - if one wants to become Prime Minister, one has
to walk over dead bodies.
Thus a monster has been born
to us. Rosemary's Baby.
* * *
TODAY, THE 25th day of the
war, we can draw up an interim balance. What were the aims? What are
the results?
"To destroy Hizbullah".
Who would have believed it,
but on the 25th day Hizbullah is still standing and fighting. A few
thousand fighters against the fifth strongest army in the world. Nobody
speaks anymore about eliminating it. Not Olmert, not Peretz, not even
Dan Halutz - the third corner of this unholy triangle.
"To weaken Hizbullah".
That is a watered down version
of the first aim. It is more convenient, because it cannot be measured.
After all, in any war both sides are weakened. People are killed and
wounded, arms are destroyed, installations demolished. But while the
Israeli army can mobilize another division and another one, and the
Americans are rushing more bombs to us, can Hizbullah absorb such losses?
Nobody knows how many fighters
the organization has lost. The Israeli army distributes estimates, without
being able to prove them. The Lebanese speak about far smaller numbers,
and do not have any proof either.
But that is not the main
thing. An organization like Hizbullah has no problem in raising more
and more volunteers for "holy war". Be their losses as they
may, after the war the organization will train as many new fighters
as necessary. Their arsenals will also be replenished with new weapons
arriving from Iran and Syria. The border is long, it is impossible to
seal it.
"To push Hizbullah away
from the border".
That is the crumpled aim,
after the two preceding ones were shown to be unattainable. It, too,
has not been realized yet, and never will be, because it is also unattainable.
Most Hizbullah fighters are local boys of the South Lebanese towns and
villages. They will continue to be there, overtly or covertly. No international
force can prevent that, and certainly not the Lebanese Army.
The rockets can be moved
further away. How many kilometers? Ten? Twenty? That will not remove
the threat from Nahariya, Haifa and Tel-Aviv - especially since the
range of the missiles is bound to grow with time, when technologically
more advanced types arrive.
"To kill Hassan Nasrallah".
For the time being, so it
seems, the report of his death was an exaggeration, to quote Mark Twain.
True, in a kind of parody of the Entebbe exploit, Nasrallah was pulled
out of a hospital in Baalbek, but it was another Hassan Nasrallah. Oops.
In the meantime, the original
Nasrallah is flourishing. Compared to the kitschy speeches of Olmert,
with their endless clich?s and the fist thumping on the table, the Hizbullah
leader comes over as a sober speaker, measured and mostly quite credible.
"To return to the Israeli
army the power of deterrence".
Nobody has any doubt that
the Israeli army is a good, professional army, capable of defeating
regular armies. But this war proves that it is not capable of achieving
a military decision against an able guerilla organization with determined
fighters. If Hizbullah is alive and kicking after 25 days, the deterrence
power of the Israeli army has been weakened - whatever happens from
now on.
From this point of view,
the war has harmed the security of Israel. It has proved that the Israeli
rear is exposed, that the Hizbullah fighters are not inferior to the
Israeli soldiers, that there is no de-luxe war, that the Air Force cannot
win without land forces. Not even in ideal circumstances, when the other
side has no anti-air defense to speak of.
Some comfort themselves with
the thought that "the Arabs have seen that we are crazy".
We react to a small local provocation with an orgy of killing and destruction,
destroying whole countries, a sort of national amok. But running amok
is not a policy. It does not solve any problem. It is an uncontrollable
reflex. It does not allow for straight thinking. It even allows the
other side to manipulate us with premeditated provocations.
"Deploying an International
Force along the border".
That is a kind of emergency
exit, after all the other aims have gone up in smoke.
At the beginning of the war,
Olmert himself strenuously objected to such a force, because it would
restrict the freedom of action of the Israeli army. Clearly, no international
force will dare to come, unless there is a cease-fire in place and an
agreement with Hizbullah has been reached. Nobody wants to be exposed
to cross-fire. Therefore, this force will also have to serve Hizbullah's
interests, for fear of a guerilla war starting against it. Have all
the sacrifices been made for this?
""We shall create
a new situation in the Middle East".
This aim has indeed been
achieved - but not the way Olmert told himself (and us).
The long-range results of
the war are not immediately obvious. They belong to the category defined
by Bismarck as "imponderables" - things that cannot be measured.
Every day on their TV screens
tens of millions of Arabs and hundred of millions of Muslims see the
atrocious pictures of crushed babies, the sights of the horrible destruction.
These are deeply imprinted in the consciousness of the masses and will
leave behind them an accumulation of anger and hatred that is far more
dangerous than an arsenal of missiles. In these 25 days, thousands of
new suicide bombers have been created. And as the stature of Nasrallah
as the hero of the Arab world increases, so the respect for the "moderate"
Arab regimes hit new lows - the very regimes that the US and Israel
rely on for creating the New Middle East.
* * *
AFTER THE 25th day, the 26th
will arrive, and so on and on. President Bush, who pushed us into this
war to start with, is now pushing us to fight on ("Until the last
Israeli soldier," as the saying goes.) Like Olmert, he lives in
an imaginary world.
Bush, Olmert and their like
can incite and draw the masses behind them, until the call of "the
Emperor is naked" finds receptive ears.
One of the most sickening
sights of the war is the picture of the international diplomats doing
everything they can to enable Olmert & Co. to go on with the war.
The UN has long since become an agent of the White House. Hypocrisy
and sanctimoniousness are having a field day, while lives are being
destroyed and the dead buried on both sides of the border.
Olmert wants to "gain"
as many days as possible for continued fighting. What sort of gain is
this? We are conquering South Lebanon as flies conquer fly-paper. Generals
present maps with impressive arrows to show how Hizbullah is being pushed
north. That might be convincing - if we were talking about a front-line
in a war with a regular army, as taught in Staff College. But this is
a different war altogether. In the conquered area, Hizbullah people
remain, and our soldiers are exposed to attacks of the kind in which
Hizbullah has excelled from its first day.
So we shall get to the Litani
River. Beyond it, there is another river, and another one. Lebanon has
an abundance of rivers we can get to.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile
for these two junkies, Olmert and Peretz, to come down from their "high"
and study the map.
Uri Avnery
is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.