Mistakes Were Made

A former Israeli general says mistakes were made.

Israel should seek to deal with Iran and Syria, "Hizbullah's parents," instead of chasing "the child who's throwing stones," a former Israel Defense Forces general said on Friday.

Speaking at a conference about the war in Lebanon entitled Thoughts after the War, former head of military intelligence Uri Saguy criticized the lack of a broader vision among Israeli leaders in handling the war and said that failures in the army's organizational and operational capacities need to be addressed urgently.

This is exactly the broad vision I expected when I wrote:Tactics, Strategy, Grand Strategy and Syria Has a Problem and Tactical Moves

He particularly slammed the government's orders to the army to capture the territory south of the Litani River 48 hours ahead of the ceasefire as useless and costly in terms of the heavy casualties sustained by the forces.

Not useless at all. It forced the UN to commit to policing all of Southern Lebanon rather than just a few km from the border. A moral victory if not an actual one. It also showed the Arabs that the Israeli army could still, after 20 years of rust, execute a time limited dash. That has deterrant value. Badly lead, poorly equipped, barely supported logistically the Israeli Army could still do the Patton thing. Think of how much better they will be as they get their problems fixed.

He also linked the IDF's deficiencies to the fact that it for the last six years it has been "busy with other things," namely the fight against Palestinian terror groups in Gaza and the West Bank.

Asked about the conflict with the Palestinians, he said a solution is possible through talks, citing that the conflict is "territorial and not cultural."

I think he is mistaken. At this time there is no territorial solution that will satisfy the Palestinians. Here is the problem:

Hizbollah and Hamas have constructed core ideologies based upon this Islamic theology of Jew hatred, which one can glean readily from their foundational documents, and subsequent pronouncements, made ad nauseum. Hamas further demonstrates openly its adherence to a central motif of Jew-hatred in Muslim eschatology—Article 7 of the Hamas Charter concludes with a verbatim reiteration of the apocalyptic hadith alluded to earlier:

“The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: `Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him’; but the tree Gharkad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985).

Apocalyptic Muslim Jew-hatred.

This is cultural all the way. Those who espouse this culture must either change their minds or be destroyed.

What Israel did was an opening gambit in the war, not a full fledged battle. More like a punitive expedition or a reconnaissance in force. I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that the Israeli public goaded Olmert into more of a war than he needed or desired to meet his politico-military objectives. This is always the great problem in democracies. They will bear a lot. However, once they feel the peace is broken, nothing but unconditional surrender of the enemy will do.

I looked at what Israeli objectives might have been given what they actually did at: The Bitter Taste of Victory and Deception and Intel Bonanza and Jabbing and Cash Flow Jihad Meets Aftermath.