Israel’s Flight Under Fire from South Lebanon 20 Years On - by Prof. Efraim Karsh and Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

Israel’s May 2000 rushed evacuation of its security zone in south Lebanon and the desertion of its longstanding local allies there tarnished the Jewish State’s deterrent posture and helped spark a string of large-scale armed confrontations with Hezbollah (2006), the PLO (the so-called “al-Aqsa Intifada”), and Hamas (2008/9, 2012, 2014). The withdrawal transformed south Lebanon into an ineradicable terror entity that can harass northern Israel at will and expedited Hezbollah’s evolvement into a formidable military power armed with 150,000 rockets and missiles capable of reaching anywhere in Israel. It also dented the IDF’s fighting ethos and operational competence, as illustrated by its lukewarm performance during the Second Lebanon War (2006) and Operation Protective Edge (2014).

Prof. Efraim Karsh and Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,577..
22 May '20..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israels-south-lebanon-withdrawal/

In the dead of night on May 24, 2000, 18 years after invading Lebanon with the expressed goal of removing the longstanding terrorist threat to its northern towns and villages, Israel hurriedly vacated its self-proclaimed security zone in south Lebanon and redeployed on the other side of the border. With PM Ehud Barak authorizing the operation a day earlier to avoid its disruption by the Hezbollah terror organization, which had long harassed the Israeli forces in Lebanon, the evacuation was executed without a single casualty.

Yet the humiliation attending the IDF’s flight under Hezbollah fire, leaving behind heavy weapons and military equipment (some of which were promptly bombed by the Israeli air force to deny them to Hezbollah), as well as its abandonment of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), which had aided its counterterrorist operations for years and which collapsed upon the withdrawal with many of its fighters and their families seeking asylum in Israel, was not lost on outside observers. A prominent leftwing Israeli journalist, by no means hostile to the withdrawal, even compared “the scent of humiliation [that] permeated the air” to that attending the “last helicopter on the [US] embassy roof in Vietnam.”

Shattered deterrence

Keenly aware of these disturbing images, Barak quickly extolled the flight as a glowing success that in one fell swoop ended Israel’s “18-year Lebanese tragedy” and neutralized Hezbollah’s terrorist threat to the Galilee. “To fight against terrorism is like fighting mosquitoes,” he told Time Magazine:

You can chase them one by one, but it’s not very cost-effective. The more profound approach is to drain the swamp. So we are draining the swamp [by leaving Lebanon] … Once we are within Israel, defending ourselves from within our borders, the Lebanese government and the Syrian government are responsible to make sure that no one will dare hit Israeli civilians or armed forces within Israel. Any violation of this might become an act of war, and it will be treated accordingly. I don’t recommend to anyone to try us once we are inside Israel.

This buoyant prognosis couldn’t be further from the truth. Far from draining Hezbollah’s “terrorist marsh,” the withdrawal served to expand it to gargantuan proportions. Hezbollah exploited the demise of Israel’s security zone to transform south Lebanon into an ineradicable military stronghold crisscrossed with fortified defenses, both above ground and in a complex underground tunnel system, designed to serve as a springboard for terror attacks on Israeli territory, to shelter Hezbollah’s burgeoning rocket and missile arsenal (which quickly doubled after the withdrawal from 7,000 to 14,000), and to exact a high cost from attacking forces in the event of a general conflagration. Hence the IDF’s inconclusive ground operations in the Second Lebanon War (July 12-August 14, 2006), which hardly ventured more than a few miles from the border during the 34 days of fighting—in stark contrast to the 1982 invasion, which swiftly swept across this area and reached Beirut within five days. And hence the war’s relatively high human toll: 164 fatalities, or 70% of those killed in the security zone during the 15 years preceding the 2000 withdrawal.

Nor did Barak’s warning against any attempt “to try us once we are inside Israel” (or, for that matter, FM David Levy’s threat that “Lebanon will burn” in the event of terror attacks from its territory) make an impression on Hezbollah. With Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah famously deriding Israel as “weaker than a spider web,” the organization launched repeated attacks on targets in northern Israel at a rate of half-a-dozen per year. These began as early as October 7, 2000—a mere four months after the withdrawal—with the abduction of three IDF soldiers on a border patrol (who, it later transpired, were killed in the attack), culminating in the July 12, 2006 abduction of two more soldiers (who, too, were killed in the process) and the killing of another three in a cross-border raid that triggered the Second Lebanon War. During that war, Hezbollah fired some 4,000 rockets and missiles on Israeli towns and villages—the largest attack on the Jewish State’s population centers since the 1948 War of Independence—killing 45 civilians, inflicting massive destruction and economic damage, and driving thousands of Israelis to flee their homes to the southern parts of the country.

While the Israeli architects of the war, which was censured by an official commission of enquiry as “a great and grave blunder,” sought to portray it as a shining success that led to a prolonged period of calm, the conflagration did not deter Hezbollah from sporadic attacks on Israeli targets in subsequent years or from substantially expanding its military buildup in flagrant violation of Security Council Resolution 1701, which had ended the war. This included the expansion of its already substantial rocket/missile holdings to a monstrous 150,000-strong arsenal and the deployment of thousands of well-armed and battle-hardened fighters in south Lebanon on a constant state of alert to invade Israel en masse, either directly or via offensive underground tunnels penetrating Israeli territory (some of which were destroyed by the IDF in 2019).

Even the postwar relative lull has had less to do with the Lebanon War’s deterrent effect (though Nasrallah later admitted he would have foregone the soldiers’ abduction had he known it would lead to full-scale war) than with Hezbollah’s decade-long immersion in the Syrian civil war and the reluctance of its Iranian patron to unleash its protégé’s full might absent a direct Israeli attack on its nuclear weapons installations. Had PM Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak’s purported intention to launch such an attack in 2010-11 not been nipped in the bud by their security establishment and the Obama administration, an all-out Hezbollah-Israel war would likely have ensued. As it is, such a conflagration remains a distinct possibility, with Hezbollah’s security threat via both its rocket/missile arsenal, which can hit any part of the Jewish State, and ability to invade Israel and occupy Israeli localities infinitely greater than it was in May 2000.

Sparking the Palestinian war of terror

Defending his Lebanon decision 20 years later, Barak argued that the withdrawal improved Israel’s military position vis-à-vis the Palestinians since the IDF’s continued presence in Lebanon would have seriously constrained its ability to launch Operation Defensive Shield (April 2002), which curbed the Palestinian war of terror (euphemized as “the al-Aqsa Intifada”) that had begun a year-and-a-half earlier.

As with his claim that the Lebanon flight neutralized Hezbollah’s terrorist threat, this assertion is not only false but the inverse of the truth: had the humiliating Lebanon flight not occurred, the “al-Aqsa Intifada” might not have ensued in the first place, at least not on its unprecedented massive scale.

There are lessons from the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict - by Michael Rubin

...Are there lessons from the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict? Yes. First, the United Nations does not bring peace but only delays war. Its promises are empty. UN observers and peacekeepers are often less interested in keeping peace than in feeding at the international trough and sending remittances back home. To place trust in the United Nations or the attention span of European diplomats and even the State Department is foolish. Diplomacy empowers terrorists, it does not defeat them. Nor does it do any favors for peace.

Michael Rubin..
Commentary Magazine..
12 August '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/lessons-of-lebanon-hezbollah-10-years-on/

This Sunday marks the ten-year anniversary of the end of the 34-day Israel-Hezbollah War in Lebanon. The war began when Hezbollah crossed into Israeli territory from southern Lebanon, killed three soldiers, injured two others, and kidnapped two more. While Lebanon professed its innocence, it had made a conscience choice to allow Hezbollah to assert its primacy along its southern border following Israeli’s UN-certified withdrawal in May 2000. Israel’s war aims were to eradicate Hezbollah missile stockpiles and Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. While the Israeli military succeeded in knocking out many Hezbollah stockpiles, the Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia managed to launch hundreds of missiles and rockets, striking as far south as Haifa and killing several dozen Israelis.

A chorus of international officials called for Israel to cease its attacks at once. French President Jacques Chirac condemned Israel’s actions as “completely disproportionate,” and Russian President Vladimir Putin called Israel’s “use of full-scale force” unacceptable. Even U.S. officials chimed in. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned, “It is extremely important that Israel exercse restraint in its acts of self-defense.” Hillary Clinton, then a New York senator, doubled down on the call for an immediate ceasefire and demanded the United States and Israel resolve the situation diplomatically. “We’ve had five and a half years of a failed experiment in tough talk absent diplomacy and engagement,” she said. “I think it’s time to go back to what works, and what has historically worked and what can work again.”

By diplomacy, European officials, Clinton, and eventually the Bush administration meant the problem should be punted back to the United Nations. There was some irony in this, especially since Hezbollah had armed and launched its attack under the watch of UNIFIL, the UN monitoring agency in southern Lebanon. Still, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan promised a bigger, better (and more expensive) UN monitoring force to keep the peace if only hostilities would stop. “It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground,” he said, “The force will be larger, the way I see it, much larger than the 2000-man force we have there.” British Prime Minister also endorsed an international force. “The only way we are going to have a cessation of violence is if we have an international force deployed into that area,” he explained.

Unilateralism - An abject failure and past time to put it to rest as well

...In the event that Israel withdrew from the majority of the West bank and pulled back to its security barrier, not only could it not expect any international recognition for its borders, but experience suggests that it should expect the West Bank to be turned into the same kind of lawless terror launch pad for Iranian proxies that Gaza and southern Lebanon have already now become. Sharon may be buried, but unilateralism is still alive and well. In the future Israelis may yet come to deeply regret not having buried this ideology with its most renowned practitioner when they had the chance.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
13 January '14..

While Israel may have now buried former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it is still far from having buried with him the idea with which Sharon ultimately came to be most strongly associated: unilateralism–the notion that if no partner for peace could be found, then Israel should determine its own fate, draw its own borders, and extricate itself from a conflict it has long wanted no part in. It was ultimately to this end that Sharon broke from the Likud, and indeed the settlement movement that he had long been the patron of, and established Kadima, the party that would give him the representation in Israel’s Knesset that he needed to carry out the unilateral disengagement from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

Sharon had been lying in a comma since early 2006, and despite the abject failure of unilateral disengagement from both Gaza and Lebanon, Sharon’s ideas have not lain dormant with him. Having been a territorial maximalist for most of his political life, unilateral withdrawal from territory may prove to be Sharon’s most significant parting gift to Israel and the region.

Today there is no shortage of politicians in Israel who still espouse the virtues of this strategy. Most notable among them is former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who in a sense first pioneered unilateralism with his disengagement from southern Lebanon in 2000. He was still voicing partial support for unilateral disengagement from the West Bank in 2012. And the idea remains particularly popular among many in Israel’s defense and security establishment. Avi Dichter and Ami Ayalon, both former heads of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency continue to champion this policy, as does Omer Bar-Lev, former head of the general Staff Reconnaissance Unit and a Labor Party member of Israel’s parliament.

Just this weekend Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was outlining the possibility of withdrawal from much of the West Bank in the not-unlikely event that Israel’s latest round of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority produce no tangible results. In his obituary on Sharon, written for CNN, Oren writes, “A growing number Israelis are asking, ‘What happens if the process fails?’ One solution could be a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian population centers in the West Bank.” Oren suggests how things could be done differently this time, a sign that unilateralists do indeed recognize where the policy has unraveled in the past. Oren explains, “As in the disengagement from Gaza, the United States would endorse this move, but unlike in Gaza, most Israeli settlements would remain within Israel, and Israeli troops would still patrol strategic borders. Of course, the preferable solution is two states for two peoples. But if that proves unattainable, then Israel can still end the occupation of the Palestinians, preserve its security, and perhaps lay new foundations for peace.”

Unilateralism’s great strength is that it refuses to have any delusions about Palestinian intransigence. It refuses to allow Israel to be indefinitely held hostage by the kind of Palestinian rejectionism that has thus far rendered all attempts at a negotiated peace futile. Instead, the unilateralists advocate simply withdrawing to borders of Israel’s choosing. The problem here, however, is that unilateralism is still buying into some of the most fundamental and mistaken premises of the dovish camp in Israel. That is the belief that the conflict is about territory, and that Israel can trade land for peace by giving the Palestinians an agreed upon allotment of territory. Since the Palestinians have so far failed to outline precisely what amount of territory they would require before ending the conflict, negotiations on land for peace have thus far failed to deliver.

The unilateralists seek to bypass stalled negotiations through simply handing over territory to the Palestinians without the framework of peace talks, thus creating a de facto two-state solution. Yet this is a mistake. The two-state proposal is itself an Israeli creation and the Palestinians have never come close to unanimously acknowledging it as a preferable end goal. Israel can create a two-state scenario without Palestinian cooperation if it wants, but there’s no reason to think this will do anything to pacify them.

Both with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and with Hamas in Gaza, Israeli unilateral withdrawal was viewed by the Islamists as a retreat and a sign of weakness. Israelis had demanded nothing in return for the territory they abandoned, they had simply fled. Proof enough for the extremists that terror pays and that Israel’s resolve will always break eventually. In this way unilateral disengagement has emboldened Israel’s enemies to step up their war on Israel, which is not territorial in nature, but existential.

Arens - Unilateral folly

Civilians have now become equal partners with the Israel Defense Forces in the war against Israel's enemies. That is not the way it was supposed to be.

Moshe Arens..
Haaretz..
05 June '12..

It seems that some of our military-men-turned-politicians are suffering from the unilateral withdrawal syndrome. It may be typical of the military mindset: Get it over with! Finish the job! Do something! Do anything! Actually, on some occasions that may be the correct strategy. It usually comes under the heading of "Cutting your losses." But often it may be the wrong way to go.

Two of our illustrious military leaders seem to have been afflicted by this syndrome. One was Ariel Sharon, who peremptorily decided on the unilateral withdrawal from Gush Katif and the forceful uprooting of 8000 Israeli citizens from their homes, in the expectation that the move would ease Israel's defense problems and advance the peace process. The other is the present defense minister, Ehud Barak, who has a long record of espousing unilateral withdrawals in the expectation that therein lay the solution to our problems, or else that this is the way to evade an oncoming tsunami that he thinks he sees approaching on the horizon.

His first opportunity came in 2000, when, as prime minister and defense minister (he insisted on holding both positions ), he decided on the unilateral withdrawal from the south Lebanon security zone, abandoning Israel's ally, the South Lebanon Army, and bringing the Hezbollah terrorists up to the border fence in the north. He expected this move would transform Hezbollah from a terrorist organization into a Lebanese political party that would abandon its policy of launching attacks against Israel, or alternately that Israel, after the retreat, would be able to deter Hezbollah from continuing its terror attacks against Israel. It didn't work.

Israel’s fateful withdrawal

Lebanon exit marked zenith of Israel’s shift from offensive to defensive posture


Gabriel Siboni
Israel Opinion/Ynet
01 July '10

(Dr. Gabriel Siboni heads the Military and Strategy research program at the Institute for National Security Studies. Last week, it held a convention titled “The Withdrawal from Lebanon: 10 years later,” attended by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, former military leaders, and senior researchers.)

The withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 constitutes a significant and special event; an attempt to shape our security reality in the north unilaterally, while aiming to elicit broad international recognition.

The withdrawal marked the zenith of a significant change in the characteristics of Israel’s security doctrine. It appears that we still cannot formulate a clear answer to the question of whether it was a planned move that stemmed from strategic-political thinking, or whether it stemmed from the “peer pressure” that dominated the public discourse in previous years.

Related: In praise of wars of choice

It is possible that the withdrawal’s execution in practice, with all parties being surprised by the timing (including the IDF, South Lebanon Army, and Hezbollah) had some weight in respect to entrenching the attitude to the pullout both within the Israeli public and among Hezbollah members. Yet more than anything else, the withdrawal indicted a doctrinal change whereby Israel shifted from an offensive to a defensive approach.

Israel’s security strategy was set by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and premised on a defense strategy that allows for offense as a systematic-tactical component; hence, Israel developed offensive perception vis-à-vis terror organizations. Over the years, the IDF continuously implemented an offensive military policy that did not allow the terror threat to develop. This offensive approach maintained a low-level threat.

The years of our war on terror are replete with examples of offensive operations against terror groups in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. These operations assisted Israel in suppressing and maintaining terror groups’ capabilities at a low and relatively stable level, while creating a complex security reality that was limited to borderline communities.

Yet the longer the IDF stayed in Lebanon, the more we saw a gradual process of abandoning the offensive approach and adopting a clear defensive posture. The number of offensive operations declined, the operational freedom of commanders on the ground was considerably limited, and every operation produced limitations for future operations. As a result of this, we saw the emergence of an operational reality that made it difficult to continue adopting the offensive approach. All this was happening against the backdrop of a society that focused its discourse on our casualties in Lebanon.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

The Western Way of War

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
25 June '10

(While addressing McChrystal's interview and firing, the article returns to what application "The Western Way of War" has had, or should have for Israel today. Y.)

General Stanley McChrystal has paid a huge price for his decision to give Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings free access to himself and his staff. But he performed a great service for the rest of us. US President Barack Obama fired McChrystal -- his hand-picked choice to command NATO forces in Afghanistan -- for the things that he and his aides told Hastings about the problematic nature of the US-led war effort in Afghanistan. But by acting as he did, McChrystal forced the rest of us to contend with the unpleasant truth not only about the US-led campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. He told us the unpleasant truth about the problematic nature of the Western way of war at the outset of the 21st century.

Hastings' now famous article, "The Runaway General," told the story of an argument. On the one hand, there are people who want to fight to win in Afghanistan. On the other hand, there are people who are not interested in fighting to win in Afghanistan. Obama - and McChrystal as his general - occupy the untenable middle ground. There they try to split the difference between the two irreconcilable camps. The inevitable end is preordained.

The US and its NATO allies first deployed in Afghanistan in October 2001 with the aim of toppling the Taliban regime and destroying Al Qaida's infrastructure in the country. They have remained in the country ever since with the goal of preventing the Taliban from returning to power.

After McChrystal took command a year ago, he conducted a review of the allied strategy. His revised strategy was based on counter-insurgency methods developed in Iraq. It called for a surge of 40,000 US forces in Afghanistan. It also recommended that NATO train 400,000 Afghan forces who, in the long term, would replace NATO forces once the Taliban was defeated.

McChrystal's strategy was greeted with moans by leading members of Obama's leftist base in the administration and outside it. Led by Vice President Joseph Biden, they offered a counter-strategy. As Biden has explained it, the alternative would involve deploying special forces units and airpower to target the Taliban as it becomes necessary, and otherwise disengage from the country at quickly as possible.

McChrystal and his allies dismissed Biden's strategy as a recipe for disaster. Without a sufficient number of forces on the ground, the US would lose its ability to gather intelligence and so know what targets to attack. Recent reports that the US drone attacks in Pakistan are killing civilians rather than al Qaida and Taliban members indicate just how difficult it is to gather credible, actionable intelligence from a distance.

Presented with the two opposing strategies, Obama decided to split the difference. He ordered 30 thousand troops to Afghanistan. He refused to increase the target number of Afghan security forces from its previous 230,000. And he announced that US forces would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

The Gaza Flotilla and the Gallant Rapist

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
31 May '10

Do you remember the gallant rapist? The criminal who would offer his victims a ride home after the rape? He apparently thought that his "good manners" would make his crime seem less reprehensible. In the end he was apprehended and sentenced like all the other rapists.

Today, Israel is the gallant rapist. We declared to the entire world that Gaza is not ours, but theirs. The world was not particularly convinced, so we expelled all the Jews from Gush Katif in Gaza and destroyed their homes. We even dug up their dead for reburial "inside Israel." Let there be no mistake, dear world, Gaza is not ours. Look, we have even retreated from there – with sensitivity and determination, of course.

Now, the world is convinced. Gaza is really not ours. But just a minute: If Gaza is not really yours, why are you blockading it from the sea and the air, allowing entry only from your territory following your security checks? What are you trying to do? To gallantly rape the "Palestinians" and convince us that they consent?

If Gaza is yours – stay there and fight! If it is not yours, get out of there and do not interfere in their lives! You can't do both. You can't simultaneously rape and be well-mannered. Oh, you say that they are trying to smuggle weapons into Gaza? Well, what's the problem with that? Who are you to tell them what to bring into their territory? Aren't you constantly arming yourselves as you please? If the state of Gaza will declare war on you, then defend yourselves. But don't tell us that you left while you are still ruling there by remote control. What right do you have to prevent them from building their own army?

What? They actually did start a war and they are constantly shooting at you? OK, then re-conquer Gaza and administer a military government, like the Allies did in Germany. What? That's impossible because you convinced your citizens that it is good to disengage from Gaza? Hmmm.

We tried to fool the world, and first and foremost- ourselves. Now the entire house of cards is collapsing on our heads. The question is not who is more well mannered, us or them. The question is not how much violence was used to stop the flotilla. The question is who is the rapist. The question is who is just, who is the good-guy and who is the bad-guy in this story. Israel in flight from its identity lost justification for its existence – not just in the Land of Israel but on the face of the entire globe. It maneuvered itself into the position of the most despised nation on earth. Achmadinijad can travel Europe freely. Tzippy Livni and Bogi Ya'alon dare not land there.

If we would have adopted the stance of the just, we could have acted according to the maritime international laws that were determined by Great Britain when it ruled the seas. Call to stop. First shell in front of the ship's nose. Second shell into the ship, and the story is over. But this law is for legitimate ships, not pirate ships, like us. It will not help us to base our justness on good manners. We will always turn out to be rapists in the end. It won't work even if we enlist the most professional soldiers in the world for the mission.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

South Lebanon Will Be Liberated from Hezb'allah

Charbel Barakat
American Thinker
30 May '10

Last Sunday was the tenth anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from what was used to be known as the "security zone." That day, following the instructions of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack, all Israeli units operating north of the borders inside Lebanese territories were pulled back inside Israeli territories. According to Barack, it was in implementation of the UNSCR 425, issued in 1978 after an Israeli incursion into Lebanon in response to PLO attacks across the borders then. So in the year 2000, 23 years after it entered the country to fight its enemies, Israel's government decided to pull its troops back from Lebanon abruptly. Barack at the time said he was complying with U.N. resolutions and that he expected that no threat will come from Lebanon anymore. That was the Israeli version of the Labor Government then.

But as IDF forces were pulling back, Iranian-backed Hezb'allah militias were entering every single village and town evacuated by the Israelis. According to Hassan Nasrallah, the commander of Hezb'allah, Israel withdrew because of the strikes by the so-called "resistance," which in fact was the Iranian-backed militia. The Hezb'allah story is that southern Lebanon was occupied by the Israelis, who had a proxy militia known as South Lebanon Army. And that Hezb'allah struggled to liberate the land from its Zionist occupiers.

However, there is a third version. It rejects the first two, and it claims it represents the struggle of the people of southern Lebanon, who struggled against Terror and were removed from their ancestral lands -- because of Ehud Barack's policies on the one hand and the abandonment of the West of Lebanon last resisting free people against the hordes of Hezb'allah and their Iranian and Syrian backers on the other. Unfortunately, the third story has no tellers these days. Barack has Israel's media at his service so that he can boast about his betrayal of southern Lebanon and his own Israeli people, and Nasrallah has his Iranian-funded media to claim his victories against the populations who resisted him in southern Lebanon.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Hizbullah's media champions

Caroline Glick
Carolineglick.com
11 May '10

A few weeks shy of the tenth anniversary of Israel's May 24, 2000 unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon, last Friday mass-circulation daily Yediot Ahronot chose to devote its weekend news supplement to a retrospective on the event. The retrospective included a fawning five-page interview with Defense Minister Ehud Barak who ordered the withdrawal during his tenure as prime minister and defense minister. It also included a two-page spread featuring interviews with the IDF commanders who carried out the withdrawal recalling their adrenalin rushes as they retreated their forces across the border.

Nearly hidden between the two puff pieces was a little article titled "We told you so."

It featured an interview with retired far-left Knesset member Yossi Sarid who opposed the withdrawal. Sarid told Yediot that in hindsight, he's glad the withdrawal went through even though it led directly to the wars that followed. Following Sarid's self-congratulatory modesty, Yediot gave former defense minister Moshe Arens and Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau a sound bite apiece to lash out at the withdrawal. That base covered, the paper dismissed them both as "right-wingers."

ALTHOUGH UPSETTING, Yediot's treatment of the Lebanon withdrawal was not surprising. The unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon -- which was a failure on every rational level -- was a strategy concocted and championed for the better part of a decade by Yediot and its media colleagues at Israel Radio. The paper's decision to publish a ten-year anniversary retrospective two weeks early was undoubtedly an attempt to preempt and prevent any further discussion of the withdrawal.

Yediot praised the retreat as a work of operational genius because no one was wounded, kidnapped or killed during the 48-hour operation. Of course, by presenting force protection as the IDF's highest goal, the paper ignored basic strategic realities.

The fact is that the withdrawal was an operational fiasco. In its rush to the border, the IDF left behind huge quantities of sensitive equipment that Hizbullah commandeered. Israel abandoned thousands of loyal allies from the South Lebanon Army and their families to the tender mercies of Hizbullah. These were men who had fought shoulder to shoulder with the IDF since 1982. Those that managed to escape to Israel before the gates were locked were treated as unwanted dead-weight by Barak and his media flacks who couldn't be bothered with the treachery at the heart of the operation.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.