They didn't know what the hell they were doing. That, in a nutshell, is the finding of an official Israeli investigation into the Jewish state's 32-day war against the terrorist group Hezbollah last summer. Its key finding: Israel attacked Hezbollah's positions in Lebanon without any kind of plan for victory, even as its political leaders made grandiose claims about how they were going to destroy Hezbollah now and forever. The report released yesterday does not specifically draw the obvious conclusion, which is this: By talking so tough, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz ensured that Hezbollah would be the victor in the war. All it needed to do was simply continue to exist once the conflict ended and Israel would be defeated.
The report continues Israel's remarkable tradition of open inquiry following the nation's military disappointments. The 1983 investigation into the first Israeli war in Lebanon sidelined Ariel Sharon as a major political force for almost two decades. And the country's first major effort at self-examination, released in 1974 after Israel was caught by surprise when three of its neighbors launched the Yom Kippur War, ended up forcing the beloved Golda Meir to resign as prime minister - even though the report specifically exonerated her.
There's no exoneration to be found here for Israel's current prime minister, Ehud Olmert. Far from it. The commissioners specifically say that they chose to release some of their findings early because they were being used by Olmert as a way of avoiding necessary changes in the wake of the war. "Initially," they write, "we hoped that the appointment of the Commission [would] serve as an incentive to accelerate [change] . . . In some ways an opposite, and worrying, process emerged - a process of 'waiting' for the Commission's Report."
Therefore, they conclude, "we decided to publish . . . in the hope that the relevant bodies will act urgently to change and correct all that it implies." The "relevant bodies" here are the Israeli parliament and the voting public. The report's authors have set their laser-guided sights at Olmert's reputation and political career.
Consider: The report has three named targets. One of them is Dan Halutz, the army's chief of staff during the war. He resigned months ago. The second is Defense Minister Amir Peretz. He will be losing his job in the next few weeks anyway - because he is going to be removed as the leader of the Labor Party and will no longer be a minister in this government. Only Olmert is left standing.