It is now clear
that as much as the Israeli Army doesn�t know how to win a war, the Israeli
people do not know how to lose one. Already at the late stages of the recent
wave of hostility in Lebanon the Israelis were desperately searching for a
scapegoat, someone to blame, someone who would take personal responsibility for
the humiliating Israeli collective defeat.
It didn�t take long before the Israelis turned en mass against
Dan Halutz, their IDF Chief of Staff. They accused him of being an �arrogant
pilot,� for being �detached from reality� and for �not preparing the Army to
win a war.� Dan Halutz, no doubt a qualified war criminal as well as an Israeli
stock exchange inside trader, dismissed his critics. Yet, as one may expect,
Halutz wouldn�t stand up and admit in public that the leader of a miniscule
Arab paramilitary force, the legendary Hassan Nasrallah, was just slightly
better than himself in wining a battle and concluding a war. In fact, Nasrallah
was just better than every Israeli general in using his force, in maneuvering
his fighting units, in strategic moves and tactical decisions. Halutz and his staff
generals wouldn�t admit it because being Israeli soldiers, a product of Jewish
nationalism and crude racism, they are all supremacist to the bone.
While in a meeting
with reservist commanders last week Halutz learned about an IDF commander who
refused to rescue combatants just because �they were not under his direct
command.� He learned as well about another Israeli commander who managed to
evade the battlefield in the midst of the fight. The commander was found hours
later hiding inside a tank. Yes, the Israelis are far from being heroes; their
paratroopers do not shoot from the hip as much as their tank commanders do not
expose their upper body while the battle goes on. They all prefer to hide
behind their glorious Merkava tank�s armour. However, they all fail to
admit that the Hezbollah are just exactly the opposite. The Hezbollah warriors
do shoot from the hip and they don�t have armoured vehicles to hide in. Yet,
the Israelis would prefer blaming themselves rather than simply admitting that
an Arab fighter happens to be just slightly better.
These days, an extensive Israeli reservist rebellion is emerging in
Israel. The humiliated IDF fighters are somehow very unhappy. They felt
unprepared for the war. Their weapons were faulty, so they say. They lacked the
necessary gear. The �catering services� failed to serve their food exactly when
they expected it. If this isn�t enough, they insist as well that intelligence
was misleading and orders where confusing. Like the archetypal Jewish mother,
the newly born Hebraic Samson is a venerable effeminate character who would
prefer to endorse the role of the victim. I believe that when the Israelis
engage in self-criticism they tend to regard themselves as a collective of
outspoken liberal beings. But in fact, they all lie to themselves. By putting
themselves down, they save themselves from confessing the clear fact that, at
least in this round, the �Arabs� were just far better.
The reservist rebels call for the immediate resignation of Olmert,
Peretz and Halutz. Peretz, so they say, is just a small �Union leader.� He
lacks the capacity to command the army of a hostile state that insists upon
putting world peace at a constant threat. They may be right. Peretz isn�t a
natural talent. Indeed, he was quick to join the never ending list of Israeli
war criminals. He gave the Israeli Army the green light to bring �Lebanon to
its knees,� to kill so many civilians, to destroy a country�s civil
infrastructure. Yet Peretz was not a tactical or strategic visionary. He was good
enough to spread death in the region, but he himself didn�t understand what all
this loss was there to serve.
Unlike Peretz, who became a mass murderer just a few days into the war
for absolutely no reason, Sheikh Nasrallah has managed to defeat Israel without
bringing the state to its knees, without killing many civilians. Nasrallah won
a war without being a mass murderer. And the question to be asked is whether
the time is ripe for the Israelis to admit that a Lebanese Shiite leader is far
more advanced both intellectually and morally than their own leaders. May I
tell you, this is not going to happen. The Israelis are racist to the bone.
Even now after being defeated by a bold patriotic group of warriors, they are
still convinced that they are fighting a fanatical bunch of subhumans.
And what about Olmert, the man who was elected to implement a sickening
Judeocentric unilateral peace agenda and managed to bring his country into a
miserable war less than four months later? Would he admit in public or even to
himself that it was Assad, Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah who smashed the Israeli
power of deterrence without causing any damage to the infrastructure? They did
it without killing many civilians, just with light weaponry and conventional
rockets, without American planes and Merkava tanks. They did it
without hundreds of nuclear bombs. Will the Israelis admit that Assad,
Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah are just slightly more clever than their own
miserable leadership whom they �democratically elected�?
I say no. I say
never! Israel is a racist national state. It is supremacist to the bone. The
Israelis are not capable of regarding their neighbours as equal human beings.
This is exactly why Israel has never been and never will be a partner for
peace. In order to make peace you must first respect your foe.
Gilad Atzmon
is an Israeli jazz musician, author
and political activist.