With a ceasefire between
Israel and Hezbollah still holding, however tentatively, and Israelis returning to their homes in the north, the
politicians and historians are already hard at work putting their spin
on the war that was. Did Israel win? Did Hezbollah?The
Israeli public has already voted, though. According to a Globes-Smith
poll earlier this week, 58 percent of Israelis think Israel achieved
“only a small part” or “none of its goals” in the war. That’s up
considerably from just two weeks ago when only 16 percent thought
similarly. And the results don’t look much better for the ruling Kadima
or Labor parties – some 60 percent of the two parties’ supporters say
they would defect and become floating voters were elections held
tomorrow.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz has already decided to
set up a commission of inquiry into how the war was handled (which
could presumably lead to his own downfall), and there have been calls
for IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz to step down due to ethical
improprieties – he apparently authorized a personal stock transaction
three hours after hearing of the kidnap of the two Israeli soldiers by
Hezbollah, the event that ostensibly sparked the entire war.

Beyond
the post-conflict political wrangling, it’s not hard to see why
Israelis are disillusioned: a million residents across the north spent
32 days either in bomb shelters or in temporary lodgings in other parts
of the country while over 4,000 missiles rained down, devastating the
economy of one third of the nation.

And so now, Israelis are asking: At the end of the day, what have we got to show for our effort?

There
is no provision or timetable in the ceasefire agreement to return the
two kidnapped soldiers. Most countries have balked at sending troops to
join a beefed up UNIFIL. And while the Lebanese Army is moving into the
south of that country, a side agreement – in clear violation of the
ceasefire – will allow Hezbollah to keep its arms as long as they’re
not “publicly displayed.”

The bottom line: It looks depressingly like the region is rapidly heading back to square one.

That
unflattering assessment, however, depends entirely on what was really
going on in the last month of fighting. If the Israel-Hezbollah war is
perceived as simply a regional conflict – an enhanced border skirmish,
if you will – then Israel clearly came out on the sharp end of the
stick. But if seen as an integral part of the global war against
terrorism, then the past 32 days could, ironically, prove to be
extremely valuable…for the next war.

The Next War?

Certainly,
if you listen to Seymour Hersh, the controversial reporter for the New
Yorker magazine who wrote that the attack on Hezbollah had been planned
by Israel for some time, long before July 12 when the fighting began in
earnest, and that the Bush Administration was closely involved in the
planning of Israel’s retaliatory operations. The U.S., Hersh claims,
wanted to take out the Hezbollah threat prior to an American
pre-emptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installation, which some
have speculated is scheduled for as early as this fall.

Israel’s
bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily-fortified underground
missile and command and control complexes, moreover, was to have
provided the U.S. with invaluable data on how similarly fortified
installations in Iran would withstand U.S. bombing.

Both
Israeli and U.S. spokespeople have strongly denied Hersh’s claims. But
it’s hard to deny the global terror connection, especially after last
week’s uncovering by British authorities of a plot to blow up airliners
traveling from the U.K. to North America.

Am I implying that
there is a direct connection between the 21 men arrested in London who
were working on a plan to smuggle liquid explosives onto planes in
sports drink bottles, and the Hezbollah organization in Lebanon? Not
exactly.

But the money comes from the same patron: Iran. And
it underscores that what has been going on in Israel during the
difficult days of July and August cannot be viewed as isolated events,
but rather as part of the proverbial big picture. While I don’t mean to
denigrate the success or failures of the just-concluded operation,
whether Israel wins or loses today is ultimately less important than
whether the western powers prevail in the long term. Israel, clearly,
is playing its role with great intention, whether that’s overt or
circumstantial.

And how is the west doing in the overall war
against terror? Not too well, says Saul Singer of the Jerusalem Post.
In an article published over the weekend, Singer writes that a
premature ceasefire that doesn’t sufficiently degrade Hezbollah “will
embolden Iran… Just as Hezbollah’s survival will be widely seen as a
defeat for Israel, it is also a defeat for the United States by Iran.”

Singer
goes on to quote historian Bernard Lewis who, in the Wall Street
Journal last week, referred to an 11th-grade Iranian school textbook
that cites the goals of jihad. In it, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni says
that “either we shake one another’s hands in joy at the victory of
Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and
martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.”

In
other words, all casualties – including those on the Iranian home front
- are to be welcomed as this will bring about the ultimate triumph of
good (Islam) over evil (everything else).

John Podhoretz,
writing in the New York Post, takes the issue one step further,
questioning whether the West is up to confronting this kind of enemy.

“What
if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point,” he asks, “where
they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a
level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really
cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests? Can it be that the
moral greatness of our civilization – its astonishing focus on the
value of the individual above all – is endangering the future of our
civilization as well?”

The same thought occurred to me as well
as I read about 15-year-old girls from middle America being forced to
pour out their hand lotion and toss their lipstick in the trash before
boarding a plane last week. This kind of even-handed approach might be
appropriate when dealing with a domestic matter or even a civil
disobedience, but not with world war. And make no mistake: After London, Madrid, Bali, Istanbul and New York, we are in
the midst of a world war, even if it hasn’t yet been labeled as such.
The West needs new tools and new approaches if it is to prevail.

Who Won?

Which
leads us back to the original question. Who won in the war between
Israel-Hezbollah? Militarily in the short term, Israel bested
Hezbollah. The “state within a state” Hezbollah created is gone for
now. Hezbollah has been pushed into a corner and much of the billions
of dollars its backers in Tehran spent on fortified command centers now
lies in ruins. Hezbollah may brag about success, but it has clearly
been crippled.

In the mid- to long-term, will Hezbollah return
to southern Lebanon? Undoubtedly. Will Israel get its kidnapped
soldiers back? Unknown. Will missiles once again rain on the country’s
north? Unfortunately, probably.

But in the meantime, we now know
a whole lot more about what Hezbollah had in store for Israel, what its
technical capabilities were and, by proxy, what Iran has in store for
the U.S., when and if it comes calling.

The London plot, in
addition to bringing to public attention yet another way terrorists can
attack civilian transportation, solidifies the need to not turn a blind
eye to the key player in the what President Bush once mockingly called
the “axis of evil.”

The IDF and the western powers, we can
only hope, are now aggressively using the data they’ve amassed to begin
building new strategies and new tactics.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Sunday, August 13, 2006. The link is here.

Parenting is never easy…even more so when you’re dealing with comforting your child during a missile attack.
 

It was supposed to be the
highlight of camp: “Survivor Day.” Inspired by the TV show of the same
name, the campers arose at 5 a.m. and prepared for a full day of
managing outdoors on their wits. There were a variety of water
challenges planned – a critical concession given the 90-degree plus
heat – ranging from jumping on and off rafts to wet and wild tug of
wars.Everything was going swimmingly, so to speak, until – in
the middle of all the fun – four long-range Hezbollah missiles from
Lebanon landed about a kilometer from where the campers were frolicking
in the local water hole, giving Survivor Day an unexpected and entirely
unwanted twist.

For the past 12 days, our 12-year-old daughter,
Merav, has been having the time of her life at her first overnight
camping experience. The setting was Kibbutz Shluchot just south of Bet
Shean in the northern Jordan Valley. “Everyday there’s something
different,” Merav told us one night by phone. “You never know what to
expect.”

The ever-changing activities included swimming, arts
and crafts, badminton, inline skating, nature hikes, a “Color War,”
tiyulim to nearby attractions (such as the impressive Bet Shean
archeological dig with its ancient Roman amphitheater), a stroll
through the kibbutz carrot factory, more swimming, basketball, Shabbat
“walks” with a camper of the opposite sex, and, did I say swimming yet?

The kibbutz, Merav said was beautiful; the campers all received
their own bicycles and they rode everywhere, from their bunks to the
synagogue and then to the dining hall. Even the meals were pretty
tasty, high praise from my newly vegetarian daughter.

Disrupted Routine

Survivor
Day was set in a man-made swimming hole about a 15-minute walk from the
kibbutz itself. After its early start in the wee hours of the morning,
the action-packed day wasn’t scheduled to conclude until near sunset.
Then, at approximately 11 a.m. Hezbollah fired five long-range,
Khaibar-1 missiles from deep inside Lebanon.

Unlike the
shorter range Katyushas, which fall on beleaguered closer-to-the-border
communities like Kyriat Shemona, Karmiel and Safed, the long-range
missiles can travel 100 km or more and pack a much more powerful
warhead.

The Khaibars landed in the Mount Gilboa forests
between Bet Shean and Afula. As soon as I heard the news (since the war
started over a month ago, I have been obsessively monitoring the
Internet, checking in no less than once every five minutes), I pulled
out a map. Whereas the previous round of missiles fired into the Bet
Shean area sailed mostly over the town and nearby Kibbutz Shluchot -
setting off alarms, but touching ground a good deal away near the West
Bank city of Jenin – this time, they were daringly close to a camp full
of kids outdoors, who not coincidentally, were also miles from the
nearest bomb shelter.

The phone soon rang. It was Merav. She was
clearly in tears; I could feel her shoulders heaving up and down in the
tremble of her voice. “They’re canceling camp,” she said. “We’re coming
home tonight. They said it’s not safe here anymore.”

I didn’t
know exactly how to respond. It’s hard enough parenting a teenage
daughter in ordinary times and Merav’s emotions are already volatile; I
never know if she’s going to take a comment in stride or launch into a
sequence of ceremonial door slamming.

Taking Stock

Should
I try to comfort her, ask her how she was feeling and if she was
scared? Or should I act all nonchalant and normal and say what a shame
it was that camp was ending early, letting her initiate any heavy-duty
discussion?

I looked for clues in Merav’s words.

“And
today was supposed to be the best day of camp, too,” she said. I sensed
less shaking now and more of a pout. That seemed to call for a
laid-back direction.

“That’s such a bummer,” I said, picking my words carefully. “I know you were really looking forward to it.”

“But I’m scared, Abba.”

“You are?” I said, confused now by the rapid change of course. “Well, what was it like?”

“We
heard this whistling sound, it was more like a ‘whoosh,’ then we
thought we saw a light in the sky – I’m not sure – it was almost like a
shooting star in the middle of the day – and then there were these big
‘booms’ and we saw all this smoke going up from the other side of the
mountain. We had to duck under these picnic tables for, like 15
minutes, and we were all wet and it was muddy.”

“That must have been awful,” I intoned caringly. “No wonder you were scared!”

“And now you’re going to have a big load of clothes to wash!” Merav barked, a sprig of sarcasm back in her voice.

My
parenting instinct was being ping-ponged all over the table. I needed
to pick a strategy: casual or concern. But Merav had decided for me.

“I have to go now,” Merav interrupted my game of mental table tennis. “We need to pack. We’re coming home tonight. Bye.”

A few minutes later, Devorah, one of the camp co-directors, was on the line giving us pick up instructions for the bus.

“Did the home front command tell you to cancel camp?” I wondered out loud.

“No,
but one of the missiles landed in Nir David,” Devorah said, referring
to the next village over, a scant two kilometers from Shluchot. “We
don’t need to wait until it lands in our own garden. We wanted to be
prudent,” she said.

And that’s how it ended. The weeks-long
debate chronicled in these posts about whether to send our child to
camp closer to the front lines, whether it was irresponsible not to
take her out when the first missiles landed; the whole discussion was
now moot. Camp was closing.

Later that night, Merav was home.
After a five-hour bus ride, she looked less frightened than exhausted
as she made her way around the campers and their parents, handing out
hugs like chocolates at a bar mitzvah boy’s Torah reading.

We
thanked Kenny, the other co-director, who joked that “usually at the
annual camp convention, the big conversation is what to do on a rainy
day. I think I can top that this year.”

Which got me thinking:
maybe we can make a little hay out of the hell we’ve been going
through, too. I’m half thinking of calling up CBS and pitching them on
an idea for an upcoming season of that veteran reality show “Survivor.”
Forget the Australian Outback, Thailand or Panama. Just send the next
crop of contestants to camp at Kibbutz Shluchot and tell them to
prepare for “Survivor Day.”

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Thursday, August 10, 2006. The link is here.Where are the miracles of Entebbe and the Six Day War in the current conflict with Hezbollah?

After 29 days of fighting,
Israel is slowly winning the war against Hezbollah. There’s still a lot
of work to be done and the fighting is nowhere near over. Still, the
overall outlook is surprisingly good. So why do Israelis feel so bad?The
destruction of Hezbollah and the Iranian-backed terror regime it has
carved out of south Lebanon over the past six years hasn’t proceeded
the way anyone had expected. This war has been slow going to a fault.

After
nearly a month of Hezbollah missiles, a million Israelis either
displaced to points south or living in bomb shelters, and with no acceptable ceasefire looking to be finalized at any point soon, it’s no wonder
that many Israelis are beginning to question their government’s
handling of the war effort.

With our massive firepower and
superior technology, why hasn’t the Israel Defense Forces been able to
secure a truly decisive win already, a growing clamor of voices is
asking? How can it be that, despite Israel’s occupation of nearly the
entire former security zone (the area Israel held for 18 years from
1982-2000), more – not fewer -missiles are landing in the north? Why
did the security cabinet feel it necessary to authorize an expanded
ground operation on Wednesday to push up as far as the Litani River in
an operation cabinet minister Eli Yishai said could last up to 30
days…and probably more?

And the question perhaps most prominent but rarely spoken: where are the miracles we’ve come to expect from the Israeli army?

Slow In Coming

Yes,
miracles – that’s the key to the despair that’s taking over from the
euphoria of during the initial weeks of the war. Israel demands
miracles and it’s just not seeing any in this protracted battle.

Where
is the daring of a covert operation like the one in Entebbe that freed
a hijacked plane of Israeli and Jewish hostages in 1976? Or a war
against implacable odds and the combined armies of three Arab countries
that ended miraculously in just six days, as in 1967? How about an
unexpected and audacious attack on the very heart of the enemy, such as
what Israel undertook when it shocked the world and removed the threat
of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in Osirak in 1981?

And let’s not
forget the stunning turnaround that represented the War of Independence
- an outcome so miraculous that not only was the fledgling Jewish state
not destroyed as its enemies predicted, but it ended up with a
geography far larger than what was granted it under the initial
U.N.-sanctioned partition plan.

Where are those quick,
unexpected and outrageous miracles this time? Israel and its supporters
have been deprived of the one-two knockout punch that would have ended
the misery in a matter of days or hours, not weeks, now going into
months. The Israeli air force tried, but has been unable to take out
-let alone find – Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah from whatever
super-secret bunker he’s squirreled away in today. Where is the massive
display of Israeli airpower we all believe – but have not seen – that
can vaporize every single missile launcher deployed against the Jewish
state with a single dramatic flourish?

Why, Israelis are wondering, can’t the Israeli army deliver this time?

It’s
not just Israelis who are looking for miracles. The Americans too have
been disappointed. Hoping that Israel would “show those Iranians who’s
the boss” by quickly defeating its front line proxy army – the
Hezbollah; Washington analysts are starting to question America’s
over-reliance on Israel, “the little strategic ally that couldn’t” as
Jerusalem Post Editor David Horowitz put it this week.

As if
the U.S. was able to do any better in Iraq. But that’s not point. We
expect more from Israel. We expect nothing short of miracles.

Amotz
Asa-El, also writing in the Post this week, says Israel has made a
number of strategic errors to date, most importantly by lacking
“swiftness and imagination. Massive aerial bombardments on mountainous
guerrilla enclaves, followed by ground forces frontally approaching
villages just beyond the border fence, could hardly have been more
banal,” Asa-El commented.

Why such seeming incompetence?
Ironically, it’s Israel’s Jewish moral and ethical values that have
gotten in the way of the miracles so desperately needed, the Post’s
Horowitz says. Israel needs either a much greater use of the airpower
it surely has, or a larger ground offensive.

But “either of
those avenues would necessarily involve death on a far larger scale
than we have seen thus far,” Horowitz wrote. “Pulverizing airpower
would likely create Lebanese civilian casualties of a number that would
dwarf the toll to date. Wider use of ground forces, on Hezbollah’s home
territory, would likely dwarf the IDF toll hitherto sustained in the
close-quarters fighting.”

And so the current conflict justifies
“the degree and scale of airpower and ground troops to date,” Horowitz
concludes, “and no more.” Israel has “not chosen different answers to
its ethical dilemmas.”

Winning Pace

And yet, the
war is being won, despite the loss of 15 soldiers yesterday in the
Lebanese villages of Marjaryon, Khjam and Kila.. Let’s look at some
facts:

· Over 10,000 Israeli troops are currently on the
ground in Lebanon and Israel now has in its hands large swaths of
former Hezbollah-controlled land.

· Hezbollah has been on the run, and rumors are that Nasrallah had fled to Syria and is conducting operations from there.

·
The rocket launchers in Tyre that have plagued Haifa have mostly been
taken out, as has the area near Sidon where a long range Khaibar-1
missile was fired at Hadera – the deepest point south a missile has
penetrated Israel – last Friday night.

More tellingly,
wherever Hezbollah and Israeli forces have fought, Hezbollah has been
defeated. That’s not been without IDF casualties, to be sure, and the
toughest battlefields, including Maroun er Ras and Bint Jbail, are
still claiming Israeli soldiers’ lives nearly daily. But Hezbollah has
lost its grip on the Israeli-Lebanese border and the fortified bunkers
that it used to taunt – and eventually kidnap – Israeli soldiers now
lay abandoned to Israeli military might.

Even Hezbollah’s main
weapon – its extensive missile supply – has not had doomsday effect
many feared. Over 3,300 missiles have been fired to date but “only” 51
Israeli civilians have died. While I don’t mean to sound cavalier -
tearful newsreaders regularly announce the times and locations of each
and every funeral during Israel Radio’s calm but sadly mesmerizing
top-of-the-hour briefs – from a geo-strategic point of view, at least,
that’s not a very good return on investment. Israel eventually managed
to deal with the last “new” weapon introduced into the region – the
suicide bomb; now it is learning how to live with and neutralize
Hezbollah’s missile threat as well.

The fighting is not over,
and as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a decidedly
Churchillian speech before the nation last week, there may still be
more days of “pain and tears and blood” ahead, but Israel is surely -
albeit very slowly – gaining the upper hand.

All this brings us
back to miracles. Perhaps we have been looking for miracles in the
wrong places. Instead of hoping for a miracle from beyond – a
Moses-like defeat of Israel’s enemies in the desert or the parting of the Red Sea – maybe we need to
look within. It may sound like a cliché, but the steadfastness of the
Israeli people is truly its own miracle.

For nearly a month,
Israel has been battered but not defeated. The north is on the run, but
it has not given up. Israelis may question whether the government is
handling the war in the best way possible (can you imagine Israelis not
kvetching about something), but support for the war effort remains high.

And
the stories of families in the center of the country opening their
homes to complete strangers, or donating money to buy toys and supplies
for those still stuck in the bomb shelters of the north are
heartwarming.

Friends of ours are hosting a family from
Karmiel who have been camping in tents along the beach for weeks.
Museums and attractions all over the country have been offering deep
discounts to families from “confrontation line communities.” Tel Aviv
is taking in 3,000 residents of the north who’ve been hardest hit,
housing them in a municipal convention center. There is a sense of
unity and consensus that this country has not felt for many years.

This
past week, a delegation of Jerusalem municipal authorities headed by
Mayor Uri Lupolianski drove up in a convoy of vehicles to Kyriat
Shemona to provide help (the picture above shows the delegation under a banner in Hebrew reading “From Jerusalem to the North with Love”). The luggage compartments were filled with
sandwiches and soft drinks; a petting zoo was in tow, as was a mobile
children’s library and a van filled with wheelchairs donated by the Yad
Sarah organization.

One of the 13 vehicles heading north was
from the city’s veterinary department. Headed by Jerusalem’s chief vet,
Dr. Zohar Dvorkin, they were bringing massive amounts of cat and dog
food to soothe the thousands of abandoned pets who are now roaming the
streets (officials estimate there are some 8,000 abandoned pets across
the north).

“You came all the way from Jerusalem to Kyriat
Shemona to feed the cats?” asked a man emerging from his shelter, at
once incredulous and grateful.

A small gesture, but one that
speaks volumes for why Israel is winning this war. “We embrace life
while the enemy embraces death.” Another cliché, but in a war where one
might reasonably expect blood-curdling calls for revenge, those very
Jewish ethical and moral concerns for life (even animals) are what will
sustain the country at the end of the day.

And that, unquestionably, is the real miracle.

Interest has been so high in my “Blogging the War” posts that I’ve put together an eBook that I’m making available at no cost. Simply right click on the file you see below under “Attachments” called “This Normal Life – Blogging the War” and choose “Save Link As…” (in Firefox) or “Save Target As…” (in Internet Explorer) from the menu that pops up. You’ll then have the complete collection of “Blogging the War” articles in a convenient PDF format. You may send this to others via email or – better yet – suggest that they visit  the This Normal Life website to read more and download their own copy.

Please let me know if this experiment in a different format of online publishing is of interest to you by posting a comment below or dropping me a line at brian@ThisNormalLife.com.

Thanks!
– Brian

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Sunday, August 6, 2006. The link is here.

Missile lands ten minutes from my daughter’s camp.

Last week I wrote that my
12-year-old daughter, Merav, was scheduled to depart for two weeks of
camp at Kibbutz Shluchot, just south of the town of Bet Shean in the
northern Jordan Valley. In my post, I questioned whether it was
irresponsible to send Merav that much closer to the front, despite the
fact that nothing had happened at Bet Shean nor was anything expected
to at the time. In the end, we decided to continue with our “normal
life” and Merav climbed happily onto the camp bus that Friday morning.

Imagine,
then, my concern last week, less than a week after camp had started,
when I received a frantic call on my cell phone from the father of
Merav’s friend Shayna who was at the camp with her. “Did you hear?” the
father asked breathlessly. “Sirens just went off in Bet Shean.”

A
minute later, the phone rang again. It was another parent who had just
spoken with his daughter. “She said she heard a big boom,” he said and
asked if I had any more information. I didn’t – there was nothing on
any of the Internet sites I’ve been monitoring constantly since the
conflict began.

After several tense minutes where I
incessantly pushed the “refresh” button on my browser, a headline
finally appeared: a long-range missile had penetrated into Israel the
farthest of any to date, landing in Bet Shean proper, while another hit
an open field somewhere between Bet Shean and the West Bank city of
Jenin.

Bet Shean is 10 minutes north of Kibbutz Shluchot – a
veritable gulf in this war of missiles. Still, that didn’t particularly
put my mind at ease, considering that at the very moment the missile
was striking ground, my daughter Merav was not at the kibbutz at all.
She had been come down with a nasty stomach ache that morning, and the
camp nurse sent her to the closest HMO doctor…yes, where else, but in
Bet Shean.

Now, I know the chance of the one missile Hezbollah
has fired at Bet Shean actually hitting the exact spot where Merav was
traveling at that moment was very low. But yesterday’s strike in Kfar
Giladi that killed a crowd of 10 people who were standing in a
wide-open field shows that sometimes one’s worst fears of being in the wrong place at the wrong time really do come
true.

Until we located Merav, I was shaking.

After
a very long 20 minutes, my wife, Jody, got a hold of Kenny, one of the
camp directors, on his cell phone and he told us that Merav had just
returned and was heading to the infirmary to take the pills the doctor
had prescribed. We learned further that the camp had taken to the
kibbutz bomb shelter for a drill that morning (Merav later told us she
had done the real thing at the doctor’s office, spending 15 minutes in
the shelter there).

They were taking all precautions, Kenny
reassured us, and were in touch with the home front command for any
further instructions. We were not to worry.

The missile that
landed near Merav is, fortunately, one of only a few long-range rockets
Hezbollah has left. The IDF has been particularly effective at knocking
out these weapons. It’s the thousands of short-range missiles that pose
a more constant threat to Israel’s north. It was one of those that
caused the deaths at Kfar Giladi.

At
about the same time as the missile was landing on Bet Shean, I received
an e-mail from an irate reader who took exception with my post on
sending Merav to camp in the first place. In his particularly
ill-tempered message, he called me a variety of names I will not stoop
to print here, but his message was clear: Either I am “in denial” or am
“unbelievably cavalier” he wrote. “You think sending your kid closer to
the border war is OK, because that means you are not taking a defeatist
attitude? That’s a bunch of s–t if I ever heard it.”

After the
missile that landed near Bet Shean, I was momentarily inclined to agree
with him, despite his foul language. But then my unpleasant
correspondent continued on to shoot himself in the foot (not an easy
task given that his pedestrian appendage was inserted firmly in mouth).

“Imagine if the U.S. was in a border skirmish with Mexican
terrorists,” he wrote, “and I decided to let my kid go to summer camp
in San Diego or La Jolla, Calif., a stone’s throw from the border? How
stupid would I have to be to do that?”

Other than the fact that
I have family living in both the aforementioned southern California
cities who would be equally offended at his accusation, I have to ask:
what would my tormentor do instead? If everyone took his approach, all
terrorists would have to do is hit a few well-situated locations in the
U.S. and, eventually, the entire population would wind up confined to a
tiny corner of Wisconsin. Guess who’d win the global war on terror then?

We
didn’t send Merav to camp in order to fight. But we’re not pulling her
out either, despite our concerns and the Katyusha that landed too close
for comfort. The big bully who wrote might call me cavalier. If so,
then bring on the cavalry.

Last week, I suggested
several possible names for the war in which Israel is currently
embroiled with Hezbollah in the north. Those included the ironic “War
of Disillusionment” and “The War When Reality Finally Sunk In” as well
as the official working titles: “Operation Just Reward” and “Operation
Change of Direction.” Even before that, though, I raised the
possibility in an earlier column that, were the war to be concluded by
today (Aug. 3) – which happens to be the fast of Tisha B’Av according
to the Jewish calendar – the significance would be too much to avoid in
deciding the war’s name.

Jewish scholars will
already have taken notice that the war started at the beginning of the
“three weeks” prior to Tisha B’Av (literally, the ninth day of the
month of Av on the Hebrew calendar) on a date that is also a fast day
known as the 17th of Tammuz (Tammuz is the month in the Hebrew calendar
preceding Av).

The three weeks between
the 17th of Tammuz and the ninth of Av have traditionally been a
mourning period. Jewish weddings are not conducted; observant Jews
eschew live music and entertainment, and avoid eating meat except on
Shabbat.

The three weeks
commemorate a whole host of disasters in Jewish history, including the
Jewish people’s defeat at the hands of the Babylonians (resulting in
the destruction of the first Jewish temple in Jerusalem) and
Jerusalem’s defeat 600 years later by the Romans (resulting in the
destruction of Herod the Great’s rebuilt Second Temple). Both these
conquests, according to Jewish tradition, took place on the ninth of
Av.

Other tragedies have
subsequently been ascribed to Tisha B’Av – the date of the expulsion of
the Jews from Spain in 1492 during the Inquisition and even dates
during the Nazi Holocaust.

If the war that began on
the 17th of Tammuz and actually ended on the date of the ninth of Av,
we would have no choice but to call it the “Three Weeks War.” Even if
it were to end a bit later, we might still have a bit of a “fudge
factor” to play with.

Well, apparently, the
folks in the naming wars department had the same idea. Israeli Defense
Minister Amir Peretz has announced that the current conflict between
Israel and Hezbollah will be recorded in history as Milhemet Bein
Hameitzarim or literally, “The War Between the Straits.”

Come again?

There aren’t any straits in Lebanon the last time I checked, so this can’t be a literal translation. And it’s not.

The “three weeks,” as
English-speakers have come to know them, is referred to in Hebrew as
Bein Hameitzarim. The expression comes from the scroll of Lamentations,
which is traditionally read on Tisha B’Av evening. In its first chapter
are the lines:

“She dwells among the nations. She finds no rest. All her persecutors overtook her between the straits.”

These words, from the
prophet Jeremiah, are attributed to the nation of Israel, which he
bemoans has forsaken its God. The rest of the scroll spells out in
great detail the misfortunes that will further befall Israel if it does
not repent.

Lamentations, it seems, is not a happy scroll.

While Jeremiah’s words
hardly seem meant to embolden an Israel now fighting for its very
existence, there may be more between the lines, if not the straits.
Milchemet Bein Hameitzarim could refer to the gap (implied in the word
“straits”) between cultures – in this case between the West and
fundamentalist Islam.

In this respect, the
official name of the war reflects both its time period and a clash of
cultures, a highly appropriate metaphor for a post 9-11 Middle East
struggle that has been referred to as everything from a proxy war for
the U.S. and Iran, to the last chance to stop the runaway train that is
Jihad’s battle with the West.

Will a ceasefire be
declared by day’s end? It’s hard to say. After Sunday’s tragedy in
Qana, a previously supportive world opinion has turned tepid, and U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to be preparing a draft
ceasefire agreement to be implemented as early as this weekend. At the
same time, Israeli officials and Israel Defense Forces planners are
talking about the war requiring another two weeks and some 15,000
Israeli troops.

Still, whether the dates are exact or not, the irony will not be lost on either the war-namers or the Jewish people.
 

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Tuesday, August 1, 2006. The link is here.Will Qana tragedy be the turning point for the war?

If there were ever a need
to provide further fuel for America’s favorite diplomatic past-time,
France-bashing, the French Foreign Minister served it up it in spades
on Monday. Speaking during a trip to Lebanon, Minister Philippe
Douste-Blazy declared, “In the region there is, of course, a country
such as Iran – a great country, a great people and a great civilization
which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region.”Douste-Blazy’s comments
would be outrageous at any time, but coming a day after Israel’s tragic
targeting of an apartment block housing terrorists, missiles, rocket
launchers…and – depending on conflicting reports – somewhere between 28 and 56 innocent civilians, including many children, who were killed in the blast,
Douste-Blazy’s words epitomize the double standard that has plagued
Israel throughout all its battles, no less so in its current conflict
with Hezbollah and Hamas.

Yes, the attack in Qana on
Sunday was horrific. But sucking up to Iran isn’t going to make
Hezbollah stop hiding behind civilians, a tactic it has employed
numerous times to turn the tide of world opinion as it did in Qana. Nor
will the words of UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett who, referring
to the deaths in Qana, said “it’s absolutely dreadful, it’s quite
appalling.”

Where were Ms. Beckett’s
words of shock and condemnation these past three weeks as Hezbollah has
deliberately targeted Israel’s cities, forcing over a million citizens
into bomb shelters?

How did the apartment
complex in Qana come to be targeted in the first place? After much
scrambling, Israel released footage late Sunday night purporting to
show a similar building being used as cover for the launching of dozens
of Katyushas headed for Haifa, Afula and beyond (see image above of a Katyusha launcher).

The Israeli Air Force
identified the building that collapsed as being a Hezbollah command
center and said it had no idea there were civilians hiding in the bomb
shelters. Israel says that it had warned residents to get out of town,
dropping leaflets and making announcements by bullhorn.

In Gaza, Israel has taken
this kind of advanced warning system to a new level: the army is now
making telephone calls to the residents of a building about to be
targeted for its use by terrorists in launching Qassam rockets against
southern Israeli towns.

Did the Pesachov family
near Safed get a phone call from Hezbollah before the Katyusha landed
in the family’s living room, killing a grandmother and her
seven-year-old grandchild? Did Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah
apologize to even a single Israeli the way all of Israel’s top brass -
from the Prime Minister on down – did immediately after the Qana
incident?

United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan on Sunday urged the U.N. to condemn the air strike
in Qana but, remarkably, the Security Council couldn’t figure out the
language and, blocked by objections to strengthen the language from
Qatar of all places, for once showed momentary restraint “only”
expressing its “extreme shock and distress.”

Israel announced on Monday
a 48-hour quasi-ceasefire – the Air Force would halt proactive
missions, although it pledged to provide cover for ground forces and
take out “imminent threats.” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
hightailed it back to Washington after canceling a trip to Beirut,
broadly telegraphing her intentions to get a full ceasefire in place by
the weekend.

The Israeli army says it
still needs 10-14 days to completely silence Hezbollah, but some
generals on Monday were already hinting that all of Hezbollah’s border
bases within two kilometers of Israel could be cleared as early as
Thursday. Another report optimistically claimed that Israel had taken
out 2/3 of Hezbollah’s long-range missile arsenal.

That won’t stop the
Katyushas, though, of which an estimated 9,000 still exist, but it
could quell the clamoring and complaints within Israel that will erupt
if the war is forced to be called off “too soon,” providing the
government and the army with at least some mild face saving.

Will Qana prove to be the
turning point in the war with Hezbollah? It certainly was in 1996 when
a stray Israeli shell aimed killed 102 civilians in nearly the same
location, forcing the government of Shimon Peres to order an abrupt and
early end to an Israeli counter-terror operation known as “Grapes of
Wrath.”

Ten years later, Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz are singing
a different tune. Olmert and crew undoubtedly knew “their” Qana moment
would come and were ready for it.

“Israel is continuing to
fight,” Olmert declared in an address to the nation on Monday night as
the cabinet to expand the ground operation – something that had been
turned down just days before in favor of more air power. “We will stop
the war when the threat is removed, our captive soldiers return home in
peace, and you are able to live in safety and security … we are
determined to come out victorious in this battle.”

“We are fighting against
ruthless terrorists and we will not stop until they are pushed back
from our border,” Olmert added.
“We have to finish the operation,” Defense Minister Peretz declared.
“The army will expand and deepen its actions against Hezbollah.”v
Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon also downplayed the ceasefire in
the air. “It is not stopping the war. If it ends today it means a
victory for Hezbollah… and for world terror, with far-reaching
consequences. Therefore this war is not about to end, not today and not
tomorrow,” he said.

Israel may, ironically,
receive help in its PR campaign from an unlikely source – an
anti-Syrian Lebanese group, which is claiming that Hezbollah gunmen
deliberately “placed a rocket launcher on the building’s roof” in Qana,
then brought “invalid children inside, in a bid to provoke an Israeli
response.” The Lebanese website Libanoscopie, which is associated with
the Christian “March 14 Forces” group, says that Qana was picked
because it is already a symbol for “massacring innocent civilians” and
that Hezbollah’s plot was meant to turn attention away from Lebanese
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s “Seven Points Plan” which calls for
deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon and the disarming
of Hezbollah.

It was Nachman Shai,
though, who perhaps put it best. Writing on Monday, the former IDF
spokesperson, who served in that capacity during the first Gulf War and
who is currently the Director-General of the United Jewish Communities’
Israel Office, addressed both the war and the public relations
challenge.

“Israel must continue its
military actions,” Shai stressed. “I know this is a difficult decision,
which some claim shows callousness and indifference. Nevertheless …
this kind of accident should not divert attention from the main
challenge we face: a democratic, Western country which acts according
to moral standards faces a fundamentalist terror organization that acts
against and from within the civil population, intentionally and
brutally. We must present and market these facts, repeatedly and
persistently.”

In a world where battles
are fought both on and off the battlefield, carefully choosing one’s
words may be the best weapon Israel has against the international
double standard.

——————————-

A perfect flight tracker site should not only have information on airlines but details on even Florida hotels and should get hotel reservations for you as well. The site should be able to book you on jet airlines with as much ease as any car rental.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Sunday, July 30, 2006. The link is here.Does the war in the north serve U.S. strategic goals?

Why is the U.S. giving
Israel so much leeway in its war against Hezbollah? Why hasn’t
Condoleezza Rice been pressing for a ceasefire sooner than today’s
call, which only followed the Israel Defense Forces strike on the
Lebanese town of Qana that killed 55? And why has the Bush
administration so far blocked every U.N. attempt at condemning Israel
for its “disproportionate response?”Is it simply because this
time – unlike during previous Israeli operations against terrorists
threatening its home front – America “gets” it? Or is it that
Washington’s and Israel’s interests in dealing a mortal blow to
Hezbollah are finally in line?

I think both those points are
true, but there’s something more going on here. Since 9/11, Israel has
valiantly pressed the case that its fight against terror and the global
war on jihad are one and the same. That message may finally be getting
through.

The U.S. is watching Israel’s war with Hezbollah
under an intense magnifying glass, but it is relating to it less as a
regional struggle and more as a real-life “war game” with true
geopolitical implications.

In the book “Blink,” researcher
Malcolm Gladwell relates a detailed accounting of how the U.S. in 2002
conducted a $250 million Persian Gulf war game, two and a half years in
the planning, before actually going into Iraq. The same thing is
happening now, except the game has taken six years to plan, will cost
the Israeli economy even more, and is anything but virtual: the
casualties on both sides are very real.

Center Stage

Israel-Hezbollah
is a dress rehearsal for the main event: the U.S. vs. Iran. There’s
little to distinguish Hezbollah from Iran other than the smaller
playing field on which it’s conducting its attacks against the Western
mini-power of Israel. Nor is Hezbollah’s arsenal dissimilar from
Iran’s; indeed, most of the now 1,600 missiles that Hezbollah has fired
into northern Israel came from Iran by way of Syria.

Hezbollah
receives its marching orders from Iran; the raison d’etre behind the
timing of Hezbollah’s attack on the Israeli army convoy and subsequent
kidnapping of two soldiers that started this whole conflict 19 days ago
was in no small part to distract world leaders at the G-8 Summit from
censoring Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

So it is of great
interest to the U.S. to see which weapons Hezbollah (read: Iran) will
use against Israel (read: the U.S.), what explosives payload they will
be carrying, and how effective they are. The U.S. is also watching
closely to see how quickly the Israeli army can respond and take out
the threat, and how Israel synchronizes its air strikes and ground
operations.

Ha’aretz’s Avraham Tal put it succinctly last week
when he described how much of a proxy Hezbollah is for its Iranian
handlers. “Contrary to what the critics are arguing, the IDF is not
fighting a small guerrilla organization,” Tal wrote. “It is dealing
with a trained, skilled, well-organized, highly motivated infantry that
is equipped with the cream of the crop of modern weaponry from the
arsenals of Syria, Iran, Russia and China.”

There is also the
question of strategy. If Hezbollah acts like Iran (whether under direct
orders or not), it is critical to note the timing and order of missile
attacks: Are they fired one at a time against different targets or does
Hezbollah prefer a barrage against a single target all at once? At what
point will Hezbollah pull out the long-range missiles, like the ones
that hit Afula on Friday and that were rumored to be aimed at Netanya
or Hadera but that “missed?” Does Hezbollah have the gumption – and
ability – to make good on its threat to target Tel Aviv?

And
then there’s the issue of Jerusalem. Will Hezbollah necessarily spare
Israel’s capital because of its concentration of Muslim holy sites and
heavy Arab population?

After all, it hasn’t stopped Hezbollah
from hitting Haifa and the Galilee, both of which have high Arab
populations and have seen a large number of Arab casualties. Maybe
Hezbollah just doesn’t care. A martyr is a martyr no matter where the
shell fell from.

Stage Set?

All of this, it can be
assumed, will be repeated in some form if and when the “mother of all
battles” is conducted between Iran and the West. As a result, the U.S.
has little incentive to end the battle early. The more data this “war
game” can yield, the better prepared the U.S. will be when and if what
would surely be called World War III breaks out.

A cynical
analysis? Unquestionably. But I’m not the only one talking like this.
In an interview with the right-wing WorldNetDaily last week, Lebanon’s
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt charged that Tehran is using Hezbollah’s
confrontation with the Jewish state to test the abilities of Iranian
weapons and to observe Israeli military capabilities.

“The
Iranians are actually experimenting with different kinds of missiles in
Lebanon by shooting them at the Israelis. Iran is using this violence
to test certain of (Israel’s) abilities,” Jumblatt said.

The
Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon writing over the weekend spun the
situation more in terms of U.S. interests in Iraq, writing that,
“Washington is watching to see how Israel does. The US wants to see
Hezbollah weakened badly; it wants to see Damascus weakened badly; it
wants to see Iran suffer the loss of a key proxy. This is in their
interest. This will help their own efforts in Iraq. A democratic
Lebanon, something impossible with a strong Hezbollah and Syrian
meddling, will enhance the American status in the region, a status that
is declining with each passing Iraqi day.”

Ha’aretz analyst
Ze’ev Sternhell was more blunt. “Sometimes, it seems as if U.S.
President George W. Bush wants Israel both to destroy Lebanon and to
sustain painful losses,” he wrote last week. “That way, Israel provides
him with an excellent alibi for the war in Iraq: The fight against
terror is global, the blood price is the same, the methods of operation
and the means are identical, and the time needed for victory is long.
The Israeli vassal is serving its master no less than the master is
providing for its needs.”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah came
to essentially the same conclusion as Sternhell. In Nasrallah’s eyes,
Israel has already lost and it is its U.S. patron that is a true
warmonger. “The Israelis are ready to halt the aggression because they
are afraid of the unknown,” he declared. “The one pushing for the
continuation of the aggression is the U.S. administration. Israel has
been exposed as a slave of the U.S.”

Regardless of whether
Israel is being given such extraordinary latitude due to “America’s
determination to smash Iran’s strength and positions of influence
around the Middle East and the Persian Gulf,” as another commentator
put it, the support Israel is receiving also plays into its own
interests.

For Israel – as I have written before – this is
nothing short of an existential battle that will determine the
viability of Jewish settlement in the north of Israel, if not the
entire state. Israel has no alternative to win and the time to fight is
now. If that happens to serve U.S. interests, who’s complaining?

“Why
did Hezbollah invest so much time and energy in creating a network of
rockets and missiles that is the densest in the world (at least in
terms of weaponry per square kilometer)?” asked Ha’aretz’s Tal last
week. He posits a chilling explanation: “This is the basic phase that
will prepare the stage for an offensive attack on Israel, supported by
Iran, that is intended to liquidate the Jewish state.”

And if
the war hadn’t started now? “Eventually, Hezbollah (installed as
Lebanon’s formal regime), in collaboration with Iran, would have
launched a war of annihilation against Israel. Should the confrontation
with Hezbollah have been delayed until Iran had already acquired
nuclear weapons?”

Major-General Ya’akov Amidror, former head of
the IDF Intelligence Assessment Division, put it another way. Defeating
Hezbollah will cost Iran “a key strategic deterrent weapon,” he said,
“in which it has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in weaponry,
infrastructure, training, command and control in order to “light up’
the Middle East.”

And so the war goes on, now in its 19th day,
with no end in sight. Yes, the fighting is proceeding more slowly than
expected. Yes, Hezbollah is better trained and better armed than
anticipated. But Israelis remain resolute and despite the events in
Qana, it still seems that a U.S.-brokered ceasefire is days, maybe
weeks away.

“War game” or not, for Israel this is no virtual reality.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Thursday, July 27, 2006. The link is here.

Does living a normal life including sending your child closer to the border?


For weeks, 12-year-old
Merav has been buzzing about summer camp. On Friday, she heads off for
her first overnight camping experience – two weeks at the “Kayitz
b’Kibbutz” program at Kibbutz Shluchot, just south of Beit Shean in the
Jordan Valley.Much of Merav’s excitement has been about what to
bring. She’s spent hours and not an insignificant number of her
parents’ shekels buying new gear – pajamas and a new bathing suit, a
better sleeping bag, two disposable cameras, bug spray, suntan lotion,
snacks for the bus ride, and many more items I’ve long since lost count
of.

She has busily consulted with her friend Shayna, who was a
camper the year before, on everything from what to expect on Shabbat to
the type of boys she might meet. Together they have looked at pictures
posted by the camp on its Web site. By this point, she knows just about
all she can before actually getting there.

Except for one thing, which we haven’t had the heart to tell her. We’re not sure she should go.

You see, her camp is a two-hour drive north of Jerusalem. Which puts it potentially in Katyusha range of southern Lebanon.

As
the war with Hezbollah enters its third week, there seems little
indication the missile barrage that has blanketed the north of Israel
will let up any time soon. As of Wednesday, an estimated 1,402 missiles
have been fired by Hezbollah – with Wednesday being the worst day of
all with 119 rockets landing in Israel. Four people were injured, one
seriously.

The day before, on Tuesday, some 90 missiles were
launched, killing a 15-year-old girl. The Northern District Police’s
spokesperson reported a total of 19 Israeli civilians have been killed
and 1,262 wounded – including 46 who are still hospitalized. Officials
in the local authorities estimate that 30-50 percent of northern
residents have left their homes over the past week.

Thus far, in
Jerusalem we’ve felt mostly isolated from the fighting, watching the
news just like our worried family members back in the “old country.”
Whether it’s because we’re out of range of the majority of the terror
arsenal, or due to the (misplaced?) assumption that Hezbollah would
never fire on Jerusalem with its many Muslim holy sites, we have felt
safe here in Israel’s capital. We’ve eaten in our regular cafes,
attended jazz and wine festivals and gone about “business as usual.”

But
Kibbutz Shluchot, where our daughter’s camp is situated, is not all
that far away from Tiberias, the vacation resort on the Sea of Galilee
that has been relentlessly targeted. And although no Katyushas have
fallen that far south yet, they have landed in Afula, slightly to the
west and nearly as deep into Israel.

And Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah has made it clear that his group’s “surprises” are not over.
The ambush of elite Israeli army forces in Bint Jbail early Wednesday
morning that left eight Golani troops dead and another 22 wounded was
just one of a string of unexpected setbacks for Israel in the 16 days
this war has raged.

On Wednesday, in a televised statement,
Nasrallah fumed that Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon would not
stop Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel and that the conflict
was moving “to the stage of beyond Haifa.” Fuad Dirani, a Hezbollah
commander, went one step further and called for the residents of
Netanya to evacuate their homes because “soon the range of our rockets
will reach 100 kilometers (62 miles) into Israel.” After everything
else we’ve experienced, we have no reason not to believe them.

This
week, the “Kayitz b’Kibbutz” staff informed worried parents that the
camp was taking all precautions, including rerouting day trips that
normally include bicycling in the Hula Valley (a few miles from the
Lebanese border), a trip to the Banias waterfalls and an outing at the “Luna Gal” water park (in the
aforementioned Tiberias).

The kibbutz has bomb shelters and
the campers can be expected to be instructed in their use. Which only
intensifies the dilemma: The tang of guilt my wife Jody and I have over
sending our daughter two hours closer to the front is not the type of
worry most parents have when sending their children off to overnight
camp for the first time. Less bittersweet and more bitter lemon.

We’re
not the only ones grappling with questions about coming closer to the
“action.” On Tuesday, I received an email from my cousins Richard and
Dori who live in Toronto. They are supposed to arrive in Israel next
week with two of their children. Their plan was to tour the north and
Jerusalem before heading south for a few days relaxation in Eilat.
Clearly, the vacation in Haifa and the Galilee would have to be
cancelled. But what about the rest of the trip?

“We have been
agonizing as to whether to come now or not,” Richard told me. Their
daughter,, Cindy, is worried about the possibility of Tel Aviv getting
hit by rockets. “She is saying that even Israelis are telling people
not to visit now. It’s not like me to cancel out. But do you think we
would be taking unnecessary risks by coming now?”

How do you
answer a letter like that? On the one hand, I can tell him all about
our “normal” life in Jerusalem. I could say that it’s not necessarily
any safer in Canada. A gang of terrorists was recently arrested for
plotting to storm Canada’s parliament and behead officials, including
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

But could Tel Aviv (and Jerusalem) be targeted? Of course, we are at war.

And
then there’s Marla. Three years ago, our cousin Marla Bennett from San
Diego was also agonizing whether to return to her Jewish studies
program in Israel after spending a month student teaching in the U.S.
This was in February 2002, at the height of the suicide bombing
campaign, just prior to the horrific March that concluded with the
Pesach massacre at the Park Hotel and the launch of Israel’s Operation
Defensive Shield.

She, too, sought our counsel. Four months
later, she was murdered in the terror attack at Hebrew University on
July 31, 2002. So what right do we have to advise anyone about anything
when it comes to visiting Israel in time of war?

But giving in
to fear also means giving up and giving a victory to our enemies. We
received an email this week from the embattled town of Safed in the
Upper Galilee. The son of a friend of ours who lives there was driving
into the woods as he does every Friday to meditate before the Sabbath.
As he got into his car, he encountered an old man who was hitchhiking.
The man was going in the opposite direction but when the son tried to
refuse, the man had already got into the car and there was no arguing
with him.

The man then insisted on making another stop before
their final destination; again there was no arguing with him.
Eventually, it became too late and the son was forced to give up on his
weekly meditation. As he returned to his house to prepare for Shabbat,
the son looked out into the woods from the window in his living room
and saw that a Katyusha had fallen exactly in the spot in the woods
where he usually meditated.

Is the story true? Apocryphal? A
miracle? I’m not a particularly religious man, but the son’s experience
reminds me that not everything is under our control. We can let fear
rule our actions and keep our children locked up at home where we hope
it’s safe. Or we can continue living that “normal life” for which
Israelis are so famous, knowing that sometimes you’re in the wrong
place at the wrong time, sometimes you’re not, and there’s little one
can do about either.

In the current conflict, I’ll opt for the latter. Which for us means sending our daughter on Friday off to camp…with Katyushas.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Tuesday, July 25, 2006. The link is here.Is it too early to give the war in the north a formal name?

What should we call this
war? Thus far, we’ve been using fairly generic names, like the “War
with Hezbollah” or the “War in the North.” But those seem too
pedestrian to capture the essence of what is rapidly shaping up to be
one of the most decisive fights in Israel’s short but battle-weary
history.A grander name might be the “Israel-Iranian/Syrian
Proxy War.” Or how about the “War Between the West and Radical Islam?”
But those high-flying monikers presuppose we know more than we do about
who the ultimate players in the unfolding drama will be and how it will
all end up. Most wars don’t get named until after they’re done. After
all, you couldn’t know the Six-Day War would be called that on the
fourth day of the fighting?

Indeed, maybe what’s taking place
today along the Lebanese border will eventually be downgraded in the
history books from a full-fledged war to a limited “operation,” in
which case the military code name – “Just Reward” – might just as well
be used.

The Knesset debated that very issue earlier today.

MK
Menahem Ben-Sasson of Kadima argued that Israel can use “the term ‘war’
only when the military actions are started by our side.” Ben-Sasson
expressed concern that calling the current conflict a war would
contribute to a negative public image painting as a “hostile
aggressor.” He preferred the label “military action.”

That
response infuriated Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav. “Refusing to call this
situation by its rightful name, a war, is a completely irresponsible
action by the government,” Yahav declared. Only by calling it a war can
“proper aid be received by citizens of the North.”

A
definition of war also allows for reparations for real estate damage
and provides a security blanket to employees and businesses
guaranteeing that both will be compensated for time absent from work,
Yahav added.

Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On agreed. “I think it is a
clear case of hutzpa by the government not to have declared war the
first day,” she said “They are trying to save money while people are
suffering.”

Legal wrangling aside, I
think we have enough data to give the war a proper name. My proposal
stems not from the war’s most likely conclusion, but the mood into
which Israelis have fallen at its onset. Yes, there’s defiance and
resolute steadfastness. But there’s something else that’s gripped the
country.

I say we should call this “The War of Disillusionment.”

Not
disillusionment in our military or even the government: opinion polls
still show a high degree of support for the action in the north.

Rather,
this is the war when our dreams of a new Middle East literally went up
in smoke. Everything we’ve strived for since the Oslo Accords has been
bombed back to 1967, most critically our hope that things could ever be
different in our tough little neighborhood.

When Oslo first
emerged on the Israeli political scene some 15 years ago, it was met by
both detractors and supporters, but there was an overall mood in the
country that, if nothing else, life would not be the same. We had a
chance at peace, at treaties, at borders and negotiated resolutions.
Some felt Yasser Arafat was going to be rehabilitated and that the PLO
would be our partner. Our children would no longer have to serve long
years in the army and reserves.

That was quickly followed by
the peace treaty with Jordan and the opening of friendly relations with
several progressive Arab countries. We even gave our daughter, born in
those heady optimistic days, the middle name “Yonit” – meaning little
dove of peace.

The process eventually culminated with the
pull-out from Lebanon which, while hasty and ill-planned, still said to
the world: “This is an internationally recognized border and you no
longer have any basis for calling us ‘occupiers.’”

We all know
what happened then. In the fall of 2000, following the failed Camp
David talks, Arafat and the Palestinian Authority launched a protracted
campaign of terror and suicide bombings against civilians inside the
1967 “Green Line” that effectively buried the Oslo process.

Ariel
Sharon re-invented himself and his drive to build the separation fence,
along with last summer’s controversial Disengagement from Gaza, were
conscious steps to create a new reality, one where Israelis and
Palestinians – and indeed, Israelis and the rest of the Middle East -
would be able to co-exist peacefully … just not together.

Giving
up the dream of driving to Damascus for falafel was the first
disillusionment. Now the War with Hezbollah represents the final one.
Because if disengagement posited that we can live in the same crowded
piece of real estate, just not in the same building, we were – a year
ago – still closing our eyes to the growing reality that the other side
wanted us evicted entirely.

We wanted so desperately to
believe that all those statements made in Arabic (but not English)
about still intending to push the Jews into the sea were just poetic
hyperbole that made for good rally chants, but that no one really meant
it. That all those who had died in the years of so-called peace had not
died in vain.

Now, sadly, Israelis believe what the other side
is saying. And the message is this: Nothing has changed since 1967.
Since 1948 before that, and maybe all the way back to the Balfour
Declaration. The War with Hezbollah tells Israelis that our neighbors
don’t want us here, not at all.

Lebanon is not a border
dispute – Israel pulled out in 2000 and the UN went as far as to
recognize the border. The legal definition of the border with Gaza is
murkier, but for nine months, the Strip has been judenrein. The attack
that killed two soldiers and resulted in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit
was on the Israeli side of the border. So what else could all this be,
but a continuation of the first Arab-Israeli war?

Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday told representatives of the Gaza
evacuees living in temporary housing in the Negev community of Nitzan
that “we will yet evacuate communities and it is important to me to
complete this chapter as soon as possible.” He added that he was
“convinced that we made the right decision to carry out the
disengagement plan.”

But will he really be able to implement
his realignment plan? Will Israelis, after the “War of
Disillusionment,” consent to setting the hoped-for new international
border to just a few kilometers away from their homes in Jerusalem and
Tel Aviv? Hezbollah and the Palestinian government run by Hamas both
get their marching orders from Iran and Syria. If Hezbollah can make a
35-kilometer band of land in the north of Israel a living hell, why on
earth would Israelis agree to a plan that could potentially put those
same missiles under someone’s bed in a house down the block, even if it
is on the other side of a “fence?”

Let’s not forget that “when
Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaks about destroying Israel, he means
exactly that,” wrote MK Ephraim Sneh, leader of the Labor Party Knesset
faction. “And before he obtains nuclear weapons, he is trying to hammer
and weaken Israeli society with various types of rockets and missiles.”

U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Israeli Prime Minister in
their meeting on Monday that it is “time for a new Middle East. It is
time to say to those that don’t want a different kind of Middle East
that we will prevail. They will not.”

Israelis won’t give up.
It’s not that kind of disillusionment. We won’t all pack up and make
yerida to New York or Los Angeles. We have no choice but to remain
vigilant.

Even if the war is concluded in our favor and
Hezbollah is dealt a mortal blow with international peace keepers
replacing terrorists in southern Lebanon; and even if Iran is given a
bloody nose through the defeat of its proxy and remarkably goes the way
of Libya which has purportedly given up its weapons of mass destruction
program; even then there’s still no turning away from the lessons
learned in these hot weeks of July.

“Give peace a chance?”
veteran Israel Television journalist Idelle Ross said this week.
“Wouldn’t we love to? Maybe another time, another place.”

Let me suggest, then, perhaps an even better name for everything that’s going on: “The War When Reality Finally Sunk In.”