Hizbullah’s media champions

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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.

The withdrawal was a military defeat. It weakened Israel and strengthened Hizbullah. Without the security zone, Israel had no buffer between its civilian population and Hizbullah. For its part, Hizbullah set itself up in the IDF’s abandoned fortifications and imposed its full control over south Lebanon.

Israel’s strategic incoherence and incompetence in the wake of the withdrawal was showcased just four months later. When Hizbullah forces penetrated Mt. Dov and kidnapped IDF solders Benny Avraham, Omar Sawayid and Adi Avitan, Barak had no idea what to do. So he did nothing.

 

The soldiers were killed and Israel released hundreds of terrorists from its prisons to secure the return of their bodies four years later. Interestingly, the names Avraham, Sawayid and Avitan didn’t make it into Yediot’s ten year-anniversary retrospective.

The withdrawal was a regional failure. Immediately after the withdrawal, Palestinian Authority chairman Yassir Arafat ordered Fatah chief Marwan Barghouti to prepare for war. Acting on Arafat’s orders, Barghouti formed the Aksa Brigades terror cells comprised of Fatah members and the Popular Resistance Committee terror network that combined Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror cells.

Four months later, after Arafat rejected Barak’s offer of Palestinian statehood at Camp David in July 2000, he ordered his forces to launch the Palestinian Jihad.

Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon showed Arafat that Hizbullah commander Hassan Nasrallah was right to liken Israel to a spider web that would collapse at the slightest provocation. Lebanon taught Arafat that there was no reason to negotiate a peace with Israel. If pressed, Israel would lose the will to fight and surrender.

The withdrawal was a political failure. To justify his decision to surrender south Lebanon to Iran’s Lebanese proxy force, Barak and his media flacks repeatedly presented the false claim that Hizbullah only fought Israel because Israel was in Lebanon. If the IDF were to pick up its marbles and go home, Hizbullah would naturally disband.

This historically false, intuitively nutty assertion gave credence to the false Arab-Leftist narrative which argues that Israel’s size, rather than the Arab world’s refusal to accept a Jewish state in the Levant, is the cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

AS HIZBULLAH’S subsequent build-up, continued aggression and eventual de facto takeover of the Lebanese government all showed, Hizbullah was not an Israeli creation. It was formed by Teheran to serve the needs of the ayatollahs. Its continued existence, strength and aggression are dictated not by Israeli actions but by Iranian interests.

So too, the wider Arab conflict with Israel predated the 1967 Six Day War and it won’t end if Israel shrinks into the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. It won’t end until either Israel is destroyed or the Arabs decide that they are finally willing to accept a Jewish state in their midst.

The withdrawal from Lebanon set the conditions for the 2006 war. It provided Hizbullah with the political cache in Lebanon and regionally to rearm. And it gave Shiite, non-Arab Iran unprecedented popularity among the Sunni Arab masses. Even more devastatingly, the withdrawal — which set the course for the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and the Olmert government’s plan to unilaterally withdraw from Judea and Samaria — discredited the one strategy that could have brought Israel a strategic victory in 2006: reassertion of Israeli control over the border area in south Lebanon.

For ten years Israel has been paying the price for the withdrawal from Lebanon. And yet even now, with Hizbullah fielding guided missiles capable of hitting Dimona and in control of Lebanese government whose military receives advanced weapons from the US, the Israeli media, led by Yediot are still presenting the withdrawal as an act of strategic genius and political courage.

CONSIDER THE following representative extract from the paper’s interview with Barak.

Q: The most significant argument [against the withdrawal] is that the withdrawal is what built-up Hizbullah. That we are responsible for its increased strength.

A: That is…completely incorrect. When we left Hizbullah already had 7,000 rockets, which is nearly twice what they fired during the second Lebanon war. [In 2000] they already had rockets with sufficient range to hit the power station in Hadera. Hizbullah didn’t exist when we went in [in 1982]. It was formed because we were there. Hizbullah’s build-up is not a consequence of our withdrawal from Lebanon, it is the consequence of our stay in Lebanon….

“Hizbullah’s biggest build-up happened six years after the withdrawal, after the Second Lebanon War. Paradoxically, that war, that hurt them badly and created a type of deterrence, after it ended Hizbullah’s buildup escalated in a major way. They had 14,000 rockets in the Second Lebanon War. They fired some of them. And now they have 45,000 that cover the entire country.

“I suggest that we set aside the comforting story we tell ourselves that we supposedly built them up. We didn’t build them up and there’s no reason in the world to think, from everything I know about reality, that if we were in Lebanon now they would have less rockets.”

So we built them up but we have to set aside the comforting fable that we built them up. They were formed because we were in Lebanon and the fact that we’re not in Lebanon has no impact on their build-up.

And how did Yediot respond to Barak’s pearls of strategic wisdom?

Q: You never stop talking about leadership and making courageous decisions. But you’re not a commentator. You are Defense Minister and one of the most important people in the Israeli government. Ten years after the withdrawal and four years after the Second Lebanon War we again hear talk about an inevitable new round of war in the summer. Until when [will we have to fight]?”

This exchange – which is in no way unique – makes two things clear. First, Barak would rather say foolish things than acknowledge the harsh truth of his strategic misstep. Second, led by Yediot, the media prefer to portray Barak’s buffoonery as courageous statecraft than acknowledge the massive cost of his failure.

THE QUESTION is why are they acting this way? From Barak’s perspective, the answer is clear. Telling the truth would force him to acknowledge that his tenure as prime minister was a disaster for the country. Moreover, if Barak were ever courageous enough to acknowledge his failure, rather than listen to what he had to say, the media would shove him into the right-wing ghetto with Arens and Landau. He would lose his status as a brilliant strategist and be castigated as an ideologue.

The media’s commitment to prolonging the fiction that the withdrawal was a stroke of brilliance and blocking all debate on issue stems from the fact that the withdrawal from Lebanon was a media initiative. The media introduced the foolish notion that Hizbullah only existed because Israel was in south Lebanon.

Yediot, Israel Radio and other major news organs championed the cause of an Israeli pullout from Lebanon for a decade. They portrayed EU-financed straw organizations like Four Mothers which called for the withdrawal as mass movements. They demonized IDF commanders for opposing their withdrawal plan. They stifled all voices in the North opposing the move. They castigated all politicians opposing the retreat as right-wing warmongers or conversely in the case of Sarid, as hopeless doves. And they catapulted Barak to power in 1999 after he promised them that if elected he would withdraw the IDF from Lebanon within a year of taking office.

Since the withdrawal, the media have ignored its military consequences. They pretended Hizbullah’s abduction of Sawayid, Avitan and Avraham, its cross border attack in Shlomi in 2002, and its military build-up were unrelated to the withdrawal. So too, as far as the media are concerned, Hizbullah’s electoral and extra-electoral takeover of the Lebanese government and its decision to initiate the Second Lebanon War were all wholly unconnected to the IDF’s withdrawal.

The media have ignored the withdrawal’s regional consequences. They preferred to give credence to Arafat’s claim that the Palestinian terror was a popular Palestinian response to Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000 over considering the connection between Hizbullah/Iran/Syria and the Palestinians.

They ignored the political consequences of the withdrawal. They opted to support the Arab-Leftist narrative that if Israel contracts to the 1949 armistice lines, the Palestinians will make peace. And they continued to advance this lie even after Hamas took over Gaza in the wake of the 2005 withdrawal.

When people wonder why Israel continues to blunder from defeat to retreat and can’t figure out a way to assert its interests militarily or politically, they need to look no further than Yediot’s ten-year anniversary celebration of the withdrawal from Lebanon. So long as the media continue to portray their ideological fantasies as journalism, no politician will dare to embrace strategic rationality.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

 

 

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13 Comments

  • Marcel 05/11/2010 at 8:19

    The next war is coming, 100%, but we don’t know when,” said Ali, one of the Hezbollah fighters interviewed by Blanford. “We have big plans for it. God willing, you will see the end of Israel.”
    It does seem that this mental disease of the left has taken over Lukud otherwise how do you explain Netanyahu keeping the failed loser Barak as Israel’s Defense Minister along with the other failed loser Peres ? Was it to please Israel’s Washington pimps as they always love weak subservient poodles who without question implement their failure plan of erasing Israel from the Middle East.Was this why Netanyahu worked so hard to get the other defeatist loser Livni into his ‘rubber stamp of failed US policy’ government ?
    How is it that Israel still follows the failed land for peace disaster ,How can this be ? Why can’t Israel say no to the Pimp ?
    Under Netanyahu and Barak we have an IDF force more concerned about razing Jewish homes and preparing new retreats than showing resolute determination.
    Appeasement,retreat and capitulation are always seen as weakness by Israel’s enemies and always lead to the same place and yet Israel has set aside large deposits of this guaranteed to failed policy.More retreat is promised by these demented fools who rule Israel.
    Blunder after blunder since the retreat from South Lebanon the failure to finihs off Hizbollah in the second Lebanon war and the failure to defeat Hamas in the Gaza War of 2009 are traced to these servile leaders attempting to please their peace huslter pimps in Washington.
    This same desire drives Netanyahu to make critically flawed decisions that will hurt Israel even more.
    Israel is driven to make the same mistakes again and again to please her pimps and refuses to learn from them.
    The peace proces has succeeded in bringing Israel to the edge of the pit which it’s friends and enemies have dug for her.
    How does a nation with insane leaders and their enabling media extricate itself from the brink of self imposed destruction ?
    It dosen’t.
    So it is left to the Holy One of Israel to sever the pimp prostitute relationship as He has done often in Israel’s history.
    What will Israel do when God removes the peaceless pimp,who will Israel run after to please then ?
    The ugly world only respects force and brutal determination, something Israel’s enemies have in abundance and which Israel has lost.

    Reply
  • Steve 05/11/2010 at 10:48

    It’s going to be a race between the Iranians screwing up their courage to nuke Israel and the peaceless pimp being replaced by another peaceless pimp after Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem have been made Judenrein. It may be that some bright Iranian might figure out that nuking Israel before Israel has been pressured into dismantling its nuclear arsenal might give Great Satan (the U.S) and Little Satan (Russia) a free hand in the Middle East after Iran gets counter-nuked. So the Iranians might wait, all the while continually threatening Israel with extermination and arming its allies with the capability to do so. Even electing someone to the right of Bibi the Dhimmi probably won’t help. For instance Avi Lieberman believes Jewish unity is more important than standing on any sort of principle so if he got elected he’d cater to the Israeli Left. There is still the near universal idee fixe that maintaining good relations with one great power namely the United States, no matter now anti-Semitic its Executive Branch, is necesary for Israel’s survival. So the appeasement of Israel’s enemies will continue with another set of peaceless pimps.
    Where is God in all this? Well He’s not a registered Israeli voter and if He was He’d probably not vote. He was voiceless while six million Jews got butchered and I really don’t expect Him to weigh in if it happens again. He expects decent people to defend themselves.

    Reply
  • US citizen 05/11/2010 at 11:31

    God is and is with us as evidenced by His continued provision of our needs. Us humans like to think of ourselves as self-sufficient which God allows up to our ultimate failure: death.
    Fear not fellow humans didn’t Job say we will see God in our flesh at the last trump.
    A day approaches when the mighty men under the earth in their bunkers will pray that they fall upon them to hide them from the face of He who sits upon The Throne.
    Us humans are all condemned under the Law of God but redemption has been purchased.

    Reply
  • Marc Handelsman, USA 05/11/2010 at 12:50

    The reason Israel continues to blunder is because of weak leadership. Having been recently led by mediocre premiers, Israel has squandered its strategic deterrence. So as long as Israel is poorly led, it will continue to make strategic errors. Israel needs genuine statesmen who take responsibility, and don’t shift blame on the media. As long as Arabs sense Israeli weakness, they will continue to make aggression on Israel. Unfortunately, a regional war is coming soon, because career politicians have badly served Israel. And Israel must decisively win the next war.

    Reply
  • https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnayUgsHsuQX34qJoZ5j4CRyD4xUbGr1fs 05/11/2010 at 15:07

    I referenced this article in my own piece today:
    http://gentwarrior.blogspot.com/2010/05/will-he-heed-lessons.html
    As usual you are spot on and done twist history or mince words.

    Reply
  • DR WILLS 05/11/2010 at 17:58

    Caroline wrote: “…no politician will dare to embrace strategic rationality.” Of course, no ‘politician’ would dare. So, when will a real statesman stand up in Israel, who will not only embrace “strategic rationality” but will show some real courage and love for the people of Israel?

    Reply
  • Terry, Eilat - Israel 05/12/2010 at 4:17

    Most informed, sane people realize that Barak is a disaster, that he has made a career of one blunder after the other, that he is a pompous, over-stuffed, opportunist, inept & incompetent for any gov’t. position, that he has no strategic judgement. This is nothing new.
    Nor is it any surprise to read about the role of our media. Personally, I am so disgusted with our mainstream media, I can barely read the newspaper in the morning, I skim over the headlines & move on to various blogs for more reliable information & analysis.
    So, while everything you say in this article is accurate, can you tell me why the hell Ehud Barak is our Minister of Defense? What does this say about Netanyahu? Surely, Netanyahu is aware of Barak’s ineptitude, his poor judgement. I know the usual excuse, the necessity of a wider coalition & the fear of being labeled by our idiot media as an extreme right-wing gov’t. Sorry, I don’t buy it.
    As far as I’m concerned, it only shows a lack of courage, spinelessness, no backbone.
    With every passing day, our security situation deteriorates.

    Reply
  • yuval 05/12/2010 at 9:38

    Why does Bibi keep Ehud Barach as his defense minister?
    two reasons: One: It keeps the Media off his back
    Two: Barach is not the defense minister. He is the facade of defense minister.
    The real defense minister is Bogey Ya’alon, who is preparing for war on Iran, Syria, Hizballah, and most likely withstanding the most devastating rocket attack ever to be launched on the civillian population of Israel.
    At the same time a no-holds barred insurgency by arabs residing west of the Jordan. Ya’alon works in the shaddows, and he works hard.
    Barach is the clown left on stage to please the Media hacks and flacks. c’est tous.

    Reply
  • Steve 05/12/2010 at 9:46

    God provisions the Arabs even better.
    BTW claiming an eternal excuse for anything on the basis of a ritual human sacrifice is an abomination.

    Reply
  • Marcel 05/12/2010 at 9:58

    “Hizballah’s war-planners cannot avoid noticing that Israel has retreated from every warning it issued in the past year,” said this officer, and are therefore paying no heed to new ones.”
    http://www.debka.com/article/8778/
    O come on,give the poor poodle BoBo a break.
    He only wants to please his masta pimp in Washington by maintaining quiet for their peace agenda.
    The perfect poodle understand that he must sacrifice (the people of Israel) for the greater good of Babel land which he serves with unquestioned loyalty…..and lets not forget how hard it is for BoBo to fool the sheeple of Israel headed for slaughter.
    They’ll do nothing just like their grand parents did before in never again land.
    It’s a tough job pulling the wool over the eyes of a nation even with the media’s help.
    Disasters and Holocausts take much planning and preperations and he’s trying so hard.
    Be patient and trust him and his inner circle.
    Please lets remember that no longer sovereign Israel gave up it’s green light and is only left with red lights.
    So give the poor poodle a break,he’s trying so hard to put on a good show and all that matter’s is that Washington is happy.
    In that he is a great success.

    Reply
  • Steve 05/13/2010 at 9:30

    You’re right Marcel. We shoudldn’t get in the way of Bibi the Dhimmi getting his Nobel Peace Prize and keeping the good anti-Semites in the American Executive Branch, Europe, and Fatah happy. Bibi is just acting like a good Court Jew and has to keep his masters happy, justify everything they do, and morally disarm the Jews. So what if a few Jews are murdered now and then? If his masters aren’t appeased they might unleash a really bad pogrom and even kill Court Jews. Bibi really should go the Full Monty and do a Pablo Christiani.

    Reply
  • Yonatan 05/13/2010 at 12:12

    Everyone outside of Israel who is not a member of some Leftist organization cannot figure out what is going on in Israeli politics, and why Israel cannot just get rid of its loser politicians, like Ehud Barak. It is because he has tremendous support from the owners of Yediot Aharonot, which once tried to sell their paper among Jews in the Los Angeles area, but failed miserably. They have to give this piece of rag to people here to convince them to read it, but I use it to clean windows with. It is not worth the effort to read it at all.
    We have a lack of democracy in Israel, and the small groups who run the country seem determined to destroy Israel – and this goal comes before all others.
    Why are Israelis so passive about this situation, and when will the people rise up and rid themselves of these thieves and traitors? Will it only be after they have divided the country and created an indefensible Israel, or after the State of Israel is destroyed?
    This is a really pathetic situation, and Jews outside cannot understand what is going on. Neither can Jews here understand why Israelis tolerate this nonsense and these empty headed liars like Barak.

    Reply
  • Ron Grandinetti 05/13/2010 at 13:10

    Caroline it’s high time for the Israeli leadership to stop trying to win a popularity contest and forget about appeasing other governments.
    The number one objective is to protect and defend it’s people, sovereignty and to reflect the will of her people.
    There can’t be any more hits, misses and dry runs with the enemy. This just doesn’t do it.
    The build up of missiles in Southern Lebanon by Hezbollah is a definite threat to Israel and needs to be dealt with.
    The IDF has the ability to inflict a devastating blow and destroy the enemy. It’s the only way. They will know Israel means business.
    And above all, Israel doesn’t need permission from any outsider.

    Reply

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