Two tendencies have always competed in the Israeli army: its soldiers’ brave spirit and its top commanders’ cowardice. Ariel Sharon won the 1973 war in the face of the direct contrary orders of the hesitant General Staff, and many opposed the decision to preempt in 1967.

Israel lacks the staying power of, for example, the Iranian army. She can win only through penetrating strikes. Such operations must be necessarily daring, risky, and surprising. As such, they run against the political culture of indecision, fear of offending the Western powers, and zero loss tolerance. The Israeli army wins only when it breaks away from the political culture. That happens very rarely, though the results are spectacular. The lightning-fast and devilishly smart IDF is the exception, not the rule.

And so the Peace Now activist Perez leads the Israeli army. Consider assigning the other offices to pacifist hippies and members of Green Peace.

What strategists see as Israel’s tactical blunders in Lebanon is only the coherent implementation of her aimless politics, of the attempt to build the Jewish state without offending Arabs, and to wage a war without causing bloody reports in the media.

The IDF’s vacillation is costly. Israeli and Lebanese die, money is spent, and no end is achieved. Israel conducts a war she cannot afford in a manner that cannot bring victory. Israel does not have people to lose in urban combat or time to drag the expensive fighting out. A protracted urban war is very different from the tactics that gave Israel her spectacular victories.

Hezbollah won the battle for public opinion: it fights for the Palestinian cause even the Israeli government has accepted as right and stands firm against the Israeli enemy. Every day of fighting brings dividends to Hezbollah and further exhausts Israeli patience. Moving to Tel Aviv for a couple of weeks in the summer is one thing, a sort of vacation, but hiding in bunkers for months is different.

Hezbollah has enough rockets for another four months of shelling, and more supplies will come regardless of ridiculous Israeli operations to block the main roads—as if there were no others.

The IDF bosses order incursions into Lebanon, as if the army were going on a picnic. No war was ever conducted that way. Israel needs to move in swiftly, scorch the buffer zone, install a strong totalitarian government in Beirut, and withdraw. A protracted indecisive war will produce more losses and no victory.

Israel needs to address the causes of the confrontation. We cannot both publish in newspapers that Iran and Syria arm Hezbollah and promise that we won’t bomb Syria unless it interferes. Syria does interfere and has done for decades. Iran sold Hezbollah 210km-range Zelzal missiles with half-ton warheads whose only target is Israel. So far, Israel can easily punish Syria and significantly damage Iran. Refraining from decisive actions guarantees the guerillas’ comeback, and by that time the conflict will be on a much larger scale.

We killed 57 civilians in the Lebanese village Kfar Kana today. That’s about a two-day toll in Iraq and next to nothing in Sudan, Algeria, Afghanistan, or other war-torn Muslim countries. The Iran-Iraqi war took millions of lives, and scores of other intra-Arab wars killed more than 100,000 civilians each. The Allies had no reservations about bombing German and Japanese cities. The Lebanese cheered Hezbollah attacks on Jewish population centers. Palestinian suicide bombers specifically target Israeli civilians. So why should Israel behave any differently? Beside, the Israeli army did every thing possible to spare civilians. They were given hours to leave the villages that hosted Hezbollah fighters. In effect, Israel agreed to let the guerillas escape along with the villagers to avoid killing civilians.

The villagers stupidly stayed put and hid not in a bomb shelter, as the media has it, but in a basement. No reasonable person would hide in the basement of a house targeted for aerial attack. Israel made no mistake; the locals did.

Whether or not that Hezbollah provoked Israel to bomb a village does not matter. Israel acted within the normal limits of war. It need not offer pitiful excuses and ask for forgiveness. Wars are about killing. The moral cripples from Peace Now at Israel’s helm embarrass the country, demoralize the army, and lose the war.

The photos of Israeli children writing messages on shells destined for Lebanon provoked a flood of condemnation. It is great, however, that at least the children are not yet brainwashed. They know the enemy, and they hate him. They feel no compassion for the Lebanese. And why should they? The Lebanese willingly host Hezbollah and cheer its attacks on Israel.

The Americans, Russians, and British who bombed Germany during World War II made no attempt to distinguish between soldiers and non-combatants, between Nazis and their few opponents. Americans expressed no official regret over the millions they killed in Vietnam, and scores of other nations have been similarly unconcerned with enemy civilian casualties.

Americans cheered the bombing of Tokyo and Dresden, and the Russians felt great about shelling Berlin. It’s nice to see your enemies dead.

The line between soldiers and civilians is entirely artificial and has never never been observed in war. Hezbollah exists only because Lebanese civilians welcome and hide it, provide logistics and moral support, even finance it now since it joined the Lebanese government.

Hezbollah is not a group of bandits that holds the population hostage. The Lebanese freely elected Hezbollah. Israel fights not criminals but a regular, official army sent by a duly elected government. Hezbollah remains a major part of the Lebanese government and parliament after it started the war. Lebanese officials keep good working relations with Hezbollah staff. Hezbollah is not ousted from government, nor are its actions denounced. Israel is fighting the state of Lebanon, not a bunch of insurgents. And so the people of Lebanon, the source of its government’s legitimacy, funds, and military capability, are a proper target for Israeli attacks.

Targeting the home front would be acceptable even if it were entirely vindictive, since vengeance can be just. Recall a 1927 French court decision that acquitted Schlomo Schwartzbard—who killed Petlyura. Targeting the home front, however, is a proper military tactic. It efficiently breaks up support for the enemy army. Such popular support is especially indispensable for a guerilla army like Hezbollah. All armies during all popular wars have targeted the supporting population, generally without restraint. Israel cannot fight a Hezbollah that is indistinguishable from the Lebanese people. Israel should fight the Lebanese spearheaded by Hezbollah.

Learn from your children. Know your enemy.

Could Israel conquer the Arab states? Yes, but only with penetrating mobile strikes, not protracted “humane” warfare. The extent of victory made all the difference between the first and the second world wars. After the first war, the Entente did not enter the German capital, devastate the country, or change the government and its constitution. The enemy was humiliated but left to rearm. It did rearm and struck back with vengeance in twenty years. The French and the British occupied Egypt with easily, established a local administration, and ruled the country with little opposition. Egypt is unlike Germany in that its people lack a culture of moderation (other Arabs are still wilder), but we also have the example of a Japan that turned its educational system around after the war, taught its children international coexistence, and opened itself to the world. Israel needs to control the occupied Arab states for a decade or so. That will suffice to bring about lasting reforms in education and mentality. An occupation wouldn’t be so hard: Machiavelli taught that totalitarian states are easy to rule because their people are used to unfreedom.

All Israelis know how corrupt the establishment is. We know how the big parties distribute government sinecures and jobs in semi-governmental organizations to their supporters. How deeply connected the oligarchs are and how much they influence the politicians they bankroll. That many oligarchs and the politicians they sponsor care more about the opinions of their foreign partners than the needs of the Jewish state. That demagogue politicians cater to mass audiences of welfare recipients whose outlook is hardly Jewish at all.

We know that good people do not come to power. That the road to the Knesset is cobbled with compromises. That political donations have to be repaid many times over. That egomaniac party leaders push out possible competitors and stuff the parties with drones. That ambitious politicians have to form their own parties, fragment the spectrum, form odd coalitions, and wander out on an unpredictable course.

We know that radical, uncompromising politicians cannot attract donations. That donating to anti-establishment parties cuts entrepreneurs out of lucrative government contracts. That the media shy from uncomfortable truths and prefer to keep their idiot audience tranquil and happy.

We know the Jewish barons usurped the communities’ voices. That the people who often got their riches by every imaginable kind of crime, who are Jewish only in public pronouncements, lead the communities and decide on the matter of life, death, and existence.

We know the Jewish state we have longed for for two millennia is deterioratings into an abomination. And we keep silent. A nation of priests, unable to lead itself.

Soon we will start looking for someone to blame. How did Hezbollah managed to dig fortified underground bunkers 40 to 70 meters deep under Israel’s nose? How did Hezbollah accumulate dozens of tons of explosives? Thousands of missiles? Why did Israel tolerate Iranian military units in the Beka’a?

While gross negligence is a proper reason for firing many officials, we should not be blinded by that punishment. Israelis must look deeper. The real culprits are not the government or the general staff, but ordinary Israelis. Among the millions Jews,, who did not know that the Iranians are bankrolling and training Hezbollah and supplying it with arms? Who did not know that Hezbollah won the Lebanese elections and virtually legalized its paramilitary units? Who did not know that Israel is Hezbollah’s only enemy?

And yet Israelis remained silent. They watched in the comfort of their houses as the government raped the Jewish idea and dismantled Gush Katif. No more than 5% of Israelis went into the streets to protest the actions of the perverts who swapped Jewish land for vague Arab promises of peace. No demonstrations demanded uprooting Hezbollah. No Israeli group demanded a buffer zone in South Lebanon. None called for the preventive strike against Iran. All Israelis share the guilt for the soldiers and civilians now dying.

Israel keeps her head firmly in the sand. She fights Hezbollah instead of Iran, like a dog bites the stick someone beats it with. Israel must recognize the moving force behind that stick: the enemy is Iran, not Hezbollah. True, Hezbollah is more than an Iranian proxy, a guerilla group in its own. The Iranians cannot manipulate Hezbollah. Suffice it for Israel that Iranians supply the missiles, and that supply should cease.

More significantly, Iran is developing a nuclear bomb. That production is dissipated is irrelevant. The Israeli Air Force just has more targets in Iran than in Iraq. Bomb them all. At any rate, reactors are targets. If someone fears Iranian retaliation now, let him fear Iranian nuclear retaliation for any imagined Israeli offense against Arabs later. Nuclear deterrence does not work with Iran. It sacrificed more of its people in the pointless war with Iraq than any Israeli nuclear strike would kill. Iran does not fear Israeli nuclear retaliation and will use its nuclear weapons when they become available.

Iran, moreover, provides a perfect platform for an Israeli settlement with the Arabs. Show of force in Iran, the strongest military power in the Middle East, will drive lesson home to Arabs. They readily give in to force: to the French, to the British, and to the Iranians in the Tunbs conflict, to name a few examples. Giving in to overwhelming force does not damage Arab perceptions of honor, but they will fight to death against a weakling. Also, they have a problem with the shiite axis the Iranians are creating now. The West is concerned with Iranian nuclear program and wants to teach illegal nuclear proliferators a lesson. Beside the rhetorial condemnations—Jews have gotten used to them over the millennia—everyone would welcome an Israeli nuclear strike against major Iranian nuclear facilities.

Almost 60 years ago, a group of moral and reasonably compassionate Jews had to clear Arab guerillas from a stronghold. The stronghold happened to be a village. The Jews, regular soldiers from Palmach and zealots from Irgun, proceeded with their task. We know the results: about a hundred civilian casualties, a position cleared of guerillas, and approximately 600,000 Arabs gone, leaving Israel a Jewish state. Dir Yassin.
Among the dozens of Jewish soldiers, no one disagreed about the tactics or attempted to stop others from shooting women and children. The Jews were not politically correct. They were reasonable. They prioritized: the mission, their lives, others' lives.  The Jews were not racists. They did not think themselves better, more moral or humane than their enemies. They fought on par. Civilians allowed the enemy to hide, and were not spared. Nor could they be. Jewish soldiers, not yet brainwashed by the leftist propaganda, acted out of common sense: better to be alive than humane.  Practical humanism never required risking one's life to spare the enemy, his compatriots, or supporters. European romanticism imposed many impractical moral ideals, but not the humanism of the sort promoted by leftists. To save enemy civilians at significant risk to one's life is not humanism, but against human nature.  The conclusions of Dir Yassin are paramount. Jews are not idealistic humanists the leftists picture them. Jews value their lives, and are ready to kill indiscriminately when necessary. Without the media-aware orders to the contrary, Jews will not spare enemy non-combatants when doing so jeopardizes the mission and their own lives. Leftist media and education brainwash Jews with idealistic humanism no nation ever practiced, and are directly responsible for the deaths of Israeli soldiers in urban combat in Palestine and Lebanon.  Jews were never nice. They raged on just every nation in Sinai, and on the Canaanites. During the monarchy, the Jews incessantly fought the neighbors. Maccabees were inhumane, and Zealots, too. Jewish detachments from the diaspora which rushed to Judea at every tumult, killed Greeks on the way. Rabbis detailed horrendous capital punishments for mundane violations. Avraham Stern, a terrorist par excellence, eventually became Israeli hero. Jews do not want to be impractically humane. They prefer to be.  We adjust language and manners to those of our interlocutors. We play according to the rules the other side accepts. Why should we be more humane than our enemies?  Hezbollah shells Arab villages, and blew several hundred pounds mine under the Israeli tank without concern for collapsing the village. Al Qaeda blew the US embassies in Africa, inflicting hundredfold more damage on locals than on the Americans. When the Islamic guerillas do not care about their own people, why should Israel? And why, why the Jewish state should care more of the Lebanese civilians who hate her than of her own soldiers?  We lost seven Israeli soldiers in the fight for Maroun al-Ras, a jerkwater Lebanese village. Hezbollah guerillas pulled the trigger, but the responsibility for deaths of the Jewish boys lies squarely upon the leftists who indoctrinated them with humanist nonsense and the politically correct establishment which sent them for urban combat. The soldiers' parents bear responsibility for silently sending them to the immensely risky operations instead of protesting the politically correct military tactics. All of us are responsible for the deaths because for years we did not sufficiently oppose the doctrine of fighting with tied hands.  In Dir Yassin, Jewish soldiers applied all the available firepower. In Maroun al-Ras, Israelis handicapped themselves. Peaceful villagers don't fight tanks, and don't kill four commandos. Civilians there had enough time to leave. Israel should not care about those who did not. If vacuum bombs and napalm save Israeli lives, use them.  In fact, short brutal war is possibly less painful than protracted low-intensity conflict. Israel could finish the Lebanese war in a day or two, clearing the buffer zone with the barrage of fire, the moving wall of annihilating fire the artillery normally creates before the advancing friendly troops in battles. Israel could have scorched the earth. The people should be allowed to leave: we need a buffer zone, not Hezbollah's easily replaceable casualties. That Israel needs boots on the ground to clear the bunkers is half-truth. We don't need to clear the bunkers. We can clear the territory, and treat the bunkers with short-living chemical weapons.  Israeli cities are shelled. Israeli civilians and soldiers die needlessly. Israeli government placates the world opinion which wants the Jews to fight like no other army ever did, or could.  The victory will be Pyrrhic. Israel spends thousands times more than the guerillas. Kidnappings and bombings are inexpensive. Guerillas may continue to inflict tremendous costs on Israel - economic, if not military. Most of all, the victory will be unsustainable. Unless Israel shows now a considerable brutality - the language Arabs understand - new guerillas will replace Hezbollah, like it did replace the PLO.  We won the War of Independence. The politically correct establishment makes us to lose yet another war in Lebanon. 

Stop looking for peace. Nothing is permanent, and little lasts. The world is in flux, and any equilibrium is only temporary. Nations at peace go to war when circumstances change. There will be no lasting peace in the Middle East, a focus of cultural confrontation, nationalist ambitions, and the immense jealousy of the failed Muslim civilization.

The Egyptians are laughing at the Israelis. Egypt lost the war and got the Sinai. For peace? No, for paper. By definition, war breaks peace treaties. Under the cover of a peace agreement, Egypt re-armed and became nuclear, something Israel would have not allowed otherwise. And now the Islamic Brotherhood is poised to rule a country with a nuclear arsenal.

Israel is not the first Jewish state in two thousand years. The Jews rebuilt their state several times. It lasted sometimes years, sometimes up to two centuries. Eternal Rome proved not so eternal, and neither will Israel. We live, we die. States expand and contract and disappear. Societies are in permanent flux. The most we can hope for is longer peaces and shorter wars. That could be achieved. Overwhelming destruction terrorizes enemies for decades. Mobile penetrating strikes and preemption can make wars short. Israel just cannot conduct any wars of any other type: the low-end Iranian and Egyptian armies have more staying power than the IDF. Israel bests her enemies only if she strikes fast, hard, and deep.

But won’t the world turn against the Jews if Israel becomes aggressive? As if the world has treated the humble Jews any differently for two millennia! As if the world really opposed Israeli expansion after 1967! Bloodshed and aggression are irrelevant to world opinion. World opinion has cared nothing about millions dead in countless conflicts. The world is against Israel for the same reason it always has been. The world thinks Jews are arrogantly different, powerful and weak. Weak Jews were politically powerful before; military powerful Israel lacks the will to fight and acts weakly now. Normalize Israel. Like any state, stop running after peace. Instead, be prepared for war, and your enemies will sue for peace. Be normal. Don’t be sorry that you are alive and winning.

Jews are mindful and respect world opinion. The world has tried to exterminate them for two millennia, and so Jews think there must be a good reason. And so they are sorry: for being strong, simply for being. They fear world opinion and ask themselves, Will the world tolerate our injustices to the Palestinians and Lebanese? Doesn’t the world expect us to behave morally? Indeed, it does: even before the gas chambers, the Jews had to behave, for if they showed temper, like the Hebrews who fell on the Canaanites under Joshua . . . Well, obviously the world would not like such Jews. As if it liked the ones it has.

Does the world care about two hundred Lebanese casualties? Did it care about the millions killed in the French wars in Algeria and Indochina? Are the news services concerned about the number of Iraqi victims of the American invasion? Did not Israel get a hint from the obsessive coverage of the death of the Lebanese Canadian family in the air strike? The world cares not a bit about the locals, only a bit about their own nationals. The world is populated by reasonable people. They know wars are cruel, that sweat builds states , but so does blood. They died and killed to establish their states. And they have no problem with Israel doing the same.

After the 1967 Israeli victory, no one objected to her acquiring land. No one expectedd her to return it. No nation ever returned land significant for its national conscience and acquired by repelling aggression. America rebuffed Sadat’s peace offers. The objections arose only when Israeli ability to hold the land became doubtful after 1973.

The world condemns Jews because they act guilty. They call the land “occupied” instead of “annexed.” They offer to return land. They deal humanely with the inhabitants. That is the cognitive framework of a very, very guilty people. And so the world sees that Jews are wrong. And powerful. And weak. A perfect mix for condemnation. No one enjoys condemning a fly; many enjoy condemning a softhearted elephant.

The terrorist problem can be solved. We have an example. The Germans cornered the 300,000-strong Russian guerilla movement with reserve police battalions. Shall I recall the measures they used? The Germans did not fight the guerillas head-on but annihilated their popular support. The ability to dissolve among the population and thrive on small donations and requisitions without logistics is the backbone of guerilla strength. The Germans crushed that backbone by shooting hostages and burning villages suspected of supporting the guerillas. Israelis might not like that approach, but let us not say there is no way to fight Hezbollah. There is a way, proven, accepted, and not opprobrious. That we shrink from taking those measures is a matter of romanticizing, of blatant disregard for the nature of war, of the clear, wise instructions given to Joshua.

Eradicating popular support for the Hezbollah is one thing. Removing its reason for existence is another. Israel must stop oppressing the Palestinians. Making Arabs live in a Jewish state is oppression—a state whose anthem is The Hope, whose Law of Return applies to Jews, not to the 1948 Palestinian refugees, whose General Staff does not include Arabs. We must stop oppressing the Palestinians. Let them go.

There is a core Palestinian state in Jordan, a state with a Palestinian majority and a doomed monarchy, a state that will comfortably accommodate the oppressed Arabs from core Jewish territories the lemmings call “occupied.” (Somehow the United States is not commonly called a territory occupied by the Christian settlers from the poor Red Indians.) To deal with terrorism, address its cause. Make them leave.

Judaism has three major types of food prohibitions. One is unhealthy food, such as suet. Another is swarming and creeping creatures. While some peoples with limited access to other forms of necessary protein eat them, the revulsion they cause universally suggests that the Judaic prohibition is not arbitrary. The prohibition of eating all but four animals is unrelated to filth; valuable camels and horses are also prohibited. People are not filthy, but eating them is prohibited and filthy. The pig was originally a respectable animal, and for that very reason eating it was disgusting. Eventually, that disgust passed to the pig itself. The Torah, unlike totemic religions, does not prohibit “sacred” animals but establishes the criteria of hooves and rumination, likely related to the animals’ intellect. The permitted animals are folklore examples of foolishness: cows, sheep, goats, and gazelles. Similarly, the truly scaleless—prohibited—fish are sea mammals, smart compared to other fish. The Hebrews knew nothing of dolphins nor that pigs are anatomically close to humans. Judaism prohibits swarming creatures, and see how incredibly smart ants and bees are. Life is sacred, and people may not kill even animals, but humans must eat; the concession is made, therefore, to let people kill a few intellectually less advanced animals, and even that was limited to domestic animals who people raised in the first place and rigidly regulated to minimize suffering. Judaism does not prohibit cheeseburgers. Maimonides noted that the prohibition of boiling a kid in its mother’s milk is in the section of rules that forbid pagan customs, not in the food laws section. The pagans had such rite, and the Bible prohibits it. That is not a food prohibition and need not be expanded to cover all meat-milk cooking.