Non-observant Jew Olmert could not be suspected of killing Christian boys to make matzah with their blood. Deliberately killing Lebanese civilians with cluster bombs seems more in the spirit of our times. The accusation merits as little rebuttal as any other blood libel; crackpots will believewhatever they want, never mind facts.

Armies routinely use cluster bombs, but only the Jews – the usually culprits - are accused of planting duds to kill civilians . Never mind the absurdity of the allegations. The Israeli army, over-sensitive to Western media, warned the guerillas of the air attacks and took large losses in urban fighting to spare the enemy population. The suggestion that the Israelis spread duds in the final days of the war to harm civilians is divorced from reality.

Cluster bombs are necessary and efficient weapons. They have been used continuously since WWII. They are not horrific devices, just more powerful and economical weapons. Cluster bombs have a lower destruction/casualty ratio than conventional bombs. During the war, Israel had to clear certain areas—already abandoned by civilians—of guerillas. Cluster bombs did that with less destruction.

Why Israel stepped up the use of cluster bombs when a cease-fire loomed? Blame the media. Journalists with little understanding of military affairs decry cluster weapons, and Israel rarely used them throughout the war to avoid intensifying the pressure for a cease-fire. When the cease-fire was certain, Israel had no reason to placate the media and tried to achieve maximum results in the final hours. Hezbollah similarly intensified its rocket barrages.

The UN figure of 350,000 bomblets left is incredible. The US cluster weapons which Israel uses have a declared dud rate of 5%. The UN implicitly claims that Israel fired the incredible 20,000 cluster bombs and warheads. The real dud ratio—entirely the fault of the US manufacturers—is higher, possibly 12-20%, but many duds are dead and not dangerous.

Harm to civilians from cluster duds is a novel issue. Neither the UN nor the media screamed when the US had that problem in Afghanistan. There is no easy solution: painting the bomblets yellow actually attracted children rather than warned them. The threat isn’t major: the Lebanese can tell the children to not touch the clearly identifiable bomblets, and the fields could be plowed to detonate them. Every war theater remains dangerous for years; people in the USSR were killed by unexploded bombs decades after WWII.

Land-mining South Lebanon is a viable tactic certain to decrease cross-border incidents. In the cluster weapons affair, the Israeli government did not do that.

The obvious scenario unfolds: the peacekeepers do nothing. That is, if they make it to Lebanon at all. It didn’t take a prophet to predict that. Israel relied on peacekeepers in 1967, 1973, and 1983; wars ensued. Military theorists decry mercenaries for the lack of motivation; peacekeepers have an even smaller stake in keeping the peace. They are not even paid based on performance.

Peacekeepers don’t disarm Hezbollah. Good. The worse is for the better. We needed a government as incompetent as Olmert’s to shake Israelis out of their lethargic compliance. We need rockets from Gaza to make up our mind to clearing our Muslim enemies out of Galilee. Jews deluded themselves even amidst the flood of anti-semitism in Germany. A clear and present danger is not enough. Let the apocalypse roll. Only make sure that the Israelis have the military means to win; 1967, not 1942.

Israel missed its chance in Lebanon, and the Israeli government looks for culprits. Some of its whining is funny.

Israel stated on several occasions that Hezbollah fights with the newest weapons. In fact, their Russian anti-tank RPG-29s are twenty years old. Zelzal-2, Hezbollah’s ultimate weapon, is about the same venerable age. Smaller missiles are also 15-30 years old.

Hezbollah has only basic weapons, not Star Wars equipment. RPG-29s are so simple that Russia left plenty of them to its former satellites when it withdrew from the Eastern bloc. Even Syria parted with its arsenal of PRG-29s and delivered them to Hezbollah.

The Israeli government lies. Hezbollah is not better armed than most armies. Light guns, very simple missiles, and conventional explosives form the core of its arsenal. Ideologically motivated guerillas with primitive weapons often defeat regular armies without strategy.

The RPG-29 became a problem for Israel because she deployed tanks in Lebanon without covering them with helicopters. That was a major tactical flaw. Tanks are unprotected against side attacks, and hovering helicopters watch for ambushes. The Israeli General Staff, bent on pinpoint strikes and urban warfare, deployed helicopters for air attacks but had not enough to protect the tanks. They also feared Hezbollah would use RPGs against our helicopters. Israel had to change tactics to massive air strikes instead of sending troops and tanks without air cover.

Israel accused Great Britain of selling Hezbollah . . . night vision goggles! Next we will demand sanctions against Levi’s for selling jeans to terrorists.

Israel buys plenty of American weapons and cannot blame Russia for selling to Hezbollah. In all likelihood, the Russians did not even sell RPG-29s and other weapons to Hezbollah. Since the start of the Chechen war, the Russians have become considerably estranged from the Islamic terrorist organizations. But even if Russia did sell the RPG, that wasn’t wrong by any standards. Israel supplies weapons to paramilitary groups around the world.

If Russian weapons are so good they give mighty Israel problems, why don’t we buy weapons from Russia? They are way cheaper than the American systems and often better. Russian planes and Ukrainian tanks are cost-effective against Muslim armies. Russian Strela anti-missile systems would have relieved Israeli concerns about Zelzal-2 rockets. Israel does not buy some weapons from Russia because she fears upsetting her American masters. Instead, she absurdly opposes guerillas with top-of-the-line planes, helicopters, and tanks. Swimming in the profusion of US weapons, Israel loses her competitive edge of ingenuous and daring battles with relatively low-tech weapons. Lebanon-2006 showed that the best weapons can’t replace tactics, specialized training, and unorthodox military thinking.

Israel laughed at Palestinian complaints about the disproportional use of force. Israel did not significantly limit her choice of weapons during the operations in Gaza and Lebanon. A country that attacks ramshackle villages with Apache helicopters and Mercava tanks cannot demand that her enemies use only rifles. Actually, Israel would likely object even if Hezbollah used only rifles: Israel criticized Palestinians for throwing stones at our troops. The Israeli left calls the territories “occupied” but scream when Arabs oppose occupation.

Tell the nation the truth. We lost in Lebanon because of the lack of strategy, not because our enemy was armed well.

While it is true that the US generally restrained Israel from total victories in Lebanon-2006, the restraint came in handy for Israel. Unlike her previous wars, Israel could not win. The entrenched Hezbollah is nothing like the PLO, which the Lebanese hated. Israel’s only hope for the total victory was to attack Iran and Syria, preferably with nuclear weapons. Destroying the support base is the only way to fight a guerilla army. Israel cannot root out Hezbollah or disarm it; better cut Iranian and Syrian missile shipments. Hardly any Israeli expert believed we could clean Hezbollah out, let alone quickly. The Israeli government killed defenseless Lebanese civilians. Olmert is neither brave nor a visionary and did not retaliate against Iran and Syria. Israel could not win, and US pressure for cease-fire was a welcome face-saving measure.

Israelis tolerate losses, just as Americans tolerated them in WWII but not in Vietnam. When war is necessary and conducted reasonably, people accept losses. We oppose useless wars, useless deaths. Israeli society demonstrated overwhelming consensus for the Lebanese war; even the Left supported the war. The Israeli government, not Israelis, needed the cease-fire to cover its lack of strategy. Beside, Israel needed not suffer heavy casualties in urban combat. The IDF had reasonably good intelligence and could have destroyed Hezbollah’s positions from the air with non-conventional weapons. Israelis generally supported the air attacks regardless of Lebanese civilian casualties. The Lebanese elected Hezbollah with their eyes wide open.

So far, Israel has drained Hezbollah some, but Hezbollah won the PR battle for Muslim minds and will recover very soon. Potential donors and volunteers are numerous. In the best-case scenario, hostilities will resume, and even the Israeli government will be forced to do something meaningful, perhaps clear a buffer zone in South Lebanon. Any solution short of dismantling the Lebanese state and sharing the land among Israel, Arab Christians, and Syria would not be sustainable. In the worst case, the Israeli government will give in to Hezbollah’s major demands: a Palestinian state and evacuation of Judea and Samaria. The missiles pouring from Gaza and Lebanon showed many Israelis what they tried to forget: that no concessions bring peace with Muslims. Popular acceptance of to the evacuation of Judea and Samaria has dwindled, though the Left still favors withdrawal. Their attitude is unrelated to international politics or military considerations. The Left fight their real political enemy, religious Jews, even at the cost of collaborating with the Arabs. In the worst tradition of Jewish self-hatred, Israel’s Left wants to gentilize the Jewish state. Abandoning Judea and meekly submitting to Muslim goodwill is the Left’s way of humiliating religious and nationalist Jews. The Israeli Left, uniquely, includes both US-style democratizers and Soviet-style socialists; any ideology is good for them so long as it undermines the Jewish character of Israeli society. The Israeli government controls the media and has a powerful grip on people’s minds. The government also controls huge groups of voters through extensive welfare programs. Neither reason nor popular opinion matters in Israeli politics. Olmert & Co. will likely continue to press for withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.

Israel’s objective is not peace. Jews can live peacefully in New York. Israel was founded because the Jews want to live on their land, and Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are Jewish lands. Hardly any country ever traded religiously or ideologically critical land for peace; to the contrary, scores of countries have fought over even minor land disputes. Israel, a foreign body in the Middle East, will never be at peace; no country is permanently at peace. Preparing for imminent war, it is better to be bigger than smaller. Beside, no concession can bring Israel peace: the giveaway of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria will only prompt the Muslims to press for the right of return for descendants of the 1948 refugees, compensation, partitioning of Jerusalem, autonomy for Arab communities in Israel, and normalization of Israeli Arabs, particularly giving them ministerial portfolios. Full normalization means letting an Israeli Arab become Israeli Minister of Defense. The current minister is a Peace Now activist.

A bad sign: life is back to normal in Haifa. Street cafés and businesses reopen, and people ignore sirens. Why is that bad? For one, popular pressure on Israeli government to finish the war by whatever means dwindles. More important, the situation in Haifa parallels developments in Lebanon. There, too, life normalizes.

Visitors to Beirut in the 1980s were surprised to see busy restaurants and happy crowds alongside the city’s devastated quarters. People got used to violence. That is happening in Lebanon now.

Wartime violence terrifies the enemy population. Violence that no longer terrifies is pointless. Israel is wasting lives and resources and inflicting useless devastation. Israeli retaliation no longer frightens the Lebanese but only fans hatred of Israel.

Limited violence leads nowhere. Israel had already killed more people in the Lebanese campaign than in Dir Yassin. That unapologetic burst of violence produced the desired results. The current protracted moderate violence is costly and ineffective.

The Israeli government lost the opportunity to trumpet the deaths of several dozen Lebanese in Kfar Kana as an example to villages that host Hezbollah. The people in Kfar Kana were dead, anyway. Israel should have used their deaths. Olmert stupidly apologized and lost the effect.

Wars are about killing. Terrifying violence stops wars. Do not waste an enemy’s lives. Escalate beyond the enemy’s tolerance, disregard media condemnations, and see the war ended.

Just what are we doing in Lebanon? Israel’s rosiest estimates claim 400 guerillas killed. More conservatively, the figure is about 100. That’s out of 7,000 Hezbollah guerillas, and volunteers arrive daily.

Israel cleared 2 to 12 villages of Hezbollah, and see the guerillas returning already. Israel cannot guard every Lebanese village, and there is no way to stop Hezbollah from seeping back. The Lebanese army won’t risk it.

Israel destroyed from 30 to 100 missiles launchers and possibly a thousand missiles. Hezbollah’s losses are easily replaceable. They need not deliver weapons by main roads in trucks. Guerillas never have much problem trafficking weapons, and in Lebanon they have a supportive population that hates Israel. In the unimaginable case of Iran refusing to supply missiles, Hezbollah can buy them elsewhere or simply shower Northern Israel with fertilizer-filled tubes like Hamas does in the South. Hezbollah also has a more lucrative and media-friendly target—Israeli troops in Lebanon. Hezbollah already beat the Israeli army in Lebanon with hit-and-run tactics and will surely win again in long term.

Israel spends handsomely on the war, close to $2bn a month, including losses from economic disruption. Hezbollah spends peanuts, and the donations flow in.

Israel had lost one such war in Lebanon. We started with border incursions, then moved to the Litany River, then to Beirut, and became an inept, easy-to-target occupying power. That position proved predictably unsustainable.

Now the situation is even worse. The United States, with its penchant for exporting democracy, pushed for democratic (instead of strong) government in Lebanon and Palestine and produced failed states. Hezbollah and Hamas will not easily give up the political power they obtained in legitimate elections. And fighting Israel is their only political platform.

Betrayal is not only bad but also costly. Israel turned away from her Christian Lebanese allies after they exacted vengeance in Sabra and Shatila. The Muslims subsequently killed many Christians, especially the SLA guerillas and their families. Now Israel cannot get the Lebanese Christians to do local clean-up operations in the Muslim villages and sends her soldiers into urban combat. Lebanese Christians can be cruel when the Israeli army does not want to and terrify the villagers into abandoning their support for Hezbollah.

Israel could bring Christian radicals to Lebanon to do the job. Groups from the US, Western Europe, and Russia seek a training ground and action. They number in the tens of thousands. Muslims would hate them and attack them rather than Israel. World opinion would support radical Christians more than it does Jewish Israel. At some point, the Lebanese Christians will join their foreign coreligionists.

Israel’s best option is to do away with Lebanon and correct the colonial error of carving that multi-religious state from Syria. What France did, Israel can undo. Israel must divide Lebanon with Syria and create a buffer Christian state in between.

Instead, the Israeli government welcomed the ceasefire. Submitting to the UN was the only face-saving way to end a pointless war. The international mob’s decision substituted for the political and military strategy Israel lacks. Israel followed the UN guidelines because her government has none.

(At this is written, Hezbollah has agreed to a ceasefire only as a pro-forma measure. It will not accept a ceasefire while the Israeli troops are present in Lebanon, and in Hezbollah’s opinion, that includes the Shebaa farms. Worthless UN troops will not move in under fire. Military operations may continue until the Lebanese army comes on the scene. That Hezbollah will demilitarize, I really doubt. More likely, the Lebanese army will absorb Israeli strikes and provide a live shield for Hezbollah to rearrange itself and rearm.)

An enemy’s moves must be answered adequately. When the enemy escalates, Israel must reciprocate. Hezbollah threatens to attack Tel-Aviv, presumably with half-ton warheads. A mere intensification of Israeli bombing in Lebanon would not be a proper response. Israel should also employ qualitatively different weapons, like vacuum bombs, against qualitatively different targets, like Lebanese government buildings.

Concede at last that Iran is waging a proxy war against Israel through Hezbollah. Zelzal-2 and most other Hezbollah missiles are Iranian. Israeli civilian losses are entirely attributable to Iran. The world is sick of nuclear mullahs. When Iran—even through Hezbollah—attacks Israel with WMD like Zelzal, Israeli should retaliate with nuclear weapons against Iranian military facilities.

And stop being ridiculous. Israel need not spare the Iranian embassy in Beirut. Neither Israel and Iran, nor Israel and Lebanon, recognize each other, and diplomatic immunity does not work. Iran showers Israel with missiles and probably hides Nasrallah in its embassy in Lebanon. Flatten the place.

Eight Israeli soldiers dead in Bint Jbail against a background of 40 enemies killed is a victory, especially in urban combat. It is not the tragedy the newspapers paint. If Israel wants to kill guerillas, she has to pay the price. With Hezbollah entrenched in 200 Lebanese villages, the Israeli death toll may exceed that of the 1973 war.

The issue is, do we need urban combat? Various armies in the recent history dealing with guerilla movements had to clear villages. The Germans terrorized the Russians into hostility against the partisans. The approach proved highly successful: several reserve battalions cornered the 300,000-strong guerilla army. The Germans burned villages and shot hostages on the slightest suspicion of supporting the partisans. Though the measures seemed cruel, the actual death toll among civilians was very moderate by wartime standards. It takes cruelty, not scale, to terrorize people. Saddam similarly crushed the Kurd insurgency.

The Russians employed somewhat milder tactics in Chechnya. They also destroyed villages, sometimes along with the population, but called it military operations. That approach created less fear among the population, and the war dragged for years, even though the Russians asphyxiated the Chechens financially.

Widespread, pointless death causes fear. Military actions rarely seed panic because the population sees them as unique. In order to terrorize, everyone must be threatened. People should not think themselves immune. Burning villages achieves that effect, while bombing does not.

The Israeli army need not engage in urban fighting. There are not enough Israelis around to provide cannon fodder for that. Rather, the army must march people several kilometers out of a village, then treat the place with short-lived chemical weapons for several hours. After that, Lebanese Christian auxiliaries can search for weapons caches and, if they find any, burn the village. That would save the lives of many Israeli soldiers. It is imperative to understand, however, that short of mass killings in several villages that host Hezbollah, Israel will not win this war.

The Jews killed many in Dir Yassin but not in Bint Jbail, and the results were different. Dir Yassin won Israel the War of Independence. Bint Jbail won Hezbollah its reputation.

In Bint Jabil, everyone knew of the Hezbollah trap set for Israeli soldiers. Every villager there at the time of the fighting is guilty. Israel had every reason to annihilate the village in an air assault with vacuum and incendiary bombs. That would give an example to other villages that host Hezbullah. Cruel measures finish wars faster and, on the balance, save lives.

Without a lasting terrorizing effect, clearing Lebanese villages of Hezbollah is pointless. The guerillas will move in again after the Israeli army moves out. Another option is to swap populations: resettle Lebanese Christians along the Israeli border andmove the Muslims closer to Syria.

Beware of strengthening the Lebanese army. The weapons will go to Hezbollah. Radicals will easily convince the Lebanese army’s Muslim majority to help fight the Israelis. Hezbollah may be disarmed, but the Lebanese army will become Hezbollah. Foreign help for the Lebanese army will build informal ties between the EU and the Lebanese military. Strengthening one enemy against another is faulty strategy. Israel should not expect anyone to do her job in Lebanon.

The Cairo museum of the 1973 war deals only with the opening hours of the Egyptian offense. The museum tells Egyptians they won. The Israeli government should learn a lesson about the Arab mentality from that.

Arabs are unconcerned with rational results. Win or lose, does not matter. Rather, a show of heroics is paramount. In 1973, Egypt prevailed against its archenemy and won a battle after several humiliating losses in previous decades.

Al Qaeda, embattled and retreating, became a legend. It hit the Great Satan gloriously, and what happened next does not matter.

Hezbollah, a David against an Israeli Goliath, has already entered the annals of Arab glory. Its guerillas opposed the Israeli army fiercely, made the Zionist enemy mad, and inflicted damage on its cities. With that kind of reputation, Hezbollah or its successor organization will surely attract many more sponsors and volunteers to recover its losses.

The alternative is to humiliate Hezbollah, destroying it in a day or two. Israel could achieve that by using all the military options available and disregarding the collateral damage.

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.