Counting our dead
It may not look like it at first, but a democracy is better equipped to come out victorious
After the pain and shock comes reconciliation. After reconciliation comes determination.
The first katushyas on Haifa rocked the entire country. Many people thought Israeli society would split apart and panic would set in. But again, it didn't quite turn out that way: With the 500th missile we got used to the sound of sirens, and with the 1,500th one we came to understand that the worst is not yet behind us, but that there will be an end.
The first suicide bombings rocked many people. Israel would crumble, predicted many.
It didn't quite turn out that way: After the 20th attack we got used to living with ambulance sirens, and after the 100th we came to understand that fighting terrorism would take many more months and wreck many more lives.
Death
Sima Kadmon
Nine soldiers is a terrible price, but they did not die in vain
Current reality
The first dead soldiers in the fight with Hizbullah shattered our hearts, and we shout, "We can't take it anymore!" Who is responsible for all this? Who screwed up?
In the coming days we will become accustomed to the reality of fighting face-to-face, against a well-trained enemy unafraid of the sight of an IDF soldier.
But then we will begin to see slow progress. We will come to understand that there are some successes, some failures, and in the meanwhile the war will go on to the end.
Complete surprise
This war has hit Israel like thunder on a sunny day. It was a complete surprise. If one month ago an opinion poll had asked Israelis if they thought there would be all-out war with Lebanon within a month, 98 percent would have answered "absolutely not."
Back in those, quieter, days, you could have counted the number of Israelis who anticipated this round of warfare with Hizbullah on two hands. You could have counted the number of Israelis who thought Israel would try to occupy Shiite border towns on one hand.
Yes, Hizbullah has gotten stronger, has invested in training and digging in at south Lebanon, but it has invested no less in Shiite agriculture, in an attempt to bolster its economic and social standing in the region. At least that's how it appears from this side of the border.
Israeli newspaper reports of thousands of Hizbullah missiles aimed at northern Israel were laughed off and ignored by skeptical, smart-assed Israelis.
"This is no more than an IDF public relations exercise," say the experts. "Its aim is to prevent cuts to the defense budget."
Strategic mistakes
Strategic experts have stressed many times that Hizbullah has no interest in dragging Israel into a war, because the Shiite organization wants nothing more than to strengthen its image as a Lebanese political party. If most Israelis didn't believe this, they wouldn't have booked holidays at Galilee holiday cabins, family vacations along the Dan River, or bought plots of land in the Galilee.
Hizbullah's extreme ideology, the heart of which is jihad, had to explode some time. Hizbullah was never, and will never be, a social charitable organization. Its raison deters s to be revolutionary, Muslim terrorist organization. The basis of its existence is the ongoing fight against the Zionist-Jewish enemy.
In order to close ranks, justify its actions and enlist volunteers, a group like this needs ongoing conflict. It needs blood and fire and martyrs like a body needs lungs to breathe. Hizbullah officers looked angrily at Beirut's rehabilitation, its return to being a lively, vibrant city, the most open, liberal city in the Arab Middle East.
They couldn't live alongside that revival. It stuck with them like a bone in the throat, stopped the revolution from getting under way. Israelis thought, wrongly, that Hizbullah wanted normalization. But normalization is the second-biggest enemy (after Zionism) and threat to Hizbullah.
Asset or mud?
In truth, has anyone seen Nasrallah speak about balancing Lebanon's budget or about the country's credit rating? From Israel's point of view, quiet is an asset. From Hizbullah's quiet is mud. Now, we are shocked by this unexpected fighting. It was unprepared and it is incomprehensible.
Just like during the Yom Kippur War, people are already looking for neglect, and the reasons behind the neglect. Peretz? Halutz? Olmert?
But people forget that democracies, by their very nature, cannot prepare for sudden war. Calling up the reserves is slow, political arguments continue all the time, criticism of the government never stops and it appears at the beginning that society simply lacks the will to win.
What chance can a democracy have against a radical commando unit, prepared to die with out thinking twice?
But this thinking is incorrect. Democracy is the only system that can survive, and has done so throughout history, and has vanquished its enemies, even when it has been forced to count its dead through clenched teeth.
