The Winograd danger

The Winograd report, along with the panic of hundreds of thousands of Israelis, is premised on several assumptions that are dangerous to the future of the country. We are talking about the hasty manner in which the government embarked on the war, without thoroughly examining the issue first.

Well, this is one distortion: We embarked on an operation, rather than a war. Even a long time after the war was over the debate on whether to call it a war persisted.

The report argues that no alternatives were looked into and that the decision to launch the operation was impulsive, that the army did no offer alternatives, and that when we embarked on the war there was no examination of exit strategies. This is silly and foolish – those are hypothetical assumptions, and intellectual honesty always dictates that we should not discuss such assumptions.

Who could say that things may have turned out better had we adopted different moves? For example, it is quite possible that had we used an alternative plan, Syria would have been dragged into the war, which would have had much graver and more fateful implications on the continuation of the fighting and the state of the home front.

Other people are saying that we should have stopped the fighting at a certain stage instead of escalating it. Yet they forget that, in essence, it was Hizbullah that determined the continuation of the operation: Even without the phased fighting, it was likely to continue its bombardment and reject any offer. After all, it sought to continue fighting at any price, even if the whole of Lebanon was paying this price.

The manner of fighting was not under Israel's control, but rather, under Hizbullah control. Can someone argue that unless Lebanon was massively bombarded, which led to hundreds and thousands of refugees and international pressure by a world concerned about Lebanon's fate, Hizbullah would have stopped the fighting only because Israel offered it? We are not even talking about a state here.

Sense of hesitance

It is being said that the army was unprepared and had no plans. Again, this is nonsense: The army had a clear plan – under grave circumstances there is no choice but to utilize our effective aerial power according to a formula we always used – it is not Hizbullah and terror that are responsible, but rather, the host countries. That was an unwritten doctrine yet it was uttered many times.

At the base of the security doctrine that the army rightfully internalized was the assumption that we have no choice but to utilize large forces – much larger than the original military provocation – in order to prove to our neighbors that "they shouldn't mess with us." This requires a response that is painful and even disproportional to the provocation.

The government and the entire public realized there was no other possibly but to embark on this operation. This was undertaken with a minimum of military casualties. True, the home front was hit – but what happened during Saddam Hussein's scud missile attacks? Whole cities turned into ghost towns, residents traveled to Jerusalem and Eilat, the economy was paralyzed, homes were razed in Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan, and civilians were killed.

The argument that a ground offensive should have been prepared is again hypothetical and foolish: Who knows, maybe an incursion by large forces would have turned soldiers into "sitting ducks" and Hizbullah would have killed many more troops? The situation on the ground attests to this possibility. And how far would we go, and how would we exit with large forces? Such plans can be theoretically discussed but we can never predict their results.

The Winograd Commission's conclusions are based on inaccurate assumptions, and what's worse, they convey, along with the criticism and protests they gave rise to, the sense that Israel will be more hesitant from now on.

What will happen when, God forbid, we winess a mega terror attack or when missiles fired from Gaza cause casualties? How will the establishment and decision-makers handle such matters with the Arabs now thinking that Israel is paralyzed by the commission and its make-believe principles? We can only hope the Arabs are smarter and do not believe everything they read and hear about us.