Israel Harel's Insight

Israel Harel (whose wife, Sarah, just recently passed away המקום ינמחנו בירושלים הבנויה) drives home this point: We have never created a real deterrent against terror because we denied its power and its influence.

And he explains in today's Haaretz:-

Everybody denied that the terror of the suicide bombers was capable of bending Israeli society, of eroding its will to fight, and even of causing parts of it to lose faith in the justice of the Jewish state.

Failure to understand the strategic danger inherent in terror caused the eclipse that led to the entry of 40,000 terrorists, with their weapons and their headquarters, into the heart of the country, and to the outbreak of the terror war - the longest of Israel's wars that has been going on since October 2000 in the heart of the country. The war in Lebanon is its northern front.

During the years of the terror war, civilian society was worn down and reacted with depression and fear. And its leaders, instead of lifting its spirit - as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been trying to do in recent days - and promising it a victory that was attainable (for example, when Hamas requested a cease-fire) were swept up by the public's displays of weakness. And thus began the flight from terror whose external symbols are the separation fence (and the missiles of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah are proving how expensive, superfluous and ridiculous it is) and the unilateral disengagement.

Olmert claims that this time Nasrallah made a big mistake. But this has not been proven unequivocally by the results of the fighting. Although the very fact that Olmert dared to go to war, after years when we demonstrated an impressive ability to absorb blows - "restraint is strength," his awakening, and that of his government, has in fact shaken up Israeli society, which has begun to understand its mistakes in its attitude toward terror.

And the Haaretz editorial added this, in agreement:-

It is no longer possible to make do with lofty talk about achievements while Hezbollah is proving that nothing deters it from continuing its attacks on Israel. One of the war's main goals was to prevent missile fire on Israel. This goal has yet to be achieved. This must be said honestly.