It's Not Just Right-wingers who are Pessimistic

Ari Shavit's take:

Systemic failure

Excerpts:-

Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has not won a war. However, in all its wars during the last generation, neither has Israel been defeated. The Yom Kippur War turned from an almost-defeat into an almost-victory when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) crossed the Suez Canal in the south and threatened Damascus in the north. The Lebanon War got tangled and complicated but nevertheless brought about Yasser Arafat's expulsion from Beirut and the dismantlement of the PLO sub-state he had established. The first intifada faded before Israel wearied of it, and developed into the Oslo peace process. The second intifada was repulsed before Israel wearied of it, and developed into the disengagement.

...In the second Lebanon war, there is a danger that Israel will be defeated. If the large-scale ground move that Ehud Olmert initiated very late does not go well, the reality to which we are liable to awaken after the war is one of a first Israeli defeat. [in fact, it isn't going anywhere at all - YM]

...The attempt to create a fake ostensible victory does not serve Israel's national goals or national existence. On the contrary: it lulls the nation and prevents it from mobilizing all its strength for the necessary coping with its fate. If Israel seeks life, it cannot go on living within the gossamer webs of a military establishment with high-powered PR. It must emerge from the virtual-reality studio of the channels of patriotic ratings and look at reality as it really is. The reality is hard, very hard. Very hard, but not hopeless.

To begin with, the immediate problem must be defined: Israel failed in the first three stages of the war of 2006. The air offensive failed, the limited ground offensive failed and the days of the hesitation and confusion of post-Bint Jbail failed. As a result, Israel was perceived to be helpless in the face of a sub-state terrorist organization that was battering it repeatedly without being vanquished.

...Why did this happen to us? Why did the summer of the soccer World Cup become the summer of a faltering war? Why did Israel move in one fell swoop from a condition of economic-hedonistic haughtiness into a condition of military impotence?

...Even if in the end Nasrallah is vanquished, one way or another, the war of 2006 exposed the fact that the Israel of 2006 is experiencing systemic failure. If this is not to become systemic collapse, it must be diagnosed accurately already now, when Israel is sending its sons to fight for its future in the battlefield of the North.

The political establishment failed. It failed in that it lent itself to the simplistic belief in a simplistic unilateral withdrawal without understanding its inherent dangers. It failed in that it did not create crushing Israeli deterrence in the face of the Qassam rocket offensive in the south after the unilateral withdrawal. It failed in that it went to war hastily without weighing properly the war's prospects and without defining properly its goals. It failed in that it was in thrall to the defense establishment, which it was incapable of criticizing, restraining or focusing. It failed in that it thrust Israel into a booby-trapped battlefield where we must win even though it is impossible to win.

The military establishment failed. It failed in that it assumed that the Air Force and its precision weapons provide an answer to the fundamental problems of Israel's security. It failed in that it promised to win conventional wars without blood, sweat and tears. It failed in complacency. It failed in arrogance. It failed in that it did not create a relevant combat ethos and did not instill a steadfast spirit of combat. It failed in that it invested most of its resources in managing the occupation on the one hand and preparing the disengagement on the other hand, without deploying properly for an actual war.

The Israeli elites failed. The capitalists, the media and the academics of the 21st century failed in that they bedazzled Israel and deprived it of its spirit. Their recurrent illusions about the historical reality in which the Jewish state exists led Israel to navigate poorly and lose its way. Their incessant attacks - direct and indirect - on nationalism, on militarism and on the Zionist narrative corroded the tree trunk of Israeli existence from within and caused it to lose its vitality. While the broad Israeli public displayed sobriety, determination and staying power in all the tests it faced in the past decade, the elites disappointed. They imparted to Israeli youth a flawed set of values, which makes it very difficult for them to charge ahead when charging ahead is indisputably just. A country in which there is no equality, no justice and no belief in the justness of its path, is a country for which no one will charge ahead. And, in the Middle East of the 21st century, a state for which many of its young people are not willing to kill and be killed, is a state living on borrowed time. A state that is not sustainable.

...a thorough housecleaning has to be done not only in the systems of the government, the army and the establishment but in all the systems of our life. There must be discussion and debate, clarification and clarity. The Israeli condition must be defined, and what that condition obliges must be understood.

...Accordingly, we must assume that what we are now experiencing is only the first campaign in a confrontation that will have both a second and perhaps a third campaign. The subject on the agenda is not the abducted soldiers. The subject is the attempt by Iran to put an end to Israel's strategic hegemony in the region. The subject is the attempt by the powerful Iranian state of evil to expel the West from the Middle East by undermining Israel.

This being the case, the second Lebanon war should be seen as resembling the war in Spain in the 1930s which preceded the global conflict and served as its testing ground. It must be understood that the question with which the second Lebanon war leaves us is whether we are Czechoslovakia, which collapsed in the face of evil, or whether we are Britain, which after a very difficult period was able to cope with the evil and created a turning point against it...This summer Hassan Nasrallah challenged us in the most profound way. Employing a small, disciplined and determined army of believers, he set out to hurl at us defiantly the claim that our democracy is rotten. That our hedonism causes degeneration. That our decadence is terminal. There is no hope, Nasrallah is saying, no hope for a free society that loves life in a fanatic Middle East.

...the trenchant postwar discussion must produce many more insights - complementary or conflicting. Was the idea of a civil agenda and a civilian leadership correct or false? Was the attack on Israeli militarism and Israeli macho-ism justified or dangerous? Does the attitude toward the occupation and the convergence plan need to be reassessed? Is it the occupation that caused the IDF's "metal fatigue" - or is it Tel Aviv's hedonism? Should we treat the settlers differently now, because they still preserve an energetic source of national vitality? On the other hand, is it time to define a militant approach of a secular Israel that will make it possible for young Israelis to defend their world of freedom and pleasure against Muslim fanatics? Is there a diplomatic route to blocking the Iranian threat, perhaps by means of a peace treaty with Syria?...