Just World News with Helena Cobban

I’m always intrigued both by those very revealing ‘dogs that don’t bark in the night’ (as in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’) and by dogs that, though barking, are not portrayed as barking in the night.
So why is the US MSM– and the British MSM, come to that– so noticeably silent on the ongoing leadership and self-identity crisis that is unfolding within Israel?
If you read HaAretz daily, and Ynet as often as you can, as I do, then it’s evident that there is a major crisis of confidence and of self-identity going on in the Israeli political elite these days.
Thus from the English-language HaAretz site, just from Wednesday’s edition, we have the following stories:

(1) This one, about the fact that the attorney general has rejected two of the five people (men) whom Olmert had named to serve on the committee he is forming to look into the problems of the recent war. The reason? Because, as an Israeli good-governance NGO pointed oput, these men are both executives with major defense-contracting companies, and therefore have a clear financial/professional stake in the ooutcome of the committee’s work… (Oh, Israel and its massive, globally active military-industrial complex– how far from the more idealistic dreams of the Zionist forefathers, eh?)
(2) This one, about the fact that HaAretz has found potentially five more women who claim they have been either sexually harrassed or sexually assaulted by State President Moshe Katsav– at least one of whom now says she’s prepared to join the existing complainant in testifying publicly against him.
(3) This one, by Ze’ev Schiff, noting that IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz now faces a “crisis caused by the lack of confidence that some top Israel Defense Forces officers, and many reservists, have in him,” after the recent war, and that, ” Halutz and Defense Minister Amir Peretz … do not work well together, a problem that has manifested itself in the competition between them over the committee that each set up to investigate the war. Each leader also faces problems unique to himself… The problem with Peretz is that his term marks the first time in Israeli history that an inexperienced defense minister has been in power during wartime.” (Read the whole piece there. It’s interesting.)
(4) This article, saying that PM Ehud Olmert “did not know in advance” that the Housing Ministry had put out for tender contracts for building 690 apartments in two West Bank settlements. (Most experts in international humanitarian law, I note, consider the building of these settlements to be a, “a trave breach” of the fourth Geneva Convention, that is, a war crime.)… So the Housing Minister just went ahead and put these contracts out for tender, reportedly without Olmert’s knowledge. But guess whom he had informed about them in advance? That would be Defense Minister Amir Peretz, who in his job as DM is, of course, right there in the chain of command regarding anything to do with Israeli actions in the West Bank which is a territory under Israeli military occupation. (As the figure on this blog’s sidebar will tell you, this occupation has now been going on for no fewer than 13,397 days.)
Well guess what again? Amir Peretz (see #3 above), is also the head of the so-called leftwing “Labour” Party and a self-proclaimed “lover of peace”. And now he’s signing off on this gross expansion of the settler presence in the West Bank? No wonder the country’s in an extremely confused situation!!
(5) And then there are this pair of articles in the paper: This one quotes Amir Peretz (see above) as saying “A way has to be found to … do everything possible to create conditions so that there will be a dialogue on the Syrian front”, and this one says that Olmert “yesterday” (i.e. today) told a Knesset committee that ” “it would take a great deal of imagination to see in this situation potential for dialogue [with Syria].” Oh, I have to reproduce a bit more of this report, which is very interesting indeed:
MK Ran Cohen (Meretz), who called Olmert’s appearance before the committee “haughty,” said everyone in Israel knows the war is the forerunner for the next one. “This war ended in complete failure,” Cohen added.
Banging on the table angrily in response to the criticism, Olmert said, “I’m sorry that some MKs have lost their sense of proportion. Stop exaggerating.
“No danger to Israel was revealed during the past month. You didn’t know that Hezbollah had 12,000 missiles in Lebanon? You didn’t know that Iran supported them?”
Olmert also told the committee that “there were failures in the war, but there were also amazing achievements. Has the U.S. collapsed after three years in Iraq? What’s the panic? We all make mistakes, I first of all.”
“What did you think, that there would be a war and nothing would happen to our soldiers,” Olmert asked the committee. “The claim that we lost is unfounded. Half of Lebanon is destroyed; is that a loss?” [Actually, Ehud, I think it is. It’s a terrible loss, both in absolute terms, and in terms of Israel ever thinking it can live in peace and equality with its neighbors… You honestly think that destroying half of Lebanon can be counted as anyone’s gain??? ~HC]
With regard to the demand for a state commission of inquiry, Olmert said that while he valued the judicial system very highly, “that does not mean that at any given time they have to be the problem-solver.”
The prime minister argued that a state commission would paralyze the political and military systems for a long period of time.
Olmert said the Shahak committee appointed by the Defense Minister Amir Peretz [see above] to examine the military aspects of the war had to discontinue its investigation because the Military Justice Law does not authorize the committee to ensure the immunity of witnesses it might call to testify.

My G-d, what a shambles here. But, moving right along, we have:
(6) This article, saying that Amir Peretz’s Labour Party, plus Shas and the Pensioners’ Party– all key members of Olmert’s present governing coalition– are now threatening to pull out of the coalition “if it turns out today that the social welfare cutbacks are included in the budget book.”
Well, I would say that the fact of the recent war means that Israeli society now needs to decide in a serious way whether it is going to invest in “guns” and the big demands of military readiness, or “butter” and the ever-attractive latte-sipping lifestyle over the years ahead. Can’t have both. Cash is one constraint, sure, but the bought-and-paid-for US Congress will always ensure that ain’t too much of a problem. The real constraint there is the manpower needed for the “guns” option… But right now, it looks like a tussle over the budget. So let’s see which way this one goes.
And finally we have–
(7) This article by Yoel Marcus, in which he makes the interesting argument that Olmert should not as many have urged him to, opt to establish a fully empowered “state commission”, most likely headed by Supreme Court head Aharon Barak, to investigate Israel’s shortcomings in the recent war. Marcus makes two interesting arguments here. First, that this is a highly political matter, so it is best to leave it to the political process to deal with it (including, presumably, the possibility of a coalition breakup and/or a vote of no confidence) rather than throwing the burden onto the judiciary, as happened with the post-October War “Agranat Commission”. His second argument is that actually Olmert shouldn’t have to bear more than a small amount of the responsibility for the failings revealed by the recent war, since he has only been PM for four months, and the failings at all levels that were revealed by the war were the responsibility of many more people– from all parties– acting over the the past few years.
Here’s some of what Marcus writes:

Yes, the situation on the home front was scandalous. But the commission of inquiry will have to start investigating five years back. It will have to scrutinize what Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Ariel Sharon and Shaul Mofaz did when they were in power. And the same goes for Moshe Ya’alon, who, according to his friends, is walking around with a belly full of grievances, but who has those empty supply rooms to answer for. And Dan Halutz may be guilty of bad judgment, but he was not appointed by Olmert.
Olmert can tell the state commission: As far as things that depended on me are concerned, I was the one who created the most supportive atmosphere we have ever had in the international community for a war on terror. We had all the time in the world to take care of Hezbollah. In the end, we signed an agreement that will keep Hassan Nasrallah away from south Lebanon, and Lebanese soldiers and a multinational peacekeeping force will deploy in the vacated zone, which is the arrangement we have been wanting for years. From this standpoint, I got Israel the best possible deal – I, Ehud Olmert, who had been prime minister for a total of 120 days. I can only be accountable for things that went wrong after I assumed responsibility…

So there you have it. Or rather, just a portion of what’s right there, in a single Israeli newspaper on a single day in early September.
Is this a country experiencing a severe leadership crisis and crisis of self-identity, or what?
And in “normal” times, wouldn’t the US MSM be absolutely chock-full of details about all these developments? (I’ve never before noticed them ignoring Israel as much as they do most of the other countries in the Third World.)
So as to why the US MSM aren’t writing about it, I have a couple of ideas. One is that all the journos there who write about Israel were so busy during the war that they’ve taken a few days off since then… And the other– operating mainly at the editorial level– is that many of those editors may be kind of embarrassed to give much coverage to this whole cascading set of developments that indicate just how much the strategic failure in Lebanon has rocked the Israeli political system. Much better and safer not to mention that all intra-familial “dirty linen” in front of the broader public, don’t you think?
As for me, I don’t think so. I think these political developments are really important and interesting, and we need to know much more about them. In fact, I’ve been thinking maybe I should go to Israel soon, because so much of great political interest is happening there…
(By the way, as a small counter-weight to all the above-mentioned political shenanigans, I discovered a great new Israeli web-site recently called Occupation magazine. It looks as though it has some great material on it. Check it out! As soon as I can, I’ll put a link to it on the sidebar here.)

Israel’s hasbaristas (propagandists and apologists) have been out in force the past couple of weeks, here and elsewhere, desperately trying to shore up the confidence of Israelis and their friends around the world that the country’s military services have not fallen into operational disarray. Yossi Melman, a purported journalist, has been one of the most active– and far-fetched– of these spinmeisters. (Also, on occasion, our commenter here, JES. Okay JES: I “grant” you that the Israeli Air Force was extremely effective in knocking out Lebanon’s vital infrastructure and services, and killing large numbers of civilians. You happy now?)
But the performance of the IDF’s once-vaunted ground forces during the war was truly pathetic… And the navy got a nasty jolt in the war’s early days, too, when a Hizbullah C-802 missile hit its flagship, the INS Hanit, killing four crew members, essentially disabling the ship, and sending it limping back to port…
By chance, today my colleague and friend Nick Blanford, an experienced reporter for the CSM and other media who stayed in Lebanon during the war, penned this, which I share here with his permission:

Despite US intelligence officers’ assertions that it was Hizbullah’s Iranian-assisted jamming prowess that enabled the Israeli flagship INS Hanit to be struck and disabled, there have been several articles in the Israeli media blaming the ship’s crew for failing to switch on their defensive systems. The latest was by Zeev Schiff of Haaretz who wrote in yesterday’s edition, “Even though the destroyer entered a war zone and cruised along the Lebanese shores, the crew forgot to turn on the automatic operation system of the Barak [anti-missile system]. The result was that no effort was made to intercept the Iranian-Chinese missile, and unobstructed it struck its target.” [I note, parenthetically, that though Ze’ev is an old and valued friend of mine, he has also done a certain amount of hasbara throughout his long career, as well. His despatches sometimes have to be read and decoded with Kremlinological skill. ~HC]
As for the claim [Blanford continues] that the INS Hanit was the only Israeli navy ship struck by Hizbullah’s C-802 missiles, I can only offer this personal observation. I was in Tyre in south Lebanon on August 12 when a flash came through that Hizbullah had hit another Israeli ship off the Tyre coast. I went out onto the seafront and scanned the horizon with a pair of binoculars. After a minute or two, a thin tendril of smoke could be seen on the horizon to the southwest. The smoke grew into a thick plume and lasted for about 20 minutes before dissipating. I couldn’t see any ship and cannot confirm that it was the result of a Hizbullah missile attack on an Israeli navy vessel, but the timing was suggestive as was the most unusual sight of smoke on the horizon off the Lebanese coast.
The threat posed by Hizbullah’s C-802s appears to have forced the Israeli navy to deploy its ships far further from the Lebanese coastline than in the past. During the April 1996 Grapes of Wrath operation, Israeli ships could be seen easily with the naked eye shelling sites inland. This time around they weren’t to be seen at all. Also the Israelis appear to have made far less use of helicopter gunships than in the past, presumably, as Schiff mention in his article, because of the prospect of Hizbullah having acquired more advanced anti-aircraft missiles. We saw them flying at high altitude over the sea and could hear them come closer inshore at night, but I didn’t see any helicopters over land during the war. Instead, the helicopters seem to have been replaced by missile-firing reconnaissance drones whose handiwork was evident in the number of destroyed civilian vehicles lining the roads of south Lebanon.
Nicholas Blanford
Beirut

So the navy commanders realized that something serious had indeed happened when the C-802 hit the Hanit, it seemed.
I just want to add a couple of footnotes to this discussion. Firstly, it is evident that even as I write this, officers in all branches of the Israeli military– with, most likely, some coordination with their US counterparts, as well– are poring over the exact record of what worked, what didn’t , and why during the war, and trying to figure out ways to “fix” the problems identified.
Evidently, planners within Hizbullah’s military wing and their colleagues in the Iranian military will be doing the same thing, too. Hizbullah has proven over the years to have an impressive operational lesson-learning capacity.
On both sides– but particularly in Israel, given the many operational failings revealed by the war– there will be a huge temptation to invest a lot in significant upgrading of its forces. (Two nuclear subs recently received from Germany… But they might be just the tip of a much larger– submerged– iceberg of naval and ground-force upgrading yet to come.)
Israelis might well find themselves tempted to become even more of a “Sparta” than they already are. But that stuff is expensive– in financial terms, and also in the requirements for manpower, which could make the recently discussed plans of transforming the IDF into something close to a US-style all-volunteer force just impossible to realize any time soon.
Time for the country’s people to revolt and join the latte-sippers of the “western” nations that so many of them identify with, I say! Time, too, to learn some lessons from Portugal, circa 1974; to turn away from a strengthened reliance on militarism, and check out the prospects for its very realistic and much more hopeful alternatives.
… One further point. In my 1991 book The Superpowers and the Syrian-Israeli Conflict I had a whole chapter charting, basically, how after the 1967 war Israel started basing its “pitch” to members of the US policy elite increasingly on its “strategic value” to the US– this was in the Cold War, remember– rather than on the “shared values” of respect for life, freedom, tolerance, all those good things, that had previously lain at the heart of its appeal.
Well h’mmm. After what happened in the latest war, Israel’s “appeal” as a humane, caring, life-loving, etc country has (once again) been significantly dented.
But this time, its reputation for “military prowess” and for the ability to provide solid military/operational services to the US in that part of the world, has also taken a noticeable nose-dive, I’d say… I think it is that reputation that the hasbaristas have been working so hard to try to shore up.
So to JES, Ze’ev, and all my other Israeli friends I’d say, Look guys, if you want to gather some shreds of self-esteem around yourselves in order to enter into a serious peace process with your heads held high, I’m all for that. (And you should understand the need to let the Palestinians do it, too.) But if you want to shore up your reputation for “military prowess” in order to keep a solid lock on a strategic relationship with the militarists of the Bush-Cheney administration, then I don’t support that at all.