Author Shlomi Harif – Home

I’d previously posted on what I thought Israel’s military game plan would be. Strike hard, decisively, and continue to drill down until it hurt Hizbollah enough to cough up its captives and retreat.

What I didn’t account for was the Bush Effect, and at this stage, I can’t support the continued Israeli military operation.

When sub-Bush took aim at Iraq, I was all for the war. Not because I thought the President was right, but because taking out Iraq, I reasoned, would save Israel the trouble of doing it next time he decided to transfer his aggression on one country instead onto Israel. I imagined he’d learned from ubber-Bush, who did a half-baked job on an enemy that respected only full measures of action. After the heated rhetoric, the 20,000-pound bombs, and America’s overwhelming might, I expected “shock and awe” to be deafening.

It was more like Babe Ruth needing to hit a grand slam but instead dribbling a bunt that barely made the pitcher’s mound.

Like little Bush’s attempt at war-making, Ehud Olmert has lived down to his roots as a lawyer and political hack. I know the code words that could have been spoken to trigger a callup, a swift and deep attack, and a truly devestating hit. It would have killed more Lebanese civilians, but Israel would have been saved thousands of missile strikes.

Instead, this ‘hit and wait,’ ‘hit and wait’ policy provided the enemy with ammunition for public relations and their allies and non-supporters of the Jewish state with the time and space to push Israel back on the political battlefield.

Now we are left with the impression of thousands of milling reservists, the reality of over one hundred buried soldiers, and my former home in Northern Israel a wreckage-wracked and economically devestated area, from which it will take years to recover.

Prime Minister Olmert, you failed in the kind of mission one gets but one chance to execute: safeguarding the security of the Israeli people and land. Like Bush, you have forfeited the credentials a state leader is given in stewardship, not in perpetuity.: the stewardship to manage the future of the country. The casualties of the next few years, when Hizballah lobs missiles over separation forces to land in Israel, are on your head. And you have given the radical right ammunition, ammunition to which they had no rights to acquire, to be the next weapons of mass political destruction.

Shame on you.

My spouse and I have passionate views, and, like many areas, we’re not on the same page on the future of this latest Lebanese war. (Of course, it’s not against the Lebanese, it’s against whomever’s last taken over the country, but that’s another story.)

Richard Bartholomew has yet again captured the real essence of the war. With every place I’ve ever lived in targeted by rockets, and seeing the damage up close on both sides, it’s clear that, whatever the terrorist or military goals on respective sides, it’s the innocent civilians on both sides of the ridge that are doing the brunt of the suffering.

Israel, unlike its enemy, does not have the luxury of blanket bombings of civilians and this complicates and extends Israel’s attack against Hizballah and, as a result, the casualties inflicted on civilians used as shields by terrorists and their rockets.

The Dresden firestorm in World War Two killed literally tens of thousands of innocent civilians, all because they made the mistake of living in a city that had war machine factories. This was a triumph of Allied air power, and a congruence with my family’s fate at almost the exact same time in Auschwitz.

When Hezballah or Hamas miss and hit a field instead of an Israeli citizen, house, or factory, they readjust their aim and fire again. Muslim fanatics and their sycophants hand out candy to children after a successful strike at the Jewish Homeland. And then turn around and protest when Israel accidentally hits buildings next to missile launchers, which are set up specifically to shield behind civilians.

Israel is not America in World War Two, and we do not revel in the deaths of civilians, the raison d’être of the terrorists at our borders. While the deaths of civilians is deplorable, horrible in the case of children, it is Hizballah—literally “Army of God”—that is to blame for creating the conditions, and then positioning weapons, to maximize their own civilian casualties.

Of course the civilians, beholden to the generous hand of Hizballah, will anticipate the rebuilding and rehabilitation, yet again, of their country, a mea culpa they will not understand from a terror organization that cynically knows how to sow and harvest their next generation of fanatics.

Despair works best
when it has no reason to.

I’ve been covering the war on Israel’s northern border and throughout Lebanon, as well as in Gaza, since the first attack by Hamas resulting in deaths, injuries and one soldier kidnapped. Friends, co-workers, vendors, folks in the neighborhood.

The tools available on the web such as Google’s Earth and map web site have been invaluable — to a point. Zoom in on Israel’s northern border and try to move east from the coast. At a certain point, the vision gets vague: satellite imagery gets blurry around Har Meron and Tsfat, and then totally unplottable. Check out this picture: the clear settlement is a border kibbutz, to the right is a land heading east towards Meron. This obviously helps Israel, but I wonder who makes these rules? Before North Korea’s test-spewing of missiles, I was able to track, in painful detail, all of North Korea in search of missile silos and other military structures. Not all that many vehicles up there, by the way, except for near where South Korea might be able to see.

Here’s another example: Lebanon’s Beirut International Airport versus Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. Which one do you think makes for better targeting?

So someone has pull with Google. Microsoft’s Live site solves the problem by simply not providing high-resolution shots at all of Israel, but it’s the same story on the Lebanese side.

I’m glad tactical information about Israel isn’t being made available to Iran for targeting. Google is living up to its motto of doing no evil. But I think it’s interesting that that ability is being governed according to what seem to be United States interests.

Check the weather report in Israel according to the radio news broadcasts.

This is a cross-post; normally I’d be putting posts on the Middle East on my other blog, Hadofeq (“the pulse” in Hebrew).

I was reminded of the children’s book “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” listening to the news on Israeli radio this morning (18ooZ). “The frequency of missile strikes seems to be on the upswing,” he said. “Missiles landed in…” and he rattled off a list of twenty villages and towns. That Tiberias was hit speaks to the continued existence of longer-range bottle rockets in Hizballah’s hands.

“Residents are advised,” he continued, “to stay away from torn or down electrical lines. Also, keep away from electrical substations if they have been hit by missiles.” All delivered in calm, mid-alto tones.

“Two sailors killed have been identified,” he said earlier in the broadcast. “For the information of Sailors, seas will be fairly rough,” ended the weather report.

A postscript: in the three minutes it’s taken me to write this, two more missiles have hit Tveria. At this point reporters and witnesses alike seem more calm, reporting damage and continued ‘kor ru’ach’ — mental calm, in the target zones that were my home.

Events are moving faster than reporting can adequately analyze, and I’ve been in full-time media feeding since Gilad Shalit was kidnapped, and his tank-mates were killed or injured.

Politics are not a factor at this time. Israel’s response is not a function of Kadima, or Labor, or the Likud. I trained for ‘yom k’rav’ — a day of war — twenty years ago, and this, so far, is scarily close to what I practiced then. I knew then how it would end, and I am glad that the battle plan has been updated.

The IDF, with the missile strike in Haifa, will ‘peel back’ Lebanon’s technological state decade by decade, until the barbarians within will be left with only a barbarian’s standard of life and living. Airports, seaports, long-haul transportation have already been affected. Stand by for loss of all power, water and sewage treatment, and destruction of the transportation infrastructure.

It’s up to ‘brave’ Hizballah, funded by Iran and illegal activities in the US and run by Iran, and ‘fearless’ Hamas, funded by Iran and Arab extremists and run from Syria, to return our soldiers. Only then, perhaps, will they be able to stop cowering behind and within their own civilian populations, and parley for their lives with Israel.

… and not see incoming rockets.

Sun fire patiently touch
planents
a rain lights clouds
hopes
the silky moon
beyond
desired love

Poetry.com has a daily ‘Poetry in Motion‘ contest. Here’s mine for today:

beneath paint-brushed golden summer days
I found silky
sunrise
filagree
in my last harvest rain.