For some days, Israel looked like the Place de la Concorde in 1793. The entire public sat expectantly facing the guillotine, waiting for the tumbril to bring the marquis, for the marquis to lie down, for the blade to fall on his neck and for a soldier to hold up the bloody, severed head for the amusement of the spectators.
All eyes were fixed on the raised blade of the Winograd Commission. The judge sat down before the cameras and read out the report. But the blade did not come down. No reserve soldier raised the bloody, severed head. The head remained in its place. Ehud Olmert is no marquis, and his head remains firmly on his shoulders.
When the proposed Law of Commissions of Inquiry was debated, we decided that the members of an “official” commission of inquiry should not be appointed by the government, but by the president of the Supreme Court. That happened seven years before the young Ehud Olmert was first elected to the Knesset. But he understands the law perfectly. When, after Lebanon War II, the appointment of an “official” commission of inquiry was proposed, he objected strenuously. He insisted on a government-appointed inquiry commission. While the members of an official commission are appointed by the chief justice, the members of a government commission are appointed by the government itself.
The Winograd Commission behaved exactly like an “official” commission, took decisions like one and spoke like one. It raised the guillotine blade, and everybody waited for it to fall on Olmert’s neck.
The commission has now issued a final report that is favorable to Olmert all along the line, especially about the accusation that Olmert had decided on the last-minute “ground operation” and sent soldiers to their deaths to save his personal prestige.
The commission did not lay any personal blame on any politician or general. Here it could base itself on a decision of the Supreme Court, which had expressly forbidden the commission to condemn anyone personally.
How come? When the Knesset adopted the Commission of Inquiry Law, we paid much attention to Article 15. It prohibits condemning anyone without giving them a fair opportunity to defend themself.
The Winograd Commission took another path: When the army authorities petitioned the Supreme Court and demanded that the commission respect Article 15, the commission just promised that they would not blame anybody personally.
The commission could, of course, have described Olmert’s part in the war in such scathing terms as to force him to resign. It did not do so. On the contrary, it concluded that his decisions were reasonable.
The blade did not fall, Olmert was bruised, but still standing.
The five commission members, all pillars of the establishment — two generals, two leading academics, one judge — did not want to topple Olmert, the No. 1 establishment person.
In its two reports, the commission asserted that the decision to start the war was taken in a hasty and irresponsible manner. The stated war aims were quite unattainable. But the commission did not say what had caused Olmert & Co. to make such a decision.
We now know for sure that plans for the war had been prepared a long time before. The government and the army had long been thinking about attacking Hezbollah. For six years, the northern border had been completely quiet. Hezbollah did deploy rockets (as it is doing now) but showed then (as now) no inclination to attack Israel.
The cross-border incursion in which two Israeli soldiers were captured was an exception. The action was intended to provide negotiating chips for the release of Hezbollah prisoners held in Israel. This incident was a pretext for the war, not the reason for it. If so, what was the real reason? The desire of the civilian Olmert for military glory? The dream of the Chief of Staff Dan Halutz to prove that the Air Force could win a war alone, by a massive bombardment of the civilian population? The illusion that Hezbollah could be eliminated by one big strike?
When Judge Winograd tried to explain why a part of the report must be kept secret, the words he used attracted no attention: “The security of the state and its foreign relations”. Foreign relations? What foreign relations? Relations with whom? There is only one reasonable answer: Relations with the United States.
That could be the crux of the matter: Olmert fulfilled an American wish. President Bush wanted to install his protégé, Fouad Siniora, as ruler in Beirut. For that end, Hezbollah, the main Lebanese opposition force, had to be eliminated. Also, Bush wanted to effect a regime change in Syria, one of the main obstacles to American ambitions in the region.
I believe that this is the missing link in Winograd’s chain.
The other black hole in the report concerns the Israeli Army. The report criticizes it murderously. Never before has the army leadership been described in such a way — as a bunch of people without character, talent or competence. What has not been said is: How did we get such a leadership? What has caused these faults?
The answers can be summed up in two words: the occupation.
One cannot employ a whole army for decades as a colonial police force for crushing the resistance of an occupied population, without changing its character. Worse: Such a colonial army does not attract the best and the brightest.
In the 40 years of occupation, the Israeli Army has lost the kind of officers that led it in the 1948 and 1967 wars, people like Yitzhak Sadeh, Yigal Allon, Yitzhak Rabin, Ezer Weitzman, Matti Peled, Haim Bar-Lev and David Elazar, to mention just a few. Their place has been taken by a mediocre, faceless group, gray but arrogant technicians, people of shallow thinking, colonialist and extreme right-wing attitudes, with an ever increasing percentage of knitted kippa-wearers.
That is the group the report speaks of — but without saying so. It is an occupation army in which a negative natural selection process operates — everyone who does not feel comfortable in this milieu just leaves. As in any army, the atmosphere prevailing at the top — good or bad — trickles down the ranks to the meanest soldier. This is not an army of Stalingrad fighters defending their country — this is an army of Winograd fighters. An army which no genius can “repair”, as demanded by the commission. Because all the faults stem from the original sin: The occupation.
