"First there" is the name of the WhatsApp group that my comrades in my reserve unit developed this year. Accordingly, there was a 100% turnout as early as last Wednesday, even before what is known as the "national asset", or by its more familiar name "Command 8" (calling up reserves for active duty), was activated.
The news of the killing of Ahmed al-Jabari was greeted with a degree of cynicism, coming just before elections, but this quickly changed to a sense of mission as soon as the rockets started to fall. Election or no election, the deep awareness that this time we had to put an end to this overcame everything else. And lo and behold, eight days later, the cynicism strikes again, mingled with a sense of nausea that refuses to go away.
We are not talking about guys in uniform spoiling for a fight. This is a group of intelligent men, with families, responsible and moderate, some of them dyed-in-the-wool left wingers, who know that accepting the rocket fire on Israel's population centers is tantamount to political bankruptcy and social disintegration. And so this group finds itself part of an artificial muscle flexing, a pistol loaded with blanks. Thousands of reservists who passed nights in the assembly points under the dome of the heavens, without Iron Dome, clearly observable from the Gaza Strip and ranged by mortar fire. It would have been possible to wait in the bases until the politicians made up their minds, but waiting by the border fence makes for better pictures.
Something has become confused in Israeli society. The natural, and morally right, fear of losing soldiers in battle has led to the sacrifice of the home front, which is supposed to be defended at all costs. Another shelter, another layer of concrete, another Iron Dome battery, and in all this protectiveness we are steadily losing our collective mind. The media have in recent days extolled Rafael's rocket defense system, but this technological wonder amounts to a strategic tragedy that will yet cost us dearly.
This last campaign has been like a football team that takes the field with only a goalkeeper (Iron Dome) and a striker (the Air Force), and in the middle all the rest are praying to God. There was no fighting in the South, contrary to the media cliche, but a war of cowards. Two sides that press buttons, one more sophisticated, the other less.
Not only has the Iron Dome concept collapsed, certainly after Hamas realized that a salvo of 16 rockets does the job with or without it, but also the "price tag" concept. As though if we hammer them hard enough, they'll emerge from their burrows, look at the destruction, and the land will be quiet for some period or other. But you can't extract a price that way from someone who builds his ethos on destruction. Price tag is a concept for hilltop settlers in the territories, not for a sovereign state.
"So what do you want? To go back into Gaza?" they ask on the right and the left, as though it were a rhetorical question with a negative response taken for granted. "We went into Gaza in Operation Cast Lead, and no good came of it," they bolster the argument. Except that Operation Cast Lead is a classic example that actually strengthens the counter-argument. Operation Cast Lead was not a military failure, but a strategic missed opportunity. Instead of continuing to hold the rocket launching areas and dismantling Hamas's infrastructure over time, the army left and allowed them to rearm.
Gaza doesn't need another Operation Cast Lead, but an Operation Defensive Shield. That operation, which began In March 2002 on the West Bank, has never really ended, because in essence it is not a question of an operation but of a philosophy, a recognition that it is necessary to go into every place from which a threat is posed to Israel, to pursue the terrorist chiefs and stop them from lifting their heads, continually, day in day out. Not pyrotechnics from the skies, and not briefings on plasma screens by the IDF spokesperson.
As far as the political leadership is concerned, Netanyahu has again demonstrated that his main talent is making speeches, writing books about terrorism, and engaging in the cheapest kind of propaganda. He frightens us with the threat from distant Iran, and shows feebleness in dealing with the everyday, most concrete threat. How easy to work the joystick of the aircraft that tracked Jabari's Kia car, and how hard to cope with a genuine military decision, while ever letting up in the pursuit of courageous diplomatic settlement. Once more he is revealed as a military pygmy, and a great coward.
The writer was mobilized as a reservist during Operation Pillar of Cloud.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 22, 2012
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