Between Agranat and Winograd

Many of the generation that fought in the Yom Kippur War regard comparing it with the second war in Lebanon as sacrilege - not only because of the Yom Kippur War's heavy losses (entire units were decimated) but also because that war was, after the War of Independence, our greatest victory.

It was a war in which the commander of the standing army's Paratroopers Brigade, Uzi Yairi, a figure revered by commanders and soldiers, relinquished his command of the brigade because he could not bear the heavy losses. Pilots risked their lives against the Egyptian missile batteries to help the ground forces. Soldiers in the strongholds and the tank crews alongside them fought to the last breath, and brigade commanders gave orders to their soldiers while in their midst or on the forefront.

From the spirit of those days, one consolation remains: The Israeli fighter is still the same. The soldiers, the junior officers, in regular army service and in reserve duty, demonstrated the same spirit of sacrifice and combat ability as their fathers. But not a trace remains of anything else - neither the level of the high command nor the level of the civilian government. Society has changed and with it the army has changed, becoming a colonial police force. And how could it be otherwise? The hero of that war, from the moment it began, was the chief of staff, David Elazar. Light years separate Dado from Dan Halutz. His deputy, Israel Tal, had to mobilize reserve divisions within hours and deploy them, some of them on caterpillar tracks, to two fronts. The general staff did not have two weeks to deliberate over whether or not to mobilize the reserves.

The government was headed by a tough woman whose refusal to hear the voices coming out of Egypt exacted an unbearable price. But she was not a cynic. Is there any similarity between the inner fortitude required of her during the critical first days of battle and the lap of luxury at the kirya [government complex] during July and the facileness with which it was decided to go to war? Nonetheless, Golda Meir was a politician, one concerned about her political survival. To protect the government in power, the Agranat Commission was established. In this sense, but only in this sense, Ehud Olmert is no worse than Meir: She also sought to define the composition of the panel and its mandate. Haim Laskov was appointed in accordance with an explicit demand by Moshe Dayan, while Yigael Yadin was on the verge of entering political life and had not yet decided what direction to take. Therefore, the commission only investigated the initial days of the war.

The commission worked under the assumption that it should examine whether the deployment of forces was consistent with the plan to defend Sinai ("Dovecote"), and not ask the main question: Was not the plan, in its entirety, which was based on the Bar-Lev Line, the most foolish thing Israel's military history has ever known? The time frame of the investigation was narrowed to a minimum and only included the initial days. All of this was aimed at avoiding the obvious conclusion that there was a direct causal relation between holding on to the banks of the Suez canal via strongholds and the failures and heavy losses of the initial days. Indeed, the decision to defend Sinai from the Bar-Lev Line was a political decision, bereft of any military logic.

Despite the fact that Olmert led Israel to defeat rather than victory, he still seeks to achieve the same result, only with an opposite method and in a more blatant way. In a society in which a politician is pure as snow as long as he is not sentenced to Ma'asiyahu Prison, there is no need to even maintain a pretense.

The judges and state comptroller of today pose a danger for those in power because they are much tougher on politicians than the judges of those days. Precisely for this reason, it is essential to establish promptly a state commission of inquiry. Changing the model of the investigation, even if the inquiry is expanded to the year 2000, will make it difficult for Olmert to pass the hot potato to his predecessors, some of whom are also his rivals and harsh critics or, like his benefactor Ariel Sharon, are unable to respond.

In any case, the Winograd Committee, or a state commission of inquiry, if established, should examine the war, its goals, its results and, of course, its management by those in power, and should not get bogged down in counting the stores of war equipment or delving into the battalion-level battle records. And, yes, it should not suffice with composing sterile documents about "decision-making processes" that will in any case remain a dead letter, while refraining from determining the explicit identity of those who bear responsibility for the most difficult defeat we have ever experienced.