When they speak of war

At the height of the war in Lebanon, a July 30 Haaretz editorial stated, "Bush, Blair, the IDF and the Israeli public are moving together in the same direction, the right direction." That statement was symptomatic of the battle cries of the Israeli media, which, criticism of it notwithstanding, closed ranks and rallied around the flag.

This was not an unusual stand. In fact, the media accepted the position of the army throughout the country's war history, though the level of battlefield coverage and criticism have increased over the years, given the competition among newspapers and decline of the public's faith in the army's wisdom and its ability to do what it promises to do while paying with our blood and our resources. The IDF of Ephraim Kishon, of Dosh, or of the generation that does not know the army from the inside, is not the IDF of those who recognize its inner chaos, of the "everything will be fine," of the mediocrity of advancement through the hierarchy.

On the Israeli side is the unholy coalition of the "Israeli public." Overseas there was no "American public" or "British public"; overseas were only Bush and Blair. And indeed, both are leaving the political arena utterly forlorn because they did not have a "public" when they hastened to destroy Iraq in the name of democracy and weapons of mass destruction, to the extent of misleading the "public."

They both led giant armies to a place from which there is no way back except with a cynical shrug of the shoulders while standing idly by the blood of the masses killed there. (There are still no real totals, but estimates are far beyond tens of thousands of Iraqis killed.)

The trouble is that no criticism inside or outside the media is leveled at such false beliefs as "the position of the West." As long as the West was critical of the Israeli occupation and abuse of Palestinians, there was also a critical Israeli stratum in the media and the Knesset. Israeli liberalism has been built over the years in a kind of coordination with the Western liberal stance.

When it was realized that all of Europe was against the war in Iraq, public opinion-makers in Israel lashed out at "American idealism" as opposed to "European cynicism." The Israeli interest was formulated, as always, in terms of the destruction of Arab countries being good for Israel. Of course, the Israeli interest is identified with the moral good, and it dovetailed for the umpteenth time with the policies of belligerent administrations.

But once the United States pulls out of Iraq, its withdrawal will make clear how terrible the American crisis policy is. They came, they saw, and they lost. They also, of course, profited. And in Israel, it is as if nothing has happened. The declarations of war against Iran are coming now, and they sound like Israel calling on the U.S. to make "one more little effort" before 2008, when the Bush Administration exits the stage of history.

Once again our generals, in uniform and out, are quoted as if we had not seen the Lebanese arena, as if we had not been wise enough to understand: In Israel, too, the age has come when those who decide to wage wars are protected from them. The next wars will demand much more blood from the periphery than from the Center, which makes the decisions. This tone has already been heard in the rallying around the flag of the media in the last war. In a live broadcast from a community that lost residents to a Katyusha, the glib anchor, sitting in his air-conditioned studio in Givatayim, scolded the weeping residents: Why don't you stay in the shelters?

What is the point of bringing up, for example, that opponents of nuclear weapons always said the party that builds a nuclear bomb to maintain superiority in the Middle East should not be surprised when a nuclear bomb also appears on "the other side." Who listened back then to those warnings? Everything seemed so simple. Menachem Begin received every compliment in the world, retroactively, for bombing the nuclear reactor in Iraq. Shimon Peres, who boasts about the bomb, received the Nobel Peace Prize. That is all. Remove nuclear weapons from the Middle East? Sign the non-proliferation treaty? What are such treaties to us? The Israeli public is staying with Blair and Bush - two lame ducks. Oh yes, and Silvio Berlusconi, the head of the Italian opposition.