Has Olmert let us down?

Israel

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has botched the war, said Ted Belman in Tel Aviv’s IsraelInsider.com. He was so afraid of being seen as “occupying” southern Lebanon that he refused to deploy ground troops for three weeks, relying instead on aerial bombing. The result: Hezbollah still has access to its widely dispersed and hidden missiles. And Lebanese civilians are dying by the dozens, their mangled bodies displayed on television screens across the globe. World opinion, which was firmly on Israel’s side for the first week of the fighting, now paints us as merciless attackers. “Israel has lost the high ground in a war that should have been a no-brainer.”

Forgive me if I can’t muster too much sympathy for “those poor, innocent Lebanese,” said Irwin N. Graulich, also in IsraelInsider.com. These are the people who allowed a vicious terrorist organization to take over one-third of the country. They stood by as Hezbollah built fortified bunkers and tunnels underneath their homes and businesses to store bombs, rockets, and guns. Hundreds of thousands of them attended Hezbollah rallies and chanted, “Death to Israel, Jews, and Americans.” Of course it’s unfair that some innocent civilians are being harmed, just as it was unfair that little German babies were killed in the bombing of Dresden in World War II. But when an attack comes from your country, the country is responsible. “You sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas.”

Such a callous attitude does the Israeli cause no good, said The Jerusalem Post in an editorial. In fact, it feeds directly into Hezbollah’s propaganda offensive. After Israeli airstrikes, Hezbollah operatives carefully remove all weapons and launchers and then invite in foreign reporters to film the bodies of the human shields. Israel should be countering by showing footage of the rocket fire that came from the scene, or by briefing foreign correspondents on the extensive evidence that Hezbollah is preventing civilians from fleeing. But in a display of “spectacularly inept public relations,” Olmert’s government shrugs off the international criticism. Its philosophy: “The world hates us anyway,” so let’s do whatever we deem necessary.

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Olmert may be talking tough, but he’s failed the Israeli people, said Tel Aviv’s Ha’aretz. The government was completely unprepared for the rain of Hezbollah missiles that has terrorized northern Israel. Bomb shelters are underfortified and ill-supplied. With no government plans for an exodus on this scale, families forced to flee their bombed-out houses have nowhere to go, and must rely on private charity. Olmert hasn’t even declared a state of emergency. As the war grinds toward an unsatisfactory conclusion, Israelis are left with “an overwhelming feeling that the leadership has abandoned the public.”

Eitan Haber

Yedioth Ahronoth