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The advantages of winning and losing

Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, is probably not Israel's favourite columnist but certainly from this afar he makes a lot of sense.

In his lastest op-ed piece he writes:

"The bad (and predictable) news: Israel is going to come out of this war with the lower hand. The good (and surprising) news: This ringing failure could spell good tidings. If Israel had won the battles in an easy, sweeping victory of the kind Israelis prayed so much for, it would have caused enormous damage to Israel's security policies. Another slam-bam win would have brought disaster upon us. Drugged with power, drunk with victory, we would have been tempted to implement our success in other arenas. Dangerous fire would have threatened the entire region and nobody knows what might have resulted.

On the other hand, the failure in this little war might teach us an important lesson for the future, and maybe influence us to change our ways and language, the language we speak to our neighbors with violence and force. The axiom that "Israel cannot allow itself a defeat on the battlefield" has already been exposed as a nonsensical cliche: Failure might not only help Israel greatly but, as a bonus, it might teach the Americans the important lesson that there is no point in pushing Israel into military adventures."

Read the rest of Levy's piece here.

Meanwhile, The Observer reports that PM Olmert may face a problem retaining office:

"The future of Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, was last night hanging on how successfully he could sell his citizens the idea that the country had been 'victorious' in the 'war in the north' as criticism of his shaky performance began to escalate amid the first calls for his resignation.

While Olmert's allies and government officials lined up to express satisfaction about the outcome of the UN ceasefire resolution passed while the fighting continued, attempts to present a 'victory' to the Israeli public could not disguise the deep sense of disquiet over the operation's failures and fears that Hizbollah might manage to emerge 'victorious' in the coming days."

Read the full Observer article here.

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