JERUSALEM:
The report issued Monday by the Commission of Inquiry on the Second Lebanon War, headed by former District Judge Eliyahu Winograd, is a damning one. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and the former chief of the general staff of the Israeli Army, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, are severely criticized for the way they handled the war.
Peretz has indicated his intention to step down, and Halutz has resigned, which basically leaves Olmert in the eye of the storm, with many voices calling for his resignation.
Should Olmert resign because of the Winograd report? I'm not sure.
First, when he took Israel to war, Olmert enjoyed overwhelming popular support. Second, I don't share the idea that the war was a defeat. I believe that Israel's position vis-à-vis Hezbollah is better today than it was before the war, and that - according to the military thinker B. H. Liddell Hart - is the aim of war. And third, even if the war did not end in a great success, I would not rush to punish our leaders. Instead, I would borrow a page from the history of Rome. The Romans, after all, knew a thing or two about state affairs and leadership.
Nathan Rosenstein, a history professor at Ohio State University, in 1990 published a book titled "Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic," in which he showed that Roman generals not only paid no personal price for defeat, they often went on "to win the republic's most highly coveted and hotly contested offices."
Rosenstein explained the rationale: The Romans wisely refused to let military defeats become a weapon in the republic's contentious political arena. A general may have lost a battle, they reasoned, but did this disqualify him from continuing to serve his country? Maybe the bitter experience taught him a lesson and the public might benefit from his experience.
The Israelis are notoriously impatient with their leaders. They want immediate results, and they show little tolerance for failure. Yet, paradoxically, this highly responsive system is much better than, say, the rigid American one. In a recent poll of more than 100 top American counterterrorism experts conducted by The Center for American Progress and the magazine Foreign Policy, 9 out of 10 respondents said that the war in Iraq has had a negative impact on enhancing U.S. national security and in combating terrorism. Nevertheless, there is almost nothing either the American public or Congress can do about it. President George W. Bush will remain in office till his term ends, and most probably will stick to the same policy.
In Israel, on the other hand, there are ways to call a prime minister to account if the consensus is that he has drifted away. The Israelis can also oust him in mid-term. But should they? That depends on how bad his performance really is, and also on the alternatives. After all, who is now pushing ahead to replace Olmert? Two former prime ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, who were kicked out by Israeli voters before completing their terms. What's this rush to bring them back?
A mass rally is scheduled for Thursday in Tel Aviv, which, the organizers hope, would unleash a popular storm that will eventually bring Olmert down. Let's take it as a litmus test. If hundreds of thousands take to the streets, I will rest my case. If, on the other hand, only few people show up, it will mean that the Israelis, while not happy with their prime minister, prefer for the time being to carry on with him rather than rock the boat even further.
This article was first published in the International Herald Tribune on May 1, 2007.
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The opinions expressed herein are the author's own personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of the Israel Democracy Institute.