Thursday, August 17, 2006

Keep It Up

EHUD OLMERT’S greatest sin in the eyes of the Israeli public is not that the war in Lebanon was “disproportionate”, but that he did not win it. Now that hostilities seem to be winding down, the debate over the conduct of one of the most unsuccessful military campaigns in the history of the Jewish state has begun with a vengeance. And it could bring about the demise of the Prime Minister and the new, centrist, Kadima party that he led to victory in the election in March.

There is a word in Hebrew for such a reversal: mechdal. It means something along the lines of “culpable failure resulting from inadequate preparation and inaction”. It was last in common currency after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when the Israeli political and military leadership failed to anticipate the attack by two Arab armies.


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