The Israeli defeat in Lebanon
Thierry Meyssan (Voltairenet.org)
With translation by Colin Buchanan (endempire.blogspot.com and www.iransolidarity.endofempire.org)

After having met with many politicians and Lebanese military officials, Thierry Meyssan draws the lessons of the war. According to him, Israel’s resort to carpet bombings of urban areas and her defeat by a popular guerilla army are unprecedented since the bombing of Hanoi and the victory of US troops by the Vietnamese people. Above all, he explains in this article, the outcome has overturned the existing paradigm transforming an Israeli war against a “terrorist organization” into a regioinal and ideological conflict between Zionist and anti-Zionist forces across both Israel and Lebanon.

The Failure of Air Power.
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The plan of attack had been conceived jointly by the US and Israeli chiefs of staff. The Pentagon superimposed its Shock and Awe tactics on Tsahal’s classic Blitzkrieg approach.
For the US generals, the moment had come to give a demonstration of air power. For the last thirty years, the air force had sought to show that massive aerial bombardment is sufficient to force an enemy to surrender without the need for combat on the ground. It would be sufficient to unleash a deluge of bombs to leave the enemy hopelessly incapacitated. This theory has been put into practice throughout the world for the last 60 years. This time, the idea was that complete and utter destruction of all the towns in Southern Lebanon would drive the Lebanese to rebel against the dictatorship of Hezbollah and turn their support to the Hariri family
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After a day and a half of bombing, Tsahal had cut communications between the north and the South of the country, rendered the airport unusable and destroyed petrol reserves, blockaded the main ports and imposed a sea and air embargo. There only remained the routes linking the north of Lebanon and Syria, filled with refugees.
The problem was that Hezbollah is not a dictatorship, but a movement of resistance and solidarity. The bombings displaced a million people. The first quarter emigrated, the second found refuge in Syria and the remaining half went to north Lebanon. The refugees received no state aid. They were rather taken charge of by Hezbollah, helped by the free patriotic current of the Christian general Michel Aoun. Some received the hospitality of other refugees, the Palestinians, who have been living in poverty in the refugee camps for 60 years. Far from considering Hezbollah as the being responsible for their plight, the refugees blamed Tsahal, armed by the Americans with the collaboration of the Siniora government.
The most amazing thing was that the Lebanese who remained in the South throughout a deluge of bombs equivalent to five Hiroshimas didn’t collapse into a state of shock. Their endurance was due, first of all, to their previous experience, but also to their training and organization, if not to their faith. Far from giving up they had prepared themselves for a long war and were surprised by the rapidity of their own victory.
In addition, Tsahal bombed from day two, the TV studios Al-Manar and the headquarters of the Party of God, both situated in a working class area of Beirut. Since this only interrupted broadcasts for two minutes and had no effect whatsoever on the organization of Herzbollah, the Israeli high command assumed that the TV studio and the party leadership were situated underneath the rubble. Tsahal then embarked on six days of further bombardment of these supposed underground installations before realizing that they existed only in the fertile imagination of Fox News. In passing , these bombings devastated the south of the capital which is now nothing but a pile of rubble. This unremitting pursuit of an imaginary target was to Hezbollah’s advantage psychologically, making them look invincible against one of the best equipped armies in the world.
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The Israeli bombardment was completely disproportionate to Hezbollah’s response. Tsahal used F-15s to carpet bomb and reduce to dust all the towns of southern Lebanon. No nation has dared to resort to this type of bombing in an urban context since the bombing of Hanoi in1972 by the US Airforce and never since then has a modern army suffered such a defeat by guerilla forces. As for Hezbollah, they used rockets aimed exclusively at military targets even though they inevitably hit some civilian facilities. It is confirmed that the Lebanese resistance destroyed a military airport, the principal electronic communications centre, the command centre of Israeli Northern Command as well as seriously damaging two naval vessels.
From the moment of the declaration of a ceasefire by the UN, and while Hezbollah was still hesitating as to how to react, the Lebanese refugees spontaneously began to return to their homes. Half an hour after this long- awaited moment, the roads which were still open became one immense traffic jam. They returned to camp on the ruins of their homes, refusing symbolically to desert their homes. This human flood forced the Israelis to accelerate their retreat.
The Israeli air force claims also to have destroyed all the Sahar missile launchers provided to Hezbollah by Iran. Hezbollah, however, deny this claiming they are still capable of striking Tel Aviv. This seems credible since when Tsahal tried to resume the bombing of Beirut they backed down when Hassan Nasrallah threatened to bomb Tel Aviv in retaliation.
Hezbollah claims only to have used a ninth of their arsenal and to be able to continue a similar war for eleven months. The evidence gathered on the ground shows that several of their anti-tank units have been held back in reserve and weren’t used in combat.
Clearly, Tsahal’s complete air dominance didn’t help them to achieve any of their war aims. As for the ground invasion, it immediately turned into a fiasco.
The Failure of the Ground Offensive.

. From the first day, the attempt by tank divisions to break through failed and the cavalry was obliged to make an about turn. Now, traditionally, one of Tsahal’s strengths has been the rapidity of its forward thrust. This first failure was initially seen as a merely a premature operation. The chiefs of staff thought that once the terrain had been cleared by aerial bombardment, ground troops would have no difficulty in clearing up any pockets of resistance. Hezbollah was presented as a small terrorist group of some 250 to 500 fighters with some sophisticated weapons. The statements by Hassan Nasrallah, according to which the Party of God had at its disposal several thousand seasoned fighters and 15,000 reservists, were taken for so much boasting. It was a very big error, the result of the Isrealis believing their own propaganda.You didn’t need sophisticated intelligence networks to see the reality, especially since, for some years now, Hezbollah had been organizing tours of its bases with a view to dissuading the Israelis from doing anything rash. But the rhetoric of “the war on terror” which equates all patriotic groups with small groups of terrorist fanatics, blinded the Israelis to a reality known to all.
Hezbollah is a network of resistance formed during the Israeli occupation (1982- 2000). Perfectly aware that peace in the region is impossible as long as the question of the nature of the Israeli regime has not been resolved, it has dedicated the last six years to preparing for new battles. It has maintained its underground structure at the same time as developing a political and parliamentary wing. It has trained its members, men and women, to be disciplined fighters. It has built up an impressive arsenal provided by its Syrian, Iranian and possibly Russian allies.
It has analyzed its errors during the previous period and studied the combat methods of the Israelis in Palestine and the US in Iraq. It has completely assimilated and modernised its methods of guerilla war. Following the theories elaborated by the Lebanese generals A.H. and E.H. it has invented a type of guerilla war which uses a wide range of different weapons. For example, it buried in advance old fashioned combat phones which unlike digital phones couldn’t be intercepted and used hi-tech infra-red night vision goggles to increase the mobility of their commandos.
The Lebanese War was not, therefore, an asymmetric war confronting a well-equipped modern army with a ragtag band of guerillas. In this battle between the Israeli Goliath and the Lebanese David, the weaker side didn’t just have slings ; they also had the RPG-29 Vampire, the best rocket-launcher in the world.
War by Blitzkrieg, which brought Germany victory in 1939, has found its limit. It was based entirely on tank warfare. With the course of time, tanks have become heavier and heavier to counter increasingly powerful anti-tank rockets. Today, some are reinforced with depleted uranium armour plating. They turned out to be easy prey for Hezbollah’s Russian RPGs. We must, then, question whether the war in Lebanon won’t mark the end of the tank, just as Agincourt marked the end of the heavily armoured mounted knight. Incidently, the Israeli defence minister has just announced that the production of the Merkava tank, considered amongst the best in the world, is to be ended.
A Tragic Error of Analysis
But apart from questions of strategy, tactics and armament, the most important lesson from Lebanon concerns the quality of the troops themselves. In previous conflicts Tsahal deployed a professional force in the front line following up in a few days with a swarm of reservists. These proved resolute both in defense of land conquered and in conquering fresh terrain. But times have changed. The heroes of the Jewish legion and of Hagannah are dead. Their grandchildren are the beneficiaries of an apartheid regime who fight, not for their country, but for their privileges. Their military experience is limited to racist attacks in uniform in the occupied territories. They haven’t been able to stand up to the patriotic resistance of an independent country.
In reality this war was not between Israel and Lebanon, but between Zionism and the egalitarian ideal. It’s worth remembering that Tsahal is not composed of the Israeli people but of Israeli Jews fighting against Arabs, including Israeli Arabs. Over the years, this army has dedicated itself , above all to maintaining order, or, rather, maintaining apartheid. The anti-Zionist Israeli Jews opted initially to be conscientious objectors or simply refused to serve. Nowadays they place their hope in Hezbollah. They passed on to the Lebanese resistance all Tsahal’s internal documents which were immediately translated into Arabic and distributed to the guerilla fighters. The resistance, therefore, had detailed descriptions of the Israeli units. Informed of the details of the military chain of command and their insignia, they were able to target the officers.
This high quality of intelligence available to the resistance contrasted with the delusional notions which the Israeli army fed itself, explains, in part, the outcome. The town of Aita Al-Chaab, on the Lebanese frontier, where, for 34 days, about a hundred fighters successfully resisted the Israeli army, will always be remembered.
Hassan Nasrallah : Ho Chi Minh and Mandela rolled into one?
The US and Israel persist in seeing this war as part of the war on terrorism” even though the popular nature of the resistance and Tsahal’s defeat contradict this analysis. For its part, Hezbollah presents the war as a regional struggle between Zionist ideology and its own egalitarian ideals. It is this analysis which has imposed itself on the ground, overturning the prevailing view of the Middle East and provoking the anger of the more extremist generals within Tsahal.
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If it is impossible to quantify the precise number of Israeli officers in contact with Hezbollah, it is , on the other hand, easy to evaluate the Israeli perception of the resistance. Surveys have shown that more Israelis listen to the daily Hebrew broadcasts of Al-Manar than to news reports from there own TV channels. They also show that the Israelis have twice as much confidence in Hassan Nasrallah to resolve the crisis than they do in Ehud Olmert. Far from being eradicated by Tsahal, Hezbollah has become an invisible political player within Israel where it embodies the possibility of ending apartheid and establishing an inclusive peace for all the peoples of the region.
The Israeli Defeat
The Isreali offensive in Lebanon brings together a variety of interests.
► for the neoconservatives in power in the US, who are giving the orders here, the strategic goal is to transform the frontiers of the Middle East, the tactical goal is to eliminate Hezbollah before attacking Syria and Iran.
►for the Zionist regime in power in Israel, the strategic goal was to clear the population of Southern Lebanon, to annex this area and its water supplies, to create a Bantustan for the Arabs of the West Bank – indeed , of Gaza too-, and, tactically, to eliminate Hezbollah as an opposition to the Siniora government.
►for the financial system, personified in Lebanon by the Hariri family, the destruction offered them the opportunity to make a vast fortune out of the reconstruction of Lebanon, as they had done in the 90s.

Now, the frontiers of Lebanon haven’t been altered ; the population of South Lebanon has returned to the homes which they were forced to leave ; Hezbollah has become the leading political and military force in Lebanon as well as a key player in Israel’s own internal politics ; Lebanese unity has been reaffirmed ; Syria has regained its regional leadership ; Iran is strengthened by the victory of its Lebanese allies. As for the financial objectives, far from being in a position to keep its hold on power, the Hariri family is in danger of losing the vast properties which they acquired illegally during the last reconstruction.
On all fronts, then, the military offensive has been defeated.