The Hezbollah War, Viewed from the Top and Bottom:

1.  From the top:  excerpt from Atlas’s transcript of the AIPAC presentation by Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s IDF chief of staff from 2002-2005, earlier this week:

I have a lot of criticism about the way that this operation has been managed. Actually, I went back to Israel on the second week of the war to speak with the people about it, because I thought about a very different operation to deal with Hezbollah. Not to fight them in the villages, but to deploy the ground forces earlier, to dominate the grounds up to the Litani River, approximately the line of the Litani River, in order not to allow them to launch Katyushas.

And in the last couple of weeks, most of the rockets that Israeli civilians absorbed were Katyushas, and there is no way by the Air Force to eliminate this kind of capabilities. The air force was very, very effective in eliminating the longer and the medium-range capabilities, a quite impressive achievement, but we knew, I didn’t expect the Air Force to deal with the Katyushas, which is a very low-profile target, as we call it. Very easy to maneuver, you can take it in your car, you can have it in your living room, and you can launch it from your backyard, very easy and very difficult to the Air Force to deal with. So the ground operation should have been deployed earlier, from the very beginning.

Another issue is, how long should these kinds of operations last? I thought about not more than two weeks for many reasons. Because of the situation in Israel, the situation of the civilians, the economic situation, the situation in Lebanon, the strategic goal should be not eliminating Hezbollah by military force, but achieving the political conclusion in which the Lebanese themselves would support the idea of disarming Hezbollah, and actually, 75 percent of them, I’m talking about the Christians and Sunnis, Druze, and even part of the Shias, they do not support Hezbollah, and in the beginning of the operation, even Arab countries didn’t support Hezbollah, and by operating in a longer period of time, actually we lost the hearts and minds, and I didn’t support the idea of destructing the fortification along the border. I thought that it was not so important to deal with it, if you’re going to reach the goal of disarming Hezbollah, so the fortifications are useless, and if you’re not going to reach the goal even by destroying it, again they will reconstruct it.

So I have a lot criticism about the way that the operation has been managed. The outcome is given now, and we have to deal with it. It is not a lost case, let’s say it this way. In the end, first of all, some benefits we have from this conflict. The first one, the Israeli people, generally speaking, civilians as well as the reservists in the military, they demonstrated resilience, endurance, strength. They are not a spider web, as Hassan Nasrallah called Israel in the year 2000.

Secondly, the Lebanese people, the Lebanese country, paid a very significant price, and they can’t ignore it, and the Arab countries around us can’t ignore it. So although it is not a clear military victory, it is not a lost case in terms of returns.

Anyhow, we should be prepared in the very near future, for another round of hostilities, either in the Palestinian arena, or even in the Lebanese arena, although this is not in Hezbollah’s interest now, but it might happen.

The Iranian regime is in a hurry. You know, to encourage the imam to appear. My assessment is that they will try to use Palestinian proxies to provoke or to deteriorate the situation and to renew another wave of hostilities against us in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

In this arena I believe that, first of all, in the West Bank we control the situation. The IDF is doing very well controlling the situation in daily operations, arresting terrorists every day. In the Gaza Strip, we should do better. I’m in favor of intensify the military operation in the Gaza Strip, not to allow this kind of Lebanon phenomenon, Hamasstan, Hezbollahstan, Al-Qaedastan, to emerge in the Gaza Strip.

So this is not a lost case. We should be ready for the next round of hostilities, and to perform in a better way, in terms of political management, and senior military-level management, the tactical level of tank commanders, brigade commanders, division commanders, they were performing impressively, but they didn’t get the right orders.

2.  From the bottom:  Boker tov, Boulder! posts the harrowing blog entry of an Israeli soldier who fought in Lebanon.  It is an extraordinary document, as are the comments about it at his blog.