ISRAEL ARMY BOSS FIRST SACRIFICIAL LAMB FOR LEBABON DEBACLE

Israel’s internal war of attrition over its embarrassing military performance in Lebanon in 2006 has claimed its first victim, its Army Chief of Staff, Lt. General Dan Haluzt. He resigned on January 16, having been in the job for only 18 months.
His resignation came after mounting public pressure for someone at the top of the political-military chain of command to fall on his sword and take one for the team. Halutz became the sacrificial lamb when it appeared that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose ratings are at an all time low because of his handling of the Lebanon war, was not willing to offer himself up for slaughter. Neither was his defense minister, Amir Peretz but like Halutz they are now in the eye of the storm as Israel continues to reel from the fact that it lost its military cloak of invincibility in his war with Hezbollah. For most Israelis, the Lebanon campaign was the worst military failure in Israel’s short history and one that shattered the belief of most Israelis that there was no threat they couldn’t eliminate. They had never considered the possibility their powerful military machine, with its hi-tech American planes, missiles and surveillance gear, would ever abandon a fight, especially with a rag tag guerilla army like Hezbollah. As we now know, Israel was outfoxed by Hezbollah’s intelligence arm, as well as by its fighters, and Israel’s prolonged “shock and awe” bombing of civilian areas of Lebanon cost it dearly in terms of its global image.
Prior to the Lebanon conflict, Lt. Gen. Halutz knew all about fighting a dirty war and about being in the center of a storm of controversy. Before he became chief of the IDF- Israeli Defense Forces, staff he was commander of the IAF, the Israeli Air Force. In his IAF role he developed what became known as “targeted assassinations,” the controversial policy of blowing up homes and cars in high density civilian areas in order to kill Hamas militants. He began by bringing together specialized pilots and members of the IDF, Mossad and Shabat, the Israeli internal security service to share intelligence on targets. He then ordered the most up-to-date planes and surveillance equipment from the United States for carrying out assassinations.
One of his most controversial decisions was to authorize the dropping of a one ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza on the night of July 23, 2002. The target of the attack was Salah Shahade, a Hamas commander but he was not the only one killed when the bomb tore apart the building. His wife and daughter died, as did nine others, mostly children. At the time, Israeli Prime Minster, Ariel Sharon, applauded the attack but it was condemned across the world, as well as by peace groups in Israel. What made it particularly heinous, aside from the deaths of innocent children, was the fact that hours before it happened the leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin promised an end to suicide bombings. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas were negotiating an end to terror. In a revenge attack in Jerusalem a week later, eight civilians were killed two of them Americans.
Halutz had no regrets about the Gaza attack and told a journalist that when it was over he told his pilots: “You can sleep well tonight. I also sleep well, by the way…….Your execution was perfect. Superb!”
In response to a question of whether the attack was morally reprehensible, given the civilian deaths, he replied that there was a moral consideration built into the planning and a mistake or accident did not make it wrong. His response reflected a traditional Israeli military principle that the target, if it is a Hamas militant, not only justifies the means but any additional death toll. As a consequence of such a mindset, the risk of “collateral damage” – a politico-military euphemism for dead civilians - has rarely dissuaded Israeli military figures like Halutz or politicians like Sharon or Olmert from using overwhelming force in civilian areas. Israel’s campaign in Gaza and Lebanon has proved that to be true. At the end of the Lebanon war last summer, Israeli artillery units and war planes sprayed parts of Lebanon with almost one million cluster bomb droplets, knowing they will kill the innocents for perhaps a decade or more to come.
In the wake of the bombing of the Gaza apartment, Halutz ran into a firestorm of criticism in Israel when he said members of peace groups who criticized his targeting policies were traitors and a clause should be found in the law to put them on trial for treason. The Israeli Supreme Court later forced him to back away from that pronouncement. Amnesty International has credited him with ordering the destruction of most of the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon last summer and of threatening the Lebanese that if they did not get ride of Hezbollah the country would “pay a heavy price.” And it did.
Lt. Gen Halutz ran into a different controversy in August 2006 after was revealed that a month earlier he sold off part of his stocks portfolio hours after learning that Hezbollah had kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. That kidnapping became Israel’s justification for him launching the war against Lebanon. Halutz claimed the sell-off was a personal matter.
His sudden career demise may well be a portent of things to come. So far there have been at least one dozens Israeli inquiries into the failures of the Lebanon campaign and the Israeli public are clamoring for more resignations. All of this comes at a time when leadings politicians in the country are mired in scandal, including Prime Minister Olmert. He is the target of a probe into a 2005 bank privitization.