In an interview last Friday, Ehud Barak marked 18 years since he oversaw Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon during his term as prime minister.
"Now, just as then, I am very proud of my decision to remove the Israel Defense Forces from Lebanon," Ehud Barak said. "It followed many reservations by the political and security establishment and succeeded in the end."
But did the withdrawal in May 2000 from Lebanon really succeed?
Barak said that he succeeded in "stopping what cost many soldiers their lives." How dishonest and disrespectful is it to disregard the victims of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, who are casualties of the withdrawal? Here is the tally of the casualties: 165 Israeli civilians and soldiers killed and 2,628 injured. In that one war, Barak managed to surpass the number of lives he saved after withdrawing from Lebanon by the amount of Israeli lives lost during the war.
Costing Israel 13 billion shekels ($3.6 billion), during the war the Israeli home front, from the north to Tel Aviv, was ceaselessly bombarded from the "nature reserves." This is the term the IDF uses for the Hezbollah-controlled villages and towns over the border that are littered with bunkers and tunnels, which the Shiite terrorist organization diligently prepared in the six years between the withdrawal and the war breaking out.
Was the withdrawal a success? When late-Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat saw that the IDF was on the run under Barak's leadership, he launched a terrorist offensive to kick us out of Judea and Samaria. Why would an older, more experienced terrorist follow the lead of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah if the withdrawal was a success?
Israel paid the price of more than one thousand killed and thousands of injured for the Lebanon retreat under enemy fire. This policy puts Israel on the defensive, despite claims it is a legitimate security policy. The desire to shy away from friction with the enemy brought late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who came after Barak, to similarly fold in the Gaza Strip during the 2005 disengagement, which only led to the establishment of a Hamas semi-state in the south. Barak set the precedent for him.
How was this fiasco, the spoilt fruits of which we are forced to eat to this very day, allowed to happen? Barak was correct in noting that there were "reservations" about the withdrawal plan. Barak, who joined forces with the Four Mothers movement (formed to press the IDF to withdraw from Lebanon) and the like-minded media, was opposed by virtually the entire scope of professionals serving on the Lebanese front.
In the army, those opposed ranged from the secular Meir Dagan, then-commander of the IDF's Lebanese Liaison Unit, to the religious Brig. Gen. Efraim Eitam, then-commander of the 98th Division in the north. Opposing on the intelligence side were late diplomat Uriel Lubrani, the Shin Bet security agency, the IDF's field interrogation unit known as the 504 Unit and the Mossad. They feared our strategic partners in the South Lebanon Army, whom Israel helped build and turn professional – to the extent that commands and radio jargon were sometimes in Hebrew – would not be able to stand alone without the IDF because they were a minority in the area. Years of cultivating close ties and collaboration between the IDF and local forces went down the drain.
Meanwhile, Iran was in the background. Barak was warned that the Iranians wanted to build an army for the Shiites in Lebanon to threaten Israel from the north, in addition to the Palestinian threat from Hamas in the south. This is exactly what happened. It was impossible for the Shiites terrorist group Hezbollah to base themselves as an army in the presence of the IDF. But Barak had elections ahead of him and made a petty political decision. He saw the media and the social movement pestering the people to withdraw from Lebanon and leveraged this campaign in his favor, turning it into a central issue in the elections. That is how the most decorated soldier led us to national submission. Alas, now he is trying to change history and cause people to forget what happened 18 years ago.
For the record, here is what happened: Before the cameras of the world, Israeli tank and infantry companies withdrew in panic, unorganized, to the Fatima Gate in Metula, northern Israel, as Lebanese Shiite pursued their rout. Afterward, South Lebanon Army commanders and soldiers arrived with their family members, panic-stricken as well. My friends and I organized a fundraising campaign for clothes and bedding for them, as they had come with nothing. Meanwhile, Hezbollah militants took over bases and appropriating weapons and basic war equipment that was forgotten in the hasty rout. Pictures of their victory with Hezbollah flags raised were seen throughout the Arab world.
Eitam captured the spirit of the times in this quote: "The start of the flight: collapse." This was mainly because they showed their morale had been defeated, which was an important strategic component. A resident of the Golan Heights, Eitam emphasizes that there is currently a conflict between the simultaneously new and old spirit of the Jewish people and the Iranians over the Syrian border. And indeed, security personnel who then stood at the center of Israel's security establishment in Lebanon draw inspiration from the virtual unanimity in public opinion concerning the Iranian enemy. Israel is rebuilding its (collapsed) iron wall.
As former Meretz MK Tzvia Greenfeld noted in Haaretz on Sunday, "The Labor party and the Left faction in general has long ago become a horde of zombies. Surrounding the raging storm, they stumble in the darkness. Wandering hands and feet find votes but there is no base for their actions. With the remainder of their strength, they trudge forward, seeking where to go and why…"
As our sages fittingly write in the Babylonian Talmud, "The admission of a litigant is worth a hundred witnesses."
