      Witty as ever, our friend Gilad Atzmon wonders "Why is it so hard for an
      Israeli to admit that an Arab combatant is just slightly better?" (read
      below) and concludes: "Will the Israelis admit that Assad, Ahmadinejad
      and Nasrallah are just slightly more clever than their own miserable
      leadership whom they ‘democratically elected’?" He answers with: "I say
      no, I say never!" Maybe this judgement is premature. "Hard" is not the
      same as impossible. Actually, this thought occurred to many Israelis.
      One of them is Ron Ben Yishai http://www.ynetnews .com/articles/
      0,7340,L- 3294340,00. html who said: "Hizbullah fighters fought more
      effectively than IDF soldiers" And another one is Bradley Burston who
      called "Nasrallah for Prime Minister - of Israel" (read on
      http://www.haaretz. com/hasen/ spages/756175. html )

      One may hope that this seeping feeling of admiration for an enemy will
      change Israeli society - for even Crusaders admired Saladin, their
      enemy. This admiration can start the process of reconcilliation -
      likewise, the whites and the Maori made peace after a few very
      successful attacks by Maori, while quite peaceful and non-belligerent
      Tasmanians were wiped out. If Israelis are so fond of military prowess,
      maybe the right way to bring peace is to earn their respect by beating
      them properly?

      Gilad concludes with "In order to make peace you must first respect your
      foe." Maybe this process has just started?

      Shamir

    Why is it so hard for an Israeli to admit that an Arab combatant is just
    slightly better? By Gilad Atzmon

    http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/

    It is now clear that as much as the Israeli Army doesn’t know how to win
    a war, the Israeli people do not know how to lose one. Already at the
    late stages of the recent wave of hostility in Lebanon the Israelis were
    desperately searching for a scapegoat, someone to blame, someone who
    would take personal responsibility for the humiliating Israeli
    collective defeat.

    It didn’t take long before the Israelis turned en mass against Dan
    Halutz, their IDF Chief of Staff. They accused him of being an ‘arrogant
    pilot’, for being ‘detached from reality’ and for ‘not preparing the
    Army to win a war’. Dan Halutz, no doubt a qualified war criminal as
    well as an Israeli stock exchange inside trader, dismissed his critics.
    Yet, as one may expect, Halutz wouldn’t stand up and admit in public
    that the leader of a miniscule Arab paramilitary force, the legendary
    Hassan Nasrallah was just slightly better than himself in winning a
    battle and concluding a war. In fact, Nasrallah was just better than
    every Israeli general in using his force, in manoeuvring his fighting
    units, in strategic moves and tactical decisions. Halutz and his staff
    generals wouldn’t admit it because being Israeli soldiers, a product of
    Jewish nationalism and crude racism, they are all supremacist to the
    bone.

    While in a meeting with reservist commanders last week Halutz learned
    about an IDF commander who refused to rescue combatants just because
    “they were not under his direct command”. He learned as well about
    another Israeli commander who managed to evade the battlefield in the
    midst of the fight. The commander was found hours later hiding inside a
    tank. Yes, the Israelis are far from being heroes, their paratroopers do
    not shoot from the hip as much as their tank commanders do not expose
    their upper body while the battle goes on. They all prefer to hide
    behind their glorious Merkava tank’s armour. However, they all fail to
    admit that the Hezbollah are just exactly the opposite. The Hezbollah
    warriors do shoot from the hip and they don’t have armoured vehicles to
    hide in. Yet, the Israelis would prefer blaming themselves rather than
    simply admitting that an Arab fighter happens to be just slightly
    better.

    These days, an extensive Israeli reservist rebellion is emerging in
    Israel. The humiliated IDF fighters are somehow very unhappy. They felt
    unprepared for the war. Their weapons were faulty, so they say, they
    lacked the necessary gear, the ‘catering services’ failed to serve their
    food exactly when they expected it. If this isn’t enough, they insist as
    well that intelligence was misleading and orders where confusing. Like
    the archetypal Jewish mother, the newly born Hebraic Samson is a
    venerable effeminate character who would prefer to endorse the role of
    the victim. I believe that when the Israelis engage in self-criticism
    they tend to regard themselves as a collective of outspoken liberal
    beings. But in fact, they all lie to themselves. By putting themselves
    down they save themselves from confessing the clear fact that at least
    in this round the ‘Arabs’ were just far better.

    The reservist rebels call for the immediate resignation of Olmert,
    Peretz and Halutz. Peretz so they say, is just a small ‘union leader’
    - he lacks the capacity to command the army of a hostile state that
    insists upon putting world peace at a constant threat. They may be
    right. Peretz isn’t a natural talent. Indeed he was quick to join the
    never ending list of Israeli war criminals, he gave the Israeli Army the
    green light to bring ‘Lebanon to its knees’, to kill so many civilians,
    to destroy a country’s civil infrastructure. Yet Peretz was not a
    tactical or strategic visionary. He was good enough to spread death in
    the region but he himself didn’t understand what all this loss was there
    to serve. Unlike Peretz, who became a mass murderer just a few days into
    the war for absolutely no reason, Sheikh Nasrallah has managed to defeat
    Israel without bringing the state to its knees, without killing many
    civilians. Nasrallah won a war without being a mass murderer. And the
    question to be asked is whether the time is ripe for the Israelis to
    admit that a Lebanese Shiite leader is far more advanced both
    intellectually and morally than their own leaders. May I tell you, this
    is not going to happen. The Israelis are racist to the bone. Even now
    after being defeated by a bold patriotic group of warriors, they are
    still convinced that they are fighting a fanatical bunch of sub-humans.

    And what about Olmert, the man who was voted to implement a sickening
    judeocentric unilateral peace agenda and managed to bring his country
    into a miserable war less than four months later? Would he admit in
    public or even to himself that it was Assad, Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah
    who smashed the Israeli power of deterrence without causing any damage
    to the infrastructures? They did it without killing many civilians at
    all, just with light weaponry and conventional rockets, without American
    planes and Merkava tanks. They did it without hundreds of nuclear bombs.
    Will the Israelis admit that Assad, Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah are just
    slightly more clever than their own miserable leadership whom they
    ‘democratically elected’?

    I say no, I say never! Israel is a racist national state. It is
    supremacist to the bone. The Israelis are not capable of regarding their
    neighbours as equal human beings. This is exactly why Israel has never
    been and never will be a partner for peace. In order to make peace you
    must first respect your foe.