Olmert Confesses His Crimes
Jonathan Cook
www.virtualcitizens.com
2007-03-14

http://www.virtualcitizens.com/articles/Olmert_Confesses_His_Crimes

Olmert’s testimony reveals the real goal of the war in Lebanon

Israel’s supposedly “defensive” assault on Hizbullah last summer, which killed more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians, ending with Israel littering Lebanon’s south with cluster bombs – after the ceasefire was declared, was cast in a different light last week by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.

What were the lies?

His leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee -- investigating the government’s failures during the month-long attack -- suggests that he had been preparing for such a war four months before the official casus belli: the capture by Hizbullah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on 12 July 2006.  Lebanon’s devastation was apparently designed to teach both Hizbullah and the Lebanese public a lesson.

Olmert’s new account clarifies the confusing series of official justifications for the war from the time.  First, we were told that the seizure of the soldiers was “an act of war” by Lebanon and that Israel’s “shock and awe” campaign was needed to secure their release.  As the then Olmert’s Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, explained, his pilots were going to “turn the clock back 20 years” in Lebanon.

Then the Israeli army claimed that it was trying to stop Hizbullah’s rocket strikes.  But Israel’s bombing campaign mainly targeted civilian areas including Beirut.  (The American and mainstream media conveniently overlooked the fact that Hizbullah’s rockets were launched in response to the Israeli bombardment and not the other way round – and Hizbullah did not kill any Israeli civilians.)

And finally we were offered variations on the theme that ended the fighting: Israel’s need to push Hizbullah (and, incidentally, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians) away from the northern border of Israel.

The last justification, covering for the fact that Israel could not re-occupy Lebanon, is why Israel chose to dump a million cluster bombs -- old US issued munitions with a high failure rate -- that are lying in south Lebanon’s farm lands, playgrounds and back yards waiting to explode.

What had been notable before Olmert’s latest revelation was the clamour of Israel’s military command trying to distance itself from the failed attack on Hizbullah.  After his resignation, Halutz blamed Olmert, while his subordinates blamed both Olmert and Halutz.

What is the truth?

Olmert told the Winograd Committee that, far from making war in a hasty reaction to the capture of the two soldiers (the main mitigating factor for Israel’s show of aggression), he had been planning the attack on Lebanon since March 2006.

Allusions to pre-existing plans for a ground invasion of Lebanon can be found in Israeli reporting from the time.  On the first day of Israel’s bombing campaign, the Jersualem Post reported: “Only weeks ago, an entire reserve division was drafted in order to train for [such] an operation ...”

Olmert defended these preparations on the grounds that Israel expected Hizbullah to seize Israeli soldiers, who were in Lebanon, and that he wanted to be ready with a harsh response.  According to Olmert’s testimony, he was seeking a solution to the main problem:  a small corridor of land, “the Shebaa Farms” claimed by Lebanon, but occupied by Israel since 1967.  As a result of the Farms area’s occupation, Hizbullah has argued that Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 was incomplete and that the territory still needed liberating.  Olmert’s claim, however, does not stand up to scrutiny.

What are people in Israel learning?

The Israeli media revealed in January 2007 that for much of the past two years Syria’s leader, Bashir Assad, has been negotiations over the return of Syrian territory, the Golan, currently occupied by the Israeli military and colonizers.  Though those talks offered Israel the most favorable terms, including declaring the Golan a peace park open to Israelis, Sharon and then Olmert -- backed by the U.S. -- refused to engage Damascus.

A deal on the Golan with Syria would almost certainly have ensured that the Shebaa Farms were returned to Lebanon.  Had Israel or the U.S. wanted peace, they could have assured that the deal was completed.

The other major tension was Israel’s repeated transgressions of the northern border.  After the Israeli army was forced to withdraw in 2000, United Nations monitors recorded Israeli warplanes violating Lebanese airspace almost daily.  Regularly Israeli war planes flew over Beirut, where pilots used sonic booms to terrify the local population, and IDF drones spied on Lebanon.  Again, had Israel halted these violations of Lebanese sovereignty, Hizbullah’s attack on the IDF border post would have been hard to justify.

And finally, after Hizbullah captured the Israeli soldiers, Hizbullah made clear from the outset that it wanted to exchange the soldiers for a handful of Lebanese prisoners still in Israeli jails – a practice suggested and started by Israel.  But as Olmert’s testimony implies, Israel was not interested in talks or in halting its bombing campaign.  That was not part of his plan.  We can now start to piece together why.

When did Israel hatch the plan to invade Lebanon?

Olmert first discussed the preparations for a war against Lebanon in January 2006 and then asked for detailed plans in March 2006.  Given the implications, Olmert’s account has been decried by leading Israeli politicians.  Effi Eitam pointed out that Olmert’s version parallels the claims of Hizbullah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who insists that his group knew that Israel wanted to attack Lebanon.

Most interesting are the dates mentioned by Olmert before the Commission.  His first discussed a war against Lebanon on 8 January 2006, four days after he became acting prime minister!  Olmert held his next meeting on the subject in March 2006, immediately after his victory in parliamentary elections.  

Rather than Olmert being some “rookie” prime minister and military novice “going it alone” in planning a major military offensive against a neighboring, it is more likely that from the moment that Olmert took the reins of power, he was brought into the army’s confidence.  Olmert was allowed to know of the senior command’s advance plans for war -- plans, we can assume, known by Ariel Sharon.

What is the evidence that Israel’s generals had already established the protocols for a war?  First, an article in the San Franscisco Chronicle, revealed that the Israeli army had been readying for a wide-ranging assault on Lebanon for years, and had a specific plan for a “Three-Week War” that they had shared with Washington think-tanks and officials in the Bush administration.

“More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation,” wrote Chronicle reporter Matthew Kalman.

That view was confirmed this week by an Israeli military officer who told Ha’aretz that the army had a well-established plan for an extensive ground invasion of Lebanon, but that Olmert had shied away from putting it into action. “I don’t know if [Olmert] was familiar with the details of the plan, but everyone knew that the IDF had a ground operation ready for implementation.”

Bush administration supported the illegal invasion

Second, we have an interview in the Israeli media with Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of a member of the Bush administration, David Wurmser, who serves as Middle East adviser to Dick Cheney.  Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli citizen, is herself closely associated with MEMRI, the group that is ties to the Israeli secret service and mistranslates speeches by Arab leaders.

Meyrav Wurser told a leading newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, that the U.S. stalled over imposing a ceasefire during Israel’s assault on Lebanon because the Bush Administration was expecting the war to be expanded to Syria.

“The anger [in the White House] is over the fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians.  The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space.  They believed that Israel should be allowed to win.  A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hizbullah.  It was obvious that it is impossible to fight directly against Iran, but the thought was that its [Iran's] strategic and important ally [Syria] should be hit.”

In other words, there was a long-standing plan by the Israeli army, approved by the Bush administration, for a rapid conquest of Lebanon -- followed by bombing of Syria -- using the pretext of a cross-border incident involving Hizbullah.  The real purpose, however, was to weaken ties to Tehran’s allies, before Israel and the U.S. attack on Iran itself.  That was why neither the Bush administration nor the Israeli government wanted to negotiate with Syrian president Assad over the Golan and refuse a peace agreement that could change the map of the Middle East for the better.

PR to support their next war

Despite recent signs of Washington’s opening to have normal relations with Iran and Syria, as such is driven by the desperate U.S. need to stop her bleeding in the mire of Iraq, Damascus is understandably wary.  The continuing aggressive Israeli and Bush administration postures have provoked a predictable reaction from Syria.  The small nation has started building up its defenses along the border with Israel.  But in the Alice Through the Looking Glass world of Israeli military intelligence, that response is evidence of an imminent attack by Syria.

Such is the opinion of Martin Van Creveld, an Israeli professor of military history, who recently penned an article in the pro-Zionist American weekly, The Forward.

Van Creveld suggests that Syria, does not want to negotiate over the Golan, but is planning to launch an attack on Israel, possibly using chemical weapons, in October 2008 under cover of fog and rain.  The goal of such a Syrian attack?  According to bizarro world of Van Creveld, Syria wants to “inflict casualties” to ensure that Jerusalem “throws in the towel.”

What’s the professor’s evidence for these Syrian designs?  Her military has been on a shopping spree in Russia, and has been studying the lessons of the Lebanon war.  Van Creveld predicts that Syria will generate “some incident … and used [it] as an excuse for opening rocket fire on the Golan Heights and the Galilee.”  Van Creveld concludes: “Overall the emerging Syrian plan is a good one with a reasonable chance of success.”

So how can the world be saved from the barbarians at the door?  Van Creveld argues, “obviously, much will depend on what happens in Iraq and Iran.  A short, successful American offensive in Iran [might] persuade Assad that the Israelis, much of whose hardware is either American or American-derived, cannot be countered, especially in the air.  Conversely, an American withdrawal from Iraq, combined with an American-Iranian stalemate in the Persian Gulf, will go a long way toward untying Assad’s hands.”

It all sounds familiar.  We are supposed to believe that Iran wants the nuclear destruction of Israel, and Syria wants Jersualem to “throw in the towel” – as the neocons, thieving contractors, and the useful taxpaying idiots in this “clash of civilizations” would have us believe.  They project their vices onto others, and seek to stimulate fear to get their way and push Israel and the U.S. towards another, illegal and immoral pre-emptive war -- or maybe two.

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Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.  His book “Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State” is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

Jonathan Cook
www.virtualcitizens.com