Hezbollah claims victory against Israel

[A.Rahman]

I don't know. I'm not an Israeli corps commander. However, it's obvious that you have to deny the Hezbollah room to move and to my bellycrawler mind means a blocking force.

They are still maintaining sea & air blockade of Lebonan

 

[Officer of Engineers]

And that would do wonders to the columns coming over from Syria.

 

[melb4aust]

The reason hezbollah won was becase they were fighting for the right cause, and like true muslims, they were not afraid to die. Yet the IDF on the other hand just made a excuse of captured soldiers and attaked. They had no such thing as morale or even a solid reaon to die? That's why the so called best force in the world was defeateed by a small group.

I think there were too many Israeli military and civil casualities, which they were not expectind and certainly cant afford. This may have led them to pull back there forces and engage ceasefire. Hizbullah certainly did give emm a hard time out there.

 

[melb4aust]

They are still maintaining sea & air blockade of Lebonan

This is where the lebanone or certaninly hizbullah cant do anything, they have tried, destroied one of their navy ship and a helicopter. But still this is just like giving minor scratch kind of thing.

 

[araz]

Brothers AsSalam o Alaikum.
I strongly suspect that this is not the end of this story. Sure the Israeli forces lost a battle where they were outmaneauvered, out thought and outfought. However, my advice to Hizbullah would be not to sit back and marvel at their victory, but to continue the hard work and think of all the possibilities and scenarios of the next battle and work to counter it. I am not a war monger and wish like all of us here that there be peace in the ME with a just and equitable solution which safeguards the rights of all parties, Palestinians and Israeli to live in peace.This aim however is too far away at this moment in time. The Israelis will come back with a vengence and they will come prepared the next time. Unless the Hizb continue their hard work and show unity, they will be destroyed. Only strenght will ensure peace in the region. This is also a lesson for the limp and spineless Arab rulers to sort their act out, and form a joint front to promote their cause.
On a side note, one of the factorw behind Hizb,s Victory was the remarkable cohesion shown by all the population of Lebanon, irrespective of their political or religious beliefs. It is a lesson for all the Ummah to learn, especially Pakistan.
WaSalam
Araz

 

[Officer of Engineers]

And now the propaganda sets in. The Israelis lost nothing, not even the battle. All Hezbollah did was to show that they could take a punch and throw a few of their own. The Israelis owns the battlefield.

 

[wadawada]

And now the propaganda sets in. The Israelis lost nothing, not even the battle. All Hezbollah did was to show that they could take a punch and throw a few of their own. The Israelis owns the battlefield.

israel and hezbollah are not playing in the same field.

hezbollah is playing in politics. israel is a war machine.

hezbollah seeks to survive. israel wants to dominate.

hezbollah is a milicia. israel is the 4th to 6th army in the world.

no comparison is possible. compared on its promizes, hezbollah won fully. how that would be used later in another question. compared to its image, israel lost.

israel would NEVER have accepted ANY ceasefire whatever if IDF was winning. this is indisputalbe: israelis NEVER accept "humanitarian" or "by principle" ceasefire. ONLY under pressure or fear.

if hezbollah have at least achieved that, then hezbollah have won. of course not against israel, but based on his own objective. also, israel have not lost based on her objective, but on the long term situation.

 

[Averroes]

So what has happened to the Israeli army?

This question is now being raised not only around the world, but also in Israel itself. Clearly, there is a huge gap between the army's boastful arrogance, on which generations of Israelis have grown up, and the picture presented by this war.

Before the choir of generals utters their expected cries of being stabbed in the back--"The government has shackled our hands! The politicians did not allow the army to win! The political leadership is to blame for everything!"--it is worthwhile to examine this war from a professional military point of view.

(It is, perhaps, appropriate to interject at this point a personal remark. Who am I to speak about strategic matters? What am I, a general? Well--I was 16 years old when World War II broke out. I decided then to study military theory in order to be able to follow events. I read a few hundred books--from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz to Liddel-Hart and on. Later, in the 1948 war, I saw the other side of the medal, as a soldier and squad-leader. I have written two books on the war. That does not make me a great strategist, but it does allow me to voice an informed opinion.)

The facts speak for themselves:

* On the 32nd day of the war, Hizbullah is still standing and fighting. That by itself is a stunning feat: a small guerilla organization, with a few thousand fighters, is standing up to one of the strongest armies in the world and has not been broken after a month of "pulverizing". Since 1948, the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan have repeatedly been beaten in wars that were much shorter.

As I have already said: if a light-weight boxer is fighting a heavy-weight champion and is still standing in the 12th round, the victory is his--whatever the count of points says.

* In the test of results--the only one that counts in war--the strategic and tactical command of Hizbullah is decidedly better than that of our own army. All along, our army's strategy has been primitive, brutal and unsophisticated.

* Clearly, Hizbullah has prepared well for this war--while the Israeli command has prepared for a quite different war.

* On the level of individual fighters, the Hizbullah are not inferior to our soldiers, neither in bravery nor in initiative.

* * *

THE MAIN guilt for the failure belongs with General Dan Halutz. I say "guilt" and not merely "responsibility", which comes with the job.

He is living proof of the fact that an inflated ego and a brutal attitude are not enough to create a competent Chief-of-Staff. The opposite may be true.

Halutz gained fame (or notoriety) when he was asked what he feels when he drops a one-ton bomb on a residential quarter and answered: "a slight bang on the wing." He added that afterwards he sleeps well at night. (In the same interview he also called me and my friends "traitors" who should be prosecuted.)

Now it is already clear--again, in the test of results--that Dan Halutz is the worst Chief-of-Staff in the annals of the Israeli army, a completely incompetent officer for his job.

Recently he has changed his blue Air-Force uniform for the green one of the land army. Too late.

Halutz started this war with the bluster of an Air-Force officer. He believed that it was possible to crush Hizbullah by aerial bombardment, supplemented by artillery shelling from land and sea. He believed that if he destroyed the towns, neighborhoods, roads and ports of Lebanon, the Lebanese people would rise and compel their government to remove Hizbullah. For a week he killed and devastated, until it became clear to everybody that this method achieves the opposite--strengthens Hizbullah, weakens its opponents within Lebanon and throughout the Arab world and destroys the world-wide sympathy Israel enjoyed at the beginning of the war.

When he reached this point, Halutz did not know what to do next. For three weeks he sent his soldiers into Lebanon on senseless and hopeless missions, gaining nothing. Even in the battles that were fought in villages right on the border, no significant victories were achieved. After the fourth week, when he was requested to submit a plan to the government, it was unbelievably primitive.

If the "enemy" had been a regular army, it would have been a bad plan. Just pushing the enemy back is hardly a strategy at all. But when the other side is a guerilla force, this is simply foolish. It may cause the death of many soldiers, for no practical result.

Now he is trying to achieve a token victory, occupying empty space as far from the border as possible, after the UN has already called for an end to the hostilities. (As in almost all previous Israeli wars, this call is being ignored, in the hope of snatching some gains at the last moment.) Behind this line, Hizbullah remains intact in their bunkers.

by Uri Avnery - ex israeli solder, now writer & activist.

read the whole article at

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery08142006.html

 

[Spring Onion]

Very rightly and nice post Averro.

Virtually its a defeat to the Isreal who backing of US and weapons' supply from her to bomb civilians in Lebanon,.
Although the main objective of Isreal to destory Hizbollah's infrasturcture may had been achieved by Isreal but the war has added streangth to Hizbollah morally who had put much stronger opponent at back foot.

Anaylists believe that ceasefire itself a defeat to Israel.
Furthermore for the first time in its history Israel has so many casualties to her millitary.
Even She lost at her home front as there was news that the current leadership has lost the confidence of the Israeli public who had also dennounced the killings of civilians by their Army.

 

[Tiki Tam Tam]

The PM of Israel is having problems in the Knesset.

I reckon the bombing on Haifa has sort of created the problem as also the fact that there was not the usual clean sweep into Lebanon.

Israel has got their way, but it was not a cakewalk and that is what has irritated the Israelis.

 

[Officer of Engineers]

israel and hezbollah are not playing in the same field.

hezbollah is playing in politics. israel is a war machine.

hezbollah seeks to survive. israel wants to dominate.

hezbollah is a milicia. israel is the 4th to 6th army in the world.

And you're absolutely right but give it a day and you will have stories on how two Hezbollah guerrillas with BB guns drove the entire Israeli army back across the border.

Within historical context, is this a Tet or is this a Lang Soon (the final big battle of the 1st Sino-Vietnam War)? Tet openned the way for eventual Vietnamese victory. Lang Soon saw the Chinese gone home to lick their wounds and then coming back out with both fists swinging instead of the one.

 

[wadawada]

And you're absolutely right but give it a day and you will have stories on how two Hezbollah guerrillas with BB guns drove the entire Israeli army back across the border.

Within historical context, is this a Tet or is this a Lang Soon (the final big battle of the 1st Sino-Vietnam War)? Tet openned the way for eventual Vietnamese victory. Lang Soon saw the Chinese gone home to lick their wounds and then coming back out with both fists swinging instead of the one.

unfortunatly, arabs like fiestas, and i'm sure now they are celebrating instead of understanding. while israelis are now learning and improving.


sorry i'm an analphabete in military science, but i'll opt for Lang Soon. from israeli perspective.

hezbollah is in an effective bad situation, for the milicia aspect. but i'm thinking of many parameters, and i'm not sure that they are still valid in lebanon. it all depends on how much support hezbollah can have from the pro-syrian christians, and how long the anti-syrian christians will stand a strong hezbollah. muslims are now, even the most anti-hezbollah in sunnis and druze, mostly "neutral" and gained to the anti-zionist cause. especially that they saw how much the "good west" loved teh lebanese.

but if I take the pessimist scenario, anti-syrian christian will jump on the resolution and try to force apply it. IMHO, hezbollah this time will accept by fear of an internal conflict.

so in the long term, INSIDE lebanon, the israeli would win.

but but but : OUTSIDE lebanon, the "victory" of hezbollah will create an incredible pressure on pro-usa/israel tyrants of the region. for the first time in modern history, there is an arab real time global public opinion, and this public opinion have been shocked by the tyrants and amazed by the example of hezbollah. this will make ANY phantastik american pro israeli policy in the region sensitive, even dangerous for american faithful "servants".

 

[sigatoka]

And that would do wonders to the columns coming over from Syria.

But all the bridges are destroyed.

 

[Officer of Engineers]

But all the bridges are destroyed.

Give them a week.

 

[Officer of Engineers]

israel is the 4th to 6th army in the world.

My apologies but I actually have a beef with that ranking. ALL WORLD WAR III ARMIES ARE BETTER THAN ISRAEL! And by WWIII, I mean the Fulda Gap. Those who know me from WAB has seen me shot down this Israeli ranking. It's undeserved.

Israel in its entirety chickened out when the Soviets threatened intervention in 1973. We have records of the Israeli cabinet being scared crapless that Moscow was going to wipe out Israel.

My one single brigade was ready to take on the entire Soviet thrust into Europe.

So, take that into advisement when stating Israeli military prowness.