Fateful Triangle

Peace for Galilee539Israeli superiority in equipment was even more overwhelming” in boththe Syrian and, again obviously, the Palestinian phases of the war. Asfor the latter, “the PLO (despite official Israeli attempts to prove thecontrary) possessed very few of the heavy weapons crucial to theconduct of modern war and hardly any of the logistic and technicalinfrastructure required to maintain and deploy them,” the generalconclusion of serious military analysts, as noted earlier. “Yet in spite ofthis, as the casualty figures show, the campaign was no walkover.” Hestates that the casualties “during the active phase of operations” were atabout the same level as on the Egyptian front in 1967, where Israel wasfacing major armed forces. The IDF’s overwhelming military superioritydictated its tactics: “Wherever problems arose in the war, the IDF solvedthem by the application of overwhelming firepower—why waste men, oreven thought, if you have a virtually unlimited supply of shells to fireand bombs to drop.” It was “possible to avoid any kind of militarythought” while “spew[ing] forth vast amounts of ammunition to destroythe country which the IDF had allegedly come to save,” a familiarphrase from Vietnam days. In human terms, however, the results were“disappointing. ‘The traditional superiority of individual Israel troops andcrews over their opponents took a nosedive.” One cannot prove thisconclusively, he says, because “the Defence Ministry [is] naturallyanxious to hide the shortcomings of Israel’s most unpopular war todate.” But it is “indisputable,” he believes, “that the IDF’s morale inLebanon has been lower than during any other Israeli campaign,” a factreflected in the very high number of psychiatric casualties already noted.“Some aspects of the IDF’s performance should serve as a warningrather than as an example,” he concludes. 306This is the complementary side to the interpretation of the war thatappeared to be current among the Palestinians, and others, as it cameto an end, still considering only the narrowest aspect of the “Peace forClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky