by The Perescope
Guess who lied through his teeth last night on TV and got away with it?
Interviewed by legendary anchor Haim Yavin on Mabat, Israel Television's evening newscast, Shimon Peres stated that the "Grapes of Wrath" operation against Hizbollah terrorists, which he conducted in Lebanon during his brief tenure as Israel's prime minister in 1996, "was a great success." And in response, Yavin, a political Peresite known as Israel's "Mr. Television," didn't even wink.
With hindsight, there is no doubt that Operation Grapes of Wrath was a tremendous failure. After an Israeli shell went off-course and accidentally killed more than a hundred Lebanese civilians, Peres was anxious to end the hostilities, which began when Hizbollah launched katyusha rockets on Israeli towns and villages. Under international mediation, Peres agreed to a ceasefire, under whose inequitable terms Israel and the Hizbollah would not fire on each other. As a result of agreeing to tie the hands of the Israeli army, Peres's ceasefire allowed Hizbollah to rearm. This was ultimately untenable, and, as a result, Israel was eventually forced to withdraw overnight from Lebanon in 2000 with its tail between its legs.
The Hizbollah saw that, correctly, as a great victory on their part. They became the first Arab fighting force to expel Israel from territory without any quid-pro-quo. The great Hizbollah victory over the Israeli army was hailed by jihadists and rejectionists across the Muslim world as the precedent for future action, and was a model for Yasser Arafat's decision to launch his terror war against Israel later that year. If, after all, a Shi'ite militia could expel Israel by force from Lebanon, Arafat, who fancied himself as a later-day Saladin, could settle for no less in Palestine.
The war Israel is now waging in Lebanon is the inevitable result of its abandonment of its south Lebanon security zone in 2000. As long as Israel exercised control there, either directly or through the now-disbanded pro-Israel South Lebanon Army (SLA), Hizbollah was unable to launch rockets against Israeli towns and villages in the Galilee. In the past six years, Hizbollah has used its freedom of action in south Lebanon not only to re-arm, but also to import vast quantities of weapons from Syria and Iran, together with Iranian "advisors."
While Peres lied through his teeth, hundreds of thousands of Israelis were huddled in bomb shelters. Katyushas and Iranian-made Fajar rockets had brought death and destruction across the Galilee, from Haifa to Tiberias. And the man whose diplomatic malfeasance paved the way for such a tragedy continues to escape responsibility.
