Wrapturously yours
Hezbollah is hell-bent on seizing our greatest treasure:
the cliches
By Doron Rosenblum Ha'aretz Feb 19 2000
It happened at the beginning of the week, so hardly anyone
can remember anything about it; but before they were
swallowed up by the other tumultuous events, two turning
points occurred in the Lebanon War whose significance
cannot be gainsaid. First, the SLA withdrew (well, actually
we withdrew) from the Soujud outpost, and on the very
same day Hezbollah captured another strategic asset that
is of inestimable importance: the utterance of the threat that
"we will respond at the time and place of our choosing."
As to the first turning point - the abandonment of Soujud -
its degree of gravity is perhaps not unequivocal; because
that strategic jabel is only the latest in an endless series of
fortresses, jabla'ot, map coordinates, straits, strongpoints
and ridges that were considered "last-ditch stands." For
years these places were considered sort of miniature
Masadas, over which the National Homeland would either
stand or fall - when suddenly, within hours, they became
hot potatoes that we abruptly flipped to the enemy
"because of security needs."
Not so the second turning point - the fall to Hezbollah of
"we'll react at the place and time" - or, in short: the WRAPT.
Here things are plenty more serious and the blow is a lot
more painful, since this is an efficient, multipurpose
strategic asset that has served us for years, with the
addition of some original Israeli innovations.
Who among us doesn't have a soft spot in his heart for the
good ol' WRAPT? For that riveting moment when - decade
after decade - a stern chief of staff or prime minister faces
the cameras and the battery of microphones - the clearing
of the throat, the shuffling of the papers, the waiting for quiet
to descend; and only when that charged yet solemn silence
settles over the room, with everyone raptly attentive to
ensure the full impact, is the WRAPT unwrapped, in slow,
deliberate, cadence, like a voodoo curse, steely eyes
staring straight into the camera: "Only - we - will - choose -
the - appropriate - place - and - time - for - an - umm -
appropriate - response."
Like multi-launching Katyushas, the WRAPT achieved a
number of goals simultaneously. First, it wrapped the
country's citizens in a cloak of calm after every painful
incident: since our public is considered more extreme, more
aggressive and more hot-headed than its leaders (at least
in the time-space between the end of the news and the
onset of "Bloopers"), the announcement sent them to bed
with the sweet taste of a looming revenge operation; with
the knowledge that perhaps at that very moment the
engines of whatever were being revved up to pound and
pulverize whoever.
Second, the WRAPT is also designed to intensify, at least
in our own eyes, both our deterrent strength and the cloud
of mystification that enwraps our strength. The assumption
is that the declaration of "we will choose the place and
time" etc. will so discombobulate Hezbollah and/or Hamas,
fill them with such panic, that by itself it will have (as the
military correspondents explain) "already achieved its
goal." So terrified are Sheikh Nasrallah and his cohorts that
they immediately succumb to a case of the runs and are too
busy making sure the edges of their robes don't get stained
to have the time to prepare roadside bombs.
Third, the declaration of WRAPT somehow preserves our
self-respect and our self-perception as a sovereign,
self-confident power. In other words: we, we alone (not Kofi
Annan, for example, or Ally McBeal, or Mister Bean, or the
British high commissioner) and only we will decide both on
the time and on the place of our response. It makes no
difference, for this purpose, that the very promise that "we
will react at a time and place" etc. is self-defeating, as it
contains an explicit and self-expressed forgoing of the
option (that is reserved to truly sovereign states) not to react
at all, or to take action that is not merely a reaction to a
provocation. Nor does it make any difference that the
declaration is in fact groundless: because of the self-made
trap of revenge and re-revenge, with all the domestic
political constraints involved, our enemies by now can play
our reflexes like an organ: it is in fact they who determine -
almost exactly, like Pavlov's dog - the time and the place of
our response.
But be that as it may, the WRAPT has always been a
cardinal strategic tool for us, of which an intelligent Israeli
leader could make extraordinarily flexible use for years on
end: to calm the public and to threaten the enemy, to keep
up pretenses while also not spoiling everything by actually
realizing the threat. Because this is a weapon of the
"launch and forget" variety (launch a promise, trust the
amnesia: because in these parts "affairs" pile up so rapidly
that the previous one is forgotten within hours, the chances
are good that the promise of revenge will be forgotten
within a day because of a new revelation by Yoav Yitzhak
or some utterance by Rabbi Yosef; and not only that: even
when it is finally implemented, the narrative connection
between the revenge and its plot line will be lost). But
above all, the WRAPT, like the Davidka, like the Merkava,
like the Uzi - was ours, only ours. So the shock and dismay
this week when that weapon fell into the hands of
Hezbollah were perfectly understandable.
What does "fell into the hands of Hezbollah" mean? It's
very simple: Hezbollah, after the de rigueur revenge-attack
on one of its leaders, which came in response to the de
rigueur attack on one of the SLA's leaders, suddenly, out of
left field, stated that it, Hezbollah, "will respond at the time
and place of its choosing..."
The very utterance of the threat prompted the opening of
the public shelters in Kiryat Shemona; and not a day
passed but the organization did exactly what it had
promised - found a time, found a place - and responded;
and the rest is the history that began to unroll on the
northern front this week again - tiresomely familiar, but with
a new after-taste.
Like Groucho Marx in the famous scene where he
encounters someone who looks exactly like him but who
pretends to be his mirror reflection, we too are fated to
gradually come to resemble those enemies over whom we
lorded it so proudly just yesterday. And on top of that, we
are gradually losing not only the physical outposts, but also
those typifying bastions and distinctive strongholds that we
thought were ours alone: inventiveness, resourcefulness,
craftiness, tenacity, the use of propaganda. Now it turns out
that Hezbollah is seizing our most precious asset: the
cliches.
Okay, forget Soujud, we'll get along without it very well. But
what about "the message has been conveyed," "the ball is
in their court," "satisfaction in the army," "the enemy
understands well"? What about "we are acting and will act
in Lebanon all the time as required," "the force operated as
a force is expected to operate"? And what about "the IDF
does not elaborate on the character of its operational
activity" - all that gibberish that was heaped up only in the
first part of the week (including the army's references to
itself in the puerile third person - like George in "Seinfeld" -
to cast fear and self-encourage itself)? Will all this now
pass to the enemy? If "we will react at the place and time of
our choosing" has already rolled like a stone to Hezbollah,
can "the IDF is following the situation closely" and "there
will be a debriefing" still gather moss?
But we are not yet at the end of the road, we do not yet
resemble the enemy in everything, there is still a vestige of
singularity and self-identity: We still have the crying. Only
on the day when we see Hezbollah soldiers crying will we
know that this is it: The last outpost has fallen.
