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Aug. 18, 2006
Aftermath of the war
PAT JOHNSON
Israel's ambassador to Canada rejects the idea that Israel lost
the war with Hezbollah. After the ceasefire Sunday, recriminations
began over the execution of Israel's war effort. But Alan Baker,
speaking during a B'nai Brith Canada conference call Tuesday with
media, Jewish community leaders and others, said Israel had to weigh
continued fighting with a satisfactory compromise.
Baker said that scenes of Hezbollah supporters celebrating victory
are misrepresentative and he blamed media coverage for purveying
the idea of a Hezbollah victory.
"I don't accept that this is a success for Hezbollah,"
said the ambassador. "They're trying to show this as a success
for their own reasons."
Though Israel did not succeed in its ultimate goal eliminating
Hezbollah it reached a satisfactory result, Baker suggested.
"You can have various opinions on whether Israel should have
continued fighting, whether we should have simply taken another
two or three weeks and completed the job with the growing number
of casualties this would have involved," he said, "or
whether the international action taken by the international community
in the [United Nations] Security Council gave us some type of better
assurance or guarantee that the international community and the
state of Lebanon would take concerted action to deal with the problem
of Hezbollah. And I think here there are several achievements that
we cannot underestimate."
The UN has recognized Hezbollah as the cause of this conflict, Baker
said, and has put in place a framework for preventing the transfer
of weapons from Iran, Syria and Russia to Hezbollah.
In a separate interview with the Independent, Dr. Michael
Elterman, chair of the Pacific region of the Canada-Israel Committee,
expressed a mixed reaction to the outcome of the conflict.
"If Hezbollah is not disarmed and they have this mandate, which
is to destroy Israel on any pretext, a ceasefire is not going to
get them to drop arms and take up farming," said Elterman.
"Unless something is done to address the patrons, which are
Iran and Syria, I'm not that optimistic that we've seen the end
of it."
In terms of media imagery over the month of fighting, Elterman believes
Hezbollah won the visual battle, but Israel was treated fairly by
media who generally sought to explain the complexities of the regional
conflict, including the role of Iran, Syria and global jihad.
"It's true to say that we lost the battle on images, but we
won the battle on text," Elterman explained. "By and large,
newspapers have been favorable and explanatory, but the images of
civilians killed have been very difficult to stomach.... The other
side in these conflicts has no compunction showing dead and wounded,
where Israel won't do that."
The worst-case scenario coming out of the conflict, Elterman warned,
may be that Hamas will learn from the tactics of Hezbollah.
"Why do they need to send in suicide bombers, why do they need
to try to infiltrate the [security] fence when all they need is
to get some of the short-range rockets that Hezbollah got from Iran
and Syria?" asked Elterman. "The fence doesn't matter
at that point."
Pat Johnson is editor of MVOX Multicultural Digest, www.mvox.ca.
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