Israeli asks: where are our voices of protest, like we had before?

Where are the voices of protest? -- by Yoel Marcus

The war has created a serious dilemma for the Israeli public. We went to battle with unparalleled self-confidence and came home bent and bowed. The call to war of our leaders, from the prime minister to the chief of staff, promised a crushing victory. The greater the promises, the deeper our disappointment. The army failed to achieve two of the war's objectives - freeing the captured soldiers and stopping the missile attacks on Israel.

The chief of staff, mistakenly believing that Hezbollah could be knocked out from the air, discovered too late that ground troops would have to be mobilized. Most of the soldiers lacked proper training. They were equipped with weapons that went out with the flood, and armor that could be penetrated by anti-tank missiles.

In 48 hours, 34 soldiers were killed for no rhyme or reason. The reservists felt duped. Like cannon fodder. God only knows how things might have ended if President Bush had not rushed to draw up a cease-fire agreement that gave us an honorable way of retreating from this unfortunate military campaign.

Ehud Olmert's promise that Israel would soon be a fun place to live has become the joke of the year. The arrogance projected by our heads of state, including the defense minister, who promised that Nasrallah would never forget his name, and Olmert, who assured us that victory was already in our hands, has only made the public angrier. Israel's citizens want to know who is responsible around here.

Who is responsible for the fact that the substandard shelters that the state comptroller complained about in 2001 were not repaired? Who is responsible for the fact that the political and military echelons have ignored the recommendations of the National Security Council from one decade to the next? Who is responsible for the fact that the government and its agents performed so poorly during the war? Who is responsible for the fact that Hamas has discovered our weak spot, and it won't be long before its pathetic Qassams are replaced by Katyushas and long-range missiles?

The frustration of the public has triggered some tough responses. One proposal is to bring down the government with early elections, which probably won't help much. The Kadima party doesn't really exist, and Labor has gone to the dogs since it gave up its socialist ideology and Amir Peretz, the defender of the poor, was given the portfolio he knows least about. There are no alternative leaders on the horizon. "The cupboard is bare," as Eitan Haber put it.

Another proposal is to sack the chief of staff, Dan Halutz, who has the ultimate defense at his fingertips: "I recommended, but you approved." Peretz has already chosen the option he likes best - an internal committee that will be friendly toward his superiors, the kind that will conduct an investigation, but without getting too fanatic about it. In short, a farce.

A third proposal is a national commission of inquiry. By law, however, such commissions are headed by a justice of the Supreme Court, and he makes the rules. Our government ministers are not going to offer up their necks to a panel whose decisions constitute the last word on who is guilty.

The Agranat Commission, which investigated the blunders of the Yom Kippur War, recommended the dismissal of the chief of staff and the head of the Southern Command - both stars of the Six-Day War - but vindicated Israel's political leaders. In spite of this war, which dropped on us out of the blue, a war that Moshe Dayan described as "the destruction of the Third Temple" in which 3,000 soldiers died, Golda Meir and Dayan ran again and won the elections.

An army captain by the name of Motti Ashkenazi was called up for emergency reserve duty on September 26, 1973. Together with his men, he was sent off to Budapest, the northernmost outpost on the Bar-Lev line. The outpost withstood five days of intense bombardment by Egyptian forces. After five days, Ashkenazi and his soldiers were rescued.

Upon his release from the army on February 3, 1974, Ashkenazi began a one-man vigil outside the Prime Minister's Office and demanded Dayan's resignation. He stood there alone for many days. But little by little, other embittered reserve soldiers joined him. One man's dissent became a massive protest movement that forced Golda and Dayan to step down.

As we hear more and more of the reservists' horror stories and the nightmare endured by hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens driven from their homes by rocket fire, and our politicians try harder and harder to dodge responsibility, the question grows louder and shriller: Where are you, Motti Ashkenazi of 2006?