Ehud Put Forth His Left Hand

The government of the Righteous State has sponsored a report on the conduct of its rampage in Lebanon during the summer of 2006. The report castigates the government for having "wasted an opportunity, for Israel was engaged in the war and did not finish with a conclusive, clear-cut victory". In other words, despite the sustained efforts of the international community to prevent a ceasefire, Israel's violence in Lebanon was simply not violent enough to suit the investigating commission. According to the commission's leader, Eliyah Winograd, "great failure overshadowed the military operation", in which a hundred and fifty-eight members of the master race perished along with a thousand or so persons of lesser significance. In a previous report, the commission had accused Olmert bar Sharon of "very serious failings", but it now turns out that these were "built on substantial grounds". Although the commission, in the great tradition of government commissions, does not recommend penalising the government whose failures it was set up to investigate, it is clear that Olmert has a long way to go before he can consider himself equal to the hero of Sabra and Shatila.