I take my hat off to Gilbert Achcar and Michel Warschawski for writing "The 33-Day War", a brutally honest account of Israel's ruthless but unsuccessful aggression on Lebanon from 12 July to August 14, 2006.
The first two chapters provide detailed background on Lebanon and Hezbollah (In my opinion a single chapter on background would have been sufficient, given that the book is only five chapters long). The first chapter tells us about Lebanon's civil war from 1975 to 1990, the importance of Iran and Syria in the region, and the situation in Lebanon after Syrian troops left. Chapter two concentrates on Hezbollah, from its proclamation in 1985 up until 12 July, 2008 - the day it kidnapped two Israeli soldiers to trade for Lebanese prisoners jailed in Israel.
Chapters three and four provide excellent analysis (mostly political) of the war and its aftermath. The authors discuss Israel's military failure, UN Resolution 1701, Hezbollah's handling of the post war situation, Israel's political failure and its role in Washington's "Global War". I was interested to read that "Resolution 1701 says not a single word about the protection of Lebanese territory against the repeated aggression by Israel, an occupying power in Lebanon for eighteen years". Another interesting fact revealed was that "Chief of Staff Dan Halutz sold off all his stock market shares at the beginning of the crisis, knowing that their value would probably fall soon". Warschawski explains that the Israeli military staff, like their chief, were more interested in stock market fluctuations than in the readiness of their troops - one of the causes of Israel's disastrous war campaign.
Achcar, in the conclusion titled "The Sinking Ship of U.S. Imperial Designs", explains that although the US has the capacity to "knock down any regular army on earth" it "nevertheless proved one more time in contemporary history that is unable to control rebellious populations in poor countries". He comments that "however the situation in Lebanon evolves, the Israeli rescue boat, instead of helping to raise the sinking ship of the U.S. empire, actually aggravated the shipwreck, and was even dragged down with it".
Although the political discussions of the war were brilliant, I would have liked to read at length about the military aspect, in detail. When I came across the book, being someone immensely interested in this topic, I was going to buy it no matter what it centralised on. That said, I was hoping to read about Hezbollah fighters climbing out of their bunkers and surprising the Israeli soldiers and about their logistical and communications systems - how it all remained intact and why it was unbelievably effective.
"The 33-Day War" is very anti-Israeli, and rightly so. I congratulate Achcar and Warschawski for their courageous stand against the Zionist regime and for their vision and insightful discussions on the realities of the wider Arab-Israeli/American conflict.
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