Meanwhile, in Israel, a long-awaited internal formal inquiry has criticized Israel’s leadership for its handling of the 2006 attack on Lebanon. The final report from the Winograd Commission called the Lebanon war “a serious missed opportunity” that failed to achieve its goals. The report did not criticize the government for attacking Lebanon in the first place nor for causing more than one thousand Lebanese civilian deaths. Referring to Hezbollah fighters, the report concludes: “A semi-military organization of a few thousand men resisted, for a few weeks, the strongest army in the Middle East, which enjoyed full air superiority and size and technological advantages.” In Lebanon, parliament member Hussein Haj Hassan said the report recognized what he called Hezbollah’s successful resistance.

Hussein Haj Hassan: “This report highlighted that the Israeli army, that everyone knows is invincible, was defeated. And that has a big impact on the Zionist enemy, on all levels, in the short, medium and long term. When the Winograd report says that the army failed in its ground offensive, that means that the Israeli army failed and was defeated in the war against what it itself said was only a number of fighters.”