MB Civic

By ZEV CHAFETS
Tel Aviv

ON Sunday my 10-year-old son’s summer camp was shut down; it was judged to be too close to Haifa, too vulnerable to missile attack. Instead, he and his sister are at home in Tel Aviv, busying themselves with yard work.

On Monday, the Israeli Air Force discovered and destroyed a Hezbollah rocket capable of hitting our yard in Tel Aviv. There are said to be many more such rockets in the Hezbollah arsenal. So today, when I sent my son and his 9-year-old sister out to buy gardening gloves and a rake, I first briefed them on what to do in case of a missile attack.

Ah, memories. It seems like only yesterday that I was having a similar discussion with my elder son, then 9 years old. That was in 1991, during the Persian Gulf war. My parental briefing included instructions on how to put on a gas mask. Saddam Hussein had threatened to “burn half of Israel” and we thought his Scuds might be armed with chemical warheads or worse.

This time around there are no gas masks (at least not yet; Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has promised “new surprises”). But Hezbollah’s conventional rockets are lethal enough. They have killed 13 Israeli civilians since the fighting began. In 1991, after almost a full month of trying, only one Israeli was hit and killed by an Iraqi Scud.

The Israeli government in 1991 was ordered by President George H. W. Bush to stay out of the fighting. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a man of limited communications skills, complied without explaining his decision to the Israeli public. When Israelis realized they were unprotected, people panicked. Schools shut down, businesses closed and just about everyone fled to safety.

This reaction led Israel’s enemies to a simple conclusion: whatever the Israeli Army could accomplish on the battlefield could be neutralized by hitting the squeamish home front. Hezbollah (and the Palestinians and Syria) began laying in stocks of missiles.

Successive Israeli governments made the prevention of missile attacks a major goal. Israeli diplomacy, from the Oslo accords through the unceremonious Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and right up to the current frenzied efforts to stop the Iranian nuclear program, have been premised on the fragility of Israeli morale in the face of assault. Starting with the first gulf war, Israel went from being the deterrent power in the neighborhood to being the chronic frightened patsy.

At least that’s what Sheik Nasrallah thought when his men snatched two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border. He figured the new prime minister, Ehud Olmert, would meet almost any price to get the soldiers back peacefully.

Instead, Mr. Olmert attacked. He knew that retaliation would bring on the missiles and rockets, but he evidently thought it was worth the risk.

What Mr. Olmert didn’t know when he gave the order — what the Israeli public itself didn’t know — was that the rockets wouldn’t cause panic. Fear, yes. Caution, too, and some complaining (this is Israel, after all). But, amazingly, most people in even the most vulnerable areas have behaved with something like the sanguine good nature of the British during the Blitz.

What’s different this time? Leadership, in Jerusalem and in Washington.

For Israelis, fighting back made all the difference. We’ve taken Hezbollah’s best shot and we’re still standing. “We will win,” Mr. Olmert told the Knesset on Monday, and this simple assertion became an instant headline and a rallying cry. Mr. Olmert’s confidence is based on military capacity, of course — fully unleashed there is very little the Israeli Army can’t accomplish against Hezbollah (and beyond) — and on his faith that George W. Bush will give him the time and the international support needed to finish off Hezbollah.

And this faith is well placed.

There is, of course, a certain poetic justice in having President George W. Bush help Israel restore the deterrent power President George H. W. Bush undermined in 1991. Unlike his father, this president doesn’t seem to regard Israel as a nuisance. On the contrary, he sees it as a friend and an ally in the fight against Islamic radicalism.

An Israeli victory in Lebanon wounds Hezbollah’s patrons, Syria and Iran, both of which threaten American troops and aspirations in Iraq. It establishes Mr. Olmert as a major figure as he tries to set Israel’s permanent borders in accordance with American policy. And, with any luck, it will make it possible next year for my children to stay in camp for the entire summer.

Zev Chafets is writing a book about Christian evangelicals, American Jews and Israel.