‘If God wills, even a broomstick will shoot. That is an old Yiddish adage.

One could add now: If God wills, even Olmert can sometimes tell the truth.

The truth, according to the Prime Minister's testimony before the Inquiry Commission headed by Judge Vinograd that was leaked to the media yesterday, is that this was not a spontaneous reaction to the capture of the two soldiers, but a war planned a long time ago. We said so right from the start.

Olmert told the commission that immediately after assuming the functions of acting prime minister, in January 2006, he consulted with the army chiefs about the situation on the northern border. Until then, the prevailing doctrine followed Ariel Sharon's decision - logical from his point of view - not to react in force to provocations in the north, so that the Israeli army could concentrate on fighting the Palestinians. But this enabled Hizbullah to build up a large stockpile of rockets of all kinds. Olmert decided to change that policy.

The army prepared a two-pronged plan: an operation on the ground aimed at the elimination of Hizbullah, and an aerial offensive, aimed at the destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure, in order to put pressure on the Lebanese public which in turn would put pressure on Hizbullah. As the Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, said at the beginning of the war: "we shall turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years." (a rather modest aim, compared to the famous proposal of an American colleague: to "bomb Vietnam back to the stone age".) The Air Force was also tasked with destroying Hizbullah's rocket arsenal.’

Olmert's Truth