Strategic Assessment

In an article published in the previous issue of Strategic Assessment, Ofer Shelah offered an analysis of the second Lebanon War. Shelah's commentary leads him to the conclusion that the terrorism of the 2000-2004 intifada and the last war in Lebanon were "two post-modern wars" and as such, the recognized rules of past wars do not apply to them. Thus, Shelah claims, Israel's leaders erred in trying to apply conceptual and behavioral rules to the war in Lebanon that did not match the "anti-war" reality that emerged there, and in so doing, they brought the failures on themselves.