Should The Lebanese Care About The Winograd Report?

Israel didn’t win the July war. But does that mean that Hezbollah did? Should we care?

The much awaited Winograd report on the July war finally came about. Since most of us humans won’t bother reading 600 pages, all we really need to know about the report’s conclusions is that the Israeli establishment failed to achieve its objectives in Lebanon — Uprooting Hezbollah & Getting back their kidnapped soldiers — because of serious structural failures.

Of course, Hezbollah immediately rushed to celebrate the report as “proof” that Hezbollah Won:

In reality, we have to tell the Israeli public at the end — with or without the Winograd report — that Hezbollah won the battles against the strongest army in the region in July 2006.

But here’s a question that I don’t hear a lot of Lebanese asking Hezbollah: If Hezbollah had really won that war, would the Israelis have published 600 pages describing in detail all of their political and military failures for the entire world to read? As in, no concern whatsoever for the “victorious” Hezbollah exploiting those weaknesses to kick their ass one more time?

But forget about that. The Lebanese don’t really care about the report and would rather pretend it never existed, for the simple reason that it was adding insult to injury. You see, not only did Israel kill thousands of Lebanese and smashed Lebanon’s infrastructural backbone throwing its economies years behind, but it also got a bunch of old men deliberate for an entire year to tell us, in 600 pages, that it was all one big failure.