 killed in a month of war in Lebanon. Hezbollah certainly did not run away and did hold their ground, but their mediocrity is revealed by the casualties they inflicted, which were very few. When an Israeli reconnaissance company attacked the mountain town of Bint Jbail losing eight men in one night, that number was perceived in Israel and broadcast around the world as a disastrous loss. Any Allied veteran of the second world war's 1943-1945 Italian campaign must have been amazed by this reaction. There too it was one stone-built village and hilltop town after another and, though the Germans were outnumbered, outgunned and poorly supplied, a company that went against them would consider the loss of only eight men fortunate; attacking forces could suffer massive casualties. Israeli casualty figures in this month's war in the Lebanon demonstrate that Hezbollah did not fight as fiercely as the Egyptians in 1973 or the Jordanians in 1967.
What is perfectly true is that the Israelis lacked a coherent war plan, so that even
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| Israel lacked a coherent war plan; even its most purposeful bombing came off as brutally destructive |
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their most purposeful bombing came off as brutally destructive, while the ground actions were hesitant and inconclusive. There was, of course, a fully developed plan in the contingency folders - a sophisticated blend of swift amphibious, airborne and ground penetrations to reach deep behind the front, before rolling back, so as to destroy Hezbollah positions one by one from the rear, all the way to the Israeli border.
That plan was not implemented because of the lack of casualties among Israeli civilians. It had been a fair assumption that thousands of Hezbollah rockets fired in concentrated barrages would kill many civilians, perhaps hundreds of them each day. Barrages compensate for the inaccuracy of unguided rockets, and produce powerful compound blast effects. That would have made a large-scale offensive by more than 45,000 soldiers a compelling necessity, politically justifying the hundreds of casualties that it would cost.
Hezbollah, however, distributed its rockets to village militias, which were very good at hiding them from air attacks, and sheltering 
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