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Moshe comes down from the mountain What is the speech from the throne by the queen of England, or the inaugural speech of the president of the United States, or the papal sermon urbi et orbi as compared with the ceremony in which a new Israeli chief of staff spells out his policy vision and his existential doctrine? No, there is no place for comparison: the queen has no real influence on the course of political events, and even the American president is subject to the constraints of the House and the Senate. Neither of them comes close to the status and power invested in an Israeli chief of staff in the third millennium. And we know how many divisions the pope commands. In the atmosphere of the "voluntary military putsch" in which Israeli politics is currently mired, it looks as though the sky's the limit when it comes to the authority and status of the chief of staff and the commanders of the corps. Almost every weekend we are enjoined to stand at attention while a senior officer purports to define unchallenged not only the essence of our "situation" - what constitutes political victory and political defeat - but also to legislate and dictate how we are to manage ourselves, what we will write and how we will think. If we thought that the political and public status of the chief of staff reached an exceptional peak in the period of Shaul Mofaz, the previous chief of staff, it turns out that we ain't seen nothin' yet. Some of the elements in the celebrations marking the crowning of his successor, Moshe Ya'alon, almost evoked the ascent to Mount Sinai by a previous Moshe/Moses: to the accompaniment of blasts of the shofar and flashes of lightning, in the presence of the chief rabbis(!), the new chief of staff came down from the mountain bearing - inscribed in tablets of stone - commandments of what we may and may not do: "I am the chief of staff, your commander. You will have no other situation appraisals before me ... Thou shalt not concede, neither shalt thou withdraw, nor shalt thou compromise. Honor thy commanders and thy Military Intelligence. Thou shalt not covet the nowisms ..." For reasons not of their making - in part because of the situation, though mainly because of the civilian leadership vacuum - the generals have been upgraded to an almost mystical status, which is liable to trip up even the most modest of them. Indeed, in a situation of this kind a person has to be made of stone in order to resist the temptation to adopt a certain degree of hubris. However, Ya'alon's very first statements in office indicate a quantum leap of such proportions that by comparison even Mofaz looks as self-effacing as Sonia Peres. "L'etat c'est moi" is in effect what the new chief of staff is telling us, and citing the stunning argument that any criticism of him weakens Israel, he repulses a priori any legitimate public reflection about his assessments (which, in the nature of things, tend to be self-fulfilling). This in addition to remarks that mix the personal ("people from your side come and undermine you. Absolutely undermine you ... Sometimes it drives me crazy") with the national ("the Palestinians are cancer ... an existential threat") and color with a pale hue of paranoia the pretension to offer an exclusive "empirical diagnosis" of our situation. It is especially interesting to examine the definition of "victory" as put forward by Ya'alon and the IDF: When, if at all, will we be able to act on the advice of the American general in the Vietnam War and "say we won"? As Ya'alon sees it, the answer is effectively never. Because victory will come only on the day when "we burn clearly into the consciousness of every Palestinian [the realization] that terrorism does not lead to agreements." It is hardly surprising that the settlers pounced on this definition as though they had found a great treasure: has a more amorphous and elusive rationale for war ever been uttered? It ensures that victory, and with it a political settlement, will recede forever into the distance like a rainbow in a cloud. "Their consciousness will be burned"? Of "every Palestinian"? "Clearly"? These are totally hazy notions: even if we win, how and when will we know it? In fact, the haziness of the definition of victory is nothing new: it has been the very essence of bitkhonism - the security-oriented approach - throughout Israel's history. For years we became addicted to one military victory after another without knowing how and when to translate them into a political advantage. Did we not win in 1948, 1967, 1973 and in the War of Attrition and in Lebanon and in the first intifada? But because we viewed victory only through the gunsight of a tank, we didn't feel it even when we rolled over it with heavy armor and we didn't know what to do with it. Symbolically, on the very day that Ya'alon's definition of victory hit the headlines, a different definition, somewhat sensational in nature and attributed to a certain "Fuad," was played down on the inside pages of the paper. In a speech delivered at the Defense Ministry, he stated: "The IDF has won, has decided the struggle, and this is the moment to extend a hand to the Palestinians." But what are the opinions of the defense minister worth compared to the chief of staff's commandments? Some will say that in any event, it is preferable to have a chief of staff who is more belligerent, suspicious, aggressive and pessimistic than the political level. That is in line with the classic bitkhonist dictum, "It is better to curb galloping horses than to prod lazy bulls." In the light of our security-existential situation, with all its miserable escalations, even that axiom can be debated today. No one disputes that the horses are splendid and well trained, devoted and honest. Still, it would be desirable at some stage for someone to take the reins in hand and also know when to say "Whoa!" And it would be best if that someone were a civilian. By Doron Rosenblum

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