Before Nasrallah’s foolish attack, even ten percent of those figures would’ve caused the roof of world opinion to collapse on Israel. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, the darling of the West, the symbol of Lebanon’s fledgling democracy, pleaded for a cease-fire. His cries fell on deaf ears.
Hizbullah was in an impossible position. It couldn’t come out and fight without facing annihilation. But hiding behind civilians wasn’t working either. The thing about human shields is that the strategy only makes sense if it spurs the international community to step in and impose a cease-fire. If it doesn’t, the whole thing backfires because not only do you lose your army, you lose your civilian infrastructure as well.
Nasrallah, the boy wonder of terrorism, appeared on television glassy-eyed and pale. The wonder was gone. The only thing left was the boy.
And what of the Katyushas? They were shown to be little more than a psychological weapon. Of the 3,790 rockets fired into Israel, over three quarters landed harmlessly in open fields. Nine hundred and one landed in communities, but they only claimed the lives of 39 civilians – barely one a day.
Put another way, Hizbullah had to fire 100 rockets to kill one Israeli. And this is when you begin to understand just how ineffective the Katyushas were. Those firing the rockets were struck by the Israeli Air Force almost the moment they launched a shot. In other words, Hizbullah lost much of its army killing as many Israelis as die in two suicide bombings.
The economic damage caused by the rockets wasn’t much greater. The Finance Ministry put the entire figure at about $900 million – less than one percent of Israel’s GNP. To put that in perspective, the Yom Kippur War cost 100 percent of Israel’s GNP, or an entire year of economic production. In World War II, Britain lost 25 percent of its entire net worth.
The cost of the war to the IDF – ammunition, lost equipment, etc. – adds another $2.3 billion to the total bill. How much is that in Israel’s big picture? Barely a dent.
During the war, Hewlett-Packard bought an Israeli company for $4.5 billion, while Warren Buffett bought Iscar for $4 billion earlier in the year. Take the tax revenue from those two sales, plus the revenue from the sale of a government-owned refinery in Ashdod, and you̓ve practically paid for the whole conflict (incidentally, the refinery was also sold during the war; investors know a bargain when they see one).
True, the war caused a slowdown in Israel’s economy. But only to the extent that growth this year is expected to be four percent instead of five. To paraphrase Tevya the Milkman, this should only be Israel’s biggest problem.
Certainly Lebanon would trade places. I’ll leave it to the Treasury Department to determine whether Hizbullah is handing out counterfeit U.S. currency, as some bloggers have claimed. Even if all those hundreds are real, the only way this ends is with ordinary Lebanese holding the bag.
No one knows for sure what Nasrallah’s War cost. What we do know is that Iran simply doesn’t have the dollars to pay for it. The math is actually simple. Lebanon’s damage has been conservatively estimated at $10 billion. Iran earns about $60 billion a year from oil, and that’s at $70 a barrel without sanctions for its nuclear program (another column for another day).
Of course, the mullahs could give up a sixth of their income, but you don’t get the 72 virgins by committing political suicide. That kind of suicide you live to regret.
