A Hot Summer in the Galilee:

This summer I stood with a group of American university professors on a mountain in Israel overlooking the border with Lebanon. Through the telephoto lenses of our cameras, we could see plainly Hezbollah’s yellow flags and installations on the Lebanese side. An Israeli Defense Forces spokesman—a New York-born major in the reserves—had told us earlier in the day of the estimated ten thousand rockets in Hezbollah’s possession and the hundreds of Iranian military personnel advising the organization. He added complainingly that south Lebanon was the only place in the world where the Bush Doctrine had not been applied. He was referring, of course, to President Bush’s dictum that the United States would not tolerate states harboring terrorist organizations. The major can now stop carping and begin reconsidering his assumptions. Only two weeks after his comments in the hills of the Galilee, the Israeli army—with U.S. material and diplomatic support—launched a military operation intended to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon. A month later it became clear that the Israeli-American effort had failed. That failure reveals much about the prospects of states with top-echelon militaries achieving political goals against the will of highly motivated non-state organizations. For me, as an historian, the Israeli-