More from the Winograd Report:

"The Israelis tend to launch their wars of choice in the summer, in part because they know that European and American universities will be the primary nodes of popular opposition, and the universities are out in the summer. This war has nothing to do with captured Israeli soldiers." --Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment, July 23, 2006.

This comment by the venerable Juan was laughingly dismissed at the time by the knee-jerk pro-Israeli advocates. But guess what? Juan Cole may have been on to something here. Actually, it appears that he had a personal mole ferreting in Israeli General Staff meeting in the lead-up to the war. This excerpt from the Wingrad Report deals with this aspect of the unprovoked war-mongering consideration to destroy Hizzbala, the excellent humanitarian Lebanese organization which resists peacefully Israel's aggression and occupation of Lebanon:

Chief of Staff: Good morning. At the top of the agenda, I want us to take up a crucial issue, related to the timing of our planned operation in Lebanon. We've already considered several key factors: the preparedness of our troops, the situation on the ground in Lebanon, coordination with the Americans. But there's a paramount matter that I want to revisit before we present the plan to the Cabinet. It's the academic calendar in foreign universities.

Neutralizing anti-Israel professors has always been a key ingredient of our strategy. We all know how vastly influential they are: just think of Juan Cole, Rashid Khalidi, Norman Finkelstein. So part of our strategic doctrine in past years has been to launch operations in summer, when academics are non-operational. Even the French work harder in summer. That's partly why two of my predecessors chose June to launch the Six-Day War and the 1982 Lebanon war.

But it's an issue I feel we should revisit. We take a slice of our strategic doctrine from the Americans. Our own intelligence was surprised three years ago, when the Pentagon informed us that Operation Iraqi Freedom would be launched in March, smack in the middle of the academic year. All our early estimates assumed that the Americans would hold off until after the last graduation ceremonies in June.

For our discussion today, I've invited Gentleman C, head of Middle East 101, the Mossad unit that tracks American and European academics. I think we'd all benefit greatly from his insights in planning the timing of our operation.

Gentleman C, why don't you give us a quick summation of your analysis?

(Read the rest of this astounding record at: Martin Kramer's Sandbox, Via: Normblog)