More than a 'bump': a tough defense chief faces tougher questions.(Dan Halutz)

Byline: Kevin Peraino

At about midnight on July 22, 2002, an F-16 fighter plane dropped a one-ton bomb on the Gaza apartment of Salah Shehadeh, a Hamas militant wanted by the Israeli military. The bomb hit its target, but also left 15 civilians, including 11 children, dead beneath a pile of crumbled concrete. The incident caused a furor in Israel; some pilots later refused to carry out orders for "targeted assassination" missions like the Shehadeh killing. But Air Force Cmdr. Dan Halutz, for one, insisted he lost no sleep over the policy. Asked by an Israeli interviewer what he felt in such situations, he replied: "I feel a slight bump to the plane as a result of the bomb's release. A second later it passes, and that's all. That's what I feel."

Such cynical bravado may fire up the troops in wartime. But as Israel struggles to navigate the postwar interregnum, it also makes Halutz, now the military's chief of staff, an attractive scapegoat for the Israeli Defense Forces' apparent failures in Lebanon. As Israeli soldiers stream home, some reservists and politicians, angry over tactical snafus and supply shortages, are calling for Halutz's resignation. Others complain that the former fighter pilot's dogged reliance on air power proved virtually useless against Hizbullah's mobile 122mm Katyushas. In a poll released late last week by Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, more than half those questioned--54 percent--said they thought Halutz should resign. Last week even the general, seldom one to admit his own mistakes, acknowledged the war plan had flaws. "We have to proceed to a meaningful examination of the successes and the errors," Halutz wrote in a letter to his troops.

Some of the most biting criticisms have come from Halutz's own men, who complain that the needs of ground troops were ignored in the campaign. "The whole way of resupply was really messed up," says Alon Gelnik, an infantryman from Israel's Nahal brigade, which fought Hizbullah guerrillas in ...