Middle East: Costly War (I)

Israel counts its dead

When the American folk group Peter, Paul and Mary sang the 1960s anti-war classic, Blowin' in the Wind, at a concert in Jerusalem last week, the audience reacted with emotion. A crescendo of applause welled up as the trio reached the lines, "How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?" Mary Travers later said that she had been so choked up by the response she could hardly continue singing.

It was only one sign of the way many Israelis felt as the death toll from last year's war in Lebanon and...