new years day, labor day, and independence day :)

Answer 1

Wherever you see a military conflict in the history of modern Israel, and that Israel still exists after it, you know that Israel didn't lose. Had Israel lost, it would no longer exist.

Just as on so many previous occasions of violence and military action, there was nothing worthy of the world's attention going on until Israel fired back. Later, Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon at the request of the UN, in return for the stationing of a UN 'Peacekeeping' force in southern Lebanon, and a guarantee that the shelling and rocketing of northern Israeli towns and farms from Lebanon would be prevented.

Answer 2

Contrary to the view presented in Answer 1, the 2006 War in Lebanon was not an existential war for Israel (as opposed to the 1948-9, 1967, and 1973 wars). Therefore, judging Israel's victory or defeat cannot come from "and the flag was still there." The dominant opinion, both in Israel and the Arab World was that Israel lost with a differing opinion on how badly.

There is still research being done on why Israel was much less successful in the Lebanese War than it had been in previous engagements. The general theory is that Israel was unable to effectively fight a counter-insurgency war in hostile territory. Hezbollah was too entrenched in the various south Lebanese neighborhoods for Israel to do anything less than carpet-bombing if they wanted to get everything, but Israel refused to engage in such conduct and attempted to go door to door. Hezbollah also had superior command over the terrain since they were fighting on "home ground". Israel's stated aim was to either deal a massive blow to Hezbollah, recover soldiers Regev and Goldwasser or both. They achieved neither. (Regev and Goldwasser's corpses were eventually recovered in a prisoner transfer deal with Hezbollah a few years later.)

A nation-less state is a state whose borders are arbitrary and with no historical context and with no real common bond among the people. Lebanon does not fit this paradigm. While there are numerous different groups of people in Lebanon, there is the historic Sanjak of Mount Lebanon, which set the prevailing, dominant Christian culture of the area. When the French expanded the Sanjak of Mount Lebanon to surrounding areas to the north, east, and south, a number of Sunni Muslim, Shiite Muslim, Alawite, and Druze groups were added to the state, making it more heterogeneous and leading to internal conflict. However, those conflicts have ended up creating a unified national identity, especially in resistance to the recent (1986-2006) Syrian Occupation of the country, and the creation of a Confessionalist Republican Structure.

By contrast, Iraq, which has no unity between its religiously and ethnically diverse groups is a nationaless state.