Noting the hesitant conduct of the war, even the usually stoic Israeli public began to urge its government to let the army hit Hezbollah harder, so it could not threaten Israel again.

Why, even a Jewish grandmother was upset by the tentative prosecution of the war. Ehud Yaari, an Arab affairs analyst, said of his mother, who is 85: “She calls me all the time to ask me how come the army is still having a fistfight with Hezbollah in places 500 meters from the border.”

The daily paper Haaretz published a cartoon satirizing the group Peace Now, with a balding member, sporting a ponytail, saying, “It won’t end until we wipe Beirut off the map.”

And Yossi Beilin, leader of the dovish Meretz Party, went so far as to confirm that the Jewish people have the right to “a democratic and secure state.”

Of course, not every Israeli was for the war to be stepped up. Some wanted it stopped. Every Friday, anti-war activists demonstrated against it.

But recent opinion polls showed support for the war at about 80%.

Unfortunately, one of the collateral complications of Israel’s careful approach has been the steady publicity of buildings blown up and civilians killed, instead of the usual major attack and, hopefully, a swift end of the conflict.

The effort has been sort of like a dentist attempting to pull a tooth with his fingers, instead of using forceps. So he pulls a little here and there, and every time the patient winces, he stops, until he and the patient give up in sweaty despondency, and the tooth is still stuck right where it was.

Of course, there are those who are vocal critics of the gradually waged war.

Gerald M. Steinberg, director of the Program on Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University, said, “… there is a strong sense of hesitation, of the lack of military leadership needed in times like this.”

Yuval Steinitz of Likud, who is the head of the parliamentary subcommittee for defense preparedness, exclaimed, “Doubts? That’s an understatement. People are talking of failure…. The bombardment of Israeli cities was supposed to be over after 48 hours. The fact that only now the government is ready to even start the real ground campaign is overwhelming.” Then Mr. Steinitz remembered and referred to Israeli defense doctrine since the tiny nation’s founding, which is that it must immediately take the fight “deep into enemy territory to protect its civilian rear….This didn’t happen, and against who? Hezbollah, which is the size of a Syrian division without any air defense. So what would we do against Syria?”