Five days into Israel's war with Hezbollah, I visited the Umm El-Fahm Gallery in the town whose name it bore. Umm El-Fahm, the largest Muslim community in Israel, with a population of 43,000, anchors the largely Arab Triangle area on the coastal plain just south of Haifa. Outside the gallery, Israeli planes were bombing Lebanon and Hezbollah rockets were detonating nearby. Inside the gallery, Yehudit Bar-Shalom, a ceramicist from nearby Kibbutz Magal, was speaking.

"I felt I was in a dream due to the hospitality of the gallery," she told me. "In all this chaos we are living in, you can do it differently," she told Said Abu-Shakra, a respected artist and the gallery's co-founder. Bar-Shalom reached across the table to Abu-Shakra. "I love you," she said.

The war between Israel and Hezbollah raised serious questions about Israel's military preparedness and strategy. Calls for the resignation of the military chief of staff, Dan Halutz, abound. It's likely that the Israeli military will clean up its act quickly (although perhaps with a new chief of staff) since there's nearly universal agreement in Israel that a smart and ready Israel Defense Force (IDF) is vital to the country's survival. But whether the political class that oversees the military can survive the war's fallout is another question entirely.