Hezbollah is rapidly deploying bulldozers and construction teams to rebuild the ruins of Beirut.

It is also revving up its public relations efforts to emerge from the recent month-long conflict as "The Winner."

War is a solemn business, where we should avoid using the same language that we'd employ when we mull over the performance of our sports teams. But "winning and losing" are typical ways that we measure the value of our conflicts.

Did Israel lose?

Did Hezbollah win?

There's a strong argument to be made that holds that Israel won-by losing, that is, by not eradicating an armed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel, in many minds, including the French who haven't been recent supporters, fought the good fight and restrained itself. In doing so, it earned respect, bolstered its credibility as a civilized nation, while sparing the lives of civilians, on both sides of the border.

By losing its aura of invulnerability, it woke up American Jews, who had tired of seeing Israel as a bully, as an occupying force, as Goliath instead of David.

With thousands of missiles raining on the north of Israel, American Jews and Christians around the world began to think the unthinkable: that Israel could be wiped off the map, and with it, access to the holy land for all religions, including moderate Islamists.

That sense of palpable danger, that the next conflict, or the one after that, could imperil the very existence of Israel; that perception is a victory, in itself.

It almost all but assures that Israel will receive the support it needs, financial and military, without as many reservations and complications as it has been burdened with in the past.

It also weakens the ability of Arab adversaries to claim exclusive rights to being perceived as sympathetic victims, the only ones whose claims of statehood are meritorious and worth attention.

Only by making it appear that it could be otherwise, that it could finally lose, and that perhaps that it did lose, to some extent, Israel may have moved closer to achieving the victory it needs: An acknowledgement that it has a right to exist, a right that it and the rest of the civilized world will come together to assert.