Many Arabs in
Gaza want war against Israel. Their political Charter demands it. A nuclear war excites them. But that’s for the
future. They seem instead to want real war right now--on their terms, so men can
fire rockets at Israel and run.
In the first
thirteen days of November, 2012, they fired perhaps 260 rockets at Israeli
civilians in southern Israel. That’s once every 45 minutes, just the right
interval to keep a million Jews in Israel sprinting repeatedly to bomb
shelters.
This was their
kind of war: lots of rockets into Israel, irrelevant property damage but a
million Israeli civilians terrorized.
Bombing
civilians is a serious war crime, but if the Arabs do not make a mistake here,
this could be a good war because they’re good at it. Their battle-plan seems to
be based partly on four war-concepts which they seem to have perfected; and
each links directly to your TV screen.
Perhaps this
is the Gaza battle-plan:
First, Israel’s
military must be neutralized. It’s too powerful to confront head-on. It must be
constrained—and then handcuffed.
Gazans
constrain Israel’s military by moving the battlefield into civilian
populations. That may be another war crime, but they don’t care about that
because no one else seems to care. They also know that Israel is terrified of
killing civilians because Western nations judge Israel harshly when human
shields die.
They
handcuff Israel’s military by formatting these civilian battlefields to fit
your TV screen. You see, your TV determines what you believe. That’s why this
conflict is a TV war. This is reality TV with
‘david-the-good-guy’ fighting ‘Goliath-the-bad-guy’.
Without your
TV, the Arabs cannot win this war.
Second, attacks
against Israel must be organized in an asymmetric (unconventional) manner. They
must also be unrelenting.
In theory, tiny
flies that never go away annoy a powerful beast. Flies that attack in
unpredictable, relentless waves can drive that beast away.
Israel’s enemy
in Gaza is spread across disparate groups. These groups appear to have no coordinated
organization. But they know that, even when attacks against Israel are not
coordinated, the impact of those attacks is no different from a pre-planned assault.
Think of a
pack of wolves attacking a prey. Each lunge by each wolf is based on
opportunity, not plan; but the total effect has the look and feel of a
pre-planned assault.
Wolves who
kill know how to work together to achieve a common goal.
Those who
would destroy Israel organize on the conceptual level and execute at the cell
level. This approach is safe, it’s extremely asymmetric and because this type
of fighting focuses on the individual, it creates great TV images.
In this war,
it’s Israel versus your TV screen.
Third, the
battlefield must be managed to Israel’s disadvantage. Unless backed into a
corner, Arab fighters in Gaza will not engage the Israeli army. They will
harass that army—and then film the results. The battlefield then transfers to film.
Film can be edited.
Watch your
TV screen. David-the-Arab can out-manoeuvre Goliath- the-Jew.
Fourth,
Israel must fear the pressure of deterrence.
In practice,
(see Wikipedia, deterrence, for a
quick definition), deterrence refers to the use of threat in order to compel an
adversary to do something—or prevent him from doing something.
Arabs watch Israel
on TV. They know that if an Israeli attack against Gaza kills civilians, the United
States could turn hostile to her; the European Union could turn hostile; and the
United Nations could support unilateral Palestinian statehood. The threat of
world reaction, in other words, compels Israel to hesitate defending itself.
That threat—and
this version of a Gaza battle-plan--worked for most of this year. Between January I, 2012 and October 30, Gazans
fired perhaps 600 rockets at Israeli civilians, sometimes paralyzing Israel’s
south. Israel’s only response was tit-for-tat because they had been compelled by
world leaders to go no further.
Israel
hesitated to defend herself. Apparently, she felt the fear of deterrence.
Until
November, the Gazan battle-plan looked good.
Then, something
changed. As November began, Gazans fired 77 rockets over a 72-hour period. A
few days later, they fired an additional 100 rockets over a 48-hour period
ending November 12. Perhaps this was a mistake because, suddenly, tit-for-tat couldn’t
keep up; on November 14, 2012, Israel decided to stop fearing world opinion.
She decided instead she needed to stop the rockets. She attacked Gaza.
Israeli
soldiers are now in harm’s way. We pray for their safety.
The Arabs
now appear to have the war they want.
During the
first two days of fighting, it has been reported that Gazans have used at least
two false pictures and one staged video to show ‘civilians’ killed or injured
by Israel. It’s another element for their TV war: faked pictures for faked
casualty numbers.
Will the
Gaza battle-plan work?
That depends
upon how you react to your TV screen.
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