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How Israel lost its invincibilityBy Gilad Atzmon 14 August 2007 Using Hebrew-language sources that have yet to be translated into English, Gilad Atzmon shows how the Palestinian armed struggle had succeeded in turning the Israeli armed forces into a corrupt and incompetent force, enabling Lebanon’s Hezbollah to defeat it, despite the Israelis’ massive technological and numerical superiority.
The Israelis tend to personalize conflicts. Yet, by doing so they are being neither original nor innovative. They are in fact following a Biblical tradition. Within the Judaic world-view, history and ethics are often reduced to a single, banal binary opposition principle. For instance, the deadly battle between the “righteous” David and the “evil” Goliath personalizes the struggle between the “good” Israelites and the “bad” Philistines. Although the specific Biblical tale could be understood in mere literary terms, the similarities to the Israelite of our time are rather disconcerting. In Israel, there is a direct express path that leads from the “role of the assassin” to the seat of government. Time after time our contemporary Israelite supplicate their highly decorated assassins to become their kings, to lead their army and then to integrate into the cabinet. This obviously happened to Sharon, Barak, Mofaz, Halutz, Dichter and many more. However, Israelis are not alone here. The tendency to personalize and objectify history is rather common among Jews. In the eyes of many Jews, the Third Reich is reduced to Hitler and Goebbels. Anti-Semitism is often reduced to Wagner, Marx, Weininger, and so on. On the face of it, personification does indeed simplify the surrounding reality, the course of history and its interpretation. Once Hitler is gone, the Third Reich may be gone as well, once Wagner is banned, the same may happen to anti-Semitism. This tendency to personalize conflicts, ideologies and world-views emanates from an infantile perception: that which you no longer see may cease to exist. It fits as well with the Biblical “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” paradigm. Yet, it is nothing but a pattern of self-deception. It misleadingly associates the abstract with some banal objectification. It saves its followers from any intellectual engagement with ideology, criticism or self-reflection. Clearly, the Zionist interpretation is engaged with nothing more than the concrete symptom, with the simplest manifestation of the animosity that surrounds it rather than with the core of the problem itself. Hitler was indeed defeated, Jews are now more than welcome in Germany and in Europe, yet the Jewish state and the sons of Israel are at least as unpopular in the Middle East as their grandparents were in Europe just six decades ago. Seemingly, it is the personification of World War II and the Holocaust that has blinded the Israelis and their supporters from internalizing the real meaning of the conditions and the events that led to their destruction in the first place. Were the Zionists to understand the real meaning of the Holocaust, the contemporary Israelite may be able to prevent the destruction that may be awaiting them in the future. Similarly, Wagner may be banned in Israel, yet the conditions that led Marx, Weininger and Wagner to say what they had to say remain unchanged. It would seem that more and more people in wider circles are now reacting critically, politically and ideologically to Israel, Zionism, Jewish tribalism and the atrocious inhuman policies that are implied by Jewish nationalism and its political and cultural offshoots. But let’s face it, it isn’t just the Israelis who personalize conflicts. Thanks to the neo-conservatives and their tremendous influence within the Anglo-American political arena, we are all subject to some oversimplification and personalization of almost every Western conflict. Seemingly, every current Western war has a “face” attached to it. The “war against terror” has the bearded face of Osama Bin Laden. The alleged “liberation of the Iraqi people” had Saddam Hussein’s face on top of the “hit list”. Within the neo-conservatives’ Zionized war, every ideological conflict becomes a personal “targeted assassination” plot. May I remind us all that, before neo-conservatives launched their pretty successful attempt to Zionize America and Britain, these two countries were engaged in proper, impersonal ideological wars and political conflicts. Britain and the USA fought courageously against Third Reich Germany (rather than just against Hitler). They coldly clashed with “the Reds” as well (rather than with just Stalin). Clearly, this isn’t the case any more. Within a world shaped by neo-conservatives, the political system is reduced into a simplistic Biblical Goliath chase. We the righteous, the Davids, pursue the Goliaths: Saddam, Bin Laden, Assad and Ahmadinejad. However, by now we should all know how futile this philosophy is. As much as Israel failed to defeat Palestinian resistance by killing every noticeable emerging Palestinian leader, as much as Israel failed to defeat Hezbollah by aiming at its leadership, America and Britain are doomed to fail in their current murderous, Zionized battles. Saddam is dead and yet Iraq and its oil-fields are still far beyond reach. Bin Laden never shows his face in public and yet the war against terror has yet to achieve a thing. I want to believe that the emerging defeat of Israel and its supporting lobbies will be appropriately grasped by the Western public. We must say NO to Zionized tactics, we must say NO to Zionist agents, we must say NO to the hunters of Goliath. Anatomy of a colossal defeatOne year after the humiliating Israeli defeat in Lebanon I found myself viewing the Israeli fiasco through the eyes of two renowned Israeli military analysts, Yoav Limor and Ofer Shelah. In a recent book entitled Captives of Lebanon the two have managed to assemble a very detailed journal of the chain of events that led to the war, the war itself and the endless lists of Israeli operational, tactical and strategic failures. However, Limor and Shelah do not stop just with the army and its commanders, they skilfully convey an image of a society that has lost its way, a society that has gradually become detached from its own reality and from its surrounding environment, a society that is facing total moral collapse, one that is led by an egotistic, self-centred leadership, both politically and militarily.Israel’s military defeat in Lebanon in 2006 took the world by surprise. It initially shocked Bush’s administration as well as Tony Blair who were both very quick and keen to give Israel a green light to destroy Lebanon’s Shi’ah leadership, not to mention obliterating Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure. Bush and Blair weren’t the only ones who came in for a shock; it also stunned the Arab world. Arab leaders are not used to the defeat of the Israeli army. Moderate Arab leaders found themselves following the TV images in which a single Muslim cleric was teaching Israelis what defiance was all about. Seemingly, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and an insignificant number of warriors proved to be the first Arabs to defeat the Israeli army on the ground. Their victory left Israel in tatters. The Israeli power of deterrence disappeared completely. It became a subject for historical research. The Israeli supreme command was shocked as well: a month after the war, General Udi Adam, the commander of Israel’s northern front, had resigned. It didn’t take too long for Dan Halutz, the Israeli chief of staff, to follow his lead. Amir Peretz, the minister of defence, was ousted by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. It is rather clear that the Israelis are fully aware of the scale of their defeat in Lebanon. Yet, it seems as if the Israelis do not know how to amend the damage. They are truly in love with their “good life”, they are captivated by the image of technology and wealth. I do not know whether the book will be translated into other languages (it is in Hebrew), but I would recommend it as a “must read” for anyone who is interested in the affairs of this region. The book is a glimpse into Israeli society in what seems to be its final dysfunctional yet destructive state. Those Americans who have been moronically sponsoring the Israeli death apparatus for almost four decades, those who still believe that Israel is a “regional superpower” had better read this journal of Israeli military cowardice and general political malfunctioning. Although the book doesn’t say it, the message is clear. Israel operates as a megalomaniac, violent Jewish ghetto motivated by some bizarre, murderous zeal fuelled by lethal American technology. As Limor and Shelah reveal, in spite of the fact that the conflict on the ground took place on a very narrow strip of land (the Israeli border on the south and Litani River on the north), the Israeli artillery had managed to shoot over 170,000 shells. By comparison, in the 1973 war, while fighting against two strong state armies over two very large fronts, the Israelis had fired only 53,000 shells. The figures relating to the air force are even more striking. Although just a few concrete targets were available for the IIsraeli military intelligence, the Israeli air force had launched as many as 17,550 combat missions, which translates into 520 missions a day – almost as many as in the 1973 war (605 a day). Yet, in 1973 the Israeli air force was fighting two well-equipped air forces, it was engaged in a fair amount of air-to-air combat and a relentless struggle against the latest Soviet ground-to-air missiles. None of that happened in the Second Lebanon War. The Israeli air force was engaged solely in hammering Lebanese soil. It literally threw and launched everything it had in its disposal, presenting a merciless method that in places (southern Beirut, for instance), had a similar effect to the infamous 1940s Anglo-American carpet bombing of Germany. Why did the Israelis react so harshly to a local border incident? Why did Israeli politicians and military chiefs lose their ability to employ strategic and tactical considerations? Why did they all fail to define achievable military goals, something that would give their war a timeframe, shape and justification? In short, why did the Israelis lose their way? This is indeed a crucial question. Although Limor and Shelah refrain from asking these questions, their book manages to provide some answers. I will try to summarize some of their points. The militaryLet’s start with the army. The Israeli army has undergone a serious transition in the last four decades. In the years that followed the rapid 1967 invasion, it was ground officers and tank brigadiers in particular who were promoted to lead the army. After 1967 Israel believed in Blitzkrieg, an offensive onslaught that simultaneously puts into action large formations of ground forces together with close air support. After the 1973 war, following the limited success of the ground forces and the tank divisions, this trend has changed. Gradually, it was the veterans of the Israeli special units who had been promoted to high command positions. Probably the most famous among those veterans was Ehud Barak, the highly decorated commando officer who ended his military career as the armed forces chief of staff. It was Barak who as chief of staff appointed his former subordinates for high positions in the Israeli Supreme Command. Ground officers were pushed aside.This transformation within the Israeli army had two motivations behind it: first, the intelligence assumption that not a single Arab state would consider a total war against Israel in the near future; and second, since the first Intifada and the general rise of Palestinian civil resistance, the Israeli army found itself engaged in more and more policing operations. Within such a shift there was not much need for massive ground training. Tank and artillery brigades seemed to be useless and even irrelevant to the newly emerging defence needs of the Jewish state. Large units of combat troops were diverted into policing tasks in the West Bank and Gaza. Within the changing scenario, it was initially Israeli special units and security chiefs who took the lead in what the Israelis perceived as their “war against terror”. Consequently, more and more Israeli commando veterans found their way to the armed forces high command and later straight into the highly militarized Israeli political life. But things didn’t stop just there; it didn’t take long before Israeli special units failed to provide the solutions to what seemed to be a constantly growing Palestinian civil resistance. Sending the salt of the Jewish earth into Gaza in the small hours proved to be too dangerous. It must be told that, as much as Israelis love to see their young boys terrorizing Palestinians, they cannot stand seeing their beloved Rambos being ambushed and killed. It was just a question of time before the air force was left to deal with Palestinian defiance. Using advanced American technology, Israel let its F-16s and Apache helicopter gunships launch guided missiles against Palestinian civilian and military targets. The philosophy was rather simple: the air force was there to maintain the Palestinians in a state of a constant awe. As it happened, in the last decade the air force has become the leading force in the war against Palestine, the Palestinian people and their imminent Islamic leadership. The air force was quick to develop a tactic that was soon named “targeted assassination”. According to the new Israeli military doctrine, all that was needed was some intelligence on the ground, which would be followed by a single Israeli jet launching an American guided missile in densely populated Gaza. The achievements were rather clear. In many cases targeted Palestinians were assassinated, in very many cases they found their death alongside innocent civilian bystanders who were unlucky enough to be in their proximity. These unfortunate people were in the wrong place at the very wrong time. In many other cases the pilots just missed or were misled by intelligence. As a result, many Palestinian civilians, old people, women and children found their death. Clearly, no one in Israel could care less. When Dan Halutz, still the air force commander, was asked how it feels to drop a bomb that kills 14 Palestinian civilians, his answer was short and simple. “It feels like a light bump on the left wing.” Halutz, the cold-blooded officer, the man who ordered the murder of so many Palestinians, was the right man in the right place. It didn’t take long before he was asked to lead the Israeli army. As time went by, the Israeli government refrained from endangering young Israeli soldiers. The Israeli “war against terror” has become very safe warfare on the verge of a computer game. Sheikh Yassin, Dr Rantisi and many other civilians fell victim to this form of murderous tactic. Apparently, the Israeli military leadership has been overwhelmed by the success of their new killing method. The people of Israel had a new God, namely “technological superiority”. The last wave of Israeli generals, many of them pilots and special unit veterans, became accustomed to the belief that Israel may maintain its regional supreme power by capitalizing on its technological superiority and overwhelming firepower. As Limor and Shelah reveal in their book, in the last decade Israeli soldiers literarily stopped training for any type of large tactical operations. With the Israeli air force chasing the enemies of Israel in their bedrooms, who needs tanks and artillery? Young Israeli tank drivers were redeployed soon after their initial and minimal training into elementary guard tasks in the occupied territories. In practice, not only were those soldiers foreign to their original military tasks in tanks and artillery, they were not familiar at all with any form of large tactical operational manoeuvres. In other words, as far as the Israeli army is concerned, it lost its readiness for war. So the Palestinians actually wonMany analysts regard the Palestinian resistance as a militarily futile struggle. At the end of the day, not much harm can be inflicted by a bunch of kids throwing stones. After reading Limor and Shelah one may conclude that, in reality, the Palestinian struggle is actually far from futile. In fact, it was precisely Palestinian civil resistance that has managed to exhaust the Israeli army. It was the Palestinian resistance that led the Israeli army into a state of paralysis. It was the Palestinian resistance that stretched the Israeli army’s manpower to its limit and stopped it from training for the “next war”. It was the Palestinians who turned the Israeli soldiers and their commanders into a bunch of cowards who prefer to win wars while sitting in front of computer monitors moving joysticks. It was actually the Palestinians who devastatingly dismantled the Israeli armed forces’ readiness for war.It is very much as Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has been suggesting in one of his most declamatory speeches. Israel was indeed “hiding behind technological superiority just to cover its cowardice and incomprehension of what living in the Middle East may entail” (Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, speech at Bint Jubayl after the Israeli withdrawal). The Israeli army has become used to smashing Palestinian civilians in their homes, to murdering their emerging leadership, to terrorizing pregnant women at roadblocks, to shelling young kids in their school classes, so this was indeed very easy. Yet, when the Israeli army was asked to engage some tiny groups of lightly trained paramilitary enthusiasts, it collapsed shamefully. It collapsed in spite of its technological superiority; it was defeated in spite of its overwhelming firepower, in spite of Bush’s and Blair’s disgraceful support. The Israeli army collapsed because it was incompetent, it was not ready to fight, it did not know how to fight and, most worrying for the Israelis, it didn’t even know what it was fighting for. Soon after the conflict in Lebanon developed into a total war (at least in the eyes of the Israelis) it became clear to most Israeli generals that the Israeli army doesn’t have the means to address the rain of Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets. If the initial Israeli goal was to stop the Katyusha rockets and to bring home the two captured Israeli reserves, these goals proved to be beyond reach. The Israeli commander soon learned that, without proper and quality intelligence, their superior firepower and technology lost any relevance. As funny as it may sound, in a matter of a few days the Israeli leadership adopted some post-structuralist vocabulary. Rather than providing the people of Israel with a simple, straightforward “victory”, they all started to communicate in terms of a “narrative of victory”. Days from the launch of the Israeli campaign, the Israeli military began to talk in terms of “an image of victory” rather than “victory” per se. Shimon Peres started to use the term “perception” of a victory. Yet, even “perception” and “image” of a victory proved to be well beyond reach. The only democracy in the Middle EastAs useless as the Israeli army proved to be, the Israeli government wasn’t any better. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, the man who was voted to “disengage” from Palestinian territories, had very little understanding of military affairs. If this is not enough, Amir Peretz, the Labour leader, the man whom Olmert appointed to be his minister of defence, also lacked any significant knowledge of defence matters. For the first time in its history, Israel was led by two professional politicians who had no military background. On the face of it, one may expect that such a dramatic shift would curve the hawkish tendency among the Israeli military and political elites. In practice, the opposite happened. Both Peretz and Olmert found themselves dragged and manipulated into a large-scale conflict by the bloodthirsty chief of staff. Considering their inexperience and the short time they had been in office, neither Olmert nor Peretz could come up with any creative alternative solutions that might avoid conflict but achieve something. Rather than holding the army back and giving diplomacy a chance, they both let Halutz lead the country towards unnecessary escalation. Without understanding the full picture, the Israeli government ended up promising Halutz the necessary time and support to achieve goals that were beyond reach to start with.But the truth must be said. Olmert and Peretz were not alone in their cabinet. In fact, they were surrounded by military analysts, intelligence experts, ex-generals and security services veterans. Olmert had in his government Reserve General Shaul Mofaz, the former chief of staff, a man who spent the late phase of his military career fighting Hezbollah. Avi Dichter, a Security Services veteran was there to comment on the armed forces’ operative suggestions. They had in the government Benjamin Ben Eliezer as well, a reserve brigadier who had been an expert on Lebanese issues for the last three decades. Shimon Peres was himself a prime minister and a defence minister in the past. Reserve General Ami Ayalon, a former army general as well as a former chief of the Internal Security Services, offered his help to Amir Peretz. Yet, none of these experts managed to form a decision-making body, none of the above managed to moderate the military enthusiasm of Halutz, Olmert and Peretz. Like a leaf in the wind, the Israeli government was manipulated by the generals and later by public opinion that turned dramatically against the leadership and its inadequate achievement. As time went by, with military failure becoming public knowledge, Olmert, Peretz and Halutz became desperate to change the course of the war just to save their future careers. Although they realized that the chances of achieving victory were vanishing by the hour, they were determined to present the public with something that would look like a victory or even simply as an achievement. This is apparently what political survival in the Israeli democracy means for real: you have to present something that may look like a victory. To call it a name, Peretz, Halutz and Olmert ordered the army to cause some real devastation, assuming that this would gratify the Israeli voter. The Israeli air force and the artillery command reacted instantly with heavy barrages of cluster bombs, missiles and shells raining all over southern Lebanon. In the last 48 hours leading to the ceasefire, Israel emptied it entire stock of weaponry. According to Shelah and Limor, Israel”s ammunition stocks reached the “red light” level. In order to save the political careers of Olmert and Peretz, the Israeli air force launched more and more pointless and risky operations that had very limited tactical value. These operations failed one after the other and achieved nothing. Yet they exposed the Israeli armed forces’ weaknesses. They revealed an army and a political leadership in a state of a panic. Towards the final hours of the war, some isolated groups of Israeli special units were stranded and starved along the southern Lebanese front with no access to water and food. A few units of Hezbollah warriors had managed to encircle top Israeli commandos. Seemingly, no one in Israel dared to risk sending supply convoys into the battlefield. Food and ammunition that was dropped from cargo aircraft fell into the hands of Hezbollah. In some areas, the wounded Israeli army commandos were lying on the ground, waiting many hours for rescue units. The defeat was total. The humiliation was colossal. Not only were the “Israel Defence Forces” unable to defend Israel any more, but it even failed to defend itself. Limor and Shelah reveal many more interesting facts:
Seemingly, the Israeli army is “all over the place”, it is under-trained, it is clumsy, it is messy and its leaders are corrupt to the bone. The Israeli political leadership isn’t any better. Although Peretz is no longer at the Ministry of Defence, Olmert, Mofaz, Dichter and now Barak – all qualified mass murderers – are still cabinet members. Considering the state of its army, Israel may have to consider a swift change of direction; it cannot fight any more. It lacks the endurance. But it would seem that this is not going to happen. It appears that, in the next Israeli election, we will probably see the eloquent yet belligerent Benjamin Netanyahu fighting the belligerent yet far less eloquent Ehud Barak. For years we tended to believe that Israel would not be defeated in the battlefield. Learning in detail the events of the last war allows us to consider that this may not be the case. The Jewish state has already been defeated in battle and this may happen again sooner than we think. *Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born musician and writer, and a proponent of a secular and democratic one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which the two peoples live in one state as citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. Copyright © Redress Information & Analysis. All rights reserved. |
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