A New Kind of War
Foreign Policy / AMOS HAREL, AVI ISSACHAROFF
22-Jan-2010 (one comment)

The end result of Operation Cast Lead, last year's conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, was quite clear. During three weeks of fighting over December 2008 and January 2009, more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed and at least 2,500 houses in the strip were demolished. There is an ongoing debate about the number of armed Palestinians killed, but even Hamas does not contest that hundreds of its men died, among them three of the Islamist organization's senior leaders. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) penetrated to the heart of the strip -- the center of Gaza City, where most of Hamas's major compounds are located. The organization's defensive infrastructure, which had been painstakingly built over three years and included hundreds of booby-trapped houses, tunnels, landmines, and smuggled anti-tank rockets, was destroyed.

Hamas fighters had no answer for the IDF's technological and military edge. Their attempts to kidnap Israeli soldiers failed and, though Hamas fired hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, only a few civilians were killed. More than a year after the fighting, the strip is still under siege by both Israel and Egypt. Most Gazans are forbidden from traveling abroad, while their supply of goods depends primarily on smuggling through tunnels from Egypt.

So how, you might ask, did Hamas mark the first anniversary of this colossal failure? By celebrating, of course. In a number of rallies, Hamas leaders proudly rem... >>>

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Not the complete true picture of recent history

by IranMilitaryForum.net on Mon Jan 25, 2010 01:07 AM PST

Nevertheless, despite their victories on the
battlefield of opinion, Hamas and Hezbollah might be celebrating a bit
prematurely.

Premature, hardly the case! Israel attacked Lebanon as the mightiest armed forces in ME. Nevertheless it took this mighty force to plead with the US to seek a ceasefire towards the end of the fighting month. Hezbollah had militarily defeated Israel so brillinatly that the major defence reasech centers across the world still write about this war today. Hezbollah managed to knock out the Israeli armor and pinned down the IDf pretty much at its border. The writer may have not read the very Israeli defence forces controvorcial Winigrad report about the Lebanese war which bluntly conceated  military defeat.

Where Israeli IDF forces won, is where IDF has a specialty above all the armed forces of the world. That is, massacaring defenceless civilians. The very same talent was exercised in Gaza. The world public reactions to both crimes against humanity has been unprecidented and Israel has been officially convicted as a country that committed crimes against humanity by the UN.

Israel may claim victory, but that is only limited in suceeding killing defenceless civilans ironically mostely done by the famed Israeli air force pilots. The history will judge their cowardice.

For Israel and Israeli "fans", it is almost impossible to swallow an Israeli defeat, not by any major armed forces in the region but by 5000 rag tag poorly armed militia. One can bet that Israel will not rest to recommit its mass killings of civilans or any other war crimes to simply gain its military "invincibility" image. 

 

Recently, however, Israel has come up with a partial
solution: the "Iron Dome" system.

This system much like the Arrow II combined with American made Patriot anti missile system are subject of discussions of many scientists that claim it will not work (especially in a mass attack by incoming missiles) and that these systems are basically to fill the US and Israeli arms manufacturers pockets at the cost of US tax payers.

The impossibility of such systems can be easily understood if one imagines hiting a bullete with another bullet!

Iran
uses Hezbollah and Hamas for a campaign "by proxy" against
Israel, hoping to gradually erode the Jewish state's resistance while steadily
stockpiling thousands of rockets in Gaza and in Lebanon.

The very strategy of fighting Israel by proxy is a brilliant one. In fact ,if such is true, the Iranians have stollen a page or two from US/Israeli strategy in the ME in the past sixty years but with a refinement. Such proxy wars where exercised times and times in Lebanon, Palestine and Iran/Iraq war (US support for Saddam against Iran) by the US and Israel long before Iranians employ any such strategies for their own.

As for Iran arming the Palestinians with rockets, the proof is in the pudding. If Hamas had any Iranian rockets in its inventory except for a bunch of very primitive home made  "Qassams", they would have raised havoc against the Israelis much like Hezbollah did in Lebanon.

 

Israel is fighting a long and difficult battle against
Iran-controlled terrorism. Having frustrated most suicide-bombing attacks,
Israel now faces the complicated challenge of rocket warfare, for which no
comprehensive strategic solution has yet been achieved. Therefore, military
counterattacks will remain part of Israel's strategy, meaning that another
round of fighting in the near future

This is essentially the crocks of this article, a warning that Israel has the right to kill mass defenseless civilians in its future and perhaps upcoming war under yet anoter "self defence" pretext. The rest of the article in general was simply building, albeit, a Micky Mouse story for its future "war crimes".

 


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