The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Middle East War: The Israeli Ground Forces Still Can’t Deliver

Israel has three great assets:

  • Its air force;
  • Its spies;
  • America.

What it doesn’t have is a good army:

After nearly five weeks of intense fighting, Israeli soldiers have managed to enter several border villages, advancing a maximum of just under two kilometres in some areas. However, they have been unable to establish overnight positions. These forces have resorted to widespread destruction, levelling homes and mosques along the border to create “scorched earth” zones. This tactic, however, exposes Israeli tanks, making them vulnerable and preventing adequate concealment as they cautiously advance through Lebanese villages. Consequently, Israeli casualties have surged

Or, to put it another way, Netanyahu’s mouth has written checks that Israel’s ground forces can’t cash. So Israel is back to wanton destruction, mostly by air.

I’ve said for years that Hezbollah’s army is one of the best in the world, man for man, and so far it seems that judgment is vindicated.

Israeli forces are currently only engaging Hezbollah’s “spoiling attacks” within the “engagement area”. They are yet to penetrate the “main battle area,” where Hezbollah’s primary defences and “striking forces” are positioned. Hezbollah’s strategy integrates conventional and guerrilla warfare tactics, employing adaptable defences above and below ground. It focuses on attrition strategy, using mobile defence tactics to harass and weaken enemy forces before drawing them into decisive engagements. These tactics include tactical retreats that expose enemy flanks, allowing Hezbollah to strike at Israel’s advancing spearhead, systematically disrupting momentum and inflicting heavy losses.

Meanwhile Israel’s attack on Iran does not appear to have done great damage and Hamas ordered Northern Israeli villages being used as invastion staging points to evacuate, and has started hitting them with missiles and drones, leading to another couple hundred thousand Israeli internal refugees.

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But the weak suffer what they must, and Northern Gaza has spent October under complete embargo of food and water. The Israeli genocide of Palestinians continues, and the clear intention is to occupy North Gaza permanently once its residents are displaced or dead.

Indeed the Israeli way of war is now clearly “genocide uber alles” with Israel’s air attacks in Lebanon prioritizing civilian buildings, with multiple attacks on hospitals, at least one attack on an orphanage and repeated warnings that they will strike first responders who try to save lives.

Israel is attempting to break the will of civilian populations through terror. Israel’s war doctrine is mass terror, ethnic cleansing and genocide, with attacks meant to maximize civilian casualties both during and after the attack. The fewer hospitals, doctors and so on, the more people who will die or be permanently maimed.

This is a war of the cowardly against civilians, which makes sense: Israel’s occupation has left its military specialized in brutalizing civilians. It had great difficulty against Hamas, a rag tag militia with missiles and other weapons built in basements. Against Hezbollah’s ground forces: seasoned, well equipped and dug in, it has been unimpressive.

The problem for Israel is simple enough: terror from the air doesn’t win wars and doesn’t break moral. Instead it makes people more determined to resist, not less.

If Israel, after its assassinations and attacks on warehouses had declared victory, it would still look strong. But engaging with Hezbollah on the ground has proven a serious mistake.

Israel is a great example of “those who are abused become abusers.” Israel might as well be Nazi Germany when it comes to both ideology (national ethnic supremacy) and actions: genocide of a despised ethnic/religious group.

It is a sad thing to see, both for their victims and for themselves. They have become monsters, and with polls indicating over 90% support for the way the war is fought, it’s clear that this has infected the mass of the Israeli citizenry.

When Israel is finally defeated, likely in a future war, it will need to completely de-Zionised, in a way Germany was never properly de-Nazified.

This entire war is sad and stupid and based on the fundamental injustice of taking other people’s land and homes. It is pursued thru terror, mass murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing and war crimes are so routine they happen every day as a matter of policy.

Every nation who supports Israel in this is stained by Israel’s crimes. We all know genocide is happening, and our countries have supported it, made it possible and opposed all efforts to end it.

To riff on Jefferson, we had best hope that there is no just God.

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9 Comments

  1. Another similarity Israel has with Nazi Germany is the aggressive arrogance. Israel hasn’t even defeated Hamas and yet they’re invading and attacking Lebanon, The West bank, Yemen, Syria and Iran.
    Each new country/group they attack increases the likelihood that Hamas wins in the same vein that the Nazi invasion of the USSR helped the Resistance win in WW2.
    They’re so high on their own propaganda that they can’t grasp how incompetent their strategy is.

  2. mago

    There must be some way out of here said the joker to the thief/ there are many here among us who think life is but a joke/but you and I have been through that and know it’s not our thing.
    Meanwhile all along the watchtower
    Howling winds, growling cats, approaching riders.
    Difficult to parse the nonsense and dissipate the fog.
    Got one side broadcasting we’re invincible pinball wizards and their adversaries hunkered in bunkers popping and hitting pow pow pow!
    Who you gonna believe?

  3. Carborundum

    Interesting comment from Magnier:

    “These individuals bring experience and accumulated expertise, particularly from their involvement in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.”

    Hezbollah leadership personalities directly involved? First time I’ve seen this asserted and I would expect that if there was clear evidence of this the IDF would be shouting it from the rooftops.

    I’m not sure that IDF performance has been so awful and Hezbollah performance clearly superior. We look to be in a qualitatively different situation from 2006. The IDF has spent a lot more time on the ground inside Lebanon and looks to have been operating with a lot more purpose and freedom of action. If I was directing Hezbollah forces, unless the IDF showed signs of interest in penetrating a lot deeper than I think they are, I’d be concentrating on carefully selected standoff attacks designed to inflict mass casualties. I would guess that what’s looming large in IDF thinking (and explaining their apparently limited operating depth) is the possibility of repeat cross border attacks using the al-Aqsa Flood template, which would be an absolute nightmare if executed by Hezbollah.

  4. Ian Welsh

    Magnier has significant contacts inside Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran.

  5. Wadangala Kaladoota

    If the USSR had really had any balls, they would’ve kept the camps open and started running every SS and Nazi Party member through them. Maybe that would’ve freed up enough living space for a socialist Jewish state in Eastern Europe

  6. Purple Library Guy

    I would have thought most of Hezbollah’s recent-ish battle experience would have come from Syria. They were DEFINITELY involved there, on a significant scale, for years. Seems much more significant than possible advisor roles on one operation lasting a couple days that was very successful but mostly because the enemy was caught with their pants down.

  7. Ian Welsh

    PLG,

    I tend to agree, however there is one big difference: in the flood, it was Israel being fought.

  8. IbnBob

    Israel hasn’t won a war since 1967. 1973 was basically a draw brokrred by the asponsoring Great Powers. Since then Israel has engaged in a series of Keep-the-lid-on exercises while simultaneously keeping the boiler ever hotter. Israel’s army is essentially an occupation constabulary. In American history we can think of the first part of Reconstruction, where a field army was split into local detachments. And also the centuries of Western Expansion, wher local detachments were occasionally combined into (usually ineffective) fiel armies. Netan-Hamas has constructed a gloried military police.

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