Israel is ‘Choosing not to Win’, Says British Expert

By Gil Ronen, INN 

RocketsSeener – who has provided analysis and expert commentary for a range of international broadcasters and news outlets including the Associated Press, Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Chinese CCTV, Fox News, Sky News,Voice of America, Bloomberg, Reuters and Xinhua – told Arutz Sheva that Israel is pursuing a misguided approach to the war, both on the ground and in the battle of words and images. The result will inevitably a deterioration of Israel’s international standing, as the war wears on.

“In general,” he explained, “modern warfare is not geared towards protracted conflict, and thus Israel should have initially gone in harder. This was prevented by a lack of extensive sound intelligence of tunnels and the whereabouts of Hamas operatives. Israel’s diplomatic standing will decline as Europe does not anymore understand the power of ideologies, let alone a genocidal, zero sum game Islamist and suicidal ideology.”

Is Israel’s hasbarah effort regarding the effort to avoid civilian casualties doing any good?

“There is so much that has been reported in Israeli news outlets but has not been reported in European outlets. This includes Hamas executing Fatah members, children digging tunnels, concrete being redirected to building tunnels rather than hospitals and schools, the affluence of Hamas’s leadership who divert funding to the Palestinians to their own personal accounts, even pictures of tunnels were reported by theWashington Post a few weeks earlier than Reuters.

“The main issue is that Israel should take exactly the same initiatives (not more) as Allied forces have done in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. While it is natural that Israel should seek to avoid civilian casualties, its priority is to its own civilians and soldiers. Israel has failed as there is a current stalemate of its civilians under attack, Hamas perpetuating its firing of rockets with Israel’s economy having been hurt as a result.

“If Israel chooses not to win a war against Hamas decisively then it will continue to conduct reprisal attacks while emphasizing its avoidance of civilian casualties. If it seeks to win decisively then Israel will not cede the initiative and strategic surprise to Hamas by announcing beforehand where it plans to strike. This serves to embolden Islamism and provokes them to continue their practices of human shields and firing of rockets.

“Paradoxically, the only way to win decisively is by reclassifying human shields as combatants and demonstrating that Israel will not abort strikes or hand Hamas the initiative by announcing beforehand Israel’s plans. It is tragic that civilians unwittingly find themselves as combatants, but this may be the only way to demonstrate to Hamas the futility of their current strategy of human shields, which has already caused their popularity to plummet in Gaza and the broader arab world.

“Imagine, had US forces announced to ISIS its strike plans and in turn handed to them the strategic initiative. It would be considered absurd! Israel has nothing to be proud of with such a morally dubious approach of letting Hamas know where and when it plans to strike. Israel should be consistent. If it resents being subjected to double standards, then it should not subject itself to norms and procedures that no military of any western liberal democracy would ever consider.”

How does the conduct of the war tie in to the rise in anti-Semitism?

“Anti-Semitism has spiked in Europe. The unfortunate irony of Zionism is that while it was intended to be an antidote to anti-Semitism, it led to its mutation from an ethnic to nationalistic critique. In the past, Israel failed to call for an international condemnation of the PA’s outlets that projected classical antisemitism and incitement.

“Only recently has Israel recognized the genocidal ideology driving Hamas, and there is no reason why the international community should be more catholic than the pope on this matter. Israel in the past took the initiative in reframing the conflict as nationalistic and territorial and thus willing to make territorial compromises. The international community merely followed suit. Furthermore, Israel also did not preemptively take to task bodies that disproportionately critiqued, and delegitimized the state of Israel.”

What is Britain’s Jewish community doing about anti-Semitism and Israel bashing?

“There is a causal relationship between disproportionate criticism of Israel and an increase of anti-Semitism in Europe and it is impossible to address one effectively without the other. Representatives of the Jewish communityin Britain have been severely wanting in countering anti-Semitism. Every campaign has sprung up from the grassroots, and has not originated or been coordinated by the Board of Deputies or Jewish Leadership Council.

“The former chief rabbi Sacks has condemned European anti-Semitism, but when he addresses the Middle East, the only thing he mentions is the plight of Christians. In this manner, he fails to effectively represent his constituencies’ interests in the UK and represent his peoples’ safety and security in Israel. Why should the non-Jewish leadership be any better than the Jewish leadership in the UK?”

 

August 25, 2014 | 14 Comments »

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14 Comments / 14 Comments

  1. @ yamit82:
    I’m in Canada and I’m a member of this group, the JPFO… As many North American Jews as possible – those that are still living in the real world, that is – should join and support this group.

  2. There is so much that is very good about this article. As someone with fairly extensive experience with the organized American Jewish community–although it is fairly dated–I find the comments on the British Jewish organizations to resonate. I have noticed how the big three of American Jewish community relations organizations (now really only two)–the ADL and American Jewish Committee–are now all but dead in the water. I fault Abe Foxman and the nameless guy (Harris?) who runs the American Jewish Committee. Both command too much of the fundraising dollar to warrant their continued existence. Most of the real heavy lifting is done by the recent startups and grassroots organizations, like the Wiesenthal Center, The Israel Project, Camera, HonestReporting, numerous blogs, websites from the Horowitz Freedom Center, Breitbart, Pajamas Media, etc., etc.

    I’ve wondered for some time what down side there would be to penalizing the atrocious media by downgrading their correspondents’ access in Israel to information, sources, interviews, key press conferences, etc. The people who have reported on Israel and its conflicts for the Washington Post, the New York Times, AP, etc., are just horrible and vicious in their bias and malicious reporting. The only person to suggest as much recently was Caroline Glick. Why not put some subtle pressure on the journalists, let them know that there will be some kind of price for biased reporting. In fact, in my thinking over the years, I’ve wondered if it would be too extreme to just start expelling journalists who are too far out of whack with their biases.

    At the start of the recent conflict I saw an article on the online magazine, Slate, which used to be owned by Microsoft and the Washington Post, and then just the Washington Post. I think the Post sold it recently to a third party. Janine Zachariah, whose name I recognized as a former Post correspondent in Israel, wrote an article saying she was incredulous that the leftwing press in Israel was not up in arms over Israel’s bombing in Gaza. She could not believe that anybody could not see that it was incredibly wrong to agree with her view that Israel had no justification for what it was doing. Completely lost on her was the reason for Israel’s reaction in self-defense to Hamas rockets and the fact that even leftist journalists in Israel might actually see Israel’s actions as justified. She could not even begin to understand that. Can you imagine how bad she must have been as a newspaper correspondent in Israel? I’m beginning to think the western press is pretty much gone, anyway, so let them get their stories from Hamas. They pretty much do anyway and just write what they want. Why cater to them. Instead, attack their bias every chance that one gets.

  3. In my latest comment on this discussion, I ought to have used the Arab and Islamic empires, and the empires of the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and Great Britain as modern examples of what the Alexandrian Greeks, the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire pulled off in their own eras. Everyone who has power uses it for expansionary purposes. Israel’s outreach, relative to all these examples, will be far smaller.

    But one thing that I think is certain. Either Israel expands the size of the lands under its control, and either forces Jewish overlordship upon the nearby Arabs or finds some way to make them run for their lives; or face the same consequences that overcame the royal successors of Shaul, David and Shlomo, Kings of an Israel as united in their day as the State of Israel is united today. Let’s keep it that way.

    Nothing about any of this will be something you would want to boast about before an audience of liberal Jews. But I never have associated with people like that in any case. So I really don’t give a damn what they think.

    Power to enforce your own will is all that counts. It worked that way on the streets of Chicago. And it works equally so all across the surface of planet Earth.

    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI

  4. Israel can conduct a relatively low-key and low-cost protracted conflict against the Arab enemies of the Gaza strip, by using the same tactics employed since the 6-Day War against the Arab enemies of Shomron and Yehuda. I am referring to the steady and effective Judaization of parts of the Gaza strip carried out the same way this process has planted a large and majority Jewish population in annexed Jerusalem and in Area C of Shomron and Yehuda.

    This effort should begin with Israeli re-occupation of the entire center of the Gaza strip, concentrating on parts where the Gush Katif settlements were located before Sharon forced their evacuation. That part of the strip, immediately after being taken, should be annexed directly to the State of Israel, followed by steady, continuous and this time permanent Jewish settlement construction.

    The strategic and political effect of that move would split Hamasland, making it far easier for Israel to cut separate and workable local autonomy deals with the significant leaders of the Arab tribes and hamulos (blood-relationship clans) of both the Rafah and Gaza ends of the strip. As this is accomplished, the rule of Hamas will shrink. Moreover, Israel, having demonstrating its strength and purposefulness to the local non-Hamas Arab leaders, will be able to hire some of their gunmen to kill off the Hamas leadership but make it look like a strictly-Arab struggle.

    That is exactly the Russians are using successfully in their long-term effort to break up Ukraine and, a little at a time, rebuild the Russian Empire. It was also the tactics used successfully by the United States of America in taking most of lands of the original 48 states, which were taken by fraud, force, or both.

    To be perfectly honest with all of you, I would advocate such a policy for Israel and the Jewish nation even if the Russian and American empires had not been built using exactly those tactics. But it is hard to ignore or argue with success.

    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI

  13. Since Oslo, the Israeli doctrine shies away from winning against the “partners”.
    Basically the present infirm leadership already surrendered. The true end result will be delayed for a month or so banking on short collective memory span.

  14. I would suggest that the main consideration should be that Israel finish the job completely, and do this with urgency. My reasoning is that (a) Israel must make an unmistakable example of those trying to destroy her, and (b) Israel will, without doubt be subjected to a number of other “pressures” coming from directions other than south. She would do well to eliminate the thorn from the south before focusing on these other “pressures”.

    Oh, and Israel’s efforts may include dealing with Qatar (for a start).