What’s Israel Doing?
July 25, 2006, 7:30 pm |
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By Andrew L. Jaffee
As an ardent supporter of Israel, I’m starting to have a hard time understanding the number of gaffs racked up by the Jewish state’s armed forces (IDF) in their campaign against Hezbollah’s Islamo-fascists. Israel and its Mossad intelligence is renouned for an excellent pin-point accuracy in targeting terrorists. But, as of today, approximately 300+ Lebanese civilians have been killed by the IDF, and an Israeli bomb killed 4 U.N. observers. Keep in mind that Hezbollah has slaughtered 41 Israelis, 19 of whom were civilians, with at least 388 wounded. And Israel is a nation that warns civilians before attacking, and allows still hostile Lebanon humanitarian aid corridors. And there is evidence of U.N. involvement with Palestinian terrorists. But what has happened to the Israel that defeated the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria in the Six Day War?
Yes, that was a war between armies, and today’s war is between an Israeli army and terrorists hiding behind human shields. But has the IDF lost its edge? Is it bad intelligence? Is it urban/guerilla warfare? Somebody please help me to understand. After all, today’s wars have a public relations aspect, like it or not, and especially for Israel, whose every move is under the microscope because of the plague of anti-Semitism that will not die.
On a positive note, Israel “killed senior Hezbollah commander Abu Jaafar, who Israel says was in charge of the central area of Lebanon’s border with Israel” and “killed between 20 and 30 Hezbollah fighters in the area in the past 24 hours.”
But whatever is hindering its anti-terrorist efforts, Israel needs to get its ducks in a row and smash Hezbollah — fast and with minimal civilian carnage.
netWMD Special Report: Hezbollah Facts
Related: Israel, War Against Islamo-fascism, Palestinians, Lebanon, Terrorist Groups
July 25th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
This campaign is going rather smoothly given its varied, multiple and difficult targets to strike. Hezbollah has to be dealt with and Israel cannot back off simply because they shield themselves like cowards.
Military actions sometimes seem illogical to civilians. That’s understandable. Without military experience, one can be utterly confused by war.
Israel has a fine military force. Give them time to complete their job. This is tough work. Moreover, most of these soldiers are green. It takes a little time to season fighters. It took me about two years to become a seasoned soldier. I could fight after eight weeks, but learning to work as a unit and understanding how units intertwined to carry out big operations took a while.
If the Hezbollah chickens would come out from behind the women and children, Israel could pluck them clean in a few days. Unfortunately, they don’t have that option.
July 25th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
What has baffled me is the constant quotes from Israeli sources stating that they were surprised by Hezbollah’s toughness. Yet IDF soldiers dealt with the ferocity of Hezbollah fighters from 1982 - 2000. Maybe you’re on the money with the “most of these soldiers are green” comment.
July 25th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
What Israeli sources mean when speaking of Hezbollah’s toughness, is unlike most of the IDF enemies, these guys don’t just cut and run, although most do. However, many remain and go on fighting fiercely. Not to worry, even though it’s dangerous work, the IDF is up to digging the hardcore Jew-haters out and killing them. Israel isn’t about to pack up and go home when it meets a tough enemy. Israel is fighting a bunch of fuckwads. This Muslem type of warfare goes against international law. Much of the world wants Hezbollah and their benefactors wiped off the map. However, few countries are willing to offer any troops to help. Therefore, the killing has been left to the IDF. And nobody is more able or better motivated to take this scum on. Jews are way tougher than these terrorists of a feather who flock together.
July 26th, 2006 at 9:13 am
Our blog’s URL is the-muslim-question.blogspot.com
July 26th, 2006 at 10:47 am
But why all the civilian casualties and “UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon contacted Israeli troops 10 times before an Israeli bomb killed four of them?” Or is this all just media hype and the usual UN anti-Semitism?
July 26th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
As a possible answer to your question about why so many Lebanese civilian deaths, the answer is really twofold:
First, there have been some varied reports that Israel has not been able to infliltrate Hezbollah as it has with the Palestinians to gain direct good intelligence.
Israelis have been able to garner some intelligence as to which Lebanese civilian areas Hezbollah are dug into as well as residential areas in south Beirut. Given the imprecision of intelligence, especially in this case, best guess estimates of where to direct the shelling can have a probably fairly high risk of being wrong and so wrong targets are hit.
Secondly, there is a probability in my mind that since Hezbollah not only locate in residential areas, but masquerade as civilians within those areas, that a number of the civilian dead include Hezbollah members. There is of course no one around to identify victims and no one can therefor even hazard a guess as to how many dead are truly innocent civilians.
As for your comment about why the UNIFIL outpost got hit, especially if it is true that UNIFIL contacted Israeli troops 10 times, we will have to wait for Israel’s report.
One critical piece of information is just how close was the UNIFIL outpost to the location from where Hezbollah was firing rockets into Israel.
The closer the outpost to Hezbollah, the greater the chance for the rocket/round that took out the outpost to miss the mark. If however the Hezbollah were far from the outpost, then who knows why the outpost got hit.
What would be unimaginable however, unless of course one is Kofi Anan, is to even suspect that Israel took out the UNIFIL post deliberately.