Hezballah's plan for war crimes

Dan Gordon:

...

There was, of course one other indispensable element to their war plan; the centering of their offensive capability against Israel's civilian population within Lebanon's civilian population. Much has been made in the Western press of Hezballah's benign social services function in Lebanon, of the hospitals and schools it has built. Almost no notice however has been paid to the large numbers of these hospitals and schools which were built over its military bunkers and rocket launching sites.

This was perhaps both the most cynical and barbaric disregard for innocent civilian lives of all of Hezballah's and Iran's strategic choices. It was also the most successful. It was predicated not on its knowledge of its enemy (Israel) but its true genius lay in its knowledge of the press. The calculus was simple: launch a rocket from within a civilian population; if you kill Jews that's a victory. If the Jews hit back and in so doing kill Lebanese civilians, that's a victory. If they don't hit back because they're afraid to hit civilians, that's a victory. Now repeat the process until you kill so many Jews they have to hit back and in so doing kill more Lebanese civilians. That's the ultimate victory, because they know that in striking just those chords exactly what music the press will play. The awful truth, which the Western Press was manipulated to ignore or downplay, was that Iran, through its terrorist operational arm Hezballah, had invaded Lebanon from within. Hezballah did not protect Lebanon, they occupied it and they used those Hezballah occupied territories to launch Iran's offensive in response to the West's ultimatum to cease development of nuclear weapons.

From a military perspective there can be absolutely no doubt as to the results of Hezballah and Iran's offensive against Israel. It was a defeat. Every part of their war plan except the manipulation of the media failed. Hezballah expected and planned for a massive charge of Israeli armor into Southern Lebanon. The amounts and type of anti-tank weapons they acquired and had operationally deployed in their forward positions as well as their secondary and tertiary bands of fortresses and strongholds through Southern Lebanon attest to this fact. They intended to do in mountainous terrain what Egypt had so effectively done in the Sinai desert in the Yom Kippur war. In that war, Sinai indeed became a graveyard for Israeli armor. Hundreds of tanks were destroyed. Whole brigades were decimated in single battles by the Egyptians' highly effective anti-tank missile ambushes. In that war almost three thousand Israeli soldiers were killed. That was Hezballah's plan. It was a good one. And it failed.

Far from the prevailing impression in the media, the IDF was not "badly bloodied" nor "fought to a stand still," much less "handed a defeat." Just prior to the cease fire, Israel suffered twenty nine tanks hit. Of those, twenty five were back in service within twenty four hours. Israel suffered one hundred and seventeen soldiers killed in four weeks of combat. As painful as those individual losses were to their families and to the Israeli collective psyche which views all its soldiers as their biological sons and daughters, those numbers in fact represent the fewest casualties suffered by Israel in any of its major conflicts. In 1948, Israel suffered six thousand killed. In 1967, in what was regarded as its most decisive victory, Israel lost almost seven hundred killed in six days. In 1973, Israel lost two thousand seven hundred killed and in the first week of the first war in Lebanon, Israel suffered one hundred seventy six soldiers killed.

...

It is the compliant media, and the deceitful media that is the enemy's best ally in the war against the Islamist bigots whether it is being fought by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan or by Israel in Lebanon. The enemy's media strategy is pretty clear. What is not clear is why the main stream media allows itself to be manipulated by people who would cut their throats or force them to convert to a hideous version of a religion.

There is much more about Hezballah's war plan and Israel's response. If you are interested in warfare and how it is conducted you will want to read this article.

Gordon is a screen writer who wrote several hit movies, listed at the end of this article and he was also an IDF reserve captain during the Hezballah war.