Israel doing it better this time

NY Times:

This time, Israeli military commanders are leading from the front, not trying to direct the infantry from television screens. This time, the military has clear plans, in stages, drawn up with a year’s preparation. This time, there is no illusion about winning a war only from the air. This time, the military chief of staff has kept his silence in public, all cellphones have been confiscated from Israeli soldiers, and the international press has been kept out of the battlefield.

In these and many other ways, Israel is applying the lessons it learned from its failed 2006 war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to its current war against Hamas in Gaza. But Israel’s failure in Lebanon also stemmed from a political and diplomatic inability to decide on clear objectives for the outcome of the war, and here the lessons of Lebanon have been not so well applied, according to senior Israeli military officials and political analysts.

And then there are the sudden events that can throw off so many careful calculations and come to symbolize the horrors of war — like the deaths of civilians from Israeli munitions in Qana, Lebanon, both in 1996 and 2006, and the reports on Tuesday evening of as many as 40 people, including children, killed as they sought shelter in a United Nations school in northern Gaza.

While accounts of exactly what happened were unclear on Tuesday night, with Israeli officials suggesting that the school compound was used to fire mortars, the deaths will inevitably turn stomachs all over the world and increase pressure on Israel for an early cease-fire.

“Everyone is very conscious of doing things differently from 2006,” said Mark Heller, director of research at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, citing the postwar investigations carried out by the military itself and by the Winograd Commission, which harshly criticized both the political and military leaders of the time for poor preparation and performance.

...

Not mentioned is an attempt to do a better job in the media battle space. You can see there is better attention to addressing the detail. For example immediately after the shelling at the UN school the IDF reported that the shells were fired in response to a mortar attack from the area and two Hamas terrorist's bodies were found among the casualties.

What the Israelis have failed to do is articulate the Hamas victim strategy which is based on creating events like this in order to put Israel on the defensive in the media battle space. Hamas wanted those casualties and will use them as props in its campaign to survive this war.

It would also be nice for the media to recognize the Hamas manipulation and victime strategy and not let themselves be used. Perhaps the media just does not realize how cyncical Hamas is, but it is an organization which values its own civilian casualties second only to Israeli civilian casualties. I have never seen Hamas confronted on this issue, but it is clear from the way thye fight and place their military assets that I am right about their attitude toward noncombatant casualties.

The NY Times has a separate story on the restrictions on reporting the war and Israel's attempts to manage the new this time. There is the typical whining about not being allowed to go where they want to go and having to tour sites where Hamas rockets have attacked in Israel.

There is still no apparent comprehension of the cynical Hamas manipulation of noncombatant casualties and the fact that Hamas desires them on both sides.