"When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
We regularly are told that we need ‘total victory’ to defeat Hamas. Unfortunately no one actually defines what that means. Broadly speaking it means that one side decisively defeats its enemy, achieving its objectives, with the enemy surrendering or retreating. There are several types of victory.
Strategic victory-whereby political goals are achieved by military means. World War Two, was probably the last of such victories.
Tactical victory –this is limited to a specific battle or battles with a significant objective during a campaign. This has been Israel’s experience and has been ongoing.
Not all military victories result in winning the war as Iraq and Afghanistan have shown and conversely, not all military defeats end with losing the war as terrorist groups have learned. Hamas and Hezbollah are painful experiences of that.
Non-state actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah have complicated the concept of victory, exacerbated by political involvement through the UN, EU, ICJ, ICC, ICRC and NGOs. Indeed, traditional allies of Israel, including the previous Biden administration, have held back essential military supplies, stymying Israel’s abilities on the battle field.
Advancements in military technologies have made military campaigns more circumspect given the price of war in human and other costs. Often Hiroshima/Nagasaki are mentioned as reference points.
Furthermore, the politicization of international law has further complicated the concept of victory. In this respect the UN, EU and other western democracies like Australia have misrepresented international law for their own purposes. The concept of ‘proportionality’ has been a popular means to hamper Israel, with little resemblance to its proper legal formulation.
In its many military battles, Israel has demonstrated prowess and innovation but never enjoyed ‘total victory.’ Often Israel’s policy of conflict management, also called ‘mowing the lawn’ was, in effect, kicking the can down the road. Occasionally a change in tactics, being nothing more than changing the shoes to continue kicking the can.
Total victory therefore needs to be redefined into today’s reality. Winning the hearts and minds of adversaries, is Second World War vintage and not realistic in the Middle East context where psych warfare plays a central role. The defeats of Germany and Japan are sometimes referred to as models that could be applied to Hamas and Hezbollah. But the cultures, contexts and circumstances are totally different. Denazification in Germany at least had an ideal reference point of the European Enlightenment from which Germany had strayed, but potentially could return to.
Repeating this formula with Hamas /Hezbollah –return to what? There never was an Islamic Enlightenment.
Victory therefore is subjective and what constitutes success needs to be examined with a different paradigm. The question arises as to how to traverse the common but vague beliefs of victory. Some 2500 years ago Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu maintained that the best victory was to defeat the enemy without fighting. Here the aim is to engage in tactics that make resistance futile, ensuring surrender when this futility is internalized.
Hamas have been masters at psychological warfare. Despite suffering enormous losses in fighters as well as material destruction of their towns, they have been unfazed. They know that Jews are a life affirming culture while they love death. In this respect, Islam is the antithesis of Judaism. Whereas Israelis are anguished at seeing the coffins of their loved ones, Hamas/Hezbollah are exhilarated at martyrdom.
They also understand what traumatises Jews, namely humiliation through torture, rape, starvation, manipulating the media, and making hostages parade on Shabbat, to be followed by self- induced emotional implosion hours later at the Saturday night demonstrations in Tel Aviv against the Israeli government.
Arab culture is based on honour and shame. It is there we must turn in order to effect a victory that complements the military one. This entails psychological warfare which has been sadly lacking in Israel. We have fought wars from a high tech western mindset that includes not only compliance with the western rules of war, but also Israel’s Purity of Arms concept which surpasses other western countries rules. We need to fight ethically but with different points of departure that are crucial and central to the Arab culture of honour and shame. Three elements in psych warfare can be identified to be effective in fighting Israel’s enemies.
1-Humiliation 2-trauma and 3-helpless despondency.
Military prowess alone does not achieve these. We need to understand that a modern high tech army is fighting barbaric and primitive killers with different notions of success. Rape is also seen by them as a legitimate method of vanquishing and humiliating the enemy. Israel is immobilised with shock and despair despite its military. Foreign leaders are shown our trauma, reinforcing the exhilaration of Hamas and Gazans, who reverse the true victims by getting the media to focus instead on their destroyed towns.
Despite Hamas parading/humiliating freed Israeli hostages on Shabbat and murdering Israelis in Tel Aviv terror attacks, Israel reportedly relaxed checkpoints in Judea/Samaria as a Ramadan gesture. Why? To be liked? The opposite should happen.
Israel’s psych warfare sometimes is impressive as with the pagers and the Magen David T-shirts on released terrorists. These tactics need to be ongoing daily, relentlessly and smartly underpinned by forceful and concerted media propaganda. Yet, it does not happen.
Israel sometimes does half measures that have the opposite effect.
During Nasrallah’s funeral Israeli jets flew over the scores of thousands at the ceremony ‘to send them a message.’ The message had the opposite effect as thousands raised their fists at the planes shouting ‘Death to Israel.’
Imagine another scenario: Israel sending jets over the funeral, breaking the sound barrier with sonic booms, causing havoc and chaos with people scrambling in panic, falling over each other. Further, leaflets dropped with a picture of a dead Sinwar in his chair and a caption: ‘Sorry Sinwar! I couldn’t help you as they killed me too.’ Perhaps also dropping skunk bombs on them. That is humiliation.
We know that psych warfare is effective with them. How? Because Nasrallah’s children said he cried when the pagers exploded and then went into a deep depression from which he did not recover.
The three elements above are a good rule of thumb to change the rules and sharpen our revised vision of victory.
What’s stopping us?
Ron Hutteris the author of the satirical novel on anti-semitism/anti-Israelism ‘The Trombone Man:Tales of a Misogynist.’