EVEN SOME ISRAELIS ADMIT THE IOF HAS GONE TOO FAR
The carnage Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians is not moving Israel any closer to its stated goal of eliminating Hamas. If anything, the Israeli strategy is having the opposite effect, i.e. elevating Hamas in the eyes of the beleaguered Palestinians. Yaniv Kubovich, writing in the left leaning newspaper Haaretz, reports on Israel’s self-defeating propaganda campaign. The title of his piece tells the story, Graphic Videos and Incitement: How the IDF Is Misleading Israelis on Telegram. He writes:
The IDF Operations Directorate’s Influencing Department, which is responsible for psychological warfare operations against the enemy and foreign audiences, operates a Telegram channel called 72 Virgins – Uncensored, which targets Israeli audiences and shows the bodies of Hamas terrorists with the promise of “shattering the terrorists’ fantasy.”
The channel, which boasts of “exclusive content from the Gaza Strip” and has published over 700 posts, images and videos of terrorists being killed and of destruction in the Strip, encourages its 5,300 followers to share the content so that “everyone can see that we’re screwing them.”
The Israel Defense Forces denies that it operates the channel, but a senior military official confirmed to Haaretz that the army is responsible for operating it. “There is no reason for the IDF to conduct influence campaigns on Israeli citizens of Israel,” said the official, who requested anonymity. “The messages there are problematic. It doesn’t look like an awareness campaign of an army like the IDF, but more like talking points for [far-right rapper] The Shadow, and the fact that soldiers operate such a problematic page is egregious,” he said.
This is just the latest example of Israel using self-defeating tactics as it pursues a campaign of extermination in Palestine. The murder of three Israeli hostages by the IOF has ignited a genuine crisis that threatens Netanyahu’s hold on power. Israeli families clamoring for a deal to be cut to secure the release of their loved ones are enraged and support for their protests is growing, not shrinking.
Netanyahu’s government also is trying to obfuscate the true scale and scope of Israeli casualties and equipment losses in Gaza. Despite the massive bombing over the last 80 days, Hamas continues to ambush Israeli units. The much ballyhooed Golani brigade has 25% kia since October 7 (72 of those were killed by Hamas on October 7). When you add in the wounded in action, the Golani’s strength is roughly 60%, if not lower. Israel’s problem is that it is relying on poorly trained reservists. Hamas and Hezbollah fighters are not poorly trained. If Israel expands the war into southern Lebanon it is likely to face a more sophisticated, well prepared foe than it encountered in 2006.
Israel also is catching more heat over its indiscriminate killing of civilians. Even Pope Francis, a left leaning Pope previously inclined to support Israel, has spoken out condemning the murder of two Palestinian Christian women who were shot by an Israeli sniper while trying to enter an ancient Catholic Church in Gaza.
The shooting of these women is just one more example of undisciplined, poorly trained “soldiers”. My use of “quotation” marks around soldiers is deliberate. These are not soldiers, they are thugs with a gun. No honor, no code of conduct. Pope Francis correctly condemned this as an act of terrorism by Israel.
Then there is Yemen. Apart from Hamas and Hezbollah, Yemen is the only Arab/Muslim nation taking military action against Israeli targets, primarily ships. The Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea is a violation of international law and is going to be used by the West to launch attacks on sites in Yemen that are used to launch missiles and drones. My understanding is that most of the Houthi arsenal is mobile. In other words, trying to find them and hit them will pose a serious challenge to the Western armada.
Hat tip to Simplicius who has provided the graphics and his usual excellent analysis. Here is the array of Western ships closing on Yemen.
The problem facing the U.S. warships is that they have a finite supply of missiles for air defense. If the Houthis fire a drone, that may have cost $5,000 to produce, it will be shot down by an Aegis missile that costs almost $500,000 dollars. This could turn into an expensive proposition for the U.S. Navy. Moreover, as has been revealed by the war in Ukraine, the U.S. does not have an ample inventory of such missiles and there is no immediate hope of producing more to replace what have been fired.
Simplicius also notes a major logistics hitch:
The US navy no longer has any warship resupply tenders and each warship’s air defense missiles must be restocked only in calm waters and in port, which makes resupply very time consuming and means that shooting down a bunch of cheap drones and rockets is not sustainable.
When the U.S. initiates bombing in Yemen it may find itself exposed, once again, as a super power with less than super logistics capabilities and will face the risk of having to end the campaign without eliminating the threat. That means the Red Sea will still be closed and commercial traffic significantly disrupted. Worst case? Yemen gets lucky and sinks one or two U.S. Navy ships. At that point, we are moving into uncharted waters and the threat of a global conflict will increase. Happy New Year.