Blog

Trumpets and the roar of tanks. A turning point in Gaza?

of RichardCamping
During the years of conflict in Gaza, the majority of the world’s media has passionately reported on the deaths of Palestinian civilians, as if they were the deliberate target of a horrific and merciless war tactic on the part of Israel. This blatantly false propaganda has been adopted by Hamas supporters and “useful idiots” in the West… Human rights groups around the world do the same.

During an operation in Gaza last week, the Israel Defense Forces attacked a Hamas tunnel complex with 12 squadrons of 160 aircraft, striking over 150 targets with hundreds of JDAM-type guided bombs in less than an hour. Although the damage assessment of the operation is still ongoing, the raid destroyed perhaps Hamas’s most critical military infrastructure, eliminating vast ammunition stockpiles, and likely killed dozens, if not hundreds, of fighters. This was a major blow to Hamas, and could prove to be a turning point in the conflict. He also sent a strong message to Iran and Hezbollah, warning of the consequences of an attack on Israel, with its arsenal of tens of thousands of missiles in southern Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces operation was a carefully coordinated combination of intelligence, surveillance, knowledge of enemy tactics, deception, surprise, and precision-targeted overwhelming force. Of these, deception and surprise were the key elements. Surprise is a war principle of American, British, and many other forces. The U.S. Army Battlefield Manual defines it as “hitting the enemy at a time, in a place, or in a manner for which he is unprepared.” The manual goes on to say: “Deception can help the likelihood of achieving surprise.” Throughout the history of warfare, surprise achieved through deception has led to many stunning military victories—often against all odds.

The IDF's deception operation is reminiscent of the biblical Israelite leader Gideon's famous trick against the Midianites. He had his men blow trumpets, light torches, and shout war cries, simulating a much larger force than they actually had, thus forcing the vastly superior enemy army to flee.

Last Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces massed tanks, artillery, and infantry fighting vehicles on the Gaza border, their engines roaring like Gideon’s trumpets. The mobilization did not go unnoticed by Hamas, with international media reporting extensively on it as an imminent ground attack. Like the Midianites, hundreds of Hamas fighters rushed to take refuge in the underground network of tunnels. These tunnels, built by Hamas after the 2014 conflict to house administrative facilities, store weapons, and facilitate protected movements, spanned dozens of kilometers beneath the Gaza Strip. There, the fighters were trapped as JDAM-type guided bombs fell from above. As they mobilized for an invasion that never took place, the surviving anti-tank and mortar teams were also hit from the air.

This masterpiece of tactical timing, with its distinctive complexity, symbolizes the precision strikes of the Israel Defense Forces during this campaign, which has been called Operation Guardian of the Walls. These attacks have already caused so much damage that Hamas will take years to recover from. The Israel Defense Forces have learned many lessons from previous operations in Gaza. Since 2014, they have been intensively collecting intelligence and working to develop battle plans and technological solutions to confront Hamas and its Palestinian Islamic Jihad allies.

Hamas is an easy opponent for the Israel Defense Forces, which are so strong that they could defeat them quickly and at a lower cost. However, there is something else to consider: the Israelis want to minimize civilian casualties, and Hamas knows this very well. It knows that it cannot outmaneuver the Israel Defense Forces and has no intention of trying. Hamas’s entire strategy is to attack Israeli population centers using rockets, suicide drones, and tunnels, with the aim of provoking counterattacks by the Israel Defense Forces that will kill its own citizens. In this way, it demonizes and isolates Israel throughout the world, gaining global support to achieve its goals. Using human shields as a key element of every operation, Hamas is the first “army” in history to use the lives of its civilian population as weapons of war.

This strategy has proven to be extremely successful. During the years of conflict in Gaza, the majority of the world’s media have passionately reported on the deaths of Palestinian civilians, as if they were the deliberate target of a horrific and ruthless war tactic by Israel. This blatantly false propaganda has been adopted by Hamas supporters and “useful idiots” in the West. In the US, Britain and Europe, last week we saw hundreds of anti-Israel protesters holding Palestinian banners, burning Israeli flags, spewing their hatred for the Jewish state and shouting at the Israel Defense Forces as baby killers. Hamas' slanders are the primary motivation of anti-Israel academics in higher and secondary education in the West, who use its false claims as material to brainwash entire generations of students.

Human rights groups around the world are doing the same. There have been dozens of anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, often based on Hamas rhetoric and distorting every aspect of the conflict in Gaza. The highlight was the decision by the International Criminal Court this year to launch a thorough investigation, in the hope of bringing Israeli soldiers, officials and politicians to trial in The Hague.

I have attended every session of the UN Human Rights Council and every special public debate on the conflict in Gaza over the past 15 years. The willful ignorance combined with bad intent has always been appalling. Every commission of inquiry has found Israel guilty before the first meeting. Every public debate and vote has overwhelmingly and of course falsely confirmed the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, the actual multiple war crimes of Hamas have been brushed aside.

The reality is very different from the lies that come from these modern-day Towers of Babel. The IDF attack on the underground tunnels this week was a lightning operation that involved coordinating the attack of 160 planes on a small area in a very short period of time. In addition to this incredibly complex operation, the IDF selected specific targets to ensure minimal civilian casualties, such as empty roads under which the tunnels passed and constant close monitoring to ensure that no bus full of people suddenly passed by. The IDF has so far destroyed several high-rise buildings that housed important Hamas military infrastructure, as well as political offices and apartments. It is noteworthy that all of this was destroyed without any civilian casualties being reported.

As in previous clashes in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces made radio broadcasts in Arabic, sent text messages, and even called citizens inside the Strip to warn them of impending strikes. Gaza residents have given interviews confirming something like that.

When civilians do not leave a planned target building, the Israel Defense Forces sometimes drop specially designed low-yield munitions ("roof-hit") as a warning to leave the building. By carefully monitoring target areas, the Israeli Air Force often aborts planned sorties if there is a risk of hitting a civilian population.

In a conflict designed by Hamas to maximize civilian casualties, some things are inevitable. It is too early to make an accurate estimate of the number of casualties or the ratio of civilian-to-combatant killed. However, according to current estimates, the Israel Defense Forces have succeeded in minimizing the loss of innocent civilians during this campaign than in previous engagements in Gaza. Many media outlets, human rights groups, and international organizations have been quick to characterize all civilian casualties (except those caused by Hamas, of course) as war crimes. But the Geneva Conventions disagree. Causing casualties among civilians is not an illegal act, provided that a military operation is necessary for the conduct of the war. This also applies when the casualties are not disproportionate to the planned military gain, and when there is no deliberate order to target civilians, while at the same time everything humanly possible is done to avoid striking them.

The media considers the Gaza Health Ministry’s reports to be authentic and objective. This is hypocritical and they know it. The Health Ministry is controlled by Hamas and follows its every command. For example, of the approximately 2.000 rockets fired so far by Hamas during this conflict, approximately 400 have landed inside Gaza. Some of these have killed civilians, and the Health Ministry has blamed all of these on the actions of the Israel Defense Forces.

By all accounts, the most effective means of saving Gazans has been Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Despite Hamas’s attempts to circumvent it, Iron Dome has had a 90% success rate in stopping rockets from Gaza from hitting their targets. Not only have countless Israeli civilians been saved, it has also made the IDF’s operation more targeted, discreet, and precise. If hundreds of Israelis had died from Hamas rockets, the Israeli military would have had no choice but to attack Gaza with far greater ferocity, while the infantry would have already entered the Gaza Strip, inevitably causing far more casualties than we have seen so far.

Yet, as the media constantly shows us, the real victims of this campaign have indeed been the citizens of Gaza. But, as usual, the media gets the cause wrong. Every casualty is due to Hamas’s unprovoked aggression against Israel. None of this would have happened without it. Once this round of fighting is over, Hamas will begin to prepare better for the next time—that is, to rebuild its military forces, not its non-military infrastructure. If Western governments, international organizations, and human rights groups are truly interested in preventing suffering in Gaza, they should start now by trying to end Hamas’s regime of terror, not by parroting its threatening rhetoric.

Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army commander. He was also head of the UK Prime Minister's Office's International Terrorism Task Force and is now a writer and speaker on international and military affairs. Richard Kemp is Shillman Journalism Fellow onInstitute Gatestone.