The New York Times has an article by Steve Erlanger describing Israeli Army and Hamas tactics in the urban battle for Gaza City. Essentially Israeli tactics are designed to identify, isolate and destroy Hamas operatives hiding amid the civilian population. Hamas tactics are precisely the opposite: they are designed to undifferentiate themselves, blend in with and surround themselves with the civilians.
Unwilling to take Israel’s bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off their uniforms. The militants emerge from tunnels to shoot automatic weapons or antitank missiles, then disappear back inside, hoping to lure the Israeli soldiers with their fire.
In one apartment building in Zeitoun, in northern Gaza, Hamas set an inventive, deadly trap. According to an Israeli journalist embedded with Israeli troops, the militants placed a mannequin in a hallway off the building’s main entrance. They hoped to draw fire from Israeli soldiers who might, through the blur of night vision goggles and split-second decisions, mistake the figure for a fighter. The mannequin was rigged to explode and bring down the building.
In the 64 odd years since the Second World War ended, the nature of protective armor has changed from physical to information barriers. In the past, combatants protected themselves with materials made of rock, reinforced concrete or rolled homogenous armor. With those materials easily penetrable by modern weapons, groups like Hamas must don informational armor while Israelis must seek to pierce it. A monograph describing tactics on Okinawa explained what things were like in the heyay of physical armor. The Japanese sheltered in caves while the Americans advanced with their own mobile caves: tanks.
In other words the basic tactical unit on each side was a pillbox and accompanying infantry. The Americans used a mobile, slightly vulnerable pillbox, the tank, against the Japanese who used invulnerable but not mobile pillboxes, the caves.
In Gaza, Hamas’ armor consists of emitting an outward civilian signature. The Israeli Army task is to pierce the wrapper and read the inner, encrypted information. The NYT article describes how the IDF uses its version of telemarketers to ask, ‘hello, is this Hamas?’
Israeli intelligence officers are telephoning Gazans and, in good Arabic, pretending to be sympathetic Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians or Libyans, Gazans say and Israel has confirmed. After expressing horror at the Israeli war and asking about the family, the callers ask about local conditions, whether the family supports Hamas and if there are fighters in the building or the neighborhood.
Karim Abu Shaban, 21, of Gaza City said he and his neighbors all had gotten such calls. His first caller had an Egyptian accent. “Oh, God help you, God be with you,” the caller began.
“It started very supportive,” Mr. Shaban said, then the questions started. The next call came in five minutes later. That caller had an Algerian accent and asked if he had reached Gaza. Mr. Shaban said he answered, “No, Tel Aviv,” and hung up.
“Knock, knock. Who’s there?” In Gaza infrastructure is kept intact or destroyed according to whether it contributes to the information war. Keeping utilities working and providing relief gains civilian sympathy, so they are kept going; because sympathy generates information. Small diameter bombs are used to limit collateral damage to preserve civilian sympathy, again so that they will be forthcoming with both operational tips or political support. Phones which can be tapped or used to gather and deliver intelligence information are kept working. Cellular telephones within operational areas are used by Hamas to maneuver their forces, so they are jammed. Everything is weighed and found either good or wanting in the scales of information.
There are two basic types of information armor. The first may be termed encryption armor. This conceals the target from enemy view. Hamas encrypt themselves as civilians. Israelis conceal themselves by hiding their physical signatures in basic ways, like staying off the streets or moving in the dark. The NYT report says “to avoid booby traps, the Israelis say, they enter buildings by breaking through side walls, rather than going in the front. Once inside, they move from room to room, battering holes in interior walls to avoid exposure to snipers and suicide bombers dressed as civilians, with explosive belts hidden beneath winter coats.” The Israeli encrypt their movements and intentions by limiting access to the battlefield by foreign journalists.
Hamas knows this as well as anyone and its use of encryption armor has already been described. But it has access to second kind of information armor we may call the taboo. Taboo armor is of a very special kind and it can be totally impenetrable, no matter what physical weapons are available to the IDF. Take the forged, 1 mm thick, case-hardened, diplomatic immunity armor.
JERUSALEM, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Israel accused Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip on Sunday of hiding in foreign diplomatic missions in an effort to elude Israeli forces. “The leaders of Hamas and the armed wing are hiding in bunkers, hospitals and foreign missions,” Israeli Cabinet Secretary Oved Yehezkel told reporters, basing his information on an intelligence briefing received by ministers. He did not name the missions. Few countries have diplomatic missions in Gaza and even Egypt has withdrawn its staff. The United Nations says it keeps Hamas militants out of the schools, clinics and other institutions it runs there.
Only slightly less resistant taboos are the kindergarten school, hospital or baby milk factory armor. But it is only available to Hamas. Although Israel can avail of a limited amount of encryption armor, it has no recourse to the taboo. A Jew can’t hide in a hospital and expect to be safe. Whatever the world says, it really is “ok” to shell a Jewish hospital or child’s nursery. It may even be desirable.
Taboo armor is created by repeated applications of political coating and Israeli leadership has been outmaneuvered on this front for decades; therefore while IDF Merkeva tanks are far more heavily protected than any Hamas pillbox, in the contest of informational armor, Hamas has the King Tiger while Israel has the early model gasoline powered, dry ammunition storage Sherman, or maybe even the cardboard tank.
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42 Comments
1. NahnCee:Used to be that if you were an American, that was “taboo armor” — for example in Saudi Arabia it’s alright for them to abuse their Filippino and Pakistani imported employees, but more difficult and verboten to be equally abusive to American or Western citizens because of repercussions from those countries.
Then, in Bali and Mumbai among others, we saw terrorists targeting for American victims first (or Jews), and then any other Westerner. Dead Muslims in those instances are collateral damage and don’t count.
But it seems to me that Bush going into Iraq and Afghanistan has resurrected at least a little bit part of the taboo armor of being an American: “you take down two of our buildings, we’ll take down two of your countries.” Most governments aren’t willing to tweak Uncle Sam that hard now to see what his reaction will be.
Jan 11, 2009 - 5:42 pm 2. Kinuachdrach:Very interesting take on the situation, Wretchard — with an interesting corollary.
Those who use Taboo armor are limiting themselves to inflicting pin pricks.
After all, any taboo can be broken. The Allies did not begin WWII by firebombing civilians in German & Japanese cities; they broke the Taboo about targeting civilians only as the pain grew with the war dragging on and casualties rising.
If Hamas really hurts Israel, then Gaza is glass. Taboo armor will be worthless.
Sometimes, Taboo armor & the thousand pin-prick approach works. Think Clinton abandoning Somalia. But it may not be reliable armor against an Israel with no place to run.
Jan 11, 2009 - 5:47 pm 3. F:People who wage asymetric warfare are pushing the envelope further and further — dressing as civilians, then hiding behind children, then in hospitals, and now in diplomatic missions. As a retired diplomat I find this reprehensible. Stay in the hospitals and kindergartens, you barbarians! Have you no shame? F
Jan 11, 2009 - 6:12 pm 4. steveaz:Informational armor? Absolutely!
It is posts like this one that elevate Richard’s site above the rest.
Your ability, Richard, to synthesize multiple, often-confusing observations into a single, conclusive and useful concept is what keeps me coming back.
Thanks for what you do!
Jan 11, 2009 - 6:21 pm 5. Uncle Jefe:-Steve
“Most governments aren’t willing to tweak Uncle Sam that hard now to see what his reaction will be.”
Jan 11, 2009 - 6:39 pm 6. Josh:That changes on January 20th, NahnCee.
Yes, but there really is no such thing at all as “armor” in the modern day. An M1 tank can be taken out by a $500 RPG, if it hits just right. Thirty feet of concrete can be blown through by a bunker-buster bomb. WWII era weapons can wipe out “information” armor – carpet bombing.
Hide a high-value target inside of the armor, and the armor attracts more attention.
The real “armor” of Hamas is that no single target is really worth much.
Jan 11, 2009 - 6:41 pm 7. Leo Linbeck III:One query, one sidebar, and one comment:
Query:
Presumably, a foreign mission knows that it’s sheltering Hamas leaders. If so, isn’t this a hostile act? And doesn’t that imply that a series of escalating actions (warning, ultimatum, destruction) against the mission? I understand why a kindergarten or hospital is not a legitimate target (and therefore an illegitimate shelter). Why should a foreign mission enjoy the same status?
Sidebar:
I once had an MBA student pitch me the idea of a company that would transport valuables (money, jewelry, art) purely by stealth. He’d drive a late model Monte Carlo, sport a bohemian unshaven, unkempt appearance, and be unarmed. He’d pick up the package, put it in an old backpack, drive to the destination, and make the drop. He’d blend in to any “normal” urban environment, and no one would suspect that he was anything other than an underemployed vagabond.
His point was that when you look at the cost of a Brinks truck, all of the security systems necessary to support that truck, and the fact that the truck basically called out “Hey, I’ve got something valuable here – come and get it!”, he could run his operation much more cost-effectively and successfully.
My problem was that it wasn’t clear to me how the business would scale. After all, the threat of an “inside job” seemed like the biggest threat, and while he was a very trustworthy sort of guy, how could he hire people with the same level of trust?
Comment:
The notion of taboo armor relies on the other guy respecting the taboo. It seems like a risky strategy for Hamas, especially when coupled with a media campaign that tries to convince the world that Israel is acting deplorably. One of the main reasons people respect taboos is to maintain their reputation. But if you succeed in destroying their reputation, you remove a significant incentive to respect the taboo.
However, the Hamas stealth strategy also relies on trust. As we saw in Anbar, once the locals stop trusting you, it’s over. But trust is also asymmetric; it takes hundreds of people to maintain your “trust shield,” but only one person to finger you. So it gets harder to keep everyone in line as others begin to defect. This would imply that the destruction of Hamas, if it occurs, will happen very quickly after many months of seemingly ineffective effort. The pressure that Israeli political leadership will have to withstand will be tremendous. It will be interesting to see if they have the resolve.
At the end of the day, stealth relies on small numbers. So if I had to choose between taboo and kevlar, I’m going with kevlar.
L3
Jan 11, 2009 - 6:50 pm 8. A Conservative Teacher:I might be mistaken, but isn’t someone who is not wearing a uniform who is engaged in warfare a brigand, or pirate, or common criminal, and the penalty when caught is to be shot or hung?
Jan 11, 2009 - 7:14 pm 9. pst314:“…but isn’t someone who is not wearing a uniform…”
Yes, such a person is an unlawful combatant, is unentitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, and can be summarily executed. (But don’t tell that to your liberal friends lest they have an aneurysm.) And when Hamas fighters hide in diplomatic missions, those missions lose their immunity and become legitimate military targets. Use google to find and read the complete text of the Geneva Conventions.
Jan 11, 2009 - 7:35 pm 10. Lifeofthemind:Taboos shift. Consider what happened to Athens and the Spartans during the Peloponnesian War. At first the Athenians took comfort in the knowledge that they were more civilized than the Spartans and counted on economic pressures from a blockade supported by peripheral raids. Three years or so into the war in 428/427 when Myteline revolted they reconsidered the harsh judgement and sent a second ship to bare the message of reprieve. Thukydides wrote moingly of how the two ships one with a message of life pulled by oarsmen laboring unwillingly and the second ship speeding across the Aegean by men pulling for life raced across the sea. Finally in 416/415 Melos refused to submit and in one of the coldest passages in history we read how the Athenians warned them that the “weak suffer what they must” and then put Melos to the sword.
Israel is walking a fine line, they choose to hold themselves to higher standards. Democracy and Mosaic law are not suicide pacts. The constraints on Israeli conduct are twofold. First is the internal moral rule of the taboo. That could prevent them from solving their problem by killing 100,000 Gazans but at the same time the need to retain the credibility of the nuclear deterrent means that if the threat was existential then they could act. So it is a proportional not an absolute taboo. The second constraint is external. Israel must calibrate its actions while considering how they will effect relations with other players. For example Israel could empty Gaza. That could be the best answer in terms of tactical considerations. While there is an internal moral taboo against doing so that is certainly weaker than the taboo against mass killing. The primary reason not to empty Gaza into Egypt is not even because the Europeans would disapprove. The resultant fear such an action would engender might even be an incentive. The main reason not to do it is a desire not to create a revolution in Cairo. That consideration also is not absolute and might decline, or be seen as overcome by other forces toppling the Egyptian regime over time.
Jan 11, 2009 - 7:41 pm 11. NahnCee:Hamas hiding in diplomatic missions / Iranian students over-running American embassy and holding hostages.
Is there an Iranian “diplomatic mission” in Gaza?
If so, would it be housing the same sort of Persian diplomats that we are so familiar with from Iraq?
If so, deux, precisely what is the definition of a “diplomatic mission” and who decides when and where it receives diplomatic immunity?
Jan 11, 2009 - 8:14 pm 12. Chad:In the movie Dark Knight, the Joker uses taboo armor very effectively. No wonder he is always laughing. As a movie playing to the themes of terrorism, The Dark Knight encapsulates our current middle east theater very well. See Andrew Klaven’s take on Batman as George Bush.
Jan 11, 2009 - 8:26 pm 13. Tom the Redhunter:http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121694247343482821.html
Leo Linbeck III wrote “The notion of taboo armor relies on the other guy respecting the taboo. It seems like a risky strategy for Hamas, especially when coupled with a media campaign that tries to convince the world that Israel is acting deplorably.”
Sadly I think we live in an age in which their strategy of “taboo armor” is not risky at all. The most we in the West (and I count Israel here) can do is counter it with our own armor and try and develop as precise weaponry as we can.
Jan 11, 2009 - 8:35 pm 14. DougS:I forget now whether I read it here, or on Strategypage, or somewhere else. But it seems that the Israelis have been fairly successful in cultivating human intelligence in Gaza, and not always by appealing to venality. Wretchard alludes a little bit to this in this post. I don’t think their situation in this aspect of the conflict is hopeless.
Wretchard, if you stand by your Tiger-Sherman analogy, it’s worth considering that the M4s may have been underarmored and undergunned, but the flip-side is that they were much more reliable than the German heavy tanks. I recall one German ex-tanker recalling his frustration at how often the King Tigers broke down compared to the Shermans; a tank with better specs is worthless if it won’t run. In other words, obvious advantages don’t always translate into victory in the long run.
Jan 11, 2009 - 9:26 pm 15. wretchard:There’s a book which I’ve only seen the reviews on called Commanding the Red Army’s Shermans. The Amazon Review says, “Strangely, Loza has more good things to say about the Sherman tank than Belton Cooper, who wrote Death Traps (which I just read). Cooper thinks the tanks were no match for their German counterparts, Loza argues that used properly, emphasizing speed and maneuverability, they could and did stand up to the Panthers and even Tigers tolerably well.”
One excerpt I remember seeing was Loza’s claim that the Russians liked the Shermans because they were warm. The Shermans would operate in groups and open fire on Tigers in pairs. The idea was to hit the Tiger in the treads, which would make it slew around whereupon the other Red Army Sherman would fire through the thin side armor. He claimed the M4A2 could move where the Tiger couldn’t and that gave them even more tactical advantages and their rubber tracks kept them from clanking. So maybe in the wider spaces of the Eastern Front, unlike the Bocage country for which the Tiger is associated with, the more mobile and reliable Shermans could pick and choose their fights.
Jan 11, 2009 - 9:50 pm 16. Lowell:To add to DougS’s observation of Shermans vs. Tigers. We sent a lot of them to the Russians and the Russians *loved* them. Not just because of their reliability, but because they were faster and more maneuverable than the Tigers. The Russians were able to develop superior tactics that involved moving faster than the Tigers could traverse their main gun and then getting behind the Tiger for a killing shot.
Jan 11, 2009 - 9:55 pm 17. Thrasymachus:Wretchard has written the best analysis of this phenomenon I have ever read. In fact I don’t remember *anybody* ever analyzing the phenomenon before. Still the phenomenon itself is sight out of the Marxist-Leninist playbook and goes back to the Vietnam War at least.
I’m reminded of the scene in “The Bicycle Thief” where the bicycle is stolen. The thief jumps on it and rides off, and when the owner starts to chase him, another man gets between them and asks “What’s going on? What happened?” He is of course a confederate.
The media of course is also a confederate, and to say they are unwilling or unaware is a stretch. The only way to disable this strategy is simply to ignore it. Communism didn’t die in Eastern Europe, it died in Latin America, where the cadres went to the metal bed frames wired to car batteries, and then into the sea, and then the earnest “democratic” socialists who deplored these awful violations of human rights and admired the passionate idealism of the Communists, got the same treatment.
If you prevent a man from defending himself you are just as much a participant and just as guilty as the perpetrator.
Jan 11, 2009 - 11:03 pm 18. whiskey:Taboos as noted can be broken. The universal reviling of Israel and Obama’s slew/skew/favoritism to Hamas (which raised money and phone banked for him) makes Israel have few reasons to keep to the taboos.
And the US Army in Cologne moved through buildings in the same way. The Germans called it cheating — using high explosives to blow holes in buildings and move through them entirely avoiding the street at all times. That was the brutal street fighting in Cologne, with heavy artillery used point blank in the streets by the US Army.
Why not in Gaza? The rockets are still raining down on Southern Israel. That’s the nature of war.
Jan 11, 2009 - 11:08 pm 19. rumcrook:this is an awsome thread. Thrasymachus your inside football addition on the communists brought forward my thoughts on colaborators for the islamists in the west running cover for them with multi culti laws making it impossible to criticize thier behavior or anything else, and holding rallies decrying israels self defense, and hamstringing our abilty to gather intel on the islamists and kill them so how does the west survive the unholy alliance between the socialists/commies and liberals who have taken up common cause with the islamists who are the shock troops doing the dirty work on the ground?
Jan 11, 2009 - 11:37 pm 20. Taxpayer:I don’t see how Israel can achieve more than a temporary draw under their self-imposed ROE.
I don’t understand why Israel has not permanently and totally closed their border with Gaza – after all, Gaza is supposed to be independent now. No electricity, water, food, fuel, goods, people, etc – would pass.
Recognize Hamas in Gaza as a State. Then if rockets come out of Gaza, its an act of war, Israel formally declares war, and then bombs the power system, and the water system, etc. until the rockets stop. If that requires Gaza to look like Berlin in 1945, so be it.
Jan 11, 2009 - 11:47 pm 21. Utopia Parkway:One problem with the taboo armor strategy is that it is slowly worn down. Hamas cries wolf by storing arms in mosques. In this conflict Israel has fired on numerous mosques that had arms in them. There has been nary a peep from anyone about it either. The US military fired on mosques in Iraq as well, for similar reasons. The tragedy of course is that the terrorists, who honor no rules, ruin things for those who would honor the rules.
The ultimate taboo is firing on civilians. Again the terrorists use this taboo to hide behind civilians. While I doubt that Israeli forces will knowingly fire directly on civilians they are forced to make shoot/don’t shoot decisions that must be very difficult. The brouhaha over the deaths at the UN school still continues, with both, or all, sides accusing each other of malfeasance and exaggeration of the event.
It is amazing to me how much intelligence the Israelis have. They go after specific terrorist leaders and after killing them their names are reported in the paper in hours. If they know all this how can they not know where Gilad Shalit is? My theory is that he’s in a bunker under the Shifa hospital. That’s a place Hamas expects to be safe from Israeli attack. It’s protected by the taboo armor after all.
I was amazed by the video showing Hamas soldiers dragging children along to be their “protection.” They expect that having a child next to them will protect them from being targeted but to actually see a man dragging a reluctant child across the street is so cowardly and bizarre that it’s almost hard to believe. These terrorists are the lowest of the low.
And just a few days ago you all seemed certain that Israel would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Jan 12, 2009 - 12:14 am 22. Walt:American commanders in WWII were resigned to losing two Shermans for every Mark IV or Panther. The Sherman was undergunned and underarmored. The only Sherman that stood a one to one chance with a Mark IV or Panther was the upgunned British Firefly. The US Army had a tank able to take on the best in the Wehrmacht, the M26, with a 90 mm gun, but did not want to stop the Sherman assembly lines because they thought the war would be over by Fall of 1944. The Germans, meanwhile, brought out ever more powerful and complicated designs that were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of Shermans, which were turned out like putty knives. In the end, the sheer numbers of putty knives won over technical superiority.
Jan 12, 2009 - 12:21 am 23. Barry Meislin:And then there’s the booby traps….
See this video just below the top right of the JPOST.COM site: Booby-trapped school found; IAF aborts missions when civilians enter.
Consider the following:
Jan 12, 2009 - 2:12 am 24. Barry Meislin:1. There is nothing that Hamas will not stoop to.
2. We are all Hamas now.
3. Iran is providing the materiel and pulling the strings.
Corrected link
Jan 12, 2009 - 2:14 am 25. Bob Murphy:http://www.nypost.com/seven/01102009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_demons_of_gaza_149549.htm?page=0
I don’t know if that link will work guys (and Nahncee)but it’s about the Gaza thang by Ralph Peters and ran in the NY Post a couple of days ago.
Jan 12, 2009 - 4:25 am 26. Bob Murphy:People keep talking about German tanks like the Mk IV and the Panther but the Russian T-34 and T-34/85 was the best tank of the war.
The US finally did get a tank onto the battlefield that was better than anything the Germans had but that was late in the game.
It had a stabilized gun which means you could be bouncing your way across a paddock and the gun would stay aimed. The tank bounced but the gun did not.
Blitzkreig meister Heinz Guderian wrote a very interesting book on his fighting experiences in France and Russia that is a real eye opener. It was called Panzer Leader.
Jan 12, 2009 - 4:30 am 27. Bob Murphy:Blowing “mouseholes” in buildings and staying under cover was a common tactic used by the German Army in WWII so it’s nothing new.
In fact they used it against the British paras in Holland and it is described in “A Bridge Too Far”.
Jan 12, 2009 - 4:32 am 28. UNRR:This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 1/11/2009, at The Unreligious Right
Jan 12, 2009 - 4:45 am 29. Herb:Part of the precedent for success of the taboo is that there must be a way to convey the violation of the taboo. If a school/kindergarten/hospital is hit and nobody knows it, so? Access by a reliable and sympathetic press is how violations are conveyed. That is becoming eroded by pallywood and photoshop. The problem remains that the street is full of people who believe anything they see.
Jan 12, 2009 - 7:02 am 30. Alex:Wretchard, interesting and original, my compliments. However, why are the taboos so country-specific? It seems only the US and Israel are expected to obey these taboos, no matter how much of a disadvantage this puts them. Compare and contrast Israel in Gaza with Russia in Chechneya and you will see what I mean.
Could it be that a country can neutralize taboos by ignoring them over time? No one seems to expect the Russians to be deterred by the presence of “child armor.” And of course,no Islamic country seems expected to abide by the same rules. Since the taboos are not universal, what incentive is there to obey them? By carefully avoiding civilian casualties Israel gets – the exact same condemnation and criticism she would have gotten had she leveled schools and hospitals in the first place! So, why not?
Jan 12, 2009 - 7:53 am 31. steveaz:After sleeping on it, I saw a parallel between terrorists’ “informational armor” and the Democrat’s campaign strategy over the last eight years.
Even though George Bush won significant bipartisan support for his policies, from the tax cuts, to “the Surge,” to the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, the Democrats managed to convince enough Americans that they opposed him on every front.
Just as with ME terrorism, the media tailored the obfuscating clothes for their clients. And, also in keeping with, say, CNN’s approach to Hamas, the Dem’s relied on a taboo to avoid accountability: lies. Instead of courting the deaths of children in schoolyards to justify their camouflage, the Dem’s relied on repeated accusations that Bush “lied.”
When parties share tactics, they have a certain culpability in common. I hope this is as far as the comparison goes.
Jan 12, 2009 - 8:25 am 32. Richard Aubrey:Not only did we lose a lot of Shermans fighting German armor, we lost a lot of guys.
Tanks we can afford. Crews, not so much. Or shouldn’t, anyway. Shouldn’t have to.
The funny–in a strange way–thing is that the most fervent believers (as opposed to users of) taboo armor are the religious liberals. They really believe in taboo armor. But only for one side. They will rationalize Hamas attacks on Jewish civilians all day long, as they did VC atrocities against civilians in Viet Nam. And they really believe themselves.
Jan 12, 2009 - 8:51 am 33. Anton:One writer put it down to the overwhelming power of the victim status. Muslims have managed a two-fer. Victim and bully simultaneously, or alternately, as required. Hardly anybody’s been that good.
I believe that the taboo only works against an opponent that holds themselves to a higher standard. The US will try to avoid killing civilians, the Russians look you in the eye and say, “You got a problem with that?”. I.E. if you think it is wrong to kill non-combatants then you are bad if/when you do (even if you do so inadvertently) if you don’t give a damn you are exempt. What everybody seems to miss is the start point; if Hamas quit attacking Israel the IDF would never trouble them again.
The problem is that Hamas consists largely of infantile sociopaths that cannot live without being center of attention; to give up their grieveance culture would mean that they would have to get a day job and be productive.
Jan 12, 2009 - 10:18 am 34. Brock:This is very silly. Why Israel insists on fighting with its gloves on boggles me. The information as to “Where is Hamas?” exists within Gaza. Hamas has no armor that can protect them from its immediate neighbors. The only thing Israel needs to do is to convince the neighbors who possess this information that they ought to act on it in a resolution inducing manner. And Israel only needs their tactical cooperation, not their support in the emotional sense.
All Israel needs to do is announce a 50:1 policy. Each Hamas missile will be answered by 50 Israeli missiles, aimed at no house in particular. Small diameter bombs will not be used (that’s explicitly part of the 50:1 policy).
And just to make sure the UN gets the message, Israel must also announce that an explicit plank of the 50:1 policy its full intention of ignoring all taboos and “international laws.” Those only belong to those who respect them in turn; Hamas of course has not done this and has declared war on Israel’s civilian populace and infrastructure without regard to any taboos. Any Reuters employees in the area should consider themselves warned.
Information Armor is based on respect – the assumption that the other guy will “respect” your armor for some reason internal to him. Anyone who gives the impression that he’s got respect for something other than the lives of his loved ones is a fool. Israel needs to reconsider its first principles. Civilization is pleasant, but its maintenance requires the willingness to use the tools of Barbarism under confined circumstance for short periods of time. The Citizen must be different from the Barbarian in the sense that he is capable of Civilization (and prefers it), not incapable of Barbarism (though he detests it).
Jan 12, 2009 - 11:22 am 35. Tcobb:Any Reuters employees in the area should consider themselves warned.Information Armor is based on respect – the assumption that the other guy will “respect” your armor for some reason internal to him.
I think you have put your finger on the key. When “journalists” say bad things about the Palestinians, bad things happen to them, even if the worst is just being evicted from the territory or having your stream of information being cut off. When they say bad things about the Israelis, nothing happens to them. At the very least, the journalists who are shilling for the Palestinians should be declared persona non grada in Israel and should be warned that because they associate with Hamas representatives their whereabouts will be tracked, and hopefully (snicker, snicker) they won’t be meeting with anybody who is slated to be shot or blown up on sight.
Jan 12, 2009 - 2:37 pm 36. DougRek:An elderly gentlement who survived 900+ days of starvation in Leningrad, who was 9 at the time the seige ended, said they loved the arrival of the American tanks because of the leather seat cushions: they boiled and ate them.
Jan 12, 2009 - 4:31 pm 37. Eric J:The Gazans are ultimately playing a dangerous game. As has been said above, taboos shift, culture changes. There is sufficient Old Testament justification for absolute genocide of the Palestinians that a cultural shift in that direction is possible over the course of a generation or two.
No one can look at Meir Kahane now and say he was wrong.
Jan 12, 2009 - 4:35 pm 38. Informational Armor « Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group:[...] What is essential is invisible to the eye [...]
Jan 12, 2009 - 4:38 pm 39. Wadeusaf:The Double-standard strength Taboo armor is what has keep the world attentive to the woes of the Gazan children while shedding nary a tear over the dilemma of the Israeli child similarly injured.
It is the semantic desecration of the language of empathy and sorrow by members of the elite ranks of academe and “cult-ure” that double glazed and double pained eyes wet with the tears of easily avoidable, nightmare encroaching anguish and trauma.
Thank you men of the left, for these twisted and gnarled ghouls of thought repression and the immoral lie. How will you now deal with the oppressions and tainted by human expression of life, now that you have charge? Remember please, the whole world is watching.
Jan 12, 2009 - 10:31 pm 40. blert:The statistics are in: Shermans virtually never killed King Tigers. Once a German Heavy Tank was spotted, standard operating procedure was to call in Tac Air Support — a spotter with the Ninth Air Force was always forward deployed.
Napalm was used to devastating effect against tanks in Normandy. The morale impact was horrific.
The number of German tanks lost to Tac Air and low gas ( Tac Air at the second remove ) was huge.
Other favorite tank stoppers: heavy naval guns — they work every time…
——
The Strategic Out for Israel: cut a moat at the Egyptian border of Gaza from the Med to the Negev… say 200 meters wide… drop the spoil into the Med slightly off shore creating an artificial island and naval base… keep extending the moat further into the Negev as needed….
Jan 13, 2009 - 11:25 am 41. Steynian 308 « Free Canuckistan!:[...] ISRAELI TACTICS– What is essential is invisible to the eye …. [...]
Jan 14, 2009 - 6:20 am 42. barry 0351:In the allys and the gutters of the world when fighting with men of low morals the one who insists on the Marquis de Queensbury rules will get his righteous ass stomped.
Jan 14, 2009 - 8:02 amFight like you mean to win damnit or you will surely die.
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