A lot of the media narrative about what is happening in
Israel circulates around whether what Israel is doing is justified, and is what
Israel doing in Gaza self-defence or ethnic cleansing or worse? I have
addressed this in other posts, for instance this one here.[1] But I want to ask a
different question in this piece: is Israel losing, or at least doing very
badly?
This might sound like an incredulous question to ask when
the images we see coming out of Gaza show a city in rubble, broken and bleeding
people everywhere, the reports of a severe famine settling in, and more. And I
don’t think this stuff should be brushed aside either, a clear human tragedy is
happening. But is the media focusing in one direction to obscure what is
happening in another part of this war? There are signs that point to this.
Some might see a hint of that in the recent situation of
America publicly distancing itself from Israel at the U.N. by not using
its influence to veto a United Nations Security Council vote condemning
Israel.[2] The primary motive for
this is likely that it is an election year and Israel’s
war in Gaza is becoming increasingly unpopular,
especially with the Democrat's multicultural voting base, in the United States. The
United States does have a habit of moving away from supporting lost causes, on
to newer causes. This can take years, not usually months, and the fact that
around the same time the Biden
administration authorized more weapons and military equipment for Israel
shows that the United States is still supporting the war effort, whatever mild
political distancing they may be doing. So by itself this observation is not that
meaningful, because the Biden administration is now seeking to draw a line
between wholehearted support of Israel and not being ok with the tragic effects
of Israel’s war in Gaza. But there are other signs which may be more telling.
Another sign is that Israel has been covering up the real casualty figures on
their side of the ledger,
“Discrepancies arose as the
numbers of wounded Israeli soldiers reported by the Israeli army were found to
be significantly lower than figures reported by Israeli hospitals.
The Israeli army said on
Sunday that 1,593 soldiers have been wounded so far in the Israel-Gaza war.
This figure includes soldiers injured in Hamas' deadly surprise attack on
October 7.
This is the first time the
army has released comprehensive information on the soldiers wounded since the
start of the war. However, when compared with information released by Israeli
hospitals, the number of wounded soldiers is significantly higher than the
figure provided by the military.
The Barzilai Medical Center
in Ashkelon alone reports treating 1,949 soldiers during the war – a figure
that is higher than the IDF's total number of injured soldiers.
The total number of wounded
soldiers reportedly admitted to all Israeli hospitals exceeds 4,500.”[3]
According to the quoted article, this is not the usual practice.
Usually the Israeli government is more open about casualty figures. But again,
by itself, this only perhaps points to a trend, it doesn’t prove anything. There
are many reasons why a wartime government might want to hide casualty figures,
though usually that points to things not going very well. But there are other
signs, and this last one is a significant one.
We read in the Guardian that,
“The Israeli prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, is facing one of the most serious threats yet to his
coalition government after the country’s supreme court ordered an end to
government subsidies from Monday for many ultra-Orthodox men who do not serve
in the army.
The ruling follows a series
of delays by the government in presenting a proposal to the court aimed at
enhancing the military enlistment of ultra-Orthodox men, who have historically
been exempt from conscription…
…But as Israel’s armed
forces wage a nearly six-month-old war in Gaza in which 500 soldiers have been
killed, legislators from the government and the opposition have voiced a stance
that places the onus of heightened military service obligations on the Haredi
community, rather than imposing additional duties on those already in service.”[4]
This is a very significant event. Ukraine did not start
conscripting men in their 40’s and 50’s because they were winning. It is well
known that Ukraine is facing a shortage of troops and arms, and that their
population is severely depleted. This desire by some in Israel to go against
long Israeli law and tradition, to broaden the base for conscription, may point
to the fact that the fighting in Gaza is not going well for Israel, or at
least, not as well as expected.
Israel is fighting a determined enemy in Gaza that has
nowhere else to go and may not consider surrender an option. Such a force in a
heavily fortified and dug in position can cause massive casualties. Think about
what it cost the United States to fight Japan in many of those islands in the
Pacific. And America did not rely on foreign aid to fight their war in the
Pacific, they were actually lending aid to both Russia, and Britain, among
others in the war, however Israel is fundamentally dependent on foreign aid for
this war. Yet, despite their superior military strength the war against Japan still
cost the United States heavily because of the determined, no surrender, dug in
nature of the enemy they were fighting.
This is just conjecture on my part based on hints of a
pattern emerging. I am interested to see how this war goes. It is not uncommon
for militaries to obscure real casualty numbers when they feel this is
necessary for whatever reason. It is not uncommon for countries to control the
flow of information about their military efforts either. These are all well
within the normal behaviours for peoples at war, if not necessarily what Israel
has done in the past. It may be that Israel is preparing for a bigger war, or
is anticipating needing more soldiers for a bigger defence of some kind. But
watch this space.
The media obviously wants us all focusing on debating
whether what Israel is doing is justified or not. That may indicate that they
don’t want us noticing something else about how Israel is going, and actual
media reports about how the war on the ground is going in Gaza are also hard to
find. So, we will have to wait to see how this turns out. But there is a way in
which Israel is losing.
William S.
Lind, the notable military strategist and expertsnotes for us, “In Fourth
Generation war, states defeat themselves.”[5] What does he mean by this?
Well, he explains further,
“This column is written
after the failure of the first ceasefire in Gaza and the resumption of
fighting. At present, Israel is losing. More, it is defeating itself. If that
sounds strange, it isn’t. In this kind of war, Fourth Generation war, states
usually defeat themselves.
To understand why, we need
to dip into a bit of military theory. Fourth Generation war is war between a
state and one or more non-state entities, of which Hamas is an example. In most
cases, including this one, the state is physically vastly stronger than its
enemy.
Hamas is pitting hand-held
weapons and bottle rockets against Israeli tanks, jet bombers, artillery, etc.
That disparity is why Israel is losing. What works for the state at the
physical level of war works powerfully against it at the moral level. In effect,
Israel has turned itself into Goliath. How many people cheer for Goliath?
Despite powerful images of
Israeli tanks and planes blowing up buildings in Gaza, the physical level of
war is weaker than the moral level. That is especially true when talking about
strategy. Strategy, in turn, trumps tactics. In Fourth Generation war, states
normally win at the physical/tactical level at the cost of defeating themselves
at the moral/strategic level. It is very difficult for states to escape this
trap because their superiority in the former is the cause of their defeat in
the latter.
Israeli military historian
Martin van Creveld calls this “the power of weakness.” As an example, he argues
that the only reason the British Army did not lose Northern Ireland is that it
suffered more casualties than it inflicted.
The longer Israel continues
physically destroying Gaza the sooner its strategic defeat will come and the
greater will be its magnitude.”[6]
Lind goes on to explain the practical consequences the
way Israel is fighting this war could impact the future of Israel, I recommend
reading it. In this day and age, but also to some degree in the past, how you
win matters as much as actually winning. This is true on a macro scale, as well
as on the micro scale. A debate in public is not a war, but if one side of the
debate railroads the other side, you will often turn people against you. Again,
this is simply an illustration, not a comparison. This applies even more
strongly to things like armed conflict. The United States turned much of the
world against it for how it attacked the Middle East after 9/11. People don’t
like seeing this kind of thing.
I share Lind’s piece here because he is an expert on
Fourth Generation war, that is war between state and non-state actors. He knows
the impact on a nation that these kinds of wars can have better than any of us.
And his military expertise is that on this front, Israel is losing and losing
bad.
This might be an alternative bit of evidence to help us understand
why Israel is not releasing casualty data and is seeking to conscript troops
from previously untapped pools in the population; it knows this is not going
well and it needs to prepare for a larger war. Friends of Israel should be
telling it to stop what it is doing; because even if it is winning on the local
scale it is still losing.
List of References
[1] Upon feedback from a friend, I am
going to explain why I settled on the source for the figures of deaths that I
used in this piece, in a later piece.
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