Monday, April 09, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
I remember getting a lot of pushback once I started using
the siege metaphor to describe Israel’s situation, both historically and as
part of a wider
discussion of how to look at our battle with Israel’s enemies through the
lens of military conflict.
That criticism largely stemmed from a misunderstanding of
siege warfare, with advocates for “going on offense” against Israel’s foes
perceiving being on the receiving end of an enemy’s siege as a passive example
of what is often criticized as being stuck “playing defense.”
But the siege, like the pitched battle where armies face off
in direct combat, are simply types of activities that take place in a war, each
of which come with a full set of offensive and defensive tactics. And many an army has been defeated when they
got tired or bored with fighting off a besieging army from within protected
walls and decided instead to leave their fortress to needlessly clash with the
enemy.
This month’s Passover attacks from Gaza are a perfect
illustration of siege strategy in action.
For, from the perspective of Israel, the nation’s borders are its
defensive walls which the military inside those walls cannot allow to be
breached. Outside the Gaza portion of
those walls is a Hamas army, made up of fighters and the civilians they have
recruited to protect them, trying to crash through the border/barrier to sack
the city/nation within.
In this case, the besiegers tactics do not involve catapults
or battering rams, although past (and likely future) siege attempts have
involved a different age-old tactic of tunneling beneath enemy walls. But, in the case of this month’s attacks, the
prime weapon is “the feint,” in this case the creation of distractions (large
numbers of marchers mixing civilians and military men, huge plumes of smoke
generated by enormous tire fires) that will allow militants to sneak into
Israel to wreak havoc.
One advantage of Hamas’ tactics is that it fits a propaganda
model that originated during Israel’s 2006 clash with Hezbollah in Lebanon, one
that has been perfected during fights between Israel and Hamas ever since. This tactic involves triggering a war and
then counting on allies (such as the UN and anti-Israel activists abroad) and a
pliant media to turn the violence created by Hamas into a morality tale of
Israel’s cruel targeting of civilians.
Such propaganda has had trouble getting off the ground this
time around, possibly because it’s been overused (allowing Israel and its
friends to blunt it using counter-tactics created during this same decade-long
period), possibly because parts of the media – which is being asked to swallow
ever greater lies - have grown tired of playing the role of Hamas stooges.
Getting back to the siege itself, success or failure can be
judged based on how well the IDF has managed to keep the enemy on its side of
the walls. And, so far at least, that
enemy has failed at even the modest goal of slipping killers through the gates,
making the actual dream of Israel’s enemies (thousands breaking out of Gaza to
march on Jerusalem) no more than fantasy bombast.
A key feature of siege warfare is that it is as hard, or
harder, on the besieger than the besieged, especially when siege tactics are
deployed against a stronger party that is ready to fight patiently to hold the
line.
Casualty figures routinely trotted out to condemn the Jewish
state (which is criticized for asymmetrical body counts) actually demonstrates
success on the part of the IDF since any successful war involves maximizing
enemy losses while minimizing your own. So, putting aside the humanitarian
question surrounding one side fighting behind civilians while the other side
fights to protect them, simple military arithmetic shows that treating the
current Gaza conflict as siege warfare has been a wise move on the part of
Israeli military planners.
It remains to be seen if other forms of suffering will visit
those who chose siege warfare as a tactic. Smaller crowds showing up to act as
cannon fodder for Hamas’ current campaign would be one indication of that
organization paying the cost of poor choice of tactics, as are reports of internal
fighting within the organization over choices the leadership is making.
It’s ironic that Israel’s foes use the language of the siege
to describe the situation within
Gaza, given that Israel has no interest in using siege tactics (or any other
tactics) to conquer territory it left behind over a decade ago. This is best demonstrated by the Jewish
state’s refusal to engage in traditional siege activities (such as starving out
your foe) during not just this conflict but every conflict where Israel
continued to supply food and electricity to enemy territory while fighting was
taking place.
Those who might still consider defending against a siege as
an exercise in passivity should look at results, which are still unfolding, to
decide who might be playing the right cards in the high-stakes game of war.
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