By Jed Babbin on 7.31.06 @ 12:08AM
Vince Brooks, please call your office. Your travel orders are ready.
The Israelis are losing this war because their government is
fighting indecisively on one battlefield and not at all on the
other. Because the Israelis aren't fighting the media war, the
press is slashing at the Israelis hourly in a manner previously
reserved for President Bush. Like the president, the Israelis are
losing politically because the enemy is fully engaged on both
fronts.
When Hizballah began their rocket attacks on Israel about three
weeks ago and took two Israeli soldiers hostage, they didn't have
anything in their arsenal that could have been militarily
conclusive against Israel. Israeli air power has, so far, proved
effective against their worst weapon, the Zilzal missile, and
against resupply convoys coming from Syria. But nothing Israel has
done amounts to more than damaging terrorist assets that will be
quickly rebuilt and replaced with help from Syria and Iran. The
Olmert government sent only a two-battalion sized force into
Lebanon, an obviously inadequate response. Olmert is studying Bush
when he should be reading Churchill. Sir Winston once said, "Never
maltreat the enemy by halves."
Against the Israeli air strikes and small ground incursion,
Hizballah had a well-networked web of village bases dispersed from
southern Beirut to the Israeli border, dug in with good
communications and arms caches as well as financial mechanisms to
disperse funds. It was manned by at least 3,000 Hizballah
terrorists supported by perhaps ten times that number in "reserve."
This web was built over the past six years since Israel last
withdrew from Lebanon. Syria and Iran have funded, equipped, and
armed Hizballah very well for precisely this kind of fight. And
Hizballah has one more weapon no foreign supporter need give them,
one that their ideology compels. In this they have what may prove
to be a conclusive advantage: human shields.
We know, from e-mails discovered after the Israelis killed four
UN observers at an outpost more than a week ago, that the UN
"peacekeepers" had been overrun and held captive by Hizballah. The
UN people wanted to get out of the path of the battle, but the
Hizballah wouldn't let them leave. On Sunday morning, we awoke to
the reports of horrific civilian casualties in the Lebanese town of
Qana. Dozens of children are among the dead.
Qana, like many other villages in south Lebanon, was papered
with Israeli leaflets warning the citizens to flee the impending
battle. Israeli aircraft have been broadcasting warnings and the
Israeli forces -- imitating what our Commando Solo aircraft did in
Iraq before the 2003 invasion began -- were literally telephoning
Lebanese in their homes asking them to get out of the line of fire.
Thousands have not. Why?
Because Hizballah is holding them captive and intentionally
exposing them to Israeli attacks to create the public outrage that
now dominates the media. Hizballah's strategy is to conceal under
civilian bodies the result of any Israeli strike that destroys the
terrorists' missile positions, bunkers, and weapons caches. The
civilian death toll is appalling, just as Hizballah intends it to
be. World leaders are unanimous in condemning the slaughter, having
fallen prey to this Hizballah strategy. As has Israel.
After 1967 and 1973, the world became used to seeing Israelis
slashing through Arab armies in antiseptic victories. A mile-wide
plain covered with burning Syrian tanks is something to be cheered.
Egyptian fighter aircraft, blown apart in their revetments, make
cool pictures for the television screen and the front page. But a
fallen building, surrounded by battered people dragging children's
bodies out on makeshift stretchers, does not. The latter is the
centerpiece of Hizballah's strategy. It is achieving a tidal wave
of anti-Israeli coverage in the media, and increasing condemnation
of Israeli action in the few remnants of the civilized world from
Europe and America as well as in the UN.
Examine the Sunday headline stories. The UK Independent
says, "50 Killed as Israeli air strike hits children." The AP lead
story said, "Israeli missiles hit several buildings in a southern
Lebanon village as people slept Sunday, killing at least 56, most
of them children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting."
The ever-reliable BBC said, "Displaced families had been sheltering
in the basement of a house in Qana, which was crushed after a
direct hit." But why were they there after Israel's warning of a
coming strike? Were the Hizballah terrorists and arms hidden behind
those captive children destroyed? No one asks, so no one
answers.
The once-savvy Israelis apparently don't even know how to tell
the world about what's going on. Didn't any of their military
leaders watch some of the CENTCOM briefings on Iraq in 2003? (Note
to Mr. Rumsfeld: Can't we lend them a cool pro such as Gen. Vince
Brooks to teach them how to do a daily media brief?) Where are the
photos of missiles being trucked into and launched from villages
such as Qana? Where are the Israeli spokesmen condemning
Hizballah's use of human shields? Israeli UN ambassador Dan
Gillerman made a late start at this yesterday. Why aren't Olmert
and Gen. Dan Halutz, the Israeli chief of staff, doing it every
day? Someone ought to grab each of them by the shirtfront and shake
some sense into them. They have to be made to understand that such
media operations are just as important as the combat
operations.
Where is the demand on the government of Lebanon to use the
safe-conduct corridors to evacuate the innocent? Why isn't the
Siniora government establishing refugee centers to care for those
who flee? Why aren't there enough Israeli troops on the ground in
Lebanon to seize the evidence and display it to the world? Unless
and until Israel takes the offensive on the airwaves, its ground
and air actions cannot succeed. Any diplomatic effort to expel
Hizballah from Lebanon and free the Lebanese from them will
fail.
Israel is losing this war because it is not fighting it in a
manner calculated to win it decisively. It is fighting only
Hizballah, a proxy of its real enemies. If Israel accepts a
cease-fire without breaking Hizballah's hold on southern Lebanon,
all of Lebanon will become a colony of terrorist Iran. And Israel
will have suffered a strategic defeat. On the ground and on the
airwaves, the war must be fought in the same way. Fight to win
decisively, or lose inevitably.
TAS contributing editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are
Worse Than You Think (Regnery, 2004) and, with Edward
Timperlake, Showdown: Why China Wants War With the United
States (Regnery, May 2006 -- click here to obtain a free chapter).
topics:
Television, Military, Iraq, Iran, Israel
