Monday, January 10, 2011

The futility of Israel's new rules of engagement

A typically brilliant article by Michael Totten describes in detail the extent to which the Israeli army will go to minimise civilian casualties in any future war.

The problem with the strategy is that it guarantees that Israel will be incapable of decisive victory. It also guarantees excessive and unnecessary losses of Israeli forces. For example, although it is known for certain that Hezbollah (and of course Hamas) is using mosques and clinics as both command centres and weapons storage facilities, the IDF will not be allowed to attack them.

Israel took excessive care in both the 2006 Lebanon war and the 2009 Gaza war to minimise civilian casualties - more than any other military force in history - and yet the world still condemned her. In response to pressure from the left-wing judiciary in Israel, the IDF announced in 2010 that it was instigating even tighter rules of engagement for future conflicts. Some of the fruits of this change are evidenced in Totten's report. But none of that will make an iota of difference to world reaction, which will still condemn Israel no matter what. The very act of self-defence by Israel is illegitimate in the eyes of most of the world.

The terrorists of Hezbollah and Hamas must be laughing their heads off at the extent Israel will go to appease world opinion. And they will be futher stockpiling weapons in mosques, schools and hospitals.

1 comment:

in the vanguard said...

I wonder where all this liberal, leftist, "politically correct" nauseous behavior originated from. Perhaps it always was, and only recently reared it's ugly head, in the last 30 years or so. Probably self-hating (read: hateful of G-d) Israeli leftists started it and the world, realizing it distinctly as a weakness of the Jew, couldn't help itself from further weakening the Israeli state from within by reinforcing the erosion by aping their silent victims.