Israel's first point of order: restoring deterrence by shattering the jihadist invincibility complex
It starts with chipping away at the psyche of the holy warriors.
There is a lot of ink being spilled about what to expect in the war between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
While most of it involves the kinetic circumstances surrounding the fight itself, that’s only half the battle. There’s lots of talk about tactics, strategy, and comparing and contrasting the military power of competing armies.
But what remains unspoken is the just as important psychological component of this war.
Right now, Hamas and its allies feel incredibly emboldened, almost invincible, after their successful massacre of hundreds of civilians. It was the worst single day atrocity committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and it leaves jihadists in not just Gaza, but around the world salivating for more blood.
On Monday, the president of Iran led a conversation with the leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In his comments, he remarked that “the Israeli regime is on the verge of collapse and the resistance front is advancing toward peaks of glory,” according to a report from Iran’s state-run Fars News.
“He stressed that the ‘steely resolve’ of the Palestinians heralds the final victory over the Zionist regime,” the report added.
Leaders from Hamas and Hezbollah have been sharing similar sentiments, repeating this idea that they are protected by the divine, and that the “zionist entity” is on the ropes.
These are holy warriors who believe that they are the champions of Islam, according to their interpretation of religious doctrine, and they believe their war against Israel will succeed because of these circumstances. You don’t have to rely on my academic education to believe this. Just read the Hamas charter for yourself.
The geopolitical implications for the Hamas acts of savagery are troubling, especially considering that so many western countries have imported millions of people with a similar values structure. They too are doctrinally emboldened to pursue a truly evil agenda.
The success and growth of ISIS was largely due to this phenomena. If you recall, the head chopper stuff, coupled with territorial conquest in the name of the divine, served as an incredible recruiting campaign for the Islamic State. When ISIS started losing, the group faded into obscurity rather quickly.
Now it’s up to Israel to restore the psychological deterrent against this newly emboldened proliferation of jihadism.
The good news for the civilized world is that Israel is beyond prepared for this moment. Israel is a military power with substantial technical prowess, and its Army features an incredibly motivated fighting force, given that every war is existential.
Simply put, the IDF is going to absolutely mop the floor with Hamas. And they need to let the world see how it went down.
Despite the insurmountable on paper mismatch, Hamas and its allies truly believe that they will succeed in collapsing the world’s lone Jewish state and massacring its people. Serving Hamas a Stone Cold Stunner of a reality check is the first step in restoring order.
This is not going to be a twelve dimensional chess match, and the Israelis will fast showcase their military superiority as the war heats up, despite the inevitable toll of casualties that will occur on both sides.
The Israelis must break the spirit of their enemy, forcing the terrorists to rethink the very core foundations of their barbaric ideology. Only then will they be able to restore a deterrent to future attacks.
Give ‘em hell.
Rather than writing a conclusory piece advocating expansion of the retaliaton, I was hoping your approach would first include peeling back the onion of geopolitics plus some analysis of how this extremely highly guarded border could have been breached in the first place against one of the most well armored and equipped militaries bar none. Before cheerleading for escalation and revenge in any conflict, some rational analysis and investigation is needed.
Every single R governor, politician, consultant, media voice who said they wanted Trumpism but not Trump, that the election was legit, Biden won, that Trump is unpresidential, that MAGA is hurting the GOP, that J6 was an insurrection and those in jail belong there, every single #NeverTrumper who did their best to make sure he lost, who colluded to steal his election and wishes he'd go away, just begin to know and understand that they preferred and prefer the death and carnage in Israel, and Ukraine, the invasion across our open borders, the genital mutilations of children, the Marxist indoctrination, the deaths and injuries of those forced to take the jabs against their will to this nation being led by Donald J Trump.
It's been a zero-sum game proposition. We live with Biden's policies we knew he supported, any denials he made we knew were campaign lies. The "there was no evidence of..." excuses were just that, accepted by those blinded by Trump hate. Wishes that we could get through four years of Biden so a "better, more presidential" R candidate would appear in 2024 were and remain BS self-delusions or intentional preferences for the predictable and predicted results of Biden's policies. Because, Orange Man Bad.
Zero-sum choice. They made. And many continue to make. No such thing as taking the good without the bad. They choose the bad we live with, the horrifying scenes from Israel over living with Trump's mean Tweets. Elections have consequences. Stolen elections have catastrophic consequences. Every single NeverTrumper R chose these catastrophic consequences. The blood as much on their hands as Hamas and Iran's. Biden's done what we had enough information to know Biden would do. If a snake eats a mouse dropped into its terrarium you don't blame the snake for eating it. You blame the person who dropped it in there. Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran are the hired assassins. In addition to holding the assassins accountable, destroying their will to kill as you describe, we'd get smart if we looked more closely at who put out the contracts for hire.