Hezbullah Prepares for War. As does Israel

 

by Yaacov Lozowick

 

Jonathan Campbell recently asked in the comments section here if it might not happen that Hezbullah would hide under an Iranian nuclear umbrella, shoot endless missiles at Israel, while Israel wouldn't be able to hit back effectively because of universal condemnation.

While I was preparing to respond, the IDF changed the picture a bit, by releasing piles of extremely detailed military intelligence about Hezbullah's war preparations. Much of the documentation tells about how Hezbullah is carefully placing most of its ammunition and positions next to schools, between homes, and so on.

There is a danger in such a move, as it alerts Hezbullah to the extent of Israel's penetration into their systems. There's a potential advantage, in that Israel preempts the next Goldstone report that will inevitably claim that no evidence could be found that Hezbullah was sheltering among civilians. When the next war happens, we'll be able to link to today's reports - for whatever that will be worth.

The real significance of the move, as I understand it, is that Israel is announcing clearly to all who need to know (decision makers, foreign military and intelligence agencies, but not the media at all) that when the next war comes, we know exactly where to hit. That's the answer to Jonathan's question, I think: there is no scenario in which anyone wages war on Israeli civilians, certainly not with the lethality that Hezbullah has amassed, and they survive. After the war is over, and southern Lebanon lies in smoking ruins, we'll have to deal with the global tsunami of opprobrium. Yet as I often repeat on this blog, Jews can live with universal opprobrium; they've got lots of practice, and anyway, it won't be all that universal, for all the appearances. It's the systematic attacks on Jewish lives we won't stand for, not in the mid- or long term.

The truly odd thing about all this is that the campaign to deny Israel its right to self defense has created a situation where Hezbullah's main strategy is to have lots of Lebanese civilians killed. In all the annals of warfare - and they're long, them - I don't think there has ever been anything like it. Put pithily: The Guardian is going to get lots of Lebanese civilians killed.

 

Yaacov Lozowick

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