What the Horrible Hostage Release Videos Say about an Important Israeli Failure

[LauraInLA]

Part of the routine Israelis have become conditioned to over the past few weeks, are the ugly and deeply upsetting propoganda ceremonies that Hamas is putting the hostages through before they are released. However, these ceremonies are also signaling something much more strategic - Hamas still controls Gaza and Israel has likely failed in one of its most important war objectives of removing Hamas from power.

Why do I say this? To understand the dynamics of the war you have to return to the basics of insurgency and counterinsurgency 101, and lessons the United States has learned time and again in places like Vietnam and Iraq. If you are going to replace a terrorist organization or insurgent force who controls a territory with an alternative, you have to first clear it out but then also immediately establish an alternative security force or police and build out legitimate local governance that can replace it. If you don’t do these things quickly, the fighters you defeated just go underground and eventually come back and reestablish their authority. Unless what we are seeing on TV with these ceremonies is an incredibly impressive manipulation of smoke and mirrors, what it seems to be showing is that Hamas is still clearly in charge of Gaza and despite Israeli military operations has returned to key areas.

There are two basic ways to fight an insurgency. The first is what the U.S. did in Iraq in the early years 2003-2006 and in the key years of Vietnam. You go in to areas and search and destroy. You kill a lot of terrorists/insurgents using overwhelming firepower. You make a big deal of the huge body counts of terrorists killed. Then you leave and the bad guys come back, and you have to clear the area all over again. Sound familiar? It’s what Israel has done in Gaza. It doesn’t work.


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What is the alternative? From the beginning develop a plan where you clear, hold, and build. You have to defeat the insurgents and clear them out, but then you have a security force ready to go that can replace them and provide basic policing along with local governance structures that can start to provide basic services. This is what the United States did quite successfully during the counter-ISIS campaign in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. provided key military support, but worked from the beginning with Iraqi Security Forces in Iraq and the Kurds in Syria to have them both out in the lead, but more importantly quickly take over these areas and provide basic security. Then we helped them start to build local governance structures and provided surges in humanitarian and development assistance. This was a complicated and hard process and Northeast Syria and Western Iraq are from panaceas. ISIS remains a persistent problem in those areas, but it is not in charge.


https://ilangoldenberg.substack.com/p/what-the-horrible-hostage-release?publication_id=3741098&post_id=156850092&isFreemail=true&r=uc4h&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. The pictures of the tortured and starved hostages really make me angry

These hostages were starved and tortured

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