Strategy and Tactics

 “Tactics win battles. Strategies win wars.”

Recently Israeli historian Yuval Harari wrote that the battle between Hamas and Israel in Gaza underscores the fact that while Israel may win the battle, Hamas may win the war.

His analysis is that Hamas thinks politically, while Israel thinks militarily.

While the body count may well demonstrate Israel’s superiority on the military battlefield, it may well be losing the soft power war for influence abroad among the youth of the world and the leftist movements.

Hamas’s goals have always been to be recognized as a legitimate player in the Middle East and to destroy Israel. It has succeeded in maintaining the Middle East in a state of flux.

Before October 7^th, Israel and Saudi Arabia appeared ready to mend fences at the expense of Palestinian independence and put an end to a Palestinian state once and for all. Hamas decided that this was not in its interest and that the only way to block this was to create opposition in the Arab street that would force the Saudis to reconsider and leave the Palestinian dream alive.

In Harari’s view, the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7^th was to create a significant Israeli response that would pit it against the global community.

The Israeli response has awakened the latent antisemitism among hundreds of millions of people around the world – people who have been constantly demonstrating against Israel and Jewish institutions since October 7^th and calling for death to all Jews. Hamas has managed to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism in the minds of these people and create a backlash against Israel and Jews everywhere.

Mainstream media have contributed by airing videos of tens of thousands of Gazan deaths (according to Hamas, whose word should not be taken as true) and hundreds of thousands of starving women and children to rile up people who have no idea about the nature of Hamas or the realities of the Middle East.

Israel has thought out this campaign militarily and assumed that the day after Hamas forces are defeated, Israel can take over the territory and govern it as it does the West Bank.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has no intention to allow the creation of an independent Palestinian state – a decision that plays into Hamas’s political goals for two reasons: first, a Palestinian State would entail the perpetuation of Israel, anathema for Hamas; second, it would entail the end for Hamas and its ability to raise tens of millions of dollars annually to enrich its leadership and keep alive the victimization of generations of Palestinians in the eyes of the global community.

Hamas is more than military force.

It is a movement that embodies one of the major tenets of Islam – the glorification of death and martyrdom as the Muslim believer’s highest calling.

While Western thinking glorifies life, Islamism has no problem with sacrificing adherents and non-adherents for the cause. This fundamental difference is the major weapon in the hands of Islamists everywhere and keeps its ideals alive and its followers enthusiastic, even at the cost of their very lives.

Israel has made it a point to demonstrate the collusion between Hamas and the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) that not only sustains the Palestinian fiction that generations of Palestinians retain “refugee status” – a status that no other community of refugees retains. Indeed, Palestinians who have acquired the citizenships of other countries retain their refugee states and continue to enjoy financial benefits, all at Western taxpayers’ expense.

While indeed tens of thousands of pro-Israel demonstrations have taken place in major capitals, the truth is that they have not created a new political reality on the ground.

Instead, countries like Sweden, and Australia have renewed their funding for UNRWA, while others like Canada, Spain and Norway never stopped contributing.

In terms of Israeli “soft power”, it has not kept pace with the hard military successes on the ground. Most Western governments, including the US, are calling for a cease fire knowing full well that this plays into Hamas’s hands.

Indeed, after the killing of the World Central Kitchens volunteers on April 5^th, President Biden chastised Netanyahu and appears to be on the verge of conditioning further aid to Israel on an end to the incursion.

By making things politically difficult for its key foreign supporter and ally, Israel is playing right into the hands of Hamas whose goal is to isolate Israel internationally and make Hamas a legitimate player in the Middle East.

Israel is fighting an existential war against terrorism. As the late Prime Minister Golda Meir once put it, If the terrorists lose the war they lose their weapons. If Israel loses the war, it disappears.

So, Israel can never negotiate with opponents that don’t recognize its right to exist. What would it negotiate that Hamas would respect? Hamas broke the ceasefire in place on October 7th in the most brutal fashion, and continues to express its determination to eliminate Israel’s existence and the existence of Jews around the world to this very day.

The recent attack on Israel by Iran has produced what would have been a startling result only last year. Jordanian, Saudi, and U.S. planes helped Israel down the projectiles that Iran had launched.

However, these same allies are trying to force Israel to refrain from further attacks on Iran. Yet, striking again may be the only way to ensure that Iran backs down and doesn’t feel empowered to further attack Israel.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind said the wise man. But, what option does israel have when faced with obliteration?

Israel believes that it must continue to try to eradicate Hamas in Gaza. However, it continues to do so without an apparent “day after” plan that would provide a roadmap for post-Hamas governance in Gaza.

As well, Israel must keep in mind that Hamas is more than a terrorist organization.

It is an idea that has widespread support among many Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the Muslim world as well as in Europe and the Americas. Indeed, one only has to look at the current situation in the United States and Canada. Students at prestige universities such as Columbia are calling for the obliteration of Israel and are even calling for the imposition of Sharia everywhere.

These are students from the upper strata of American society — future leaders of American society who have been indoctrinated by Hamas and other Islamist organizers. They currently form a fifth column in the West, buttressed by University administrations that sit back and watch their activities with benign tolerance.

Indeed, they are backed by such luminaries abroad as the mayor and police chief of London who back protestors in the United Kingdom by allowing them to demonstrate and attack Jews on the street with impunity.

Turkey, a strategic NATO member, full backs Hamas, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warmly welcomed visits to Ankara by Hamas leaders. He also appears to be poised to provide Hamas leaders with a safe headquarters in Ankara if and when Qatar expels them.

Strategy versus tactics.

While Hamas’s fighters may be killed, the ideal that Hamas fights for will not die easily as long as Islamism adheres to its expansionist ideas and terrorist activities, and Western governments continue to cast a blind eye on their activities and the dangers to their security from within.

While Hamas and Islamists pursue strategies, Israel and the West pursue tactics.

I would posit that current events show that strategies are winning.

This is the fundamental challenge and danger that Israel and the world face.