“Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.” Don Corleone, The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Israel’s strategic objectives are crystal clear. First, get the hostages back from Hamas. Second, obliterate Hamas as a military and political force. This assessment analyses the Israeli Defence Force’s (IDF) tactics in achieving those strategic objectives.
The Israeli Airforce
The IDF’s air force has perfect wartime conditions. Their enemy is at their mercy. Hamas don’t have ground to air missiles, or an air force, or anti-aircraft artillery. The Israeli air force have mastery of the skies.
The Israeli air force is obliterating the urban environment of the Gaza Strip at enormous human cost. The USA has supplied Israel with ultra-sophisticated F-35 fighter-bombers, which cost $80m each.1 The purchase price conceals the very high operating costs of using the planes. Operating F-35s requires expertise demanding an elite workforce. The F-35 is lethal and its capabilities are used to their fullest extent by the Israel.
The Israelis use ferociously effective bombs to destroy Gaza’s urban areas. The infrastructure has been destroyed. Roads, piped water and the sewage system no longer operate. This is responsible for a major public health crisis with two million people unable to access the basics of civilised urban life. Polio has emerged as childhood disease after being dormant for decades in Gaza. Desalination units, in the Mediterranean sea, have been destroyed making Gaza dependent on imported clean water from aid agencies.
The 2,000lb bomb is notorious for its immense destructive power. It is used to crater areas where Hamas leaders are thought to be concealing themselves,
“Israel had tried—and failed—to kill Hamas’s top military leader, Mohammed Deif, several times. So when intelligence emerged he was hiding in a compound in southern Gaza, Israel struck with overwhelming force, hitting it with eight 2,000-pound bombs….”2 (my emphasis)
Each crater extends over an enormous area in an urban environment and are the antidote to ‘precision’ weapons,
“The heavy munitions, mostly manufactured by the US, can cause high casualty events and can have a lethal fragmentation radius – an area of exposure to injury or death around the target – of up to 365 meters (about 1,198 feet), or the equivalent of 58 soccer fields in area.
Weapons and warfare experts blame the extensive use of heavy weaponry, such as the 2,000-pound bomb for the soaring death toll.”3
In addition to terror bombing, Israel’s air force use attack drones. These are used for assassination.4 The murder of seven aid workers in April 2024 showed their power.5 (The IDF’s ground forces made an even worse ‘error’ when they murdered three Israeli hostages who’d escaped from Hamas. Undisciplined, panicky soldiers saw three men and shot them.) Western aid workers were hunted by drones and murdered. The IDF brushed it off as ‘one of the things that happen in war,’ a strange version of collateral damage.
The IDF’s first tactic is clear even if its strategic purpose is opaque. They want to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable prior to ethnic cleansing. This is puerile. The Gaza Strip is a prison enclosed by walls with the sea constantly patrolled by the Israeli navy. The people of Gaza can’t leave, even if they wanted to, which they don’t.
They won’t leave because they’ve suffered this tactic before in 1948. The Palestinians call this Nabka (catastrophe).6 They know if they leave Gaza they will live in refugee camps for ever more. And there’s only one place they could flee to, which is the Sinai desert. Egypt won’t permit this because they would have to accept responsibility for two million refugees.
The IDF’s second tactic is slaughtering the Hamas leadership to leave it bereft of direction. They believe once the leadership has been assassinated Hamas will cease to exist. This is puerile. Assassination is a favoured Israeli tactic and the result is always the same: others step into the leadership space.
The IDF air force is making catastrophic errors because they need spectacular wins. The October 7th atrocities humiliated the IDF. The incursion by Hamas was a ‘Never’ event.It destroyed every principle underpinning Israeli security.Obliterating Gaza looks purposeful. The Israeli population can see the IDF is asserting their military authority and securing the country against myriad enemies. They’re wrong.
Obviously the IDF’s air attacks on Gaza don’t do anything towards achieving the strategic targets laid out by politicians. IDF have deliberately ignored the inconvenient truth that only one war has ever been won by terror bombing. That unique event was the ‘A’ bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ending the Pacific war in August 1945. Every other terror bombing campaign has been indecisive.7
The Israeli Army
The IDF’s army, until October 7th 2023, had a stellar reputation. This was based on past glories. Israel’s last competitive war was in 1973: 51 years ago.8 The Hamas incursion overran a military base. They then slaughtered 274 soldiers plus a further 38 security personnel. This massacre was facilitated by complacency. A mile from the Gaza frontier Israel lost a well-equipped military base and their reputation for invincibility.
The Israeli army have fought a series of quasi-colonial wars since 1973. The first Intifada, 1987, was brutal but non-competitive unlike the current war. It meandered over four years without becoming a full-scale ‘military’ campaign.9
“During the whole six-year intifada, the Israeli army killed at least 1,087 Palestinians, of which 240 were children.”
The IDF adopted poor tactics during this conflict. They used disproportionate force and utter brutality. Their tactic was suppression and has been ever since. Using suppression is a ‘one golf club’ approach by becoming bounded rationality. That is, they firmly believe the tactic is correct, which means failure only happens because insufficient force was used and therefore more must be employed next time. A nihilistic treadmill.
The second Intifada was more violent because of the failure to suppress the first Intifada. Palestinians were provoked by a senior Israeli politician, Ariel Sharon.10 The casualty rate increased as the IDF’s response used more force than they’d done in the first Intifada and it morphed into punishment,
“…combined casualty figure for combatants and civilians, the violence is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of approximately 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis, as well as 64 foreign nationals.”
In 2021 IDF ramped up their response to Hamas’s hugely provocative rocket attacks on Israel.11 Unknown to the Israelis Hamas were preparing for war: underground. The IDF knew tunnel networks existed but they under-estimated their scale and ambition. Hamas had a parallel universe.
After the October 2023 atrocities. the IDF invaded Gaza to release the hostages. This failed because Hamas had planned an asymmetric war. Hostages were secreted in an extensive tunnel system. Hamas knew they were incapable of fighting a conventional war. The IDF have tanks, heavy artillery, machine guns, armoured troop carriers and highly trained soldiers and Hamas doesn’t. Hamas adopted guerrilla tactics avoiding battlefield situations. Their principal tactic was ‘hit-and-run’. Asymmetrical warfare can only be combatted with sophisticated counter-terrorism operations, which the IDF ignored, trusting entirely in their overwhelming logistical supremacy.
Fifteen months12 of miliary superiority fighting an enemy which they out-number, out-gun and control the food and water supply and the IDF still haven’t brought Hamas to its knees.
The IDF haven’t achieved either of Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategic objectives and have, therefore, failed.
The Media War
Hamas conceded Israel the high moral ground on October 7th 2023. Hamas’s reputation as a terrorist organisation was confirmed by their atrocities. The hostage-taking confirmed the consensus. The natural allies of Hamas didn’t applaud. This included Iran who are alleged to direct Hamas’s actions. If Hamas was expecting the Occupied West Bank to rise up in spontaneous support they were disappointed.
The day after the incursion the world unanimously declared support for Israel. Sir Keir Starmer said,
“…October 7 2023 as “the darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust…”
Starmer, British prime minister since July 2024, added on the first anniversary of the atrocity that, ‘…..”collective grief has not diminished” …’
The media war was won by 8th October 2023. And then Israel blew it.
The Israeli’s excluded international journalists from Gaza: a tactical error. During wars, journalists are on a very short leash and those that transgress are repatriated. Briefings from military spokespersons are obligatory and aren’t subject to hostile critiques. Being denied access to Gaza forced journalists to search for alternative sources of information, They didn’t wait long before a flood of commentary accompanied by heartbreaking images arrived. The IDF failed to recognise that, ‘smart phones’ make everyone a photo-journalist.
The control of the narrative shifted from potential Israeli control to vox populi independent agents. This loss of control was worsened by the impact of the Palestinian diaspora. Influential expatriated Palestinians made their voices heard. Layla Moran, is a British-Palestinian MP, with family living in Gaza. She spoke in detail, in Parliament, about the horrors her family were enduring. Humza Yousaf, the former first minister of Scotland, had extended family in Gaza. His family escaped because he used his privileged position to pressure the Israeli government. To lessen the embarrassment of a major political figure making ‘waves’ in the media, his family were fast-tracked out of Gaza.
Stories didn’t only come from amateur photo-journalists. Al Jazeera13 was represented in Gaza both prior to the atrocities and after the Israeli counter-attack. Al Jazeera have an international presence and is the voice of the non-western media in the middle-east. The ban on professional international journalism was negated immediately. Western journalists had to use Al Jazeera sources because they had a monopoly on the images and personal stories which are crucial for wartime journalism. Al Jazeera was reporting from the front line. They interviewed the people of Gaza; filmed the aftermath of bombing raids, and revealed the way that Israel used preventative detention. Their slick professionalism gave them credibility.
Al Jazeera and amateur photo-journalists opened a credibility gap with the IDF’s media statements, which looked and sounded like propaganda. The IDF’s version of events didn’t jell with the alternative sources of information on the ground. Endless assertions about bombing being ‘precise’ and targeted at Hamas militants didn’t match the scenes of carnage. Hospitals, universities, schools and other public buildings were destroyed, alongside thousands of residential buildings. The IDF’s further assertion that it was Hamas that was ‘responsible’ because they were using the civilian population as a ‘human shield’ is risible. Gaza is a small densely populated area and Hamas inevitably will be found in residential areas. They don’t have barracks like a conventional military force.
That Al Jazeera and amateur photo-journalists were given international coverage enraged the IDF. They have responded with two tactics. Firstly, Al Jazeera has been banned from Israel and the West Bank. Israel accuses them of being a front organisation for Hamas. Al Jazeera is unhelpful to the Israeli media war programme but claiming they are an arm of a terrorist organisation is a step too far.
Secondly, IDF’s use of assassination as a method of resolving problems entails disproportionate casualties. Assassination has repeatedly failed and is notoriously inefficient. Targeting journalists sours the opinion of other journalists,
“At least 133 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed, several have been injured and others are missing during the war in Gaza.”14
IDF have assassinated 133 journalists who have been ‘replaced’ by 1000s of amateur-photojournalists. The IDF’s obsession with assassination is hope over experience.
Conclusion
- Hamas
The October 7th 2023 atrocities are difficult to explain on a tactical or strategic level. They had a moment of ‘glory’ for their terrorist organisation, which promptly led to a crushing and devasting response causing untold misery. This looks like a further iteration in the Israeli-Palestinian ‘Forever War’.
- The IDF
Failing to prevent the incursion, followed by 15 months of warfare has shattered their swaggering ‘invincibility’. Lashing out at Hamas couldn’t lead to a ‘day-after’ negotiated treaty. Even worse than that is the reported ‘mission creep’, which is being contemplated. Incorporating the Trumpian fantasy of Gaza as a resort without any Palestinians, subduing southern Lebanon, annexing the West Bank and war with Iran is insanity. IDF isn’t a learning organisation.
Final Word
The February 2025 ceasefire/hostage release agreement is a public relations disaster for the Israelis. Hamas is badly wounded but struts in front of their hostage release platform. This illustrates that the IDF has failed in their number one objective. Hamas has not been obliterated and retain a military presence even if much diminished. It’s ludicrous to say that Hamas have ‘won’ but by not being obliterated they’ve achieved a pyrrhic victory.
Notes
1 F-35’s price might rise, Lockheed warns – Defense One
2 To Target a Top Militant, Israel Rained Down Eight Tons of Bombs – WSJ
3 Gaza: Israel dropped hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs, analysis shows | CNN
4 Israel – RUSI | Armed Drones in the Middle East
5 World Central Kitchen aid convoy attack – Wikipedia For the IDF’s murder of Israeli hostages see Killing of Alon Shamriz, Yotam Haim, and Samer Talalka – Wikipedia
7 Bombing Civilians Doesn’t Win Wars | Odeboyz’s Blog Also see The bombing of Laos: Obama and an American War Crime | Odeboyz’s Blog
8 List of wars involving Israel – Wikipedia This is being written in November 2024.
9 Authorities name 772 soldiers, 68 police officers killed in Gaza war | The Times of Israel Updated 28th October 2024
10 Second Intifada – Wikipedia
11 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis – Wikipedia
12 This was written in February 2025
14 Palestine: At least 133 journalists and media workers killed in Gaza – IFJ
Odeboyz's Blog 