By Daniel Greenfield ——Bio and Archives--September 23, 2009
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While impressed with the devotion & willingness to sacrifice in the Haganah, Wingate was exasperated by the defensive nature of the Jewish forces. He realized that they could not halt the violence with their defensive tactics of fortified settlements. The policy of restraint meant the Haganah was ceding the initiative and mobility to the Arab guerillas. The British were trying to balance an active defense with mobile sweeps & strikes, with holding important static positions in order to maintain effective government control. Mobile columns & patrols were sent out to deny the rebels any sanctuary and to hunt them down. They became consistent and routine in their movements and their actions. With the enemy often indistinguishable from their civilian base and troops often quartered near Arab civilian areas, "it was very difficult to keep operations conducted in a largely hostile civilian milieu secret, and so the element of surprise was lost; at the same time, reliable information about the enemy was hard to come by." Commented one Jewish official on a big sweep by British forces, "They marched over hills and valleys, and in the end emerged with some rusty Turkish pistols and a few empty rounds of ammunition...The Arab gangsters just hid their arms and mingled with the population of the villages. Not only did the huge British army find absolutely nothing, it discredited and ridiculed itself in the eyes of the whole population." In 1938 General Archibald Wavell, the temporary acting commander of British military forces in Palestine, was forced to admit these and other actions such as aerial bombing had only "a temporary effect." Wingate envisioned carefully selected, small and mobile units of volunteers to fight aggressively and unconventionally... "There is only one way to deal with the situation, to persuade the gangs that, in their predatory raids, there is every chance of their running into a government gang which is determined to destroy them, not by exchange of shots at a distance, but by bodily assault with bayonet and bomb." This new unit was to carry the war to the enemy, taking away his initiative and keeping him off-balance. And so it was, "to produce in their minds the belief government forces will move at night and can and will surprise them either in villages or across country." The force would be a mixed British-Jewish one operating under his command, moving primarily at night in areas of guerilla activity with the allies of the night: deception, surprise, shock.Since then Israel has forgotten Wingate's lessons that helped make the IDF into the fearsome force that it was. Instead Israel has reverted to the fortified settlements and cities, the home guards maintaining watch... as well as the British assault teams thundering across the desert in a spectacular show of force that accomplishes absolutely nothing. And this applies not only to Israel, but to the United States post-2004 as well. You cannot win through defensive tactics. You can only bleed. And Israel is bleeding badly. The nation that once executed Entebbe, rescuing hostages on another continent, can no longer even rescue one of its soldiers held captive within its own borders. The country that was once hailed as a symbol of rebirth has been internationally demonized. And the worst part of it all is that Israel sat back and let it happen. Israel is too small to be able to keep on bleeding indefinitely. Its soldiers and citizens have tired of always being on watch, and always waiting for an attack. Its citizens and its defenders around the world are tired of being expected to answer increasingly outlandish charges. This cannot go on forever. Israeli leaders understood this, but they drew the wrong lesson, determining to go even further on the defensive by cutting deals with the enemy. They were wrong. Disastrously wrong. To survive against larger enemies, a small country must be quick, it must be feared, it must use surprise and cultivate an aura of inhuman abilities. Israel used to be all of these things. Now it is none of these things. But if it is to survive, it must become those things again. Israel does not have a terrorism problem, it has a defensiveness problem. Israel has the capability to destroy every terrorist group within its borders in a matter of a month. Israel does not have a PR problem. Its PR problem is created by an ongoing conflict with terrorist groups, who have extensive sympathizers abroad. Destroy the terrorist groups, regain control over the disputed areas, and the PR problem shrinks to a fraction of its former size. More importantly it ceases to have any useful meaning. The media war against Israel, the lawfare and the other various non-military tactics require an investment of resources. For those resources to be worth investing, there must be a visible payoff. The more Israel stays on the defensive, and its enemies make territorial and political gains, the more those tactics seem to be paying off. Reverse that scenario, and the resources will be reinvested somewhere else because they are not achieving tangible results. It has been demonstrated that the demonization of Israel is not significantly altered by the nature of Israeli tactics against terrorism. Whether Israeli tanks smash through Arafat's compound, or Israel builds a non-violent defensive border wall-- the demonization of Israel remains constant. That is because the demonization is not a moral response to specific policies, but an ongoing state of hostility directed against Israel in support of Muslim and Marxist terrorists. The only way to stop the demonization is to remove the incentive for it, by removing the terrorists. The Oslo Accords did not lesson the global demonization of Israel. Instead after a brief honeymoon, it significantly worsened it. That is because it was closer to achieving its purpose. The more Israel has compromised, the worse its international status has become. That is because by compromising, Israel demonstrated its weakness to both its enemies and allies, emboldening its enemies and making its allies reevaluate its ability to survive. The more Israel has gone on the defensive, the worse the terrorism and the demonization has become. That is only natural. If you retreat, the enemy's fire will only increase in severity. To many Jews and Israelis, and sympathizers with Israel as a nation battling Marxist and Islamist terror, the problem seems impossible. The political and military situation is a Gordian Knot of tangled complexities. Which is why it takes an Alexander or a Wingate to cut the knot. Israel's media and military problems are born of a defensive strategy that have allowed the country to be tied into a Gordian Knot. To survive Israel must go on the offensive to cut the knot and save itself, or be choked to death by the knot its enemies have tied around it.
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Daniel Greenfield is a New York City writer and columnist. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and his articles appears at its Front Page Magazine site.