Inventing the ethical warfare

Asymmetrical warfare has been the dominant mode of conflict since WW2 and until today. In general, it involves a regular army fighting against a terrorist group, an insurgent force, or any armed force perceived as being of inferior capability. In most cases, the insurgent forces are operating in populated areas, intertwined and not easily distinguishable from the civilian population which often hides them, cooperates, and supports them. Sometimes that same civilian population is used, against its will, as human shield by the insurgents. In many cases, it is justified to talk about terrorists rather than insurgents. Terrorists present other common characteristics such as: aiming their weapons at civilian population and areas, completely disregarding any commonly accepted “Laws of War” such as the Geneva convention, taking civilian hostages, and releasing completely erroneous facts and statistics about casualties and damages on either side of the conflict. Terrorists stop at nothing to gain public opinion support. By hiding their bases of operation in schools, hospitals, NGO offices, etc., they know any legitimate armed response by their enemy will kill these civilians they use as human shields and get international support to the terror organizations.

Since October 7, Hamas has shot over 4 to 5,000 unguided rockets per month on average onto Israel civilian centers. In the same time, Hezbollah has fired well over 10,000 rockets at Israel civilians. As a result, about 80,000 Israeli citizens had to leave their homes in northern Israel to seek refuge further south. This is all well known, and let us say that anyone who does not see Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations is being dangerously biased for one reason or another.

Waging an asymmetrical war is a difficult proposition for any organized army, even more so when that army is trying hard to fight with principles and in an ethical fashion as is the case for Tzahal, (Israel’s armed forces). Among the critical challenges are: how to locate the terrorist fighters when they are hiding among the general population, how to identify them, how to prevent terrorist attacks before they are initiated, and, last but not least, how to avoid collateral civilian casualties as much as possible. Decades of asymmetrical warfare have demonstrated that these challenges are unsolvable. Or to borrow from Bagger Vance, “it’s a game that can’t be won, only played.”

The cyberattacks initiated on Tuesday September 17, 2024 changed all that in a way most experts could never have imagined. As of the time of this writing, Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for this cyberattack, but let us assume that, indeed, Israel is behind it. In an instant, 4000 pagers (beepers) in the possession of Hezbollah terrorists exploded, all at once. A few hundreds exploded shortly thereafter. Then hundreds of walkie-talkies also in the possession of terrorists exploded. It is rumored that even other wireless devices exploded during that time frame. In total, close to 5000 terrorists were injured, some critically (losing their sight partially or totally, losing limbs, etc.), some more lightly. Only 30 or so have been killed including a very small number of children. There appear to be little to no casualty among the civilian population, even those in close proximity to the exploding devices.

And therein lies the genius in this attack: Israel has developed a weapon that targets only the terrorists and not the civilian population! It has found a way to locate the terrorists wherever they are with 100% probability, to identity them in the midst of the civilian population with 100% success, and to inflict damage to the terrorists all at once! And it found a way to limit the explosion so that only those who carried the device on their body (as opposed to those close to them) were affected by it. Interestingly enough, many of these devices that exploded were in the hands of Hezbollah’s partners: an Iranian ambassador, some Syrian personnel, etc.., thereby exposing the collusion between these members of the “Shiite axis of evil”. Even better, all terror organizations from Lebanon to Iran (the “Iran proxies”) were thrown in a state of panic, ordering all their affiliates to destroy or burry all their wireless devices, thereby throwing even more chaos into these organization’s communication network. And this needs to be repeated over and over: all this with few collateral damage or casualties. I am proud to say this: Israel just invented and implemented for the first time the concept of ethical asymmetrical warfare. And I am equally proud to say that this is the direct result of the Israeli technology, intelligence and the Jewish ancestral attachment to preserving innocent human life.

We live in a warped universe, where the Islamist world enjoys a large automatic majority in the United Nations and all its affiliates. Therefore, we should not really care about any UNGA vote. Still, it hurts me when France and several other useful idiots of the Islamist movement, European nations in particular, voted against Israel. As expected, the naysayers and the enemies of Israel are blaming it for a massacre (which massacre?) and for triggering a total regional war (but who has been bombarding Israel civilian population nonstop since October 7?). None of this affects the pride we should all feel about this remarkable achievement.

We should not delude ourselves in thinking that this makes conventional warfare obsolete, of course. This is a significant step, but this is not the end of the war. Not when the enemy’s goal is to eradicate our beloved country.  We have shown the world that we can fight in an ethical way even against the most cunning of enemies, and, with the help of G.d, we will continue to fight with determination and all necessary means to bring back peace to our country, all the hostages to their families, and all the displaced Israelis to their homes safely.

The “beeper attack” will be studied for a very long time in military academies and intelligence circles all over the world for its innovative nature, its daring implementation and its moral aspects. If there was a Nobel prize for Ethical Warfare, Israel should win it handily, I’ll settle for a Nobel Peace Prize.