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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Why Hamas still stands: Failed military doctrine drives IDF thinking
2025-01-22
Upsetting. What would have been a better strategy, given deliberately harmful micromanaging by the Biden administration? What would be a better strategy given a supportive president who wants wars to be won?
[JNS] Ran Baratz, who teaches military doctrine at the IDF’s National Defense College and founded Mida, an online Hebrew-language Commentary-like magazine, raises no objections to the ceasefire deal with Hamas—but not for the reasons one would expect. It’s because the IDF can’t win. At least, not with a General Staff marinated in postmodern military doctrine.

Baratz notes that the army’s rank-and-file is second to none, but the General Staff’s lack of strategy results in endless targeted raids, where the IDF goes in, kills some terrorists, retreats, then reenters the same area to cope with more terrorists—and lose more of its valiant young soldiers.

"When generals don’t have a strategy, they come up with an overarching strategy of attrition, which doctrinally, is achieved by raids," Baratz told JNS on Jan. 15.

"They have different names for raids. In Vietnam, it was called ’search and destroy.’ But it was the same idea. You raid a place, you kill the enemy combatants, with some collateral damage, and you pull back. You could see that in the Second Lebanon War [in 2006], and you can see that today. If they had a good operational plan, they wouldn’t be speaking about raids," he says.

The General Staff didn’t even have a plan in place to invade the Gaza Strip, Baratz says. They thought it wasn’t needed as Hamas was "deterred." That’s why it took so long for the IDF to go into Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion.


More at the link.
Posted by:The Walking Unvaxed

#5  The only solution is like with Germans of the Sudetes.
Posted by: Grom the Affective   2025-01-22 23:44  

#4  I agree with LG.
When I saw the crowd of Hamas at the Red Cross prisoner exchange I felt the IDF had a very long way to go.
Posted by: The Walking Unvaxed   2025-01-22 22:08  

#3  The "Civilian" Meat Shields alone cause problems in Hamas-Loving Media PR
Posted by: Frank G   2025-01-22 18:45  

#2  gotta agree w Grom

Israel could have had a much more effective military action and it could have started much earlier if not for the Biden Administration.

However, even this wouldn't have wiped Hamas out completely. A significant increase in the severity of the military action would have been required.
Posted by: Lord Garth   2025-01-22 18:42  

#1  There are no winning strategy as long as Globalist-Islamist alliance dictates the rules of war. That Israel does is surviving until conditions change.
Posted by: Grom the Affective   2025-01-22 09:08  

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