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Israel’s Urban Warfare Experience in Gaza Can Benefit Allies
Israeli soldiers operating in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/IDF Handout
JNS.org – The Israel Defense Forces’ experience in fighting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, an area described by observers as the most challenging urban warfare environment in history, likely holds important benefits for Israel’s allies.
One of the key lessons, according to Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman, vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, is the IDF’s use of what he described as “three-dimensional warfare.”
This concept relates to creating an unprecedented capability to generate a 3D picture of the battlefield in real-time, one that shows available friendly firepower sources in the air and the ground, and the location of enemy targets. This data is then pushed to ground forces and the Israeli Air Force, enabling new levels of cooperation.
“This means that when IDF soldiers enter an alleyway, they can see what’s behind the house because someone gives them the picture of what’s in front of them,” said Lerman.
“This is definitely the most significant and heaviest complex military campaign conducted to date under these conditions, to my understanding,” Lerman, a former deputy director for foreign policy and international affairs at the National Security Council in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, and an ex-IDF Military Intelligence officer, told JNS.
Lerman said that the IDF and the U.S. Armed Forces have been engaged in a process of mutual learning for years, adding that “the Americans had their share of urban battles. It’s not that we invented the wheel, but it seems to me that there is one central component that was implemented in combat in Gaza by the IDF with very great effectiveness, and it is three-dimensional warfare.”
The unparalleled degree of integration between advancing ground forces and the air force accompanying them from above, all working on the basis of a common battlefield picture featuring continuous updates on enemy and friendly force positions, meant that the IDF gained a major advantage against “an enemy that under normal conditions would be invisible,” said Lerman.
IDF ground forces have visual assistance through tablet-like devices that inform their combat needs at any given moment, and work more closely than ever with fighter jets, combat helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as the navy.
The ground forces’ “control of the battlefield is exceptional,” said Lerman, “both at the tactical level and at the micro-tactical level. This compensates to a great extent for the advantage that Hamas had within its own territory, which Hamas is familiar with, and where it was hiding.”
A battle management system, made by Israeli defense company Elbit Systems and called Torch 750 (also known in the IDF as Digital Ground Army), played a central role in generating this ability.
“This battle picture also prevents many friendly fire incidents, though not entirely, to our sorrow,” said Lerman. “I think these are things that will be learned.”
Israeli combat history
A glance at the casualty ratio between the IDF and Hamas reveals that in many battles, the average was around 50 terrorist casualties to one IDF casualty. Some operations, such as the IDF’s second raid on Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in March, saw some 200 terrorists killed versus three Israeli combat casualties.
This wouldn’t be the first time that battle lessons were shared between Israel and its allies. While Israel is heavily dependent on American military supplies, it has also exported products developed in the wake of lessons from Israeli combat history.
In 2018, the U.S. Army purchased the Israeli-made Trophy active-protection system for four brigades of its Abrams tanks. Trophy, which is made by Israeli defense company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, has proven to be a revolutionary system for Israel’s own Merkava 4 tanks because it can instantly detect and intercept lethal armor-penetrating threats such as anti-tank guided missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. It can also share the location of enemy threats with others.
The system was developed out of the lessons learned by Israel’s defense establishment from the 2006 Second Lebanon War, when Israeli tanks were vulnerable to Hezbollah cells armed with anti-tank missiles.
In the realm of passive armor, Plasan Sasa, an Israeli company, has played an important role in boosting the survivability of the U.S. military’s Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. In 2008, Plasan was chosen to provide armor for 1,955 vehicles of the U.S. Marine Corps.
Allied and adversary military doctrine
Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former U.S. Army officer who taught at West Point, stated, “I think there’s much to learn for foreign militaries from the experience in Gaza. I’m confident that the United States and its allies are taking copious notes.”
Bowman, a former national security adviser to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, added, “Unfortunately, many of our adversaries are also learning.”
These lessons will shape allied and adversary military doctrine, training, and operations, he assessed. “The degree to which militaries learn from this experience will have direct consequences on future battlefields,” said Bowman.
“The U.S. military is the most powerful military in the world, arguably the most powerful military in human history, but we make mistakes and have shortcomings. We can learn much from our allies and partners, including our Israeli allies,” Bowman continued.
He described the ongoing war in Gaza as “one of the most significant urban warfare battles in recent history,” arguing that it would be a mistake to assume it is such an anomaly that few lessons are transferable.
“If there’s a ground warfare component, there’s very likely to be an urban warfare component. Why? Because a large portion of humanity lives in cities, and because the seats of government are in cities and many military objectives are in or near cities. And some military bases and headquarters themselves are essentially urban warfare environments,” Bowman said.
He drew attention to the IDF’s impressive achievements in detecting and destroying tunnels in Gaza.
“I think part of the reason for that is because they had a running start. They’ve been working on terror tunnel detection and destruction for many years with U.S. cooperation and support, but primarily focused on tunnels designed to come underneath the borders of Israel, to infiltrate Israel, to kill men, women and children in the night.”
While such detection technology previously required the IDF to be above or near the ground where the tunnel was located, the IDF in this war was able to bring tunnel detection capabilities into enemy territory, he said.
The IDF’s ability to call up large numbers of reserve forces and send them on successful missions was also notable, Bowman added, saying that partners such as Taiwan could learn from Israel’s experience with reservists.
Hezbollah, for its part, will likely learn from the Gaza war that it needs to double down on its human-shield tactics.
An additional key lesson is the sheer magnitude of munitions required in such conflicts, Bowman said. That lesson remains relevant to Israel’s operations in Gaza, Bowman said, “but even more relevant to stockpiling the weapons Israel needs for the bigger fight that’s coming sooner or later with Hezbollah and Iran.
“And if I’m Israel, what do I do with that information? I prioritize, above all else, the stockpiling of weapons that Israel will need for a major war with Hezbollah and Iran. The weapons, the munitions—particularly the air-launched precision-guided munitions that could be cut off in the future by the U.S. Congress—as Hezbollah learns from Hamas’s use of human shields to increase civilian casualties and create concern in Washington to create political pressure to deprive Israel of the means of self-defense,” he said.
“Israel should get those weapons and munitions it needs now and stockpile them so that Israel has what it needs, when and if things get much worse,” Bowman warned.
The post Israel’s Urban Warfare Experience in Gaza Can Benefit Allies first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel, US Blast ‘Outrageous’ ICC Request for Netanyahu’s Arrest
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Feb. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday issued blistering condemnations of the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor’s demand for arrest warrants for the Israeli premier, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas terror chief Yahye Sinwar.
Biden said the move by Karim Khan was “outrageous” and “shameful,” adding, “Let me be clear: Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken added that the US “fundamentally rejects the announcement.”
In a video message, Netanyahu called the warrant application “absurd and false” and said it “was not directed only against the prime minister of Israel and the defense minister, but against the entire State of Israel and against the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers, who are fighting with otherworldly heroism against the depraved Hamas murderers who attacked us with savage butchery on the seventh of October.”
Addressing the chief prosecutor, Netanyahu continued: “With what chutzpah do you dare compare the monsters of Hamas to the soldiers of the IDF, the most moral army in the world? With what audacity do you compare between Hamas that murdered, burned, butchered, raped, and kidnapped our brothers and sisters, and the IDF soldiers who are fighting a just war that is incomparable, with a morality that is unmatched?”
In addition to Sinwar, the request also called for the arrests of Hamas’ political leader in Qatar, Ismail Haniyeh, and the Palestinian terror group’s military head, Mohammed Deif, on charges of war crimes.
Blinken called the prosecutor’s equivalence of Israel with Hamas “shameful.”
“Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans,” Blinken said.
He emphasized that the ICC had “no jurisdiction” over the war, and noted that both Israel and the US are not parties of the Rome Statute, the international treaty that established the court. The top US diplomat also called into question “deeply troubling processes” by Khan, who was supposed to send a team to Israel on Monday to coordinate his own visit next week.
“Israel was informed that they did not board their flight around the same time that the prosecutor went on cable television to announce the charges. These and other circumstances call into question the legitimacy and credibility of this investigation,” Blinken said.
An unprecedented majority in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset — 106 out of 120 MKs — signed a petition on Monday afternoon against what they said was an “unerasable historical crime.”
“The scandalous comparison by the Hague prosecutor between Israel’s leaders and the heads of terror organizations is an unerasable historical crime and a clear expression of antisemitism,” the petition read. “We reject this with revulsion. Eighty years after the Holocaust, no one will prevent the Jewish state from defending itself.”
Israel will likely lobby the US Congress to pursue sanctions against the ICC. Several Republican senators last month warned against issuing warrants, saying they would push for sanctions against Khan including barring entry to the US.
One of them, US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), said on Monday he will “feverishly work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle in both chambers to levy damning sanctions against the ICC,” adding that “Prosecutor Khan is drunk with self-importance and has done a lot of damage to the peace process and to the ability to find a way forward.”
Former US national security adviser John Bolton also called for the US to impose sanctions on the ICC, saying the Hague court had proved its “fundamental illegitimacy.”
“To aid our ally Israel, the US should take steps both in Congress and in the White House to condemn the ICC and impose sanctions,” he wrote on X/Twitter.
The ICC action also received strong criticism in Europe.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala called Khan’s decision “appalling and completely unacceptable.”
“We must not forget that it was Hamas that attacked Israel in October and killed, injured, and kidnapped thousands of innocent people,” he wrote on X. “It was this completely unprovoked terrorist attack that led to the current war in Gaza and the suffering of civilians in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon.”
Other European leaders, however, supported the ICC move.
“Crimes committed in Gaza must be prosecuted at the highest level, regardless of the perpetrators,” Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib wrote. “The fight against impunity wherever crimes occur is a priority for Belgium.”
The call for arrest warrants “is an important step in the investigation of the situation in Palestine,” she added.
The post Israel, US Blast ‘Outrageous’ ICC Request for Netanyahu’s Arrest first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Republican Jewish Coalition Unveils $50,000 Ad Buy to Woo Jewish Voters Ahead of 2024 Presidential Election
US President Joe Biden speaks at a Detroit Branch NAACP annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner in Detroit, Michigan, US, May 19, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) will purchase $50,000 worth of digital ads in key battleground states with the purpose of targeting Jewish voters ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, according to a statement released by the group on Monday.
The RJC, an organization that seeks to build support for the Republican Party among Jewish voters, claimed it would release new ads underlining what it described as the deteriorating relationship between Israel and the United States during the Biden administration. The ads suggest that US President Joe Biden has undermined Israel’s military campaign in Gaza against Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that launched the ongoing war with its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
“As antisemitism spikes to record highs and America’s relationship with our ally Israel continues to reach new lows, the Jewish community is more energized than ever to turn the page from the failures, broken promises, and betrayals by Joe Biden,” RNC chair Norm Coleman and CEO Matt Brooks said in a statement.
The two ads will be deployed in states considered critical in the 2024 presidential election: Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Michigan. Both ads swipe at Biden over his decision to pause offensive arm shipments to Israel and suggest the president has “stabbed Israel in the back.” They also accuse Biden of not being “strong” enough to guarantee Israel’s security and urge voters to support Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
“Biden is siding with Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah over Israel at the most crucial time, a blunder of historic proportions that will lead to more death and destruction,” one of the ads says.
Biden expressed strong support for Israel following the Oct. 7 onslaught, and since then the US has sent significant amounts of munitions to the Jewish state for its war effort against Hamas. In recent weeks, however, he has adopted a much more critical posture toward Jerusalem, culminating with his decision earlier this month to withhold sending certain weapons to Israel due to disagreements over Israeli military operations in Gaza.
In the months following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel, Republican politicians have attempted to capitalize on the growing tension between Democrats and Jewish voters. On May 9, Trump lambasted Jewish supporters of Biden.
“If you’re Jewish, and you vote for him, I say shame on you,” Trump said.
Ammiel Hirsch, a rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week warning Democrats not to take Jewish voters for granted.
“American Jews increasingly feel politically homeless. Liberal Jewish voters consider President Biden a longtime friend. At the same time, they are troubled by the growing influence of anti-Israel forces in the Democratic Party,” Hirsch wrote.
In his final statement before passing away earlier this year, former US Senator and Democratic Party vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman similarly warned Democrats and Biden about the political danger of turning against Israel.
“We are here to say that you can no longer simply count on our vote just because Jews traditionally have voted Democratic. We are here to say you must earn our vote,” the joint statement read. “We want to continue to support Democratic candidates, but you need to know that if you abandon Israel in order to garner the support of anti-Israel extremists within the Democratic Party, it will be difficult for us to support Democrats who are on the ballot this November.”
Lieberman, an ardent supporter of Israel, was the first Jewish candidate on a major party presidential ticket in the US.
The post Republican Jewish Coalition Unveils $50,000 Ad Buy to Woo Jewish Voters Ahead of 2024 Presidential Election first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pro-Hamas Encampment at Drexel University Pushes School Into Lockdown
“Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Drexel University. Photo: X/Twitter
A “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” was erected suddenly at Drexel University in Philadelphia over the weekend, forcing school officials to lock down the campus to protect it from a flood of non-students who joined the demonstration.
“This demonstration has already proved intolerably disruptive to normal university operations and has raised serious concerns about the conduct of some participants, including distressing reports and images of protesters subjecting passersby to antisemitic speech, signs, and chants,” Drexel University president John Fry said on Sunday in a letter to the campus community. “These kinds of hateful and intimidating acts must be condemned, and they cannot and will not be tolerated.”
Fry added that “it has become increasingly apparent that most of the encampment participants are outside individuals who are unaffiliated with Drexel.”
The group responsible for the demonstration, Drexel Palestine Coalition (DPC), is demanding that the school adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and “terminate” its Hillel and Chabad chapters.
“These organizations must be replaced by non-Zionist Jewish ones that in no way support the ongoing genocide, occupation, or apartheid in Palestine,” DPC said in a statement posted on social media.
DPC also wants the university’s police force to be abolished, amnesty granted to any protester charged with violating school rules, and a “60 percent” reduction in Fry’s salary, the savings of which would be invested “into local community efforts such as affordable housing, co-ops, land trusts — specifically towards Black Bottom residents — and the rebuilding of Palestinian institutions such as hospitals and universities.”
Footage of the demonstration shows some aggressive behavior, including the protesters’ dismantling police barricades. According to the latest reports, there have been no arrests.
“Hillel continues to be grateful to have partners on campus who believe that a university experience should be filled with opportunities to engage thoroughly and thoughtfully around issues where there is both deep investment and deep disagreement while recognizing that a prerequisite for any such conversation is a demonstrated commitment to the safety, well being, and shared sense of belonging of all of the students, faculty, and staff who call our university home,” Drexel Hillel said on Sunday in a statement issued about the encampment.
The protesters’ demands are not the first assault on Jewish organizations at Drexel University this academic year.
Last month, the Raymond G. Perelman Center for Jewish Life was vandalized, with the culprits removing large channel letters spelling out Perelman’s name from a brick structure near the entrance to the building. The disturbing act, which occurred amid an explosion of antisemitic hate crimes across the US, was filmed by surveillance cameras, but the persons responsible cannot yet be identified because they wore masks.
“It bears repeating that vandalizing centers of Jewish life and learning, defacing property with antisemitic graffiti, or ripping mezuzot off doorposts in residence halls does not constitute any legitimate form of protests,” Fry said at the time. “Such acts are antisemitic in their intent to disrupt Jewish life and intimidate our Jewish communities, and have no place at Drexel or in our democratic society.”
Drexel University joins the list of over 100 schools where anti-Zionists have taken over sections of campus and refused to leave unless school administrators agree to condemn and boycott Israel. Other demonstrations timed to coincide with the end of the academic year petered out earlier this month, but at Drexel, which uses the quarter system, classes do not end until June 8. Because of this, the encampment there could last as many as three weeks.
In the interim, the school remains locked down, and on Monday, Fry ordered that all classes be conducted virtually.
“We will continue to provide updates regarding this situation or any changes to the university’s operations,” Fry said in Sunday’s letter. “I ask for everyone’s patience and understanding as we work toward ensuring that our campus can soon return to normal.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Pro-Hamas Encampment at Drexel University Pushes School Into Lockdown first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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