ELEVEN DAYS IN MAY

The late Robert Fisk (journalist and author) coined the phrase “hotel journalism" referring to news media correspondents who wrote reports from their hotel rooms relying solely on press releases, without personal interviews or first-hand experience of events. Fisk was very much the on-the-spot journalist writing from Beirut, Bagdad, Israel the West Bank, and Gaza. Of course, his hands-on approach didn’t necessarily make him more objective.

He was critical of United States foreign policy in the Middle East and Israel’s position regarding the Palestinians. His stance earned him praise from many commentators but was condemned by others.  The Economist referred to him as "one of the most influential correspondents in the Middle East since the second world war."

On the other hand, The Times in its November 2020 obituary of Fisk, said that he had developed a "visceral dislike of the Israeli government and its allies" following his coverage of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, alleging that this had made Fisk biased and "unable to provide a dispassionate account of events and their context. Earlier, journalist-author David Pryce-Jones, writing in The Spectator in 2003, said that Fisk was guilty of "hysteria and distortion" in his coverage of Middle Eastern topics.

Let’s leave Robert Fisk to rest in peace and move on to  examples of ‘misleading’ news media reporting

On the front page of its May 26, 2021 edition, the New York Times ran a powerful, moving spread titled “They Were Only Children,” featuring thumbnail photos of children it says were among the 69 youths under 18 years old—67 Palestinians and two Israelis, one Arab and one Jewish—killed in the 11 days of conflict between Israel and Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

On May 28, former national director of the Anti-Defamation League Abraham Foxman tweeted: “I am cancelling my subscription to the NYTimes. I grew up in America on the NYT—I delivered the NYT to my classmates—I learned civics- democracy and all the news 'fit to print' for 65 years but no more. Today’s blood libel of Israel and the Jewish people on the front page is enough.”

Further to that, “Eleven Days in May” a documentary directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mohammed Sawwaf, and narrated by Kate Winslet omits key facts in its account of the conflict. The film is being shown in select Picture House cinemas across the UK,

David Rose Jewish Chronicle wrote that the documentary fails to include criticism made of Hamas for launching rockets from heavily populated areas of Gaza - effectively turning the civilian population into a human shield.

It also omits reports that seven children in Gaza were killed by Hamas rockets that had fallen short of the intended targets in Israel.

Like “They Were Only Children,” it depicts last year’s Gaza war completely out of context and without bothering to verify the facts. A review of the film in The Guardian described it as,” incendiary material and furiously anti-Israel.”

For the purpose of presenting a more comprehensive account of last year’s war in Gaza, I’ll include the following preamble: Gaza is one of the most carefully scrutinized pieces of land in the world, not only surrounded by cameras on the border fence but also constantly patrolled in the skies above. Every suspicious movement is carefully tracked. It is also one of the world’s most densely populated territories. Urban warfare invariably involves innocent bystanders, but in the Gaza Strip non-combatants have never been targeted by the IDF.    

Israel’s military intelligence knew that Hamas was building an extensive network of underground tunnels.

The tunnels were dug by hand and with jackhammers, as heavy machinery would have attracted too much attention from the Israeli drones constantly hovering in the skies above.

Every Hamas battalion had its assignment and was responsible for the burrowing in its area of operations. Budgets were allocated according to a detailed plan, and deadlines were set for each stage of the project.

Supervising it all was Mohammed Deif, the elusive Hamas commander who had survived numerous Israeli assassination attempts spanning more than two decades. According to some estimates, the entire project cost 290 million USD. A sum that could have been put to better use, benefitting the Gaza civilian population.

Excavated beneath a large part of the Gaza Strip the 100 km tunnel network consisted of three different kinds of spaces: passageways to get from one point to the other; places to sleep, eat, and even shower; and spaces for launching rockets. The entire network was designed to quickly and covertly move gunmen so they could surprise and attack invading Israeli infantry troops and armoured forces.

But 2014 the year the tunnel project began was also a turning point for the IDF in its battle against these underground systems.

The IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) invested unprecedented resources in gleaning as much information as they could about the tunnel network. One Military Intelligence officer appropriately dubbed it the “Metro”

Aerial surveillance was helpful but could not provide information on the routes underground. Tracking mobile phone conversations underground wasn’t a viable option.

This left the Shin Bet to focus on old-school intelligence-gathering tactics, recruiting agents, and spies in Gaza who could reveal details about the routes of the tunnels and what exactly they contained.

But time was running out. Continuous Israeli Intelligence surveillance indicated that Hamas battalions were already training in preparation for an attack. The terrorist operatives stored their weapons below ground and were sufficiently familiar with the network’s layout.

The IDF plan was in place by 2018, a joint operation planned within the IDF Southern Command – responsible for the Gaza Strip – and the Israeli air force headquarters in Tel Aviv. Due to the size of the network and the need to surprise the enemy, the initial operational requirement spoke of the need for more than 100 aircraft that would drop more than 500 bombs in less than 30 minutes. The operation was given the code name “Lighting Strike.”

Timing was of the essence for its success. The IDF high command preferred a later date. It was in the final stages of preparing a manoeuvre to destroy a series of cross-border tunnels that Hezbollah had dug along Israel’s border with Lebanon. Within Military Intelligence, there were concerns that launching “Lightning Strike” now could lead to a longer and larger conflict with Gaza, which would force the IDF to postpone the operation against Hezbollah’s tunnels – and the longer it waited, the greater the chance that something would leak out.

The cabinet sided with the IDF, and “Lightning Strike” was put on hold.

IDF Southern Command continued honing the operation with new intelligence constantly provided by the Shin Bet. When “Operation Guardian of the Walls” broke out in May, “Lightning Strike” was put back on the table. Some generals were still hesitant, feeling that such a large-scale bombing needed to be saved for an operation whose objective was to topple Hamas. However, that was not the objective of “Operation Guardian of the Walls.”

OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Eliezer Toledano believed it needed to be launched now. If not, he warned, it might not be relevant in a future operation. Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi agreed.

“Even if we don’t kill hundreds of terrorists, it is still worth setting back Hamas by 10 years,” Toledano was later quoted as saying.

That is how just after midnight on May 14, last year, 160 IAF fighter jets took off and headed out to the Mediterranean Sea. The planes – F-15s and F-16s – were loaded with GPS-guided bombs, many of them GBU-39s, also known as the Small Diameter Bomb (SDB), a weapon made by Boeing that is small, accurate, and has the ability to penetrate steel-reinforced concrete. Since they are relatively small, Israel’s F-15Is –can carry 20 SDBs on their wings and fuselage.

It was the largest and most complicated IAF sortie since the Six-Day War when almost all of Israel’s fleet took off to destroy Egypt and Syria’s air forces in the opening salvo of that conflict.

But on this night Israel wasn’t going after an enemy air force. It was looking to take out Hamas’s prized possession – the secret weapon it had skilfully and secretly built up over a period of almost a decade.

The challenge was unprecedented. Not only was it a painstaking effort to discover the exact route, but the IAF also had to find a way to destroy the tunnels without toppling entire neighbourhoods: the tunnels were not under empty fields but under apartment buildings and peoples’ homes.

Israel needed to attack in a way that would on the one hand destroy the tunnels, but also be so accurate that it would leave the least amount of collateral damage and not undermine the greater war effort of weakening and delegitimising Hamas.

Attacking such a small space in such a short period of time requires a level of precision and synchronisation rarely seen on the modern battlefield, especially when considering that 160 fighter jets were involved.

In many of the cases, the idea was to hit parts of the tunnels that were not adjacent to buildings, and if there was no choice, then to try to hit it at an angle.

The planes, which took off from different bases across Israel, gathered over the Mediterranean and waited there for the green light. Once they got it, the attack began. Every group of planes had preinstalled the GPS coordinates of their targets. The planes didn’t even have to fly over Gaza. They were able to drop their bombs while they were still over the sea.

The mission took just 23 minutes. The challenge wasn’t the attack, but synchronising the different sorties.

Five hundred bombs were dropped that night over the so-called Metro. While the attacks were carried out by fighter jets, drones that flew high above Gaza transmitted images back to IAF headquarters in Tel Aviv so officers there could immediately assess the extent of the damage caused.

Palestinians reported that at least 42 people were killed, some inside the tunnels and others in a couple of buildings that collapsed because of the destruction. How many of the dead were affiliated with terrorist organisations – Hamas or Islamic Jihad – was not immediately clear.

Weeks later, research conducted by the Terrorism and Information Centre in Israel – a think tank closely affiliated with security agencies – showed that out of the 236 Palestinians killed during the operation in Israeli attacks, at least 114 of them belonged to foreign terrorist organisations. The IDF put that number even higher, claiming that close to 200 of the dead were known, terrorists.

At this juncture, it’s important to add that every civilian life lost in war is a tragedy, but there is a question of responsibility that needs to be addressed.

Palestinians argue that Israel is the side attacking and dropping the bombs. As a result, they say, it is Israel that is responsible.

Israel argues that Hamas intentionally stores its weapons and builds its command centres inside civilian infrastructures; and while Israel goes to great lengths to minimize collateral damage, it cannot ensure that there will not be civilian casualties.

The Metro is a case in point. That 500 bombs were dropped on a small space in such a short amount of time and “only” 42 people were killed – at least half of them terrorists according to Israel – is unprecedented in the history of war.

Instead, what Israel did was astounding. It knew exactly how to hit the corner of a tunnel at a street intersection, having analysed precisely how many bombs and pounds of explosives would be needed so the explosion would have a greater effect underground and not above. When buildings did fall, it was because the collapse of the tunnel led to a collapse of the building. The structures themselves were not attacked.

One commentator summed up “Operation Guardian of the Walls” as follows:

“Considering the entire operation, what it accomplished was is even more impressive. Israel attacked over 1,500 targets throughout 11 days of fighting. That is at least 1,500 bombs that were dropped on targets – and in many cases, more than one bomb was used on a target – to ensure they were destroyed.

Considering that Gaza, with its mere 365 square kilometres, is one of the most densely populated places in the world, the operation was an impressive achievement – and a testament to the way Israel operates and the measures it has in place to minimize civilian casualties.

While the world tends to look at this conflict through the dry and simple numbers of a scorecard – how many are dead in Gaza (more) compared with how many are dead in Israel (less) – this is a distorted perspective.

It should instead evaluate what exactly happened during the operation – the most accurate and precise military operation of this scale in modern military history.

Think about it: more than 1,500 bombs were dropped in Gaza, on 1,500 targets – and maybe 60 civilians were killed. That is something that has never been done before.

This does not mean the IDF did not make mistakes. Just as all wars include collateral damage, all wars include mistakes. But when looking at dry numbers, as the international community likes to do, what the IDF did in May last year is an unprecedented military accomplishment.

A number of factors contributed to the success of the eleven-day Gaza war; extremely good military intelligence, the exclusive use of satellite-guided munitions, innovative tactics, and, finally, a set of values and military ethics to which IDF officers diligently adhere.

When it comes to munitions, for example, all the bombs dropped by the IDF on Gaza in “Guardian of the Walls” were smart weapons that in most cases accurately hit their targets.

On May 10, Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem and later attacked other civilian centres in Israel. The Israeli response (“Operation Guardian of the Walls.”) although preconceived was essentially a defensive operation.

What Israel also did was use its unique “roof knocking” tactic before attacking buildings where terrorist groups stored weapons or built operation centres alongside civilians. In 208 cases, the Shin Bet called up the owners of the homes and warned them to leave. That is 208 times that Israel purposely gave away the element of surprise so it could strike a legitimate target without harming civilians.   

 

Last week I mentioned remarks made by Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar urging West Bank Palestinians and Israeli Arabs to carry out terror attacks.

The two Palestinians who carried out the horrific terrorist attack in Elad, a Haredi town near Petah Tikva last week apparently took Sinwar’s advice.

The two were caught after an intensive manhunt, both come from Rummaneh, a village northwest of Jenin.

In the past, they worked as electricians at construction sites in Israel.

This week politicians and run-of-the-mill citizens have been calling for the IDF to “take out” Yahya Sinwar, but assassinating Sinwar right now would be counter-productive.

In due course and with a “helping hand” he will meet his maker. 

Have a good weekend.

Beni                                                             12th of May,     2022