Israel’s campaign in Lebanon over the last 10 days has been a remarkable display of intelligence, technological skill, and above all political will. The sabotage of Hezbollah’s pagers and walkie-talkies wounded or killed scores of fighters. Its targeted bombings against Hezbollah’s terror masters showed how much Israeli intelligence has penetrated its communications.
Israel, as it turns out, was not the only
entity to have underestimated the enemy on October 7th and fallen
prey to mistaken assumptions, and an entrenched mindset. So was Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s
head, Hassan Nasrallah, prided himself on what he thought was a good
understanding of Israeli society. He radiated a sense to his own people and the
region that he – more than any of Israel’s enemies, knew Israel,
understood its DNA, figured out what made it tick, grasped its fears and
insecurities, and knew exactly what buttons to press and when.
In
August 2018, this self-professed know all of Israeli society said this: “The
Israeli leadership knows that it is difficult to convince people to enlist in
the elite units and the combat units. Everyone prefers to serve in the rear
units. They lost the will that they once had to sacrifice; they have no
motivation to endanger their lives.”
His
confidence in his ability to read Israel was behind the propaganda videos he
periodically put out to frighten the country, the maneuvers of Hezbollah
terrorists on the border, and, in the early part of the century, the kidnapping
of Israeli soldiers. He thought he had found the country’s Achilles’ heel and
could exploit that weakness to victory.
Nasrallah
obviously did not believe that Israel would dare take the type of military
action it has in the last ten days, essentially crippling his organization.
This is the Israel of the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s – confident, brazen,
daring, and taking the initiative.
Israel,
he assumed, would not take serious action. It was too bogged down in Gaza, too
wary of a frontal confrontation with his 150,000 missiles, and unwilling to
provoke a confrontation with Iran.
Nasrallah
assumed that Israel’s spirit was broken, that its confidence in its leadership
was nonexistent, and that its faith in the future was shaken. And where could
he have gotten that idea? By tuning into Israeli media and concluding that what
he saw nightly on the news – massive protests, reports of internal division,
fighting among government ministers, endless bickering and criticism – was a
true reflection of Israel. He mistook the defeatism reflected in some of the
media for the overall mood of the country and its soldiers. Nasrallah did not
realize that this only reflected the mood of a small portion of the population.
Likewise,
Nasrallah was reading – and misreading – Israel from the debates swirling in
the media, thinking the country had lost its way and its will. It is
understandable how he could have drawn that conclusion. But the country’s
strength, will, and determination are much stronger than how this often appears
on the nightly news.
It
is probably a forlorn hope to expect the news reporters to become reporters and
not purveyors of their personal ideologies.
For
fuller analysis of this see https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-822427
