The Palestinian resistance understands its enemy. It has learned through experience how to fight it. This is not good news for Israel.
Blood Meal – by Mr. Fish.
By Chris Hedges
in Cairo
Original to ScheerPost
Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian resistance leader, shortly before Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza, laid down the fundamental rules for warfare against Israel.
The rules by al-Araj, not a member of Hamas, provide the Palestinian lens for the incursion by Israeli forces in Gaza. While Israel’s superior firepower — its air force, missiles, tanks, armored personnel carriers, drones, naval forces, mechanized units and artillery — make it possible to inflict huge numbers of Palestinian casualties, most of them civilians, while Israel can level whole neighborhoods and turn hospitals, schools, power stations, water treatment plants, bakeries, mosques and churches into piles of concrete, this does not translate into a defeat of the Palestinian resistance groups.
Al-Araj argued that the fight with Israel cannot be measured with body counts. The Israelis will be able to kill far greater numbers of Palestinians.
Resistant movements, he wrote, always suffer disproportionate losses. In the independence war in Algeria, between 1954 and 1962, upwards of 1.5 million Algerians — or around 10 percent of the population — were killed by the French. In the airport in Algiers, the country’s capital, is a huge sign that reads: “Welcome to Algeria. Land of a million Martyrs.”
“We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers,” he wrote.
Al-Araj, who led hunger strikes while in Palestine Authority prisons, was long a target for Israel. Israel’s counter-terrorism unit, Yamam, pursued him for months before raiding his home on March 6, 2017, in el-Bireh. After a two-hour gun battle, Israeli forces, which fired rockets into the building, burst inside and executed him at close range. He was 31.
Bassel al-Araj, photographer unknown. (Wikimedia Commons, Fair use)
The fight with Israel, al-Araj reminded Palestinians, must “follow the logic of guerrilla warfare or hybrid warfare, which Arabs and Muslims have become masters of through our experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza.” Never defend “fixed points and borders.” Draw the enemy into an ambush, accomplished by light resistance and tactical withdrawals. Strike the flanks and the rear.
The calculus of asymmetric warfare is very different from conventional war. And what Israel defines as success, including the seizing of territory, numerous deaths and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings, matters little to the resistance fighter. The goal of Palestinian fighters is to remain elusive, to carry out lightning strikes and recede back into the rubble or the vast tunnel network under Gaza.
Al-Qassam Brigades
The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, says it partially destroyed more than 160 Israeli military targets in Gaza, including more than 27 tanks and vehicles in the past two days.
On Nov. 11, the Al-Qassam Brigade says it lured Israeli soldiers to a burning car in the West Bank and blew up their vehicles with an IED.
On Nov. 10 the Al-Qassam Brigades, Saraya Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, say they allowed the Israelis to advance without significant opposition during the day.
In the evening they ambushed the Israeli forces west of Tal al-Hawa, in the areas around Al-Shifa Hospital, west of the Al-Shati refugee camp and west of Beit Lahia in the northern part of the Gaza strip. Israel unleashed a heavy bombardment, the Palestinian fighters said, in an attempt to rescue its soldiers. Israel reportedly suffered high numbers of casualties.
On Nov. 9, Al-Qassam Brigades say they ambushed Israeli soldiers in Juhr al-Dik, targeting them with an anti-personnel rocket. The Israeli soldiers were killed, they said, at “point blank range.”
On Nov. 6, the Al-Qassam Brigades say they destroyed five Israeli tanks with Yassin 105 rockets in northwest Gaza City.
On Nov. 2 Al-Qassam Brigades claimed they destroyed six tanks and two military vehicles in one hour northwest of Gaza City. “The number of casualties is significantly higher than what the enemy’s leadership has announced,” said Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Members of Al-Quds brigades parade through the Gaza, January 2022. (Tasnim News Agency, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
Israel has banned the foreign press from reporting from Gaza. It has killed over 40 Palestinian journalists and media workers. It also has instituted prolonged blockages of the internet and cell phone service. No doubt, this heavy handed censorship is done to limit the horrific images of civilian casualties. But I suspect it is also intended to block images of a ground offensive that is tougher, more protracted and more costly than Israel anticipated.
Israel invests tremendous resources in its propaganda campaign, getting networks such as CNN to repeat back its talking points. Jake Tapper should be an honorary Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman.
Al-Araj warned about the attempt by Israel to demoralize fighters by posting photos and videos of Israelis occupying landmarks and public spaces.
A video being shared on social media shows the raising of the Israeli flag on a beach in Gaza. A group of soldiers surround the flag and sing the Israeli national anthem.
In October last year, Jewish settlers occupied the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron, where a Jewish settler, Barach Goldstein, gunned down 29 Palestinians in 1994 as they prayed. The settlers held a music festival and dance party in the mosque. They hung an Israeli flag from the roof. Videos have circulated that denigrate and ridicule Palestinians.
Al-Araj wrote that Israel’s propaganda is designed to instill panic, demonize Palestinians and spread defeatism.
“We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” said Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land in 1948, facilitated by massacres, the raping of Palestinian women and girls, and the razing of entire villages by Zionist militias.
“From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war — as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza — with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.” “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end,” he concluded.
Yesterday, Israel's Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter proclaimed "We're Rolling Out Nakba 2023" — a repeat of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.
But the words "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" were not uttered once on any of the US Sunday talk shows today. pic.twitter.com/qEtpt7t9Rd
— Andre Damon (WSWS.org) (@Andre__Damon) November 13, 2023
Israel equates the Palestinians with the Nazis. Naftali Bennett, Israel’s former prime minister, in an interview on Sky News on Oct. 12 said, “We’re fighting Nazis.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Hamas in a press conference with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, as “the new Nazis.”
The IDF posted a tweet that read: “Never again is NOW. IDF forces discovered a copy of Hitler’s infamous book ‘Mein Kampf’ — translated into Arabic — in a child’s bedroom used as a Hamas terrorist base in Gaza. The book was discovered among the personal belongings of one of the terrorists, featuring annotations and highlights. Hamas embraces the ideology of Hitler, the one responsible for the annihilation of the Jewish people.”
The message is clear. Palestinians embody absolute evil.
Israel releases images that show Palestinians and Palestinian prisoners being denigrated and abused by Israelis. At the same time, Israel presents itself as compassionate.
A video titled “IDF Soldiers Give Gazan Civilians Water After Hamas Refused,” was recently circulated. The video, clearly staged, reminded me of the footage of the Bosnian Serb commander Gen. Ratko Mladic who handed out candy to children in Srebrenica in 1995 before overseeing the execution of 8,000 men and boys.
“The enemy will carry out tactical, qualitative operations to assassinate some symbols [of resistance], and all of this is part of psychological warfare,” al-Araj wrote.
“Those who have died and those who will die will never affect the resistance’s system and cohesion because the structure and formations of the resistance are not centralized but horizontal and widespread. Their goal is to influence the resistance’s support base and the families of the resistance fighters, as they are the only ones who can affect the men of the resistance.”
In every war, information is weaponized. But to rely exclusively on the Israeli narrative is to be deceived, not only about the war crimes Israel carries out but the nature of the war itself. The Palestinians understand their foe. They have had a lot of experience. They knew this was coming. I suspect the fighting in Gaza will continue for a long time. Israel paid a high price on Oct. 7 when Palestinian fighters breached its borders. It will pay an even higher price in Gaza.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report.”
Author’s Note to Readers: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waiver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, “The Chris Hedges Report.”
This column is from Scheerpost, for which Chris Hedges writes a regular column. Click here to sign up for email alerts.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Such excellent reporting! But watch out for what happens when the reporter gets too close to the story.
Jewish voice for peace–and a Christian voice for a God of love; that will not let itself be destroyed;
so Palestinian resistance endures, while the Israeli Zionists along with the US ruling elite pursue their genocide
Irish people have always empathised with Palestinian suffering, in acknowledgment of their own past experiences. Terence MacSwiney, an Irish patriot who died on the 25 October, after seventy five days on hunger strike, in Brixton Prison, wrote “It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can endure the most who will conquer.” Palestinians have managed to retain their humanity in the face of interminable suffering, whilst the perpetrators of their suffering have stripped themselves of any vestiges of empathy or humanity.
Such excellent reporting! But watch out for what happens
to the reporter when he gets too close to the story.
Jewish voice for peace–and a Christian voice for a
God of love; that will not let itself be destroyed;
so Palestinian resistance endures, while the Israeli Zionists
along with the US ruling elite pursue their genocide
I have reached the point where I have zero patience with people whose brains have been pickled in corporate owned imperialist media propaganda regarding genocide in Gaza. I will call anyone out regardless of how we know each other. This is genocide, financed, armed and verbally supported by Washington. There is absolutely no excuse for not being on the side of the Palestinians. None. When all this shakes out, those who foolishly sided with Israel are going to be treated accordingly by the world. I have no doubt.
Very well said NB (i cannot bring myself to call you nobody)
I’ve just watched the film “Mandela – Long Walk to Freedom”. It resonates so much with the plight of the Palestinians and the same suffering under a “weapons” superior oppressor.
We can but hope the Palestinians will eventually gain their rightful freedom and independence, as did the South Africans. I understand your feeling of impotence as many of us feel the same.
I read these articles as a form of penance. I don’t know of any way I can make a difference. You can’t vote for change. If you march with hundreds of thousands of like-minded citizens, they just ignore you. If you make enough noise to get noticed, they find ways to tarnish or silence you. How can you form an effective movement against it when they control and monitor the means of communication?
So, although I’d be happier sticking my head in the sand, I read articles from the likes of Chris Hedges and John Pilger, and I cry at the horror. I cry for all the victims of the war machine, and I feel a sick guilt for sitting here in relative safety and impotence while people, no different from my own family and children, are tortured and killed. I’m literally incapable of comprehending how people can do these things. Maybe that’s the problem? The horror is so great that it becomes unbelievable, unfathomable. And then it becomes easy to make excuses, to accept the lies?
There are times when it strikes me how easy it should be to stop it. Aren’t most people against war? If we could just all stand together and say “no more!”, we could easily shut them down. Right? But how? Back when we were marching against the Iraq war, I believed we could make a difference. Now I just torture myself by observing the horror, so at the very least I can say that I didn’t delude myself by pretending it wasn’t happening. Much thanks to CN and all the brave reporters who continue to witness and broadcast the crimes of the machine.
Your response so clearly captures my feelings, and it hurts so much.
In this country, we now have the esteemed former President Obama throwing weight behind the current genocider-in-chief and Israel. It will just get used to put more propaganda on the airwaves and to shout down others again.
I wish we could just stop killing each other.
I feel as you do. Every day I say this is 2023, why are people still making war rather than making the world a better place. I am sickened by this whole situation.
Thank you, Nobody. Your words capture my feelings exactly.
It’s all too easy to despair, but please don’t think that demonstrations have no effect. They let likeminded people know they are not alone and they help to build a movement. Marches alone won’t stop the slaughter, but a movement that led to more forceful actions (refusal of workers to load weapons or even a general strike) could stop it.
Voting can also help to build a movement, but only if you vote for something other than the “parties of War and Wall street”.
One more time the author repeats NATO lies about “bad Serbs”, not different from Zionist lies about Palestinians.
NATO is on the side of Zionists and in Yugoslavia it was on the side of foes of Serbs
If you look at a older “World Map” you will see that ALL that area is Palestine. The British decided to give a portion of it to the displaced Jews from Europe after WW2. British idiots…..no doubt there was US influence involved also.
The displaced Jews from Europe begged Palestine to let them in. This is how they thank Palestine.