Right now we are witnessing amazing solidarity within the Israeli people facing the massacres perpetrated by Hamas from Gaza and an incredible resolve to withstand Hamas, to organise relief and support for the survivors of the massacres and those most badly affected, and cooperations across diverse segments of society which were hard to imagine before. While the gouvernment refuses to give responses to the questions by the Israeli public concerning the likely fate of the hostages during an offensive and the perspective in Gaza for after the war, and while there are objections from the US concerning the feasibiity of a ground offensive, there is also a widely shared understanding that the Hamas must not be allowed to reestablish its powerbase in Gaza after the current war.
If we want to talk seriously about what is currently at stake, we must not ignore the concrete military and technological questions shaping the current reality beyond the high-level executive declarations of political intentions and the popular sentiment. Of course the superficial or quickly acquired knowledge of any ranyom person cannot replace the expertise of experienced military commanders and scholars. But it is crucial to be able to navigate, to make historical comparisons, to put the scale of the tasks ahead into context, to actually know what is at stake in strategic decisions, what kinds of international military support are actually crucial, and which are just talk, which timeframes are realistic, how humanitarian can be solved and legal questions addressed, and it is the basis for discussing any perspectives for the political future. Particularly in many countries outside Israel people lack the everyday contact with friends and relatives in the army and military experience and knowledge is less widespread. One resource which for me now turned out to be particularly useful to get a better understanding of the extreme challenges of the urban combats ahead is the website and the podcast of the Urban War Project of the Modern War Institute at United States Military Academy West Point. There are several interviews with Israeli commanders and military scholars, explaining for example the challenges of tunnel demolition or the strategic shift of IDF organisation, equipment and training towards urban warfare. How fierce can be the Hamas defense of houses? Under what kinds of circumstances did Israeli urban incursions experience serious setbacks? What kind of technological supplies are most useful? They also published a detailed analysis of the liberation of Mosul from Daesh by Iraqi and Kurdish PDK forces—the liberation from the Jihadists took nine months, more than thousand allied casualties, more than 5000 allied losses, probably around 10.000 civilian deaths (might be higher). Hamas might be better prepared concerning their tunnels and might have more popular support by desperate youth joining the fight with improvised explosives, having grown up with a reality and ideologies where life is very very cheap, but has also been under an at least partially effective blockade of military supplies. They provide both historical and background materials and very up to date analysis of the challenges for the looming offensive in Gaza.
In Germany there is a common saying that the entire 83 million population consists of football coaches, and that after the Covid pandemic started there were suddenly 83 million virologists. Usually people say that as if it were a bad thing. However, for the sake of a true democracy and the fundamental principle of enlightenment I wish people would put as much effort into acquiring some general ideas concerning very crucial fields like epidemology, climate science, national and international monetary policy, artificial intelligence or under certain circumstances even urban warfare as they do concerning the analysis of the decisions of football coaches and managers (in which some people surprisingly put less trust than in government officials).
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