Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter warns that the Israeli military is generally unprepared to cope with suburbian warfare against Hamas on Hamas grounds in Gaza. It will be hellish, but that is just a part of the overall problem. They also have to face Hezbollah and Iran. Clayton Morris interviewed Ritter for Redacted. NewsVoice extracted and summarized some parts.
The Israelis mobilized some 360,000 reservists. The vast majority of these people did their two and a half years of military service, but Israeli armies generally are not very good, Ritter says, except for ”some units that are very capable”, like ”special forces units” and ”some technical units”, but the ”mainstay infantry units, the armour units, they’re not very good.”
Ritter points out that most of these reservists:
”spent their time walking the streets in the West Bank learning how to break the arms of 10-year-old children, how to rough up 15-year-old girls and how to belly shoot 60-year-old men” during a ”brutal occupation.”
Scott Ritter says these experiences ”was horribly demoralizing for the many of these people”, and therefore, they left the military with a low regard for the military, but now they’re back, and this time, ”they’re being called upon to do something that nobody in Israel wants to do”, to fight a war against Hamas in Gaza.
They’re scared to death because Hamas is waiting for them”
Ritter calls an invasion of Gaza ”one giant ambush”, and he says as the Israeli forces try to find Hamas in Gaza ”, they’re gonna be blown up, ambushed, slaughtered, and they know this.”
The other huge problem for Israeli forces is that they have to commit the bulk of their reserves to Gaza, and if Hezbollah decides to open up a northern front, then Israel will have to fight two fronts, and they can’t beat Hezbollah, Ritter says, ”they don’t have the resources to do it.”
And then comes Iran into the picture. The US understands this possible situation, and thus, they are ”stepping in saying, hey, we’re going to flex our muscle in an effort to deter Hezbollah and Iran from striking”.
But Ritter says that will not do it for Israel. ”Two aircraft carrier battle groups in an amphibious ready group with 2000 Marines does not a war win”.
Ritter believes that:
”Biden is going to try and talk some common sense into Netanyahu and let them know the hard reality that, yeah, we flexed our muscles here. But if Hezbollah comes across the border, we’ll bomb them. But we can’t stop them. It’s up to you.”
He says Israel needs to come up with another way of fighting Hamas than invasion. All this comes at a time when Netanyahu is very weak ”because of what he was doing with the judiciary and the rewriting of basic law. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were in the streets.”
”He was Mr. Security. I will protect you. I am the man, and look what happened. Nobody trusts him. There’s a lot of Israeli talk going on, a lot of hot air coming out of the mouthpieces of Netanyahu’s minions. None of it’s backed up by reality. And the fact is Israel is extraordinarily weak, extraordinarily exposed, extraordinarily scared, and America doesn’t have a solution for them.”
Another aspect, probably little known to most people outside Israel and brought about by Ritter, is that millions of Israelis have dual citizenship and will leave Israel. ”That’s the death of Israel.”
Ritter:
”Every Israeli I’ve talked to said we can’t. This happened in 1991 when the Iraqi scuds came in. One of the big things they were saying is it’s not so much the damage, physical damage that the Iraqi scuds are doing.
It’s the emotional and psychological damage it’s doing to Israelis. If we can’t get the European Jews and the American Jews to want to come here and stay here, it’s over for the Israeli experiment. And if Hezbollah could come in and threaten northern Israel, if Hamas can continue to threaten, it’s over.
People will flee. Millions of people will leave, and they will never come back. And that’s it for Israel.”
So, I think right now, Israel is in a very difficult situation where the Israeli experiment has been shown to be a failure.
And now the question is, how do you get out of this? They’re going to have to come up with a solution for Palestine, one that’s acceptable to the Palestinians. And Israel no longer has a superior position where they get to dictate outcomes.
They’re actually going to have to negotiate. And this is where the United States could be of great benefit. But we can’t because we continually shoot ourselves in the foot by opening our mouths and threatening war with people when we can’t beat them.”
Summary and extracts by T. Sassersson