Why Am I not All That Worried?

 

Everyday I hear a similar question in several parts. Perhaps writing articles here at Beyond the Cusp makes them believe I actually know and understands what is going on in the world and especially in Israel. It might also be my record of making predictions which have a great amount of veracity and often coming true almost exactly. Whatever the reason, I realize these questions are posed hoping I can ease their minds or accurately warn them when to start to worry and make plans accordingly. The first part of the question is worded something like, is a war coming in the near term? This is usually followed by asking for clarification as to where. This is when I have had to provide some not so great news. The reason is that Hamas in Gaza in the south has stated that they will join in any war should Israel engage with Hezballah in Lebanon to the north while Hezballah has promised to join any war Israel might engage with Hamas. The answer is it matters little where the next conflict starts, it probably, thanks to orders from Iran, will encompass a two-front war against both Hamas (with Islamic Jihad) in the south and Hezballah in the north. This, fortunately, may not matter for the remainder of this year as my feelings are that there will not be any all-encompassing conflict, or this is my wishful thinking.

 

There have been a slowly increasing escalation from out of Lebanon and Syria where Hezballah and the IRGC are aiding Syrian forces loyal to Bashir al-Assad along with Russian air and defensive support. The escalations by these forces have gone from single or twin drones to a drone swarm and single rockets to multiple rocket launches and the use of guided anti-aircraft missiles against ground vehicles. Hamas in Gaza use rocket launchers, anywhere from two or three to as many as a dozen or two. On both fronts, the Iron Dome has intercepted the majority of these projectiles projected to strike populated regions at an unreal excellence and proficiency. There have been threats made after every exchange with Hezballah always making the claim that Israel started everything and thus they will respond to the Israeli belligerence. The only problem with their claims is that the exchanges are almost if not always initiated by Hezballah or Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Hamas also has their weekly, of more accurately daily, rioting along the border replete with launching of kites, balloons and the occasional drone with explosives and incendiary packages aimed for the destruction of Israel. They love the land so much they are willing to completely destroy everything such that nobody can use the region. These are the situations which many in our circles are concerned about, even to the point where it dominates conversation more than the coming election, but not more than the general banter which makes leaving the house worthwhile.

 

To the best of my discernment, many in our circles are displaying a level of tenseness and apprehension noticeably higher than usual. They claim that my lack of uneasiness with what I write and apparently obsession with the news cycle is unexplainable, even considering that I do not believe a war is inevitable this summer or until late next spring. Tomorrow morning, I fully expect to have this conversation within fifteen minutes of meeting the first of my regular circle leading to the same reaction of head shaking and pressing their feelings of ill-at-ease adding an, are you sure, to the conversation. If I am fortunate, others will not overhear our conversing as that almost inevitably brings others echoing the same questions and disbelief and even some expressing concern for my levels of sanity. I always assure them that I am still as unbalanced as ever. The upside of this tense situation surrounding us guarantees that people will want to converse so they can ask and be reassured that there is nothing coming in the immediate time-frame as none of the enemies of Israel desire having everything they own broken and having to wait for Iran to smuggle in a resupply of the necessary components for their rockets and drones. Outside events often supercharge the conversation and the number of scenarios discussed and presented as reasons why I am confused and unfounded in holding such an optimistic, almost Pollyannaish, attitude regarding the danger level around the threats which are thrown around weekly if not daily some weeks. Between Nasrallah boasting of the competence and preparedness of the Hezballah military units being capable of returning the Galilee to Lebanese control, read as Arab control, from the occupation by the Zionist Entity and Yahya Sinwar who leads Hamas insisting that the Friday (and often other days just peeking on Fridays) rioting will continue until the occupation by the Zionist Entity has been destroyed, we are pretty much guaranteed two to five threats each week depending on the need to distract the people from their poor governance. When one includes spokespersons from Islamic Jihad, commanders of the IRGC, Iran itself and Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian Authority (read PLO) circus all coming at the same demands, that the Jews take their rightful subjugation by their Islamic superiors, we seldom go two days without some threat raising concerns.

 

Hezballah is a terror army with all the abilities of the Lebanese Army in addition to their own forces as two-thirds of the Lebanese Army are members of Hezballah or sympathizers and thus do pose a credible threat. The IRGC is a second military fielded by Iran and are Islamic hardliners with radical beliefs. They are well trained and receive the same if not better equipment than the Iranian Army. This provides them with all the same capabilities as the Iranian Army with the possible restriction of less air support. Add in the Iranian Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei with his and the Iranian fanatics chants each Friday after religious services screaming, “Death to America, Death to Israel,” there is an additional guarantee for my conversation. The way I figure things, if there really was a threat of a war coming in the near period, they would have displayed a far higher rate of increase in the attacks and terrorism. There was the latest attack by Hezballah where they fired anti-aircraft guidable missiles at an IDF base targeting the vehicles and striking a field ambulance which could be claimed was an attempted escalation, almost, as they struck a converted Merkava I battle tank, which are obsolete as a main battle tank but make for a far safer ambulance for the rescue of injured soldiers in an active battle scenario, and claimed they had injured numerous IDF soldiers and claimed possible fatalities. The entire scene at this base was set up with mannequins which were evacuated as if being actual injuries. After Hezballah made their bombastic claims, IDF spokespeople revealed the reality that no Israeli was injured or killed and that the entire exchange was a trap which Hezballah took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

 

Still, the situation which Israel faces on a daily basis is serious and threatening. In the Middle East, threatening is the natural condition, and not just between Israel and her neighbors. Syria is in the midst of a long-running civil war, Iraq is fighting its own Kurdish citizens in the north securing the northern routs for Iran to provide supplies, forces and weaponry for the IRGC, Hezballah and forces fighting supporting Bashir al-Assad, Yemen is in a civil war with the Houthis attempting to overthrow the elected government with Iranian support provided by both the IRGC and Hezballah forces, the Jordanian King is facing the threat of massive unrest from the Arab Palestinians plus all the other conflicts surrounding the MENA nations and the remainder of the world. This is also another reason why I doubt that there will be any conflict this year. Iran is behind almost half of the conflicts in the Middle East. The other violence is mostly Islamic forces attacking those of Animist, Christian or other non-Islamic faith across central Africa in the Transition Zone (see map below). There are also conflicts between India and Pakistan as well as the civil unrest on Mindanao in the Philippines among other regions of strife. With most of the Arab and Islamic world facing internal as well as external conflicts, Israel has become less of an issue throughout their world.

 

African Transition Zone

 

This lowering of the level of concern and hatred against Israel as there exists an even more menacing threat, Iran. This has sent Saudi Arabia and many Gulf States to form an almost speaking relationship with Israel. There is far less mention of the Zionist Entity and threats with an exception for the Imams whose entire repertoire consists of hating Israel and Jews. This has caused the uninitiated to express their prediction that Israel will ally with Egypt and Saudi Arabia in order to counter the Iranian threat. Put absolutely no credence in this theme as everything will revert back to hate for the Zionist Entity as soon as Iran ceases to threaten the Sunni Islamic world. Simply put, take Iran out of the equation and the Sunni world will return to their emphasizing the destruction of the Zionist Entity and the return of the region to Arab Islamic rule, their defined norm for not only Israel but to the remainder of the world. Islam has a very simple definition for the world. They divide the world into two camps, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb; being defined as the world of Islam and the world of war respectively. Making this slightly more complicated, the Sunni Muslims and the Shia Muslims each consider the other to be heretics and thus part of Dar al-Harb. This also explains the high level of animosity between the Sunni Arab states and Shiite Iran. With Iran actively holding heavy sway over Iraq and their total control of Lebanon through Hezballah and Syria where they are assisting al-Assad defeat his opposition for control of Syria; this forms what many refer to as the Shiite Crescent and has all but encircled Saudi Arabia potentially explaining their sudden affections for Israel, the sole military which is capable of restraining Iran from doing whatever they please.

 

Shiite Crescent including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran

 

There is one other reason that we doubt that there will be a war this year, and this includes elections. We can gladly say that the Israeli elections are not the main criteria but the 2020 American elections. Iran is aware that should they be caught pressing for a war anywhere in the Middle East, even Israel, then President Trump would have a free ticket to pose a massive assault on Iran destroying their nuclear program and military ability. As long as after hitting Iran and dealing them a definitive and debilitating strike President Trump departs Iran, then this would leave the rebuilding and possible selecting new governance for the people to do as they see fits them best. Should Iran return to being ruled by a governance nearly identical to their current theocracy, then they would face the same policies from the Trump administration. If the Iranians built a representative governance and called for recognition and relations with the rest of the world, this might be accomplished once their new governance was solidly in place, a constitution or similar document designed and order restored allowing for free and open elections, then perhaps Iran might join the rest of the world. This would require their disbanding the IRGC, ending all support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezballah and all other terrorist organizations, ceasing their support and control over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen and liberalizing their civil laws allowing for greater human rights and other freedoms. Then the Middle East could return to their natural positions of complete and total rejection of Israel. This would work to relieve some of the terrorist threats on Israel, but all of them would remain and simply be seeking new backers such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabian entities and other support even to include the European Union, United Nations with accompanying agencies, European nations and others around the world. Things would take a while to settle into whatever the new conditions would become, and things would become more unstable as the terrorist groups would start to compete with one another while seeking funding and support. This would make things unsettled and far more dangerous and quite possibly could press a war with Israel to prove they are the real and true threat to the Jewish State. That is the Middle East, “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” the description Winston Churchill gave in a radio broadcast in October 1939 talking about the actions the Russians might take in World War II.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Is a War Coming in Israel?

 

I have people asking me this question almost everywhere I go and in every group with which I associate. Apparently, I am considered a bit of an authoritative source even to those around me, quite complimentary. The simple and easiest answer is to simply say, “Yes.” Then they ask, How soon? That is where I get to say that I have no idea, but eventually something will go wrong. Then we get into the nitty-gritty and so will we as this article attempts to give a better answer that is more accurate and backed by facts and reality as seen from here in Israel. Such a discussion inevitably ends up being based heavily upon Iran and secondarily Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

Hamas is the easier part of the equation, and that even includes their partners in Gaza, Islamic Jihad. These two terror outfits play a version of good cop-bad cop, which we like to call bad cop-worse cop. The game goes something like this on a quiet day. First, a quick definition of a quiet day which consists of any day with one or less rockets and under a dozen new fires in the south. The world media also have a definition of a day where nothing happened in Israel. Their definition is very simple, if Israel did not respond with any ground engagement or aerial strike which can be described as way over the top and thus disproportional to whatever the provocation may have been committed against Israel. So, under the rules of the world media, there has probably been virtually no mention of anything untoward going on in Israel. According to their reporting, there has not been a single terrorist strike including the incendiary kites and balloons. According to their no rockets means that neither Hamas nor Islamic Jihad have launched any form of attacks on Israel. There were twenty new fires started on Friday and less that twelve hours after the new agreement for quiet along the border went into effect. Hamas claims that they are unable to prevent the rioters along the border as it has simply grown beyond their ability to prevent at least on some level. Hamas points their fingers at Islamic Jihad which is already pointing back at Hamas. This leads the world media to conclude that neither terror group attacked and all the rioting is simply grassroots demonstrations where there are no incentives such as the three-hundred dollars paid to anyone rioting and launching attacks upon Israel, at least according to the world media. This can lead to the world media referring to any Israel response to the rioting along the border as an unprovoked attack as there has been no recognized attack upon Israel, there has simply been some small amount of mischief and nothing for the Israelis to get upset over. Sorry, but we find anything over a dozen new wildfires set by these incendiary balloons, kites and now drones dropping these packages even further into Israel and potentially targeted using GPS coordinates or using a camera mounted on the drone and driving it to its target location. But the world media will simply say that it is but a matter of time before Israel devises a means of intercepting the balloons, kites, and of course the drones. Of the three, the drones are the easiest to knock out of the air as the electronics inside are vulnerable to a directed EMP pulse while kites and balloons are a separate matter and a bit of a challenge.

 

When Israel hits Hamas with any accusation that they are breaking any agreement for quiet, they claim that the rockets fired were done by Islamic Jihad and they have been told to stand down and if they refuse, what can Hamas do to end their launching rockets if Islamic Jihad so desires. You know, free choice terrorist style. Sooner or later Hamas owned rocket launchers get itchy fingers and they begin to join in on the launching of rockets. At some point, the world has to recognize the Israeli right to protect her lands and peoples from these attacks. Even when the one fatality about a month ago was a Palestinian Arab staying illegally in a house in southern Israel and this was almost the only struck that day. Still, Israel suffers other forms of trauma from such attacks. The world has been led to believe that the Israeli Iron Dome systems prevents rockets from reaching their destination within populated areas, which is mostly a valid statement as it has intercepted successfully over 85% of rockets fired. That still leaves that other 15% which get through and strike within the heavily populated areas within Israel. Additionally, even when the rocket is intercepted and prevented from reaching the target and now prevented from detonating its war head, there is still a matter of large and substantive remains of the rocket and interceptor which will strike the ground with all the force gravity is able to impart to them. There are also people suffering from shock who require treatment and in rare instances shock victims can reach a point where their shock spurs a heart attack or convulsions along with other reactions to the explosions. Even when intercepted, the rocket and interceptor will cause an explosion of lesser levels than the rocket would make if it struck, but still loud enough to add to the fright. Until you have been under such attacks, one really cannot appreciate the level of adrenaline and other physical changes your body goes through reacting to a situation where your life is in real jeopardy and there is nothing you can do but pray. You reach a point where your helplessness overwhelms your ability to remain calm and from there it is but a short time before one succumbs to their panic. There have been times where the rockets continued one every hour to hour and a half for days. There have been multiple launches placing anywhere from fifty to two-hundred rockets into the air in a short few minutes to a quarter of an hour and occasionally more where it literally rains rockets. Add in the fear that your child might forget the warnings you instructed that morning and on their way home from school find one of the rigged balloons and becomes the next victim to Hamas terrorism. The border rioters were provided a new way for attacking the Zionist entity and its Jews by attaching explosive devices and poisoned sweets in a colorful bag to their balloons hoping that some innocent child picks up the package and it detonates or they eat the poisoned candies, worse still, share the newly found candy. When your child is a mere five minutes late coming home from school or play become the longest five minutes in their parents’ lives fearing the worst. This is normalcy for over a million Israelis and every so often a politicians, including Bibi, make the mistake of speaking the reality of this situation, that as long as they do not attack Tel Aviv and the surrounding region, then Israel can restrain militarily and it has been this lack of reaction which has driven the silence of the terror attacks daily thrown at Israel.

 

When might a war begin with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza? Providing Hamas is able to curtail attacks when Israel has reached a point where actions are being considered, then an open conflict is unlikely. Sooner or later, Israel will be forced to attack Gaza in response to the nearly constant attacks simply to bring the slowly escalating terror attacks to an end. The problem is that as long as any Israeli response only addresses the stocks of rockets and explosive or poisoned packets thus preventing bringing about temporary quiet. Bibi Netanyahu might order a heavy air attack response to the border terror and especially if these daily attacks start including rocket firing as well or simply as a sign of strength and caring about the border regions and the terrorism inflicted upon them shortly before the mid-September elections. This leads to there having been such increasing levels of violence which no national leader would permit against their own people without some form of retribution with the aim of ending these attacks. What one need remember when taking in news reports about events in Israel is that almost every one of these reports will open going into painful, possibly excruciatingly so, detail of every move taken by Israel with great emphasis on attacks using aircraft. Only deep into the report will the actions by Hamas and Islamic Jihad be mentioned and if one is very lucky, the report will actually finally speak of the fact that the Israeli attack was in response to the terrorist attacks upon Israel. Another one of the medias’ methods for placing Israel in the worst light possible, the media reporting will list numbers of casualties on both sides using Islamic Jihad and Hamas numbers for civilians injured and killed as a result of the war. What is left out is that the terrorists use methods and tactics which drastically increase the number of innocent civilians within Gaza placed in direct jeopardy hoping to get as many civilians listed as casualties while Israel has invested in bomb shelters and building stronger buildings able to withstand rockets and minimize the threat they will cause those within. The Gazan terrorists also will take one of their own terror troops who was killed in the fighting and take his weapons and ammunition off their fellow terrorist’s body and, presto, you now have an instant murdered civilian. It often takes weeks, though Israel has increased their efficiency. For Israeli sources to pour over the data from the Palestinian health authorities and check the names on the death certificates screening them for known terrorists and rectifying their erroneous intentional use to inflate the number of civilian deaths when they were actually a combatant. The way the two sides fight and treat their civilians is the reason for the lopsided toll on civilians. When sirens sound in Israel, the people simply head for the nearest shelter for protection while in Gaza, when there is going to be fighting the terror units place civilians to the fore to maximize their deaths, the terror government provides no shelters and does not require new building to have built in shelters on every floor, if not every single unit and finally the terrorists instruct the medical personnel to count every death as the death of an innocent and seldom as what it actually is, the death of a terrorist.

 

The media simply regurgitates every lie they are fed by the terrorist leadership placing Israel in the worst possible light and then editorialize about how Israel is a mass slaughterer of innocents ignoring all facts such as the true count which takes about a week or so after the end of fighting to fully vet the facts from the lies. But there is little chance for a ground assault into Gaza at this time but can never be completely ruled out as Hamas and Islamic Jihad could begin tomorrow morning firing fifty rockets or mortars per hour and double the rate every few days and soon Israel has to do whatever is required to bring the terror barrages to a strict and complete end, and that is a ground offensive in order to protect lives. Yes, a ground offensive saves lives of Gazans while placing the soldiers of the IDF facing far greater hazards to their lives. There exists a far easier means of ending the violence in Gaza by bombing every suspected location where rockets, warheads, explosives and other tools of the terror trade are stored. Such bombing raids would be required to bomb most of the school buildings, numerous Mosques, health clinics, homes, apartments, and the areas used for weapons manufacture. The reality is that in order to rid Gaza of the weapons, explosives, rockets and other terror tools would require a virtually every building within the regions where the poor and less well-off reside and where most of the damaged and destroyed apartment buildings are found which their government, the terrorist leaders, have decided not to rebuild after each conflict such that they can point to the previous damage claiming it is brand new damage from the most recent conflict. In some way that is true as it has been a continuous battle to contain the terrorism keeping it from spreading its caustic hold which attempts to destroy all it touches. An example of the slanted reporting is shown as when Israel cleared a small section of land along the southern Gaza border pre-2005, the media made a great debacle out of the whole affair yet when Egypt cleared five to ten times the area (see image below) the media completely ignored their actions.

 

Egyptian Forces Destroy Rafah Homes on Border with Gaza October 2014
(photo credit: REUTERS)

 

The surreal threat comes from Hezballah in Lebanon and their stockpile of tens upon tens of thousands of rockets and with more still being manufactured as well as missiles provided by Iran. A coordinated upgrading of the larger of the Hezballah rockets has been instigated by Iran who is providing Hezballah with guidance packages which can be fit into their warheads or their rockets transforming them into targetable missiles. This makes each rocket turned missile worth ten or more plain rockets as it would take that many rockets to make certain you struck your intended target. Hezballah is closer to the definition of a military as they have received generous training and arming by Iran through the IRGC. As Iran has forces in Syria in addition to the IRGC forces which have been fighting in Syria in support of Bashir al-Assad using both to provide arms and provisions for Hezballah which is also assisting the fight in Syria as well as supporting the Houthis in Yemen who are also armed and trained by Iran. Iran would arm Hamas and Islamic Jihad to a level comparable to Hezballah if it were not for the fact that Israel prevents such from the sea while Israel and Egypt assist one another in preventing such over land provisions for the terrorists in Gaza. Egypt has been angered by attacks in the Sinai Peninsula which have been aided and supported by Hamas and Islamic Jihad against Egyptian forces and personnel. As far as when the coming war with Hezballah, this war will apparently not be initiated by Israel without a provocation traceable to Hezballah, and even then, any Israeli response would be measured. Israelis really wish to live in peace without threats hanging over our heads or over our borders. Currently, there exists Iranian interlocuters at both the northern and southern borders and Iran has been making overtures to Mahmoud Abbas as well as some of the other leadership including some of his rivals. Iran looks at the regions controlled by the Palestinian Authority and its terrorist entity of the PLO and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, such that Iran will have Israel almost surrounded. Any war in the north will be the result of attacks from within Lebanon and not starting from within Israel. In many ways this could prove to be a disaster. Israel is fully aware of the locations for all of the Hezballah rocket and missile storage sites, their weapons depots, most of the bunkers and their interconnecting tunnel system. Israel knows where each rocket launcher exists including the one under the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

 

The presumed intimidation Iran believes their ability to command the terror forces against Israel is producing is, in all reality, simply nonexistent. One would think that Israelis were walking around shaking in their boots fearing that their next step could easily be their last. Such an assessment is ludicrous as Israel remains just outside the top ten happiest nations coming in at a respectable eleventh, well ahead to the United States which is ranked seventeenth. Iran also has designs on Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states. This is the reason that Iran is allied with the Houthis in Yemen, so as to attain a southern front against Saudi Arabia and control of a maritime choke-point the Bab-el-Mandeb at the southernmost end of the Red Sea and a point that should Iran close down this waterway they would basically be closing off the Suez Canal isolating Europe from Asia. Such a blockade would be against maritime codes and make Iran a pariah amongst the nations. Iran could go do far more by closing the Strait of Hormuz allowing only their own oil to be passed through and to the rest of the world. As far as Israel is concerned, Iran poses a far greater threat than any other nation. This is amplified by their ongoing threats to destroy the Jewish State in the first half of this century. As they hold ultimate control over the actions of Hezballah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and IRGC units in Syria and potentially out of the Sinai Peninsula where they may have organized other terror groups who use that region for supply and training. This would leave Israel with only their border with Jordan being free from attack. Iran might even go as far as using the IRGC to remove Mahmoud Abbas and their taking control of the regions in Judea and Samaria under Palestinian Authority control. That would all but encircle Israel. The only thing which could make this worse would be for an Iranian naval task force to also attack from the Mediterranean Sea forcing a naval battle with the Israeli naval units which protect that region.

 

Iran is currently conducting wars in Syria backing Bashir al-Assad, Iraq where they have decimated the Sunni population and are also driving the Kurds out squeezing them between the Iraqi and Iranian forces and Turkey sweeping in across northern Syria, Yemen where they are supporting the revolution against the elected government using the Houthis and IRGC forces, in Lebanon through Hezballah Iran can take control there at their leisure, and surrounding Israel and Saudi Arabia while threatening Jordan; yet, they have the nerve to claim Israel is attempting to conquer the region. Iran is the threatening hegemonic power in the region but they know they can always distract the United Nations, European nations, European Union, the various human rights NGOs and numerous other political entities by screaming that Israel is doing ethnic cleansing or conducting genocide or is an Apartheid regime or any of any number of tropes used against the Jewish State here in the not so civilized era and divert all attention from themselves. The current exception to this rule is President Trump. This does not mean that the Republicans are all that enthused with Israel or that the Democrats have much nice to say or think about Israel, but it does point out that the vast majority of Americans still support Israel. The problem in the United States is that the Democrat Party has adopted a new outlook for the future which does not include Israel or even necessarily the Jews. Still, the vast majority of Jews support the Democrat Party through thick and thin, and it is getting thinner every day but the leftist Jews simply refuse to see. Iran will start the next large conflagration and it will start in the waters around Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Where their initial target will be the United States naval fleets, they will attack Israel if by no other means than using Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezballah and whomever else they can find including the IRGC in Syria and elsewhere. Once Israel has neutralized Hezballah in Lebanon and retaken the Gaza forcing Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the Sinai where Egypt will deal with them at the first sign of trouble, then as far as Israel is directly concerned, this conflict will have ended. Certainly, Iran could launch ballistic missiles at Israel potentially even having nuclear warheads. The Israeli layered anti-missile defense augmented by the American units manning the THADD systems should prove to be an effective blocking force against any Iranian ballistic missiles. The main hope is once Iran has forced a war in the Middle East upon the world that the United States and her allies will make a very quick and resolute end to the problems caused by Iran and then turn the country over to the people and allow them to elect new leadership within three or four months and then the United States should simply leave a small detachment behind and otherwise go home. Removing the current Iranian leadership would allow the entirety of the Middle East to at least catch its breathe before any new problems arise.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

What Did Ireland Do To You Lately?

 

In my little corner of the world, perched snuggled in at the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, we have read that Ireland does not like all Israelis equally and shows disdain for those Jews who employ thousands of Arab Palestinians who could lose their jobs if what Ireland decided to support works. The prototypical example was SodaStream. SodaStream was an Israeli owned and run company with their main manufacturing plant beyond the Green Line. The BDS boycotters harried and hassled with noisy demonstrations, often inside the grocery store targeted, such that they joined the boycott of SodaStream. NGO’s had bought advertisements calling for the boycott of SodaStream. Well, SodaStream was a growing company and required a larger plant. They decided that they had been targeted enough and built their new plant within the Green Line selling off the land they had in the industrial park. This closing resulted in five-hundred Arab Palestinians losing their well paying jobs. Some were managers and in upper supervisory positions. These were jobs which paid better than almost anything one can do beyond the Green Line. Ireland wants every Israeli employed Arab Palestinian to lose their jobs. Probably, when Ireland has convinced others that destroying jobs helps the Arab Palestinian cause, then they will accuse Israel of not employing Arab Palestinians finding this a deplorable example of racism. That is a simple plan, cause a problem and then blame the Jews for the problem you caused. There is a name for such activity.

 

Does anybody remember what the first thing Hitler arranged to occur? He gave Germany the Brownshirts to destroy a mere ten percent of the stores in the Jewish Quarter of every major German city. His hope was it would frighten the rest into packing up and leaving. The Jews insisted on remaining as they had rights in the German Republic. Turns out that was a very bad plan. Ze’ev Jabotinsky made numerous appeals in an attempt to take the Jews from Europe, at least Poland and Germany, as many as possible. They scoffed at him and claimed he was a conspiracy type, having wild visions that the Jews who had been living in relative safety, the pogrom here or there every four or five years, but millions are not in danger, how could that be. Well, the rest is history, but it started with targeting a limited number of Jews, just those Jews. Jews need to learn that if there is one bad Jew, then we need be wary; when it becomes those Jews, it is time to go. They even asked where could they flee to, what country would take us in, they wanted to know. Eretz Yisroel was his answer and they had heard that life was rough in Israel where much of the world is very much like hard labor digging new irrigation to replace a swamp, of course step one is drain the swamp. That was not for them, they were merchants and tradesmen, not ditch diggers. Ditch digger probably looked like a very enticing place to be in a few years when the world darkened its soul. Then, anything in the Holy Land would have been better than the camps. They had made the most dreadful mistake not seeing the signs and doing something, anything to avoid what came.

 

Ignoring the signs is a modern thing as well. I do not wish to talk about Europe or North America and what they may be ignoring at their own peril. I want to remain with Israel and what she hopefully has planned out is an exacting plan, as almost any plan is preferable to waiting until it is on the verge of too late. Razor thin margins between horrific devastation and, Whew, that was a close one. The world knows about the rioting along the Gaza border which is ratcheted up and allowed to mellow until they decide Israel needs a good poking and stoking the riot cauldron. Gaza became such old news that even when they launch a volley of rockets every so often, that barely makes the news as the Iron Dome has proven very well worth the investment. Then there is Mahmoud Abbas, eighty-one-year-old Mahmoud Abbas. There are no set in place replacement as was with Arafat who had groomed Mahmoud making him the obvious next in line. There is no next in line, there are quite a few and this problem we discussed just the other day. The result will likely be Hamas takes as much of the lands as they have support, which they actually do in the Arab Palestinian society. But they are still a relative known, for now.

 

Then there is Lebanon and Hezballah. That can be summed up in a single fact, they have approximately one-hundred-fifty-thousand rockets and missiles pointed at the length and breadth of Israel. They have installed bunker positions connected by tunnels throughout the entire region south of the Litany River. They have ambush sites specifically for catching tanks and the anti-tank rockets to put a hurt on any tank, be it a Merkava, Abrams, Leopard, Black Panther, Armata or Challenger, the top six tanks in the world. Many of their firing and sniper locations are inside of people’s homes as are some of their mortars and rocket launchers. Every town as well as the cities are a maze of interconnected positions and command and control points. The entire arrangement used by Hezballah, as well as Hamas, is designed for a smaller and lighter armed group to overwhelm a more heavily armored and presumably more advanced, though that is no longer a truth as the Iranian computer systems and communications are actually quite good, but presumably superior enemy by making them pay dearly for every block and face ambushes on the connecting roads. The way to defeat this type of force is actually very easy, bomb the entire area until the entire land mass has dropped about ten feet, and then drop incendiary bombs to sanitize the rest. This is the way wars were fought by the powers in both World Wars, and then these same nations decided to write a code such that they could never do such warfare again. Do you know what happens to any civilization which decides that there are limits in what one is permitted to do in performance of military actions. They are conquered by the first group who is willing to use things beyond these limits, many things from amongst the worst variety which you would never resort to using. Israel refuses to use such a plan, they would never even write such a plan, because it would be such a waste of human lives is an abomination to Israelis and their military. For proof we offer any of the numerous testimonies given by foreign officers who served as observers during IDF activities both in war and peacekeeping such as British Officer Richard Kemp on Israeli Defense Force tactics and actions.

 

So, massive bombing and raining down missiles will not likely be the Israeli response to an enemy completely prepared for a ground invasion and susceptible to an air campaign. So, if and when it becomes unavoidable, Israel will resort to playing by their enemy’s rules with a ground slog. That becomes position to position fighting with house to house in towns and cities, and watching for ambush on any open ground movement. This is the most difficult means of clearing a region and poses the highest risks to your soldiers, but it prevents civilian casualties as much as the situation enables. That is why Israel uses her soldiers in situations where heavy bombing would be faster and save on IDF casualties. But that would also kill too many presumably innocent civilians of southern Lebanon.

 

But the final front is potentially the most threatening, and that is the small section of the Golan Heights and the border with Syria. Syria offers some unique situations and peculiar angles all in one short border. The real enemy on the other side of the Golan Heights is not so much Syria as it is Iran, specifically the IRGC, and Hezballah. They send up a few rockets every couple of weeks just to test if Israel sleeping at the switch. Israel has struck numerous targets within Syria but, and here is the wild part, without ever violating Syria airspace. There is a simple problem with making one of your limits overflying Syria, the range as to how deeply your missiles launched from over Israel can penetrate into Syria. But this is the chosen response of which we are aware. The problem with shots coming from the Syrian side of the border is one has to first determine what this particular incident represents. It could be an errant round from a firefight in Syria, was it a sniper shot, and if so, what was the firing position. Then there are larger objects which on occasion have come across the border. There were artillery rounds fired which were using the wrong targeting address, the numbers were transposed. That was relatively easily resolved. But then there are those other objects which are intentionally fired or launched at Israel. There are artillery rounds which target vehicles, plural, and positions, also plural, or are observed lining up and firing with intent to strike Israeli targets, military and civilian, then comes the time to eliminate that particular firing position or positions. Sniper fire need be suppressed and the sniper eliminated if possible. The easiest to determine is the anti-tank missiles. These are line of sight missiles with a variety of aiming controls, some better than others, but the projectile is largely straight-line path. There is no doubt what was targeted and from whence the projectile was launched. There is a trail of smoke leading to a large cloud of dust and debris from the back-blast of the launch which denotes exactly where the weapon was fired. This makes removing that weapon fairly easy while the operator somewhat more difficult as a smart operator leaves the weapon and puts distance between themselves and the point the weapon was fired as quickly as they are able often having a spot prepared for them to leap behind as protection from return fire. Then there are the rockets which are fired weekly. Finally, there are the drones, many of which were weaponized, which have been flown by numerous means into Israel. There have been preprogrammed drones which are made most often for a specific attack which the drone takes a complicated, low-profile approach to the target becoming visible only when it raises up to fire. There are those with human pilots which are useful for hunting a target such as a vehicle or person which is of particular importance. Then there are drones which are computer guided with a human operator overseeing the flight and in case of detection, they can take command of the drone in order to retreat. Sometimes all that might take is pressing a key which puts in place an override set of directions. All of these types of events of fire have occurred with somewhat regular rate of occurrence. The main reason nobody has heard about this is simple, Israel has not violated Syrian airspace while Iran, Hezballah, IRGC and Syrian forces have all invaded Israeli airspace and fired upon Israeli positions and civilians. All of those events where they crossed into Israel, specifically with the drones, were acts of war, which as Israel is still with war with Syria really makes everything even stranger than usual. Israel needs more than solutions for each of these fronts but far more. Israel needs a select group of precise plans and target lists for the first two hours, because that is exactly how quickly actions will be required, for any three fronts erupting in a coordinated fashion to maximize their initial strikes.

 

Distance Between Israel and Iran Plus Nuclear Sites and Size Comparison

 

Now for the numbers about Iran and Israel, mostly real numbers but we will tell when the numbers are our projections. The first thing is that Iran has numerous missiles which easily reach over two-thousand kilometers, more than for enough to strike Israel. Iranian missiles have excellent guidance packages with many different kinds. Their accuracy is within meters of any intended target. They also have numerous rockets with sufficient range to reach Israel from Iran if their desire is to lob rockets indiscriminately at any general region. Iran can fire their rockets and missiles from anywhere in Iran and strike Israel, and where within Iraq as well as anywhere in much of Syria or even from Yemen if they are seeking to try a surprise, though mostly they fire at Saudi Arabia from Yemen. Israel can easily strike Iran and probably strike any target within a matter of under a meter and has tracking systems so as to strike the launch point no matter where Iran launches so return fire can be almost immediate. Iran has a slight size advantage over Israel, as it is seventy-nine times the size of Israel. Contrary to the fables that the United States and European media have been feeding the world, the Iranians have worked on atomic weapons since the late 1980’s and have very likely been making atomic warheads very probably for fifteen to twenty years, according to our guess. As one can see on the map, Iran has seven nuclear installations and four of them are Uranium mines. This means they have all the necessary nuclear material within their borders for the production of atomic bombs. The odds are they also have cracked how to miniaturize hydrogen fusion bombs and by our figuring they could have as many as fifteen to fifty all depending on their ability to get the necessary isotopes for the construction of a device. In the case of a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran, it is doubtful Israel would survive anywhere resembling intact were Iran to launch everything all in a single strike; but Iran also would not survive the exchange despite the size differential. The problem is the Grand Ayatollah has stated that he is willing to permit the destruction of Iran if that also means that Israel was destroyed, as that would be a fair price to pay. Most, if not the vast majority, of Israelis would not accept this exchange as most hold no animosity for the Iranian people and do not wish them such harm, only their own government believes this would be acceptable. What is so worrying is that it appears as if Iran is attempting to set up some reason for making a war with Israel and using their presence in Syria in order to provoke such an attack that they could utilize it to demand the complete destruction of Israel and then fill the obvious void for the Arab world and destroy Israel themselves and claiming their victory with the hopes of turning the Arab world over to Shiite Islam. The leadership in Iran is not mentally stable or possibly not even sane by most standards, but they are heavily armed, potentially with advanced nuclear weapons and chemical weapons, are establishing hegemony across the Middle East and see destroying Israel as their right and privilege to do so for Allah. They feel similarly about the United States and only a little less antagonistic towards Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. They have often mentioned being the new Persian Empire. Iran is probably amongst the top ten dangerous nations most likely to start the next great cataclysm.

 

Beyond the Cusp