many news heads have rightly said that this pager (and now radio) attack makes sense only as a direct prelude to invasion, and the zionist entity seems to have wasted this opportunity. i also saw a comment, before the relevation that two hezbollah fighters had discovered the pagers, that “israel” has a tendency to pull the trigger on operations as soon as they are technically feasible. this sort of strategic flailing seems odd, but it also lines up with the conclusions of a US army analysis of the 2006 “israeli”-hezbollah war.

it’s about 60 pages of actual content, and it’s interesting for a number of reasons (there’s a good section on the missiles hezbollah used for people into that). now there’s a two decade sized grain of salt that should be taken here, but i doubt i could get access to current “israeli” planning, let alone in english. the biggest conclusion for recent events is that the zionist entity has focused on counterinsurgency and air power, degrading its combined arms capabilities and doctrine to the point that it does not have them.

specifically, “israel” has fallen for the US air force’s greatest lie - that air power and bombing can stand as a combat arm independently from ground operations. as such, the head of the military at the time was an airman, and the doctrinal changes created were both confusing and biased against ground combat. additionally, the long time focus on ‘counterinsurgency’ in Gaza (the phrasing is not mine) has led to reserve mechanized equipment not being replaced, tank and mechanized crews not being trained, and minimal training at the division or batallion level. the lack of training in large formations and the fact that doctrine became more confusing as the formations got larger led to failure, broadly.

to provide an illustration, i’ll run through the actions of two divisions in the last act of the war. the UN had passed a ceasefire resolution, and for reasons that are not completely clear, “israel” planned a last hurrah offensive. the symbolic goal was the litani river. division 91 of the iof was meant to be driving towards the mediterranean, but stalled out completely. In an inquiry after the war,

The investigation concluded that commanders within the division “did not fully understand their orders” and “were not present with their troops during important battles and even failed to fulfill basic missions.” The investigation also found fault “in the way tactical orders were composed, sometimes without a time element. Since the orders were not clear, they were changed, in some cases, on an hourly basis. Brigade commanders did not properly understand their missions. . . . They didn’t know what their goals were and how long they had to fulfill their missions.” Remarkably, according to the report, “an entire battalion sat in the same location for several days without moving and when the commander finally received orders to push deeper into enemy territory he was confused and failed to fulfill the mission.”

division 162 was looking to take Ghandouriyeh, a town that sat on a crossroads and high ground. they had to cross a valley, Wadi al-Saluki, to get there. first, the general sent air assault elements to secure the high ground over the valley. the air assault successfully landed near two towns, cleared several occupied buildings, did not take the high ground, and then reported that they secured the high ground. 24 tanks were sent up the road, and a collapsed building in front of them and an ied behind them had them trapped. each merkava had a smoke screen to make missile aim harder. dozens of anti-tank missiles then struck the column. not a single tank deployed smoke, and 11 tanks were hit. what infantry that was near was pinned by fire, and tank crew requests for artillery or air support were denied out of fear of friendly fire. the advance stopped at that town.

to me, this paints a clear picture of modern military material (tanks, electronics, aircraft, artillery, and infantry) manned by people who don’t know how to use them. there is no feature of the actions of these divisions where their equipment failed them. moreover, i would expect any competent force with air assault, artillery, and armor elements to be able to seize a lightly defended town 10 kilometers from their border.

so the iof is made up of a large number of uncoordinated small groups, and collectively has little sense of how to put these pieces together. and you might say, “well maybe they fixed some of that in the last twenty years”. i think the fact that modern merkavas have the trophy system answers whether or not that happened. it’s a very cool toy, designed to blow up an oncoming anti-tank missile mid air. strapping sensitive explosives to the front of your tank means that your infantry cannot be anywhere near it. so we see dozens of unaccompanied merkavas and bulldozers parked somewhere that a resistance fighter can run up to, unopposed. we also might see a hot shot intelligence officer cook up some pager plan, report it to his commanding officer, and have it approved without anyone thinking that operations are only effective in sequence and with support.