Day: November 6, 2023

It’s been four weeks since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The fog of war is still very thick. Weeks into the war, we still don’t know many details of either the attack itself or its planning. 

Yet there is one aspect of the bacchanalia of brutality of that day that experts, professional militaries and astute observers agree on: Hamas did not act on its own. No terrorist organization can make such a dramatic leap forward in its operational planning and execution capabilities without help from the outside. 

Currently, the conventional wisdom states the force helping Hamas to achieve spectacular success was Iran. Iran has denied connections to the attacks, but members of Hamas and Hezbollah say otherwise. But is their admission enough to conclude with certainty that Iran was the only helping hand in the operation? Does that admission make sense tactically and strategically? Is it possible the admission is a ruse to hide part of the truth? Is there another cunning power expertly lurking behind trying to stay in the shadow? 

We are reminded of the question Vladimir Lenin urged everyone to ask in situations like that: Who benefits here? The answer is simple. There is one power that benefits the most from the crisis. The address of that power is the Kremlin, Moscow. There is no hard evidence currently in our possession to unequivocally suggest one history of events or another. However, right now is the time to ask tough questions which may or may not lead us to the answers to help us face reality head-on.

Russia, at this time, is the only player interested in the conflict spreading out beyond the usual Gaza conflagration. Chaos is and has always been Vladimir Putin’s strategy for regaining Russia’s influence around the world. Russia has little to offer in terms of financial support or ideology. Its main export is instability. 

In the late 2000s, in the early days of Putin’s regime, Russia had surrounded itself with a circle of hot spots, primarily in the former Soviet republics. Gradually, with many successes steaming from U.S. inaction, Russia moved beyond to the Middle East and Africa. 

In Russia’s foreign policy toolkit, conflicts for the sake of a conflict are not a problem but a goal. The regime in the Kremlin, being a criminal regime, always looks for criminal opportunities. It is their strategy, not a tactic. Whether the regime is antisemitic or not is completely irrelevant.

We know, based on multiple sources, that training for the Oct. 7 attack started at least a year and a half ago. That is an important time. That coincides with when the Kremlin could see that the war in Ukraine was a lot more than it planned for. It needed a serious distraction for the U.S. to shift its primary attention to another hotspot. Perhaps this is how and then when the preparations began. 

One should never forget the longstanding ties between Palestine and the Soviet Union. Short of a brief period in the 1990s, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hamas would always find an open ear in the Kremlin. That connection has never been broken, even when Iran got involved. Even the political structure of both organizations resembles more of the Bolsheviks than the Ayatollahs. Thus, it would not be farfetched to assume Russia’s involvement with Hamas not only on a political level — which is no secret — but on an operational level as well. 

The early stage of the October assault bears all of the markings of a classic Russian intelligence operation. It was painstakingly planned, impeccably organized, hit the weakest spots of the target and had clear tactical and strategic goals. It also appeared to be guided by handlers in ways unknown to the actual participants. It is a classic Russian trick to embed oneself in the process and leave right before the act, with the results going well beyond the goals of those responsible for the execution. 

It is unlikely that Iran wanted the operation to become successful to the point of igniting a regional conflict. Iran is not ready for such a situation until it gains nuclear capability. Yet it is clear that the initial stage of the attack set events in motion that would inevitably lead to a conflagration on a regional scale. 

One may argue Hamas lost some control after the unprecedented success of the first few hours. Yet it is hard to believe a successful operation would lead to anything less than a massacre, a pogrom, leaving Israel no choice but to retaliate in full force against Gaza and perhaps beyond. It is almost impossible to believe the tactical improvements Hamas displayed during its attack were the result of a self-improvement routine. There is clearly a third party helping it to achieve its spectacular results. Iran has never displayed such ability and is not up to the task with Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, gone. 

Assuming Russia was indeed involved at some operational level in training Hamas terrorists, how is it possible that Israel had no idea? But what if Israel knew? What if Israeli intelligence knew and so did Netanyahu? Netanyahu must have confronted Putin in one of their numerous meetings during the previous decade. What if Putin assured Netanyahu that the trainers were basically an insurance policy and Hamas would not do anything stupid beyond the “red lines”? What if the relationship between Israel and Russia which persisted even when Netanyahu was not in power — the relationship that, at times, was difficult to rationalize — was based on this tacit agreement? What if Israel was double-crossed? And even if Russia was not operationally involved in October events, it is almost impossible to imagine the Kremlin did not know about the preparations. 

Hamas leadership visiting Moscow earlier this year is as much of a coincidence as a grenade exploding on Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane. Moscow must have known about the plot either from Iranians, directly from Hamas or through their own informers. Why Israeli intelligence did not know about it is another question. And though the Israel Security Agency takes most blame for the failure, Mossad should not escape unscathed from the greatest intelligence blunder Israel has ever seen. 

We will know sooner or later who guided Hamas to the most horrific massacre in modern Jewish history. Yet we should never forget there rarely has been a world crisis without Russia lurking in the background. This time is unlikely an exception.

Lev Stesin is a founding member of San Francisco Voices for Israel.

Fighting in Gaza between the Israeli army and the armed faction of Hamas is a textbook example of modern asymmetric warfare. Whenever fighting ends, it will be studied by strategists and tacticians.

The term “asymmetric warfare” has been used for less than 60 years, but the concept is much older. Originally it denoted a conflict between significantly disparate enemies, often simplistically portraying it as a David vs Goliath situation.

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Asymmetric wars are usually bloodier and more savage than those between regular armies: In a state versus non-state conflict, the latter’s fighters are not recognised as “proper” combatants and thus not considered protected by international conventions and laws of war.

The regular army will use weapons and tactics that might be legally unacceptable in a “proper war”. In a chicken-and-egg situation where it is usually impossible to say which side started with unacceptable practices, the rebels also commit acts that are blatantly illegal, often claiming to do it for not being recognised as equals.

Numerous wars, civil and other, in the last half-century or so, were asymmetric: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, and Syria. In many cases, the underdogs triumphed, often not by winning decisive battles but by wearing out their enemies, but it does not mean the smaller party always wins.

Israeli soldiers take position in the Gaza Strip, November 4, 2023 [Handout via Reuters]

For the fighting in Gaza, the most relevant cases of asymmetrical warfare are the continued skirmishes of Hezbollah with the Israeli army and the war in Ukraine. Although both Ukraine and Russia are states, there are important elements of asymmetric warfare in Kyiv’s initial response to the aggression.

When it gained independence in 1991, Ukraine inherited an old Soviet Union-style army and it did little to change it. Until Russia attacked it by proxy in 2014 and occupied Crimea. Ukrainian leadership realised that to beat Russia it had to improve on tactics and strategy, so it decided to adopt NATO standards, believing them superior to Soviet-type practices.

But changing a big and inert system takes time (other armies, take note, Israel included) and the leadership realised that the first step in implementing the new doctrines was to allow tactical initiative and independence as the first step. That move, I dare say, saved Ukraine from being defeated in a matter of days, as Moscow almost certainly expected.

Free of interference from higher commands and orders to unify every move, the Ukrainian army, or to be more precise, its highly independent battalion-sized or smaller units, resorted to ingenuity and innovation.

One of the biggest tactical advances was the use of small, cheap commercial drones for innovative tasks. Highly mobile squad-sized units using $200 drones like the ones all children now seem to have, became much faster in action: they would launch a drone over the enemy several hundred metres distant, see its position and adapt the attack or defence almost immediately.

Israeli army tanks move towards the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, November 1, 2023 [Ariel Schalit/AP Photo]

Their Russian opponents were stuck with the old, cumbersome process of asking higher units for reconnaissance assets to be deployed, then having to wait for the results to trickle down the chain of command.

The next step was to arm the hand-held drones. Their big cousins, weighing several hundred kilogrammes and operated by professional pilots, “real” aircraft just without a pilot on board, have been used for more than 20 years. The United States used missile-armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to perpetrate assassinations across the Middle East. Efficient and powerful but expensive, complex and requiring professional pilots and support.

Ukrainian geeks produced “poor man’s pilotless bombers” within days of the Russian attack, arming them with small bombs, weighing just a few kilogrammes, well within the carrying capacity of hand-held drones.

What can such a puny projectile do?

Only Russian artillery commanders know how many gun crews were killed by such bomblets, but the number is significant. Videos of small drones dropping bomblets at soldiers in the field are countless. Russian soldiers are said to fear them so much that many do not dare sleep in their trenches or move across open ground.

After initial success against infantry and artillery, Ukrainians felt emboldened to attack Russian armour. Even the mightiest tanks are scantily armoured on top: they are built to fight against another tank or withstand infantry missiles, both fired from the ground and at ground level, so the front armour is extremely thick but tank topsides have only very thin armour, as they never expected to face major attack from above. Until the advent of drones.

Bomblets dropped on unsuspecting armour directly below may or may not penetrate through a turret roof. If they do, they usually cause the internal ammunition to explode, destroying the tank and the crew. If they hit the engine compartment, they almost inevitably incapacitate the tank. A drone-bomblet system costs a few thousand dollars, a tank a few million.

There are two methods to counter these asymmetric attacks: active protection, jamming the frequencies that the enemy’s drones use, making them useless, or using anti-drone weapons. Much safer to use, cheaper and simpler is passive protection: putting a “roof” on top of a tank.

A simple metal frame is welded onto the tank with a hard-wire mesh. The drone bomb explodes when it hits the wire and cannot damage the tank. A simple, easy and cheap solution, but nevertheless, it took Russians many months to wake up to their losses and start implementing it.

Why such a long description of Ukraine to explain Gaza?

Because we could replace almost every mention of the Ukrainian army with “Hamas” and every “Russia” could read “Israel”. As the Israeli army entered Gaza, they demonstrated the same gargantuan bureaucracy’s slow approach to learning and implementing changes as their Muscovite counterparts.

Since tanks and infantry closed in on Gaza City, Hamas has been releasing videos showing bomblet attacks, with at least some of them demonstrated as efficient. Just a small percentage of mighty Merkava tanks can be seen with “roofs”, indicating that the decisions to implement such simple and cheap solutions still have to be approved and ordered through the chain of command.

Technical and tactical innovation has not (yet) won the war for the Ukrainians, but it slowed their enemy and gave him a very bloody nose. The implementation of similar weapons and methods might not defend Gaza City against massive Israeli attacks, but it will certainly make it longer and bloodier.