Israel’s Path to Victory: Winning Both the Ground War and the Media War

Israel currently finds itself mired in an asymmetric war – asymmetric on two fronts: military and political. However, Israel has a government that is sadly waging war in a conventional fashion, seemingly ignoring the social, political, legal and economic consequences not only for the Jewish State but also for Jewish individuals and businesses worldwide.

Over the last 8 months, the war against Hamas has resulted in so much bad press that same bad press has resulted in governmental, corporate and personal boycotts of Israel and Israeli products and services to such an extent that the Israeli government has incurred billions of dollars in economic losses, not to mention the tens of billions of dollars necessary to wage the actual war.

Not only that, but Jewish-owned businesses and Jewish individuals not directly affiliated with Israel have been boycotted and assaulted the world over.

At the heart of this bad press and bad PR from which Israel has been roiling has been the false but effective accusation that Israel has been “targeting innocent civilians” in Gaza and, in the words of Former U.S. President Joe Biden, “indiscriminately bombing” buildings in civilian areas.

Israel’s hasbara department has done little to effectively preempt or push back against these false and libelous accusations.

The end result has been unprecedented legal and political pressures on Israel that have no doubt forced the IDF to change tactics in a manner that is not conducive to winning the war.

The purpose of this white paper is to lay out useful and practical tactics and strategy for the purpose of winning BOTH the media/PR war and the physical war on the ground in Gaza.

The first change that needs to take place is that the PR/Hasbara officials must be at the table with the IDF and political top brass and must be privy to all military decisions (perhaps barring those entailing top-secret information).

This is necessary so that Israel’s hasbara can lay the table for the mass media BEFORE an Israeli strike and get ahead of the curve in explaining the outcome of any strike. Netanyahu’s biggest mistake in the days following October 7 was that he did not lay the table for the world’s eyes prior to sending tanks and planes into Gaza.

Netanyahu should have led with the fact that in urban warfare the likes of which Israel was to engage in Gaza the expected civilian to combatant kill ratio is 7:1; this way when the IDF has a civilian to combatant ratio of just 2:1 (as of this writing it may even be better), Israel and the IDF look like moral geniuses.

Unfortunately, since Israel did not properly lay the table, the world sees the fact that more civilians (including thousands of children) are being killed than are Hamas terrorists, and as such irresponsible political leaders like Joe Biden get away with relative blood libels along the lines of claiming that the IDF is “indiscriminately bombing.”

To change the dynamic and tenor vis-à-vis Israel’s hasbara, Israel needs an international public relations push called "Innocent Civilians" comparing REAL Jewish innocent civilians screaming in agony after Eged bus bombings in the 1990's and on October 7, and juxtaposing those images with those of "innocent civilians" in Gaza celebrating on 9-11 and 10-7 and spitting on the corpses of Shani Louk and others.

These images should be interspliced with headlines of polls showing popular support for Hamas amongst these same “innocent” Gazans.

At the same time, military strategy on the ground should be consistent with the hasbara messaging:

Arab women, children and elderly men over 60 years (most, but not all, true innocent civilians) should be separated and maintained in North Gaza with 3 meals a day; all men 18 to 60 must stay in the south and be given one meal a day until such time as they prove that they do not support Hamas and do not have blood on their hands.

Of course, financial rewards should be given for information leading to elimination of terrorists and/or retrieval of hostages.

As these men PROVE that they are TRULY innocent civilians, they can graduate to the north of the strip.

This will allow the military to concentrate collateral damage on adult men instead of women and children.

The moral authority Israel will garner by this joint media and military blitz will be greatly accretive to its successes and will minimize loss of Jewish life in Israel and the diaspora, and will further be accretive to finding hostages.

The tactics for achieving the above strategy are as follows:

A) Israel must make the 15% of the Gaza strip closest to Israel’s border a buffer zone that resembles an inverted ‘C’. Every edifice and tunnel in this buffer zone must be completely destroyed.

B) Israel must once again evacuate all Gazans from north of Wadi Gaza to south of Wadi Gaza for a period of two months.

During these two months, Israel must destroy all standing structures and known tunnels (after clearing them for possible hostages and terrorists) and create two zones north of Wadi Gaza as follows:

C) Once the above zones are established, Israel must send text messages and drop flyers promising all women, children under the age of 15 and elderly men over 60 years 3 or 4 meals a day upon their arrival in the northern civilian zone.

These individuals will be given certain hours each day to travel in double or single file through the security zone, whereby any stragglers not belonging to the aforementioned demographics will be called out of line and killed or arrested predicated on the level of threat they pose.

Israel will divert most of the international aid to the northernmost sector and will indeed provide 3 or 4 meals a day to these truly and ostensible innocent civilians.

Israel must repeatedly broadcast images to the world of these healthy masses of Gazans being taken care of by the IDF.

While doing so, Israel will begin the process of reeducating these masses within this northernmost jurisdiction by supplying them with information detailing:

D) The remaining males (15 to 60 years of age) shall remain south of the Wadi Gaza and be given strict instructions that any such individual who crosses the Wadi Gaza without IDF approval will be automatically considered a terrorist combatant and shot immediately.

These males shall continue to receive the equivalent of one meal a day via air drops and other strategic placements of food that will not endanger IDF troops and will not be likely subject to Hamas theft.

The purpose herein is to keep these individuals alive but to weaken them physically so that they are less likely to wage significant war against IDF troops.

E) After a month of weakening the threat posed by males 18 to 60 years of age, the IDF will drop flyers upon the southern half of Gaza explaining the opportunities for these individuals to “graduate” to the northernmost civilian sector.

Such opportunities include:

As these individuals prove their civilian status, they will receive 3 or 4 meals a day along with other residents of the northernmost civilian zone.

F) At this point, Israel shall announce to Hamas leadership that for every week in which Hamas refuses to release at least 5 Israeli hostages unharmed (in return for nothing), Israel will annex 10% of Gazan territory.

This process shall be repeated until such time as Israel has permanently annexed all security zones and all territory north of the Wadi Gaza.

G) Once a critical mass of civilian Gazan men aged 18 to 60 years old are identified and organized in the civilian security zones, they should be given extra financial incentive to form a militia to take the fight to Hamas in the south and prove itself worthy of self-governance after the conclusion of the war.

Thereupon, Israel and the newly formed militia will strategically target any and all suspected Hamas positions, taking advantage of Hamas’s weakened economic and physical state.

The war in Gaza should be over within 6 months of implementation of tactic G.

The above tactics being employed will greatly reduce the number of innocent civilians – real or perceived – being killed in the crossfire of attacks upon Hamas. They will also lay the groundwork for a future and more peaceful Arab governance of Gaza.

Once the above protocols are implemented, the tenor and tactics of negotiations with Hamas will change radically in Israel’s favor.

Not only should Israel not allow Hamas to dictate terms to it, but Israel must start dictating terms to Hamas.

The Knesset must pass a retroactive law calling for capital punishment for any Arab from Gaza who participated in the October 7 massacre.

Thereupon, Israel must announce to Hamas that for every day that Hamas does not release at least one hostage, ten of these Hamas terrorists will be killed.

All of this will coincide with a greater increase of bombings on a more regular and massive scale, now that Israel has cleared the southern half of the Gaza Strip of civilians.

Israel must cease and desist from the foolish notion that Hamas will give up most of the remaining hostages without a guarantee that it will stay in power.

Israel cannot countenance Hamas remaining in power, lest the release of the current hostages result in many more hostages being taken over the next 20 years.

The only accretive way to extract the hostages is through additional intelligence garnered through the above tactics coupled with daring Shabak/IDF raids the likes of which have already proven successful.

The Israeli public must be prepared for the likely possibility that not all hostages will return home alive. But the Israeli public should be able to rest assured that something like October 7 will never happen again.