The End of Israel Approaches

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

It is not easy to tell Arabs that the end of Israel is approaching, because they have stored, at the back of their minds, what they consider a truth: that Israel cannot be defeated.

Arab leaders do not see it as possible for Israel to be defeated, which is why they recognized it, expressing their recognition clearly and explicitly at the Beirut Summit of 2002, issuing a humiliation they called the “Arab Initiative.” And to confirm that these leaders had surrendered their affairs, and had no strength to challenge it, Israel set their initiative aside and never even bothered to discuss it, as though its unspoken message were: great ideas do not come from small men.

This attitude extended to vast numbers of Arab citizens, Palestinians included, who became convinced of Israel’s strength and Arabs’ inability to inflict defeat upon it.

Over time, Israel built for itself the image of a giant spreading its arms over the city, crushing it with a single blow. It is this image that stood between Arab leaders and a vast Arab public, and belief that the Lebanese resistance and the Palestinian resistance were not, in fact, defeated in the 2006 and 2008/2009 wars.

Their unspoken reasoning still says: how could a few thousand Arab fighters withstand the Israeli military machine and its exceptional Israeli mind, and thwart the objectives of the Israeli army, when they do not possess enough combat equipment to rout it?

The Erosion of the Israeli Army’s Prestige

The Israeli army’s prestige began to shrink from the moment the world watched, on screen, its soldiers fleeing south in fear of Hezbollah fighters in 2000. The television scene flipped from that moment on: it became the Israeli, not the Arab, who was dragging his legs to flee.

That flight had a resounding impact on the psyche of Israelis across the spectrum, and the image of the invincible soldier began to shake among them, and with it began the shaking of the image of a secure, reassured Israel.

Israelis’ doubts about their security future, and the army’s doubts about its own prestige, were reinforced in 2006, when the Israelis failed to achieve any of their objectives in Lebanon, and Hezbollah emerged strong, healthy, and capable of continuing the confrontation.

Perhaps it was confirmed, for the Israeli army and Israelis alike, that those wars that used to be picnics were no longer so, after the 2008/2009 war on Gaza. The Israeli army failed to achieve its objectives, and was forced to halt the war without achieving any accomplishment other than killing civilians and demolishing their homes.

The Arab resistance — whether in Lebanon or Palestine — came to realize that the Israeli army’s prestige was nothing but an illusion that had crept into Arab minds through various means and methods, and that defeating it was no miracle, but merely a matter of patience.

And Israelis — their army and their people alike — came to realize that the Arab resistance was no fragile straw, but rather the new Arab fighter: trained, aware, committed, well-armed, possessing lofty morals and an unyielding fighting will that meets bullets with the chest, not the back.

Since then, the Israeli government has focused on restoring the Israeli army’s prestige and its psychological impact on the Arab soldier, but loses more of it every time it wages a new war.

Israel was built on the idea of security for Jews, and Zionism initially promoted — as Israel later promoted as well — the notion that a Jew would feel secure only in his national homeland, the Holy Land (Palestine), and propaganda paired with Israel’s victories over the Arabs managed to draw Jews to Palestine.

And just as the Arab regimes became convinced of Israel’s invincible army, the Jews themselves became convinced of it, and turned their backs on every proposal to establish a peace that would restore to Palestinians even a portion of their rights. Arrogance born of wrongdoing overtook them, and they thought Arab land would forever remain a stage for Israeli tanks.

Now Jews have awoken to a new reality: that their army is no longer capable of decisively winning battles, but instead gets entangled every time it wages a war on the Arab resistance, returning dragging the tails of disappointment, becoming a subject of talk of defeat at the international level.

With this reality, Israelis have begun to realize that Israel is the last place where they might find security, and that their security could be achieved anywhere in the world except Israel. They have become certain that the Arab soldier is no longer that person programmed to flee at the first bullet fired at the start of the battle.

Equipment and Numbers Versus the Call to Arms and Faith

In 1967, the Arab states managed to mobilize numbers and equipment three times greater than what Israel could muster, yet the Arab armies were defeated.

The Arab armies were greater in number, but the Israeli army was greater in mobilization — meaning the soldier was war-conscious, trained, organized, and disciplined, aware of his role on the battlefield, and so fought a war of extreme precision and excellent professional performance, while the Arab soldier was chaotic, poorly trained, lacking a compass and a fighting doctrine, and so found it easy to abandon the country in exchange for saving his own skin.

The Israeli soldier fought a war knowing that behind him stood a state that would look after his household’s affairs if he were killed, while the Arab soldier was aware that his family would face troubles and abuses if he did not return home after the battle.

Now, the Arab resistance differs from the Arab regimes, just as Israel’s army differs from what it was at the founding of the state. The Arab resistance fighter now enjoys a deep awareness of his objectives and his causes, receives advanced professional training, and possesses weapons that qualify him to wage a war from which he does not emerge defeated, but rather standing firm and striking hard at the enemy.

The Arab resistance fighter also possesses a fighting doctrine grounded essentially in Islamic doctrine and the belief that life and death are in the hands of God Almighty, and he is armed with a firm determination to fight to the very last breath.

This is why our soldiers are no longer killed by blows to the back — they take bullets to the chest and head, fully aware that the resistance’s institutions will look after their families well should they fall as martyrs.

Israel possesses advanced weapons and is capable of causing enormous destruction in Arab villages and cities, and capable of killing people en masse, but it is no longer capable of moving on the ground in confrontation with the resistance. It tried entering Gaza during the 2014 war, but its army could not hold out for half a day and was forced to flee the battlefield because of the intensity of resistance it encountered.

As for the Israeli soldier, over the years he has turned into a “Kit Kat” — a soldier of biscuits and chocolate, searching for his mother’s lap to sit in. Israelis’ excessive attachment to life has led to a deterioration in the soldier’s fighting spirit, and to his preoccupation with his girlfriend and recreational activities at the expense of what the field requires.

The Israeli soldier today is undisciplined, flabby, quick to weep and wail, and prone to psychological breakdowns. This does not mean he is untrained or unorganized, but it does mean that the fighting spirit that existed in Israel’s early founding years is gradually vanishing from the scene, and the Arab resistance fighter has come to surpass him in every standard of soldiering geared toward fighting and winning wars.

This drives Israel to exploit its destructive capabilities to break the will of the Arab resistance fighter. The Israeli soldier cannot face the Arab resistance fighter, so Israel works to use the air to rescue its army from a shameful rout.

But will Israel remain master of the skies? Of course not, because the Arab resistance in Gaza and in Lebanon is determined to acquire anti-aircraft weapons, and Hezbollah may have already acquired an anti-aircraft missile system some time ago, and in the coming phase we will witness Lebanese airspace becoming forbidden to Israeli aircraft.

Arab Technology and Military Tactics

The Arab resistance does not merely smuggle weapons — it manufactures them too, and its military technology is developing rapidly. The manufacture of rockets and bombs of every kind is no longer a secret or the exclusive preserve of states, and the Palestinian resistance has managed to develop rockets with a range exceeding a hundred kilometers, after its rockets were once described as mere tin pipes.

Hezbollah has built underground factories to serve as the strategic reserve keeping the wheel of rocket production continuously turning. Matters have reached the point that the Arab resistance has begun manufacturing electronic aircraft, and will soon be capable of jamming Israeli warplanes to confuse them in determining their targets and designated bombing sites, and in the future the resistance’s technical development will direct Israeli planes to bomb Israeli targets instead of Arab ones.

Despite Israel’s technical and scientific superiority over the Arab resistance, the resistance is superior to Israel in military tactics, to the point that Israel now wages largely blind wars.

The Arab resistance has developed its military methods in confronting Israel, and fortified itself, security-wise, against Israeli intelligence methods. Israel now finds itself surprised by the resistance’s capabilities and its combat methods, which have largely neutralized the impact of aircraft on the fighters, and have halted and repelled the Israeli ground advance.

Israel is no longer immune from corruption — it has entered it through its widest doors, encompassing the presidency, its ministers, the army, and the security apparatuses. Bribery, favoritism, nepotism, and shady deals spread throughout Israel, reaching every corner and crevice.

According to what is reported, it is difficult to find anyone in Israel who is not corrupt, and every individual tells himself that his own integrity will benefit him nothing — that if he is not corrupt and does not get his share of the pie, someone else will get his share instead. It seems most ordinary people have become convinced that rising above corruption inflicts great harm on the individual, and that a person’s own interest can only be served through his own corruption.

This enormous scale of corruption has affected social and political relations, so that social fragmentation continues to expand and the political scene continues to disintegrate. The weakening of the social fabric and the decline of the moral level lead to weakening the state and paralyzing its capacity to face challenges, and negatively affect the state’s budget through tax evasion, embezzlement, and illicit financial deals.

More importantly, this social and moral decline leads to a decline in people’s morale, weakening their trust in the state and their willingness to cooperate with the government, and their concern for the prestige of the state, the army, and the security apparatuses. Israel is weakening from within at an accelerating pace, which raises the chances of Israeli emigration abroad.

Arab Weakness

Arab weakness is the greatest strategic asset Israel possesses. Israel is a state of small population and small area, and no matter how great it grows, it cannot face the challenges of a future imposed by Arabs and Muslims. If it achieved great victories in the past, this was because of the Arab regimes that insisted on their own weakness, and on fighting every Arab who wanted to fight Israel in earnest.

Israel waged its wars knowing in advance that Arab leaders were not serious, and left no opportunity for the Arab soldier to defend his nation with honesty and honor. They wronged him, humiliated him, starved him, and deprived him to the point that he lost faith in the Arab nation and its causes, preferring to remain alive as a fugitive rather than die for a corrupt ruler with an empty, embalmed head.

The Arab resistance has moved beyond Arab weakness because it has moved beyond the regimes, no longer seeing in the regimes anything but obstacles in its path toward liberating the human being and the homelands. This resistance has found in Iran an incubator that believes in strength and the necessity of meeting challenge with scientific challenge grounded in a rational foundation and a clear, conscious vision.

The resistance now, in Gaza and South Lebanon, is well-established and strong enough to make Israel toss and turn restlessly in its sleep. And as the resistance’s stock rises and Israel’s stock falls, the resistance will strike hard at Israel and its army, heralding the destruction of this monstrous entity.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “نهاية إسرائيل تقترب” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.