I’ve been saying for a while now that Hamas and its Iranian patrons have not learned the right lessons from the Hizbullah war. Now the commanders of the Givati brigade prove it.
Officers in the brigade spoke about a combination of complex and sophisticated urban warfare and fighting principles such as commitment to the mission and pushing for contact with the enemy that stood out among the soldiers and commanders. They said soldiers implemented a considerable amount of the lessons learned in the Second Lebanon War.
And this is very, very good news:
With regards to the performance of Hamas gunmen in the clashes, the officers said that the militants fought fiercely during the initial stages of the operation.
However, after the IDF burst through their formations, many of them retreated and only fired at Givati troops and tanks from the 74th battalion from afar.
I hope Olmert doesn’t get talked out of the further operation to clear out the rockets by Condi Rice. Although the AP is up in arms because Condi and the White House actually blamed the right people for the latest “cycle of violence.”
The White House on Monday blamed the Palestinian militant group Hamas for sparking recent fighting between Israel and the Palestinians that has killed dozens and posed an obstacle to peace talks.
“The number one thing that has to happen is that Hamas has got to stop targeting Israeli citizens with rockets. It must stop,” Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for President George W. Bush’s National Security Council, told reporters traveling with the president back to Washington.
Yeah, he blamed Hezbullah for the Lebanon War, too. Which is, to bring this post full-circle, the war that Hamas—led by its Iranian sponsor—is still fighting.
Iranian technology and intelligence was used by Palestinian gunmen in the Gaza Strip in the recent round of violence, said a senior official in Military Intelligence during a Monday meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
“Iran’s influence and effect is very clear,” said the official.
Terrorists fired at least 20 Iranian-assembled Grad-type rockets, which are significantly more damaging than the Kassam rockets that have been fired at Sderot and the western Negev for the past seven years, said the official.
Which is probably why Olmert said this today:
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that Israel had the power to defend itself against the Iranian threat.
Responding to the Security Council’s decision Monday to impose a new round of sanctions on Tehran, the prime minister said, “Israel can defend itself against any threat, but the Iranian threat is not just on Israel, and that is why Europe and the United States, and eventually Russia and China as well, agreed to the sanctions.”
Countdown to Iranian threat in response….