The Hamas Authority for Refugee Affairs has called Israel’s already notorious directive that all civilians should evacuate the northern part of the Gaza Strip “fake propaganda”.
Whoever wrote that is dead wrong, and was certainly not involved in the planning of last week’s armed incursion into Israel carried out by the Palestinian group’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. The last thing that matters in any propaganda operation is whether there is any truth in it.
Multiple surprise breaches of Israel’s security barriers between it and Gaza were carried out in a very determined and efficient fashion, as were the executions and captures of members of Israeli armed forces and civilians in the settlements swarmed by Hamas’s fighters.
But the main purpose of the attack was not military, except possibly to the limited degree of taking hostages who can be used as human shields in case of (expected) Israeli armed retaliation on the ground. The real purpose of the action was Hamas’s desire to demonstrate what it is capable of, militarily and in terms of willingness to use extreme violence.
The action was planned as a message saying “This is what we can and will do” – and as such it falls under that important, even crucial, part of the art of war we call psychological warfare.
The term may be new – it was first used barely 80 years ago, at the beginning of World War II – but the actions it describes are as old as warfare itself, as old as humanity.
Link from www.aljazeera.com
