GAZA is 25 miles long and seven miles wide. Total size is 141 square miles. On Tuesday, it will be one year since Israel started bombing Gaza to kill Hamas freedom fighters. After one year, Israel is still bombing. Where is the defeat of Hamas?
Why in such a small enclave, the supposed brilliant army has not vanquished Hamas and rescued the hostages? Before we answer that question, one has to understand how the world gets its news whenever Israel is in a military conflict in the Middle East.
I am suggesting you do not take my word for it. Go to world news in the past and at the present and read about Israeli action. The reporting from all the major Western media organisations is not only biased in favour of Israel, but is disdainful in its reporting about the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Hezbollah in the two Israeli invasions in Lebanon (1978 and 1982) and Hamas in 2023-24.

All the news that is published from Israeli action is based on what Israel tells these media houses. This is one of the most depressing and pathological descent into gutter journalism in the history of the world. Two combatants are engaged in a conflict, and a media house visits the conflict and asks one of the combatants, what is your casualty figure and that of the enemy’s. You are given exaggerated statistics, and you run with it.
The combatant you spoke with said it lost 10 men and killed 100 enemy soldiers. You print that, and the world reads it and believes it. The Israelis were beaten in South Lebanon in 1978, and this explains why it willingly gave up its occupation of South Lebanon. This is an army that won in Syria and annexed Syrian territory (Golan Heights).

This is an army that won in Jordan and occupies Gaza and the West Bank. So, this occupying army didn’t want territory in South Lebanon? Of course it did. But the PLO defeated it, so it hid its shame and said it was withdrawing.
Had Israel conquered South Lebanon without a fight, it would have still been in control up to this day. The Lebanese army did not fight. The battle was between the PLO and the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) and the IDF could not win in 1970 and 1980.

Why the Gaza conflict is going beyond a year? The IDF has been elevated to world military status by the Western press. So, for 60 years, the world has read about the might of the IDF. But it is a fiction. The IDF hasn’t fought a serious war with a serious enemy since 1967.
What the IDF has done since the 1970s is to bomb territories that do not have naval, air and ground forces. The Western media tells us about a war in Gaza; there is no war in Gaza. Israel has flattened this enclave of 141 square miles while Hamas engages them in guerilla warfare.
The Gaza conflict has dragged on for one year because Israel keeps bombing the place without fighting on the ground; they cannot engage in ground warfare and rescue the hostages because they are losing the ground battle as they did in South Lebanon in 1978. Is there anyone out there who believes this

mighty world military power can defeat a guerrilla band in an area of 141, a small part of Linden here in Guyana?
If yes, why has it not happened as yet? Because the IDF has suffered tremendous casualties in Gaza, and it is not going to engage in open ground warfare. We know the IDF only suffered 300 dead soldiers because the Western press reported that number as told by the Israeli government.
The IDF is not going to enter South Lebanon; it will do what it is doing in Gaza: Bomb the enemies that do not have jet fighters and warships. The Israelis are going to keep bombing Lebanon, as they are doing as we write. They will not go in, because Lebanon is not Gaza. Lebanon has a formidable fighting force: Hezbollah that makes Hamas look like children at play.

The IDF is no huge, formidable force; it has no experience in actual war since 1967. It is for this reason Israel lives in mortal fear of Iran. Iran knows about modern ground warfare, because it fought a war with Iraq a few decades ago. Israel is hoping to get rid of its nemesis by seeking an American attack on Iran. Israel, for its part, will never attack Iran, because it knows that will be the end of Israel.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.