The New Times Coming for Defense.

Introduction.

It is said that military deterrence is a quality and that it cannot be measured. If I do not know the Effect of my investment in weapons, how do I know that I am protected? Will I not need more means of one kind or another?

Precisely, Science always tries to measure the variables in phenomena. And, it succeeds. The politician should read the “Scientific Forecast in Military Art”. Text by a Soviet military man, translated into Spanish.

And, now that we have to invest up to 5% of the GDP to defend ourselves from the “threats of the felonious East”. More.

Are most of the medal ribbons of the most lucid officer, the same..? That means that the event is repeated. And this can only be because they are given for pure seniority in service… Stagnation. But, they do not care to show them off, to those who have no idea of ​​what they mean,. This is self-deception and the capital (not mortal) sin of vanity.

Martin van Creveld, a professor at the University of Jerusalem and author of several excellent books on military strategy and operations, said that “the country’s military institution had become an arthritic structure without creativity.”

And, without the qualities of initiative and flexibility, creativity becomes lame, if not paralyzed. And everything becomes stagnant.

Van Creveld was expelled from his post by the Israeli military caste.

Development.

The huge surprise of Saturday, October 7, 2014, given by the irregular militia of Hamas to the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) was a confirmed evidence.

You do not prepare such a complex and extensive operation, almost in full view of many people, as if it were a country party. And, just like that.

You always have to do a general rehearsal of the total operation. And, subject the means to tests of duration and demands, at least equal, as in action. For example, a drainage motor must be tested, using it for the same number of hours that will be needed in the action. A combined arms operation must always be carried out, since, except between units that have already acted together before, implicit communication will not exist, and “mutual collaborative actions” are difficult to improvise.

The training space must have the same characteristics and complications as the real one. And, it would be convenient for it to be located far from the mission operations area, so as to be free of giving indicative signals to the enemy’s observation and espionage. Men, means and supplies must be moved to the training areas and returned to their bases of departure for the actions.

Communication between units must be practiced without failure, especially those of different arms (infantry with tanks, tanks with artillery, ground support aviation with those that have to support), that must collaborate in tactical subordination during the development of the attack.

Each important function must have a “reserve executor”. For example, a glider cannot be unique, in case the winds carry it down far from the target of attack:

German airborne forces attack on Fort Eben Emael, Liege, Belgium, in May 1940. It controlled, by means of heavy fire from a fortress (as well as several bunkers and armored and consolidated redoubts), the paved approach route towards Brussels for the combined German forces.

The airborne forces in gliders landed on the roofs of Eben Emael, closed the Belgian exits to the roof and used hollow-charge bombs-grenades (an Originality not used before) to overcome the roofs of the various redoubts of the fortress. The roofs were designed to withstand the fire of German heavy artillery. But the hollow-charge bomb concentrates the force of its explosion in a jet of fire and molten metal, which penetrates concrete and armor and whatever else is thrown at it.

The fortress surrendered as soon as the redoubts began to be blown up and assaulted.

In spite of all the needs and the long preparation time for the attack, all the Israeli intelligence agencies were surprised by the unexpected and sudden attack by Hamas irregulars, trained for this war action.

And the Israeli people realized that the protection of their lives and property by their unbeatable Army was not effective. And they remained frozen and seriously distressed for a long time. This vivid emotional wound does not heal easily or quickly. Because the possibilities of it happening again exist. And they are not inevitable as a quality. The psychiatrist has no arguments… only tablets ones…

And why did Hamas surprise?

The strongest, most powerful proxy of Iran and coreligionist of the Shiites in South-West Asia was Hezbollah, the Party of Allah. This one was guarded, it was infiltrated like a Gruyere cheese by Israeli agents and there were middle and high-level personnel from suppliers bought by them and the Israelis knew all the traces left by suppliers, collaborators, goons and relatives.

Israel‘s foreign action and special espionage means silently «occupied» Hezbollah. And, they were prepared to make it implode or explode unexpectedly.

Hamas was the poor militia, squeezed into a very densely populated area. Capable of making a mobile or rigid Defense in Urban terrain against a trained, equipped, modern, motivated army. And, to endure the unbearable.

But, it was not supposed to carry out a more or less usual military attack, outside its external lines, keeping the objective won.

But, the Gaza attack did not intend to occupy, even for a couple of days, a tangible objective.

And, it was equipped with considerably fewer free-flying or guided rockets than Hezbollah was.

That is, it could pose a much less Orthodox threat to Israel than Hezbollah. It had tens of thousands of rockets of Iranian origin and acquisitions of very variable characteristics.

Hezbollah had a great political force in Lebanon and participated in its governance, and was a stronger and more motivated military force than the Lebanese national army.

There was plenty of information. Otherwise, it would have attracted attention and they would seek it out or implement it.

But, no one saw, detected, or heard of a Muslim militia capable of attacking Israel in the form of a “swarm” of “small units” (platoon or section type), operationally simultaneous. Trained as “reinforced mobile light infantry”.

It seems that the Ideologist and Military Leader of the successful and unstoppable Attack on Israel (for a short time) was the late Yahya Sinwar. He was a prisoner of war in Israel for a long time as a young man. And, he was released in one of those agreed prisoner exchanges.

Sinwar had time to think and mature the plan. And then, to prepare it and carry it out. And, he had his advisors, from the Revolutionary Guard of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

General Qassem Souleimani, the original head of its Foreign Branch, in charge of supporting all internal Islamic movements in the countries of Southwest Asia, sureness participated in the military training of Yahya Sinwar. Souleimani was killed by an American attack drone, after landing confidently and safely at the Baghdad airport. And he received a salvo of powerful Hellfire II HE (high explosive) rockets.

And, Sinwar was impervious to Jewish (intelligence) penetration, even in a very poor population environment, prone by character and necessity to bribery.

And, in the early hours of Saturday, October 7, 2024, Hamas launched its thundering Lightning.

The ideological adaptation of the minor Jihad to current times.

Introduction.

Islam has to assume that the Jihad, as a “bloody effort in the path of Allah” was necessary for the establishment and defense of the primitive community of believers.

Muhammad took refuge in a cave near Mecca to meditate and pray. Around 610, he began to receive motions, visits from angels sent by Allah (God, in Arabic). “Prophet, hear and write,” they ordered him. But, he was illiterate and had to dictate the verses to his collaborators. They were the Meccan verses of the Khoran, eminently religious. The first to believe his preaching were his wife, Abu Baker al-Sidrique, his father-in-law, Ali, his cousin, and then his son-in-law, his slave… About 40-45 followers formed the Muslim group that lived with him in Mecca.

Towards 615, a group of Arabs from Medina came to see him. The Jews had taken power in the Arab city and they wanted to reconquer it. But they had no guide, no motivating sense or ideology.

Muhammad understood this perfectly. “The Arabs of Medina were a force without ideology” and “he was an ideology without force”. So, “Let us use his force for our ideology”.

The authorities in Mecca were increasingly concerned about visits to the Prophet by foreign Arabs. And, from the beginning, the leaders of the Arab community in Mecca saw the behavior and religious rites of the Muslims as strange.

The situation had to lead to violence. And, they decided to kill the Prophet, at least.

Warned, Muhammad and Abu Baker fled the city. It was the Hegira or march of the Islamic Community from Mecca to Medina (the city of the Prophet) in 622. The small Muslim community followed the longest coastal route, as directed by Muhammad.

When Muhammad arrived in Medina, he pitched his tent on the outskirts. Soon the Arab chiefs came out to greet and receive him as their leader.

An embassy from Mecca went to the Medinan authorities to have Muhammad handed over to them. But, “they have reaped the green,” the chiefs warned the Meccan envoys.

The Jews saw the threat from Muhammad and attacked them. Muhammad defeated them and expelled them from Medina. Here the Prophet received the Medinan chapters or suras of the Koran, of an eminently political nature and of the governance of the peoples.

From Medina, the Muslim forces attacked and plundered several caravans of merchants, some from Mecca and others on behalf of the neighboring Jews.

The Muslims were growing in military capacity and good relations with the neighboring populations. Their tactics using very mobile light units and reiterative attacks, looking for enemy weaknesses or creating them, were effective and novel in combating their enemies.

However, on the other hand, Mecca and other towns in western Arabia were languishing and losing influence. It was the pendulum of History.

From Mecca they ended up sending a contact group to agree with Muhammad on peace and the acceptance of Islam as the religion of the Arabs. The leaders of Mecca accepted Muhammad‘s conditions.

On November 1, 630, Muhammad entered Mecca victoriously. He suppressed the Jahiliyya, the state of idolatry and chaos in Mecca, prior to Islam, and turned the Kaaba, one of the existing idolatrous points, into a center of Islamic piety. Until then, the Muslims practiced Salat, their daily canonical prayers, directing their position towards Jerusalem.

Disconnecting himself further from the Jews, Muhammad ordered a change of direction towards Mecca, specifically towards the Kaaba, and established only 5 prayers a day, according to the solar positions of activity of the Muslims.

Soon the new religion will spread throughout the Arabian peninsula, with Caliph Abu Bakr (632-634) using weapons against the last arabs idolatrous tribes. In 632, the Prophet died in Medina, his favorite city, he was barely 62 years old.

Developments.

Now comes what I call the First Transformation of Islam. Outwardly, its followers denote a continuous (in historical measures, not in chronography) conquering and expansionist activity. This will last until the year 750, at the end of the Umayyad dynasty. These successes are associated by the Muslims with the fact that Allah is with them. It is a growing Muslim century.

In a series of conquests, the Muslims destroy and take the Sassanian Empire, from Anatolia to Persia, through Asia. And, from Palestine, through Egypt, Libya, Ifrigia, the Rif and Hispania, throughout North Africa and the western European peninsula.

Their attempts to penetrate into Central Europe were cut off on October 10, 732, in the battle of Poitiers by Charles Martel, in command of the Frankish troops. Forcing the Islamic light cavalry to face solid defense forces, in a practical adaptation of the phalanxes, supported by archers from their rear. And, with their own heavy noble cavalry attacking the Muslim light cavalry by shock.

The five daily prayers of Salat, composed of standing and bowing, kneeling and lying down, with head turns and the repetition of verses from the Koran, exert an increase in religious piety, love of Allah and belonging to the prayer group among the faithful.

Here would end the historical emergence of the lesser Jihad. The historical opportunity for which does not exist today.

The proof is that the lesser Jihad is not named in the Koran, it does not exist directly in the commands of Allah. It is not necessary, nor transcendent. It is occasional and temporary in the plans of Allah.

And, it must be replaced by “another suitable type of effort in the path of Allah”.

This would be the effort of personal inner development (ascetic), seeking the purification and inner improvement of believers.

This concept exists in the Sunna, where it is called the Greater Jihad and could be promoted by the pious ulemas (ideologists) and muftis (jurists).

Since the emergence of the four main Sunni ideological schools, from the year 750 until after 1000, the principle of the effort of Personal Reflection, the ICHTIHAD, also gained strength in Islam.

These are 250 long years, because in History the facts are unraveled. Without rigid borders that cut their temporal and mental spaces. In which the Second Transformation of Islam will occur: the Ideological one. Where the body of doctrine will be elaborated for the practical application of Islam, in all areas of men’s lives.

The Ichtihad will allow the development of Arab culture, both in relation to civil aspects (science, commerce, art, literature), as well as the enrichment of its «ideology». And it is the basis of ideologues and jurists such as the Palestinian al-Chafii, in Cairo, founder of the most elaborate and brilliant Islamic school.

Ichtihad is a source of lucidity, creativity, enrichment, progress and peace, on the path of personal and collective effort towards Allah (who is really the religious core and reason of Islam), when the Umma (Arabic name of the Islamic community) has already spread and multiplied enormously throughout the world.

But, towards the 11th century (5th century of the Hegira), the ulemas and muftis close the door to ichtihad.

The methodological approach of Islamic progress is altered. And, from then on, it is imitated, repeated, creativity is slowed down, sypnosis are abused.

At the same time, the arts, sciences, civil and social studies of Muslims are languishing. The fear (always paralyzing) of fulfilling the demands (real or forced) of Islam arises. Perhaps the appearance of the fifth ideological school of Islam has an influence here. The last, the hardest and most intransigent, the violent one. Without it, Muslims would not have INSTITUTIONAL ideological support to evolve locally and temporarily to violence. The Salafi school, which wants to imitate the Salaf or the pious predecessors, because they were supported by Allah in their extraordinary successes, for their fidelity and piety.

(To be continuing)

THE WAR BETWEEN ISRAEL AND IRAN. An apocalyptic war? First Part.

Introduction.

We have before us, face to face, the two most dangerous and extraordinary rivals that exist on Earth. They are the Jews or Israelites and the Shiite Islamists.

What gives them similarity? Both have a strong religiosity, resistant to anything, which is part of their identity and the essence of their life.

The Jews or Israelites.

The Jews are a small people, who have survived the vicissitudes of History in a truly unique and special way: persecutions, pogroms, genocides, collective exiles, attempts at religious assimilation, collective guilt received, deportations.

According to their ideology, they are the people Chosen by God to guard and carry through History the Plan of Yaweh for Humanity. They hold, treasure the promises of God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. This is where their merit, stamp and superiority are consecrated.

The Israelites have deviated from this many times, but Yahweh‘s anger has always been appeased. Among other things, because God needs them to complete his plan for men. Yahweh has been sending his warners, messengers or prophets to correct them, and he has punished them collectively with exiles, famines, nomadism, a sign that it was the people who had turned away from Him.

For the sons of Israel, God is not a Father. This is implausible. God is a “Great and Powerful Creator Lord”, with all the characteristics in superlative. He leads them along his paths, rewards and punishes them. He made them at his image and likeness; but that does not mean that God has eyes, ears, legs and hands. And, He is Loving with all his creatures.

Only Christians see and feel in God a Father, in Jesus a Brother Redeemer and in the Spirit, the Guide and Consoler of their earthly life, gently and serenely.

This belonging gives the Israelites a reassuring security. They are not proselytizers, they do not seek to spread their religion to others, even to their foreign cohabitants. The others do not belong to the people of God and have nothing to do with Salvation. This is the marrow, the central essence and the core of everything.

This gives the Israelites an unprecedented, solid and secure courage in the face of a terrifying Nuclear War. Which Israel, from the start, does not seek, nor desire. They advance in the battles, without worrying about the greater number of enemies, because Jahweh Fights at their Side.

If God wants it will happen and they will be taken by the angels to Jahweh, at the culmination of History.

The Shiite Muslims.

There is a great ideological and practical difference between Sunnism and Shiism.

The latter feels persecuted, because of the dynastic orthodoxies (it defends the rights of the Prophet’s family to lead Islam) and ideological orthodoxies (it admits fewer sources of revelation, limiting the Hadiths, the sayings and deeds of the Prophet, by their origin – who communicated them- and line of transmission), which the Shiites proclaim and defend.

A’isha, the third and most cultured of the Prophet’s wives, would have been a caliph if she were a man, and Ali, cousin, son-in-law, husband of Fatima, the favorite daughter of Mohammed, are the two main and reputable creators of Hadith for Sunnis and Shiites. They begin like this: I saw…; I heard…; I knew… and the successive transmitters are also added. This chain guarantees the traceability of the hadith.

Omar, the second caliph after Abu Bakr, worked to purify and organize the Hadiths and the texts of the Khoran.

The schism of Islam was consolidated on October 10, 680, when the troops of Yazid, the second Umayyad caliph, defeated and killed Hussein Ben Ali, grandson of Mohammed, in the battle of Kerbala, in Iraq. The total number of casualties on both sides in the decisive battle of Kerbala was seventy.

The supporters of Hussein “son of Ali” (that is, Ben Ali, pronounced in English as Bin Ali. And then we call him as we hear his name, Bin Ali), were called in Arabic shi’at Ali, in short, Shi’is.

Everyone knows, from the displays on the news, the rituals of self-flagellation that devout men practice on certain Iraqi Shiite holidays.

A powerful reason for this sense of sorrow and suffering may be the great demographic inferiority of the Shiites. 90% of Muslims are Sunnis, who occupy the Holy Places of Islam and are spread throughout the world. Of the remaining 10%, the vast majority is Shiite, more than 86%, and the rest corresponds to small fractions, such as the Alawites of Syria, the Turkish dervishes. All of the latter are “heresy within the heresy” for Sunni Muslims.

In effect, the Shiites are like an island (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, which are bordering and with a majority only in Iran and Iraq) surrounded on all sides by the ocean of the Sunnis.

(To be continued)

THE IDEOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE ISLAM. 2nd Part.

THE SECOND TRANSFORMATION

FIRST HALF VIII CENTURY TO BEGINNING XII CENTURY

The salafist Ideology.

Salafism, from «salaf«, predecessor or ancestor, is the other ideological school of the Islam. As salaf, the Muslims call Mohammed and his disciples: the first four caliphs and the next two generations. The expansion of the Islam in the 7th century assumes to the purity of his faith. Since this brought them the Allah’s favor and support.

Since then, whenever the Moslem societies are sufering an economic, political or social crisis, prominent figures will arise that will praise a return to the Islam of the Salaf. Ibn Hanbal, in the 9th century, gives a literal interpretation of the Islam, based in recovering the ancestors and in the condemnation to the ideological innovations. Ibn Taymiyya resorted equally to her in the 14th century, when the Middle East was suffering the Mongolians invasions. These would be the initiators of this current or school.

The Imam, Ahmad Bin Hanbal - Alchemiya
IMAM AHMED IBN HANBAL

The salafist currents are renaissance movements of the Islam, through the return to the original faith, that of the «pious predecessors«. They reject everything that identify as «human interpretations after the revelation of the Prophet«. They are radical reformists movements, which condemn the practices of the «popular Islam« (accused of being superstitions) and great part of the ideological Moslem thought, considered as carrier of «innovations». That is to say, «creations of the human reason«, that move away from the divine message. The salafists reject in turn the influence of the Western civilization, particularly the democracy, the relativism and the laity, that «corrupt the Moslem faith«.

Was Ibn Taymiyyah the spiritual father of jihadists? - Teller Report
IBN TAYMIYYA

The salafists become emancipated of the tradition founded by the 3 sunnis canonical schools. And they invent another Islam, which they affirm is founded on the Coran and the Sunna. Also they seek to imitate Mohammed in all the acts of the daily life, included the way of eating or dressing.

The wahhabism or the salafism at the political Power.

The modern salafists begin with the preaching of the Arabic ulema Mohamed Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792). Who thought that the decline of the Moslem countries opposite to the West, ensues from the oblivion of the original message of the Islam. Ibn Abdul Wahhab preaches the literal and puritanical reading of the Islam, following the Hanbalist and Ibn Taymiyya traditions. Searching for «the correct way of acting in the teachings of the pious predecessors». His sermons were not well received and was expelled from his natal locality, in the Nejd region. He went to Diriyah’s city and there formed an alliance with the sheikh Mohamed ibn Saud, founder of Saud’s House. Ibn Saud promulgated the idea of the «wahhabí» Islam as the official way of practising the Islam in the country. For his part, al-Wahhab gave the religious legitimacy to Ibn Saud in his conquest of Arabia.

muhammad-bin-abdul-wahab – Vridar
Ulema Mohamed Ibn Abdul Wahhab

Finally, in 1902, the emir Abdul Aziz ibn Saud reconquered Riyadh. In 1924 occupied Mecca and Medina and in 1932, all the Saudi Arabia. This was giving them the control on the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to the Muslim Sacred Places and the opportunity to preach the wahhabism to the pilgrims from all the countries. But, the wahhabism was a minor current of the Islam until 1938, when the oil reserves were discovered in the zone. The immense incomes from this new wealth gave a great impetus to his ideological expansion for the world.

The imans near to the Saudi regime, reject the jihadist way, that tries to impose a Moslem regime by means of the violent and revolutionary action. On having considered it to be condemned to the failure. One of his great figures, from the 60s up to his death in 1999, the sheikh Mohamed Nasiruddin al-Alabani, was declaring that «nowadays, it forms part of the good politic, to leave the politic». For al-Albani it was necessary to follow a strategy of purification of the education: on one hand, to regenerate the faith, purifying it of ideological «innovations», that remove it from his origins; and to educate the Muslims in this regenerated faith, in order that they leave his religious «corrupt» practices.

Pin on Y Chromosome
Sheikh Mohamed Nasiruddin al-Alabani

The «Jihadist salafism» or Qutbism.

This current of the school makes the Jihad one of his activity centers. The jihadism seek to accelerate the liberation of the Moslem countries of any foreign occupation. It is based on Sayyid Qutb’s ideas, a theoretic and revolutionary born within the Moslem Brothers. He was sure that the Western Society was sick with individualism and ungodliness. And the Moslem countries would suffer the same thing, if they were influenced by West. And affirmed that the actual Moslem regimes were apostates, on having applied lay laws, instead of the Sharia.

sayyid-qutb | tarnmoor
Sayyid Qutb

Qutb‘s thought was one of the principal influences in the sects Muslims’ Society or Excommunnication (takfir) and Hegira (migration), arisen in 1969 in the bosom of the Moslem Brothers in Egypt, and in al-Qaeda, and his leaders, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Ben Laden. Sayyid Qutb, was detained, judged and executed at August 29, 1966, for planning the murder of the president Nasser. After his death, the Muslims Brothers evolved towards organization and fight forms inside the existing political system.

The actual salafist jihadism is born in the 80s, during the Afghanistan’s war against the Soviet occupation. The salafists jihadists arrived from Saudi Arabia met the Moslem Brothers. It drove them to adopt the political speech of the Moslem Brothers and to restoring in it the salafistst preaching of Sayyid Qutb.

Epilogue.

The practice praised by the salafistas introduced a strong ingredient of instability and of violence, still physical, between the Muslims and, therefore, between their ideological schools. That was depending and was a function of the antagonistic contradictions (insoluble in a pacific synthesis) that in every historical stage were generating and appearing in the Umma or in located parts of her and in the borders with the hostile peoples. The practical result was that the armed way became consubstantial and intermittently, in the mean of defense and spread of the Faith for many Muslims.

And though only a minimal percentage supports her nowadays and still they are less those who apply it, this conduct, as the red of the blood, turns out to be showy before all the men. That by extension and ignorance, attribute it to the totality of the Moslem community or Umma.

In addition, the sword is an enemy of the pen and of the abstract or scientific ideas. Or, at least, it fades and suffocates them. Though Mohammed already warned it in a hadis: «The ink of the pens is sometimes more useful for the Umma that the blood of the martyrs». At about the 5th century of the Hegira, our 11th century, the ideologists, in a political decision, closed the door to the ichtihad. And the methodological Islamic approach altered. From then, it was imitated, it was repeating itself, it was abused with the compendiums. There got lost the curiosity, the scientific personal effort, the flexibility, the intercommunication of studies and results. And, finally, since it could not be less, this ideological crystallization, moved also to the Moslem arts and sciences, that started a long declining.

This way, this second Transformation of the Islam remained largely frustrated and faded. By the new outcrop of the «minor Yihad», which constituted the first Transformation of the Islam. And that turned out to be completed and profitable with the incredible extension of the Islam in the known world in something more that one century. This reappearance of the first Transformation of the Islam, which was the use of the force for the extension and the implantation of a monotheistic religion, would turn into a complex, multiple, repetitive and violent action throughout the following centuries. Creating effusions of blood and spreading stertors of childbirth for different and numerous countries. On having searched with a new birth of the first Transformation of the Islam, the solution of the inevitable crises (for being vicissitudes of the personal and colectives lives) of the Muslims with the unfaithfuls or their chiies separated brothers…

Creating a permanent civil war, with a rosary of truces, within Islam, within the Umma, between Shiites and Sunnis.