Israeli military policy since 2006—the Dahiya doctrine (plus more on media myths and bias)

Part 2 of "Israeli/Arab Conflict in Palestine: How Did It Start? A Historical Review"

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash

My intention in this series has been to understand and provide context for current events, and then work backwards. In Part 1, I began by cautioning about misinformation on social media and even official news, and then looked at how Gaza became what it is and why Hamas would have motivation to break through the extravagant high-tech barrier that Israel placed around Gaza and to attack Israeli settlements—settlements in places formerly inhabited by Palestinians that they’d been violently expelled from in decades past.

Go back to Part 1: The Gaza Strip

In Part 1, I provided a provisional outline which I now need to revise, inserting a new Part 2:

• Part 1: The Gaza Strip

• Part 2: Israeli military policy since 2006—the Dahiya doctrine (plus more on media myths and bias)

• Part 3: The Rise of Zionism and the Creation of the State of Israel

• Part 4: The Role of Sabbatean-Frankist Jewish Apostasy

Part II

In this installment I’d like to begin again by calling attention to propaganda and disinformation. Perhaps one effective way to do that would be to look at simple numbers. First, just looking at the past two weeks, October 7-23, we have the following:

Note that the majority of Gazans dead or missing are women and children. Though this chart is only a few days old, the numbers of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks has now risen to over 7,000 as of Oct 26. We can see that Israel’s “counterattack” on Gaza has been much more deadly than the attacks by Hamas.

Is this is a new pattern of imbalance due to Israel’s need to defend itself aggressively against the worst attack on Israel in decades? Here’s a comparison of Israeli vs Palestinian casualties from 2008 to 2020. Red represents injuries, black deaths.

So I guess we would have to say no, the pattern of harm inflicted by Israel on Palestinians being many times more severe than vice versa is well established. Given this situation, is it appropriate to call Hamas a “terrorist group”? If so then wouldn’t we at least need to call Israel a “terrorist state”? Is Israel the “little David” facing Goliath, or is it the bully on the block, the cruel warden of Palestinians imprisoned in Gaza or surrounded by ever-encroaching Jewish settlements in what hasn’t yet been wrested from them in the West Bank?

If these questions challenge or offend, could it be possible the reader has been conditioned by the media to believe something different about what is going on in the Middle East than the reality? I would say it is very possible, and I sympathize. As an American growing up in rural Montana in the 1980s, attending church every Sunday, and having only 3 channels on the television to choose from, I, along with everyone I was surrounded by, were conditioned to believe many things I later discovered weren’t true. Things, I discovered, that in fact had no basis in reality at all. The documentary, The Occupation of the American Mind reveals that, with regard to Israel and the Middle East, this was no mere accident. The American media has painted Israel as the poor little country surrounded with Muslim terrorists on all sides. But the reality is quite different.

Again I will cite Rozali Telbis, who in an article discussing imbalanced coverage and censorship in the news, says:

The problem with this myopic view is that it assumes hate crimes are only being perpetrated against Jewish people. This angle not only downplays, but it completely ignores hate crimes committed against Palestinians.

Over a week ago, a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy was stabbed 26 times in his Illinois home. His family’s landlord murdered him and attacked his mom because they were Muslim. The media and advocacy groups barely reported this story before quickly moving on to the next one.

[…]

My reason for bringing this up isn’t to engage in a petty victimhood competition, but rather to show how the establishment historically and disproportionately allies with Israel at the expense of Palestinians and their ongoing struggles living in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The War on Speech Continues

Despite media claims that Israel doesn’t intentionally target civilians, the fact of the matter, as recently unveiled by Celia Farber, is that the State of Israel has been implementing an official policy of terrorizing Palestinian and Lebanese civilians ever since 2006, known as the Dahiya doctrine.

Farber provides a link to a video on X describing the doctrine and its devastating effects and also cites Military Wiki which tells the doctrine’s origins:

The first public announcement of the doctrine was made by General Gadi Eizenkot, commander of the IDF's northern front, in October 2008. He said that what happened in the Dahiya (also transliterated as Dahiyeh and Dahieh) quarter of Beirut in 2006 would, "happen in every village from which shots were fired in the direction of Israel. We will wield disproportionate power against [them] and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases. [...] This isn't a suggestion. It's a plan that has already been authorized. [...] Harming the population is the only means of restraining Nasrallah."^[3][4]

After an embarrassing defeat during the Israeli-Hezbollah War in Lebanon, the Israeli military decided on a strategy of terrorizing the civilian population, bombing and leveling of the Shiite Dahiya quarter of Beirut, as a deterrent to further resistance. Israel deemed that not merely guerrilla leaders but the entire population were guilty of heinous crimes, and were justified targets. According to the Israeli military rhetoric, terrorizing civilians would keep them in line and avoid further challenges to Israel. This doctrine would later come to play in 2008 during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. According to the film on X (Twitter) mentioned earlier:

Israel’s Interior Minister recommended that the IDF should decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it.

The film also quotes Israeli Deputy Prime Minister as saying:

“It is a great opportunity to demolish thousands of houses of all the terrorists, so they will think twice before they launch rockets. They should be razed to the ground, so thousands of houses, tunnels and industries will be demolished.”

Note that the Deputy Prime Minister is suggesting that all Gazans are “terrorists.” This is the same view and the same policy that has led to non-stop bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza over the past two weeks. Farber suggests that, indeed, without knowing this the horrible crimes against Gaza are incomprehensible. Yet, even knowing this how can we take it in? Anyone with a heart and open eyes must feel this tragedy immensely to the core. In another place, Farber writes:

"I am stone cold horrified and my heart is pounding.

I am no longer worried about seeming disloyal to my Jewish family or people I know who “support Israel.” I believe there is no such position anymore—Israel has bombed Gaza to dust and blood. The blood of innocent children, and human beings, who did nothing (needless to say) to deserve this. Once you see the images and video footage, you will find there is quite literally no such thing as “supporting this.”

She’s referring to videos posted by Gazans, like this one…

“Imagine… Your dignity, your freedom, your rights, your water, your food, your income, your movement, your basic human needs in the hands of the occupier, who makes sure you are reminded they are in control… 24 hours a day, 12 months a year, with every breath you take for 75 years now. How would you feel?”

Although the Dahiya doctrine, and especially the blatant and repeated calls for genocide by Israeli officials of the period is an interesting and horrifying side note, as we go deeper into the history of the State of Israel since its formation and even farther back to the time of the British Mandate of Palestine, we find that terrorizing Palestinian civilians has been a matter of policy from the beginning.

In Part III, I’ll look into on to how Israel came to be a Jewish-led state overlaid on the traditional Palestinian homeland. For the short version, watch this video (15 min).

Recommended reading:

Breaking the Spell of Violence

Tobin Owl is an independent researcher/writer. Over the past three years he’s conducted in-depth investigation focusing on the history of modern medicine, medical science, geopolitical conspiracy and the environment. Articles written prior to his move to Substack are found on his website Cry For The Earth