The war Israel is losing against Hamas

The Gaza conflict is bloody, brutal, and genuinely heartbreaking, but it is also perfunctory. This is a fight in which the military battle is predetermined: Hamas cannot win, and Israel cannot lose. What happens in between is almost balletic in its endless predictability. Hamas fires rockets, Israel fires back; Hamas targets Israeli cities; Israel bombs buildings in which Hamas hides and stores weapons.

So what’s the point? Well, apart from Hamas needing to show strength – and Israel needing to, in the words of its security experts, ‘mow the grass‘ by periodically degrading Hamas’ military capabilities – there is a wider battle raging. This fight isn’t about missiles or rockets but about narratives; to fight you need a reason. Without one, things generally won’t go well (see Bush and Blair’s phantom WMDs in Iraq). 

This concept is, of course, as old as war itself. But now there is a difference: in the age of the smartphone, wars are fought under almost total data coverage.