If we are talking about rocket strikes, let’s compare and cont | OTAS: operational thinking against the state

If we are talking about rocket strikes, let’s compare and contrast these two styles of attacks:

-indiscriminate attacks targeting random people

Of course there’s a thousand reasons killing random people or doing things that gesture at that are bad ethically/tactically. For states they ironically call this ‘strategic bombing,’ for non state actors or states unaligned with NATO or whatever they call this terrorism.

The goal of such attacks for states is to break the morale of the populace being bombed, to inflict terror and wear down their willingness to resist and produce. For non-state actors it’s similar with the added factor of wanting to embarrass the authorities responsible for the attacks and shattering the facade of social peace, often ‘bringing the war home’ as it were. If you’re just looking for escalation this is a way to get their especially if you and your enemies kill all the moderates. After all no tactic exist in a vacuum.

Some of the problem with these tactics is the are basically enemy and precedent for repression generating machines. They can drastically decrease sympathy from a base, decrease potential for contagion across difference. They also may not even decrease your enemies power if you’re fighting an insurgency because while you may send shockwaves through your enemies supporters you will probably not do enough to deplete their population and will again galvanize the population against you.

In the case of Hamas we can see they have managed, with the help of Israel, to be as popular as ever in Gaza, but they and they’re tactics are also part of the reason things don’t pop off in the rest of Palestine despite many supporting them there. But again no tactics exists in a vacuum.

In the case of Israel and the US, killing ‘civilians’ is the number one recruiting tool for their enemies.

It’s worth repeating child killed air strikes and bombings is an accident it is either the whole point, like Israel drooping cluster bombs in Lebanon’s fields where kids play, or it’s “an acceptable loss” that the military accounted for.

-logistics oriented attacks with precise strikes targeting infrastructure

Attacking infrastructure can be attacks on the civilian population like when the US bombed water infrastructure in Iraq in Operation Iron Hammer named after a Nazi operation that devastated Russian civilian and military infrastructure.

But let’s talk about underdog attacks on infrastructure. Attacking infrastructure attacks power directly and highlights said power’s weak spots. Infrastructure and logistics are how EVERYTHING operates and so much of it can be targeted easily. It’s also more palatable to a broader set of potential supporters. And for actual supporters it can be like fireworks without going into a morbid death-cult direction. Death cults can of course be successful, look at the Islamic State for an example of this, but their project is at its core very different than a truly liberating project and if your goal is to actually escape or to “shake off” the oppressor as Intifada can be translated to mean, other methods must proliferate.