Lessons in Atrocity Propaganda

Lessons in Atrocity Propaganda

It has been a little over a week since Hamas attacked Israel.

In that week, we have learned more of what 5th Generation Warfare looks and feels like in the context of actual battles taking place in a geographic theater of war.

Although the Israel-Palestine conflict has demonstrated an evolution in asymmetric warfare, this article will not discuss, per se, the tactics or politics of asymmetric warfare as we have observed them deployed by Hamas.

As we have witnessed in the last week, in contrast to a specific tactic, such as those employed during an asymmetric conflict, 5th Generation Warfare involves us all. As James Corbett wrote in April:

There is a world war happening right now. It is a fifth-generation war (or whatever you want to call it). It is being waged across every domain simultaneously. It is a war for full-spectrum dominance of every battlefield and every terrain, from the farthest reaches of the globe (and beyond) to the inner spaces of your body and even to your innermost thoughts. And it is a war on you.

This observation is not meant to cheapen the suffering of those on the ground, or to equate the rending of flesh with the rending of the mind. It is, however, an acknowledgement that the war over public opinion makes us all combatants in some small way. The accessibility and pervasiveness of modern media increases this involvement a hundredfold.

To fully analyze the evolution of 5th Generation Warfare through this conflict, an at least cursory understanding of each side's objectives is necessary.

Very crudely speaking, they are as follows: