Category Archives: Articles

Articles

Tired Zelensky looks too weak to achieve victory

Article published in The Sunday Telegraph, 6 January 2024. © Richard Kemp

Today Volodymyr Zelensky faces the greatest test of his leadership, greater even than the days almost two years ago when Russian invasion forces rolled across the border. Back then, when he was offered a ride to safety by the West and asked for ammunition instead, he led a country united in a fight for its life.

That’s not so much the case now. There are growing public divisions between Zelensky and other political leaders, such as former President Petro Poroshenko and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, as a blame game builds over failures in the war so far. Worse still, Zelensky and the Commander-in-Chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, also seem to be in conflict. When Zaluzhnyi admitted that the war had reached a stalemate, Zelensky publicly rebuked him.

Apart from the overriding need for national unity in war, this suggests that Ukraine lacks a clear strategy for the future prosecution of the conflict. Zelensky continues to insist that Ukraine will regain all its territory taken by Russia; although, after apparently over-promising on the summer offensive, he no longer seems to talk of timelines. Demoralised by the failure of that counter move, some are now talking in terms of some kind of peace accords. It has even been suggested that a potential peace agreement could be put to a referendum.

When I was last in Kyiv, there was certainly discussion among some political leaders about the idea of a peace deal in which Russia would accept Ukrainian membership of Nato in exchange for guarantees that there would be no Ukrainian efforts to re-take occupied territory. Such talk might well be mere exasperation, but it is mana from heaven for Biden and many European leaders who want nothing more than such a peace agreement and as soon as possible.

Any serious consideration of peace talks pretty much guarantees Ukraine’s defeat. Putting aside domestic politics in the US and EU that have, for the time being at least, essentially stifled further military aid, Biden and the Europeans have refused so far to equip Ukraine to win the war. Continue reading →

Articles

The morality of IDF maneuvers in Gaza

Article published by Jewish News Syndicate,  5 January 2024. © Richard Kemp

Other than hardened anti-Israel zealots and supporters of Hamas, few have questioned the need for Israel to take military action to defend its citizens after the depredations of October 7. But the Israel Defense Forces have come under intense criticism about the way it is conducting the war in the Gaza Strip, with allegations of excessive force and even indiscriminate attacks. Some former Western military officers have joined the chorus of condemnation, suggesting the IDF should adopt the tactics of coalition forces in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Given the outcomes of both campaigns, perhaps neither provides the ideal template for how jihadists can be defeated.

Amid this growing reproof from afar, I have not yet heard one single realistic proposal for an alternative way of operating that would reduce civilian harm while still achieving the necessary objectives. That tells me that the IDF has no choice but to prosecute this conflict along current lines, despite the terrible loss of civilian life. But given the ill-informed accusations and wide-ranging misunderstanding of how the IDF is actually operating in Gaza, it is worth a closer look at what the IDF has been doing to mitigate harm to civilians.

I have been in Israel since the start of this war in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter, rape, torture and kidnapping spree three months ago. During that time, I have been extensively briefed on the conduct of operations by IDF commanders and staff and visited a wide range of IDF air and ground combat units, including inside the Gaza Strip, on a number of occasions, when I have been able to observe military operations firsthand.

During Operation Swords of Iron, the IDF has faced and continues to face one of the most difficult and complex combat environments any armed forces have ever had to deal with. Hamas and its fellow Gaza terrorists has, over several years, been preparing the territory with weapons and ammo caches, booby traps, mines, kill zones, and ambush and sniper positions.

They have an armory that includes sophisticated ground combat systems including thermobaric anti-armor missiles, explosively Continue reading →

Articles

Iran gets a taste of its own medicine in deadly blast

Article published by Ynetnews.com,  4 January 2024. © Richard Kemp

The greatest terrorist regime in the world got on Wednesday what may seem like a taste of its own violent medicine with the most deadly attack inside Iran for 42 years. But it may be more complex than that. Dozens were killed and about twice that number wounded, some seriously, by two explosions, 15 minutes apart, on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of master terrorist Qasem Soleimani.

The day before, leaders of one of Iran’s terrorist proxies, Hamas, perished in a drone strike in Beirut that is widely viewed as Israel’s work although Jerusalem has not commented. Some have suggested that Jerusalem may also have been responsible for the twin bombings in Kerman, close to Soleimani’s tomb.

Although Israel is currently under assault from Iranian proxies in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, this kind of attack is not in its playbook. Israeli operations inside Iran have focused on targeted killings of key individuals associated with the nuclear weapons program as well as cyberattacks and sabotage at nuclear facilities.

Like the assassinations of the Hamas leaders in Lebanon, these are all legitimate defensive operations. The Kerman bombings, on the other hand, were acts of terrorism, and, unlike Iran, Israel is not a terrorist state.

So who could be responsible? So far ISIS has claimed responsibility but no hard evidence has come to light, so we can only speculate. Potential culprits include a range of opposition groups in Iran, including the Mujahadin-e Khalq which has carried out terrorist attacks inside the country in the past, although these have generally been more targeted operations, not the kind of indiscriminate attack we saw at Kerman. Another possibility is the Islamic State or other Sunni extremist groups opposed to Shi’ite Iran, none of whom would balk at such mass carnage.

Then there is Ukraine. Iran is a major weapons supplier to Russia and many Ukrainian cities as well as military forces have been attacked using Iranian-supplied suicide drones. Kyiv has every reason for striking at the regime in Tehran; but, like Israel, is hardly likely to launch an act of indiscriminate terrorism rather than a carefully targeted attack against military objectives.

Counterintuitively, many Iranians are blaming the Tehran regime itself. Certainly, such acts of terrorism against their own people are not beyond the ayatollahs. In this context, it is interesting to note it has been reported that, surprisingly, none of Soleimani’s children were present at the Kerman memorial event that was hit, nor were any top IRGC commanders.

Of course, this attack is a huge embarrassment for the regime, and also potentially encourages opposition groups. We might therefore think they would not do it to themselves. But it is not us doing the thinking and the ayatollahs might calculate things differently. Continue reading →

Articles

Ukraine is losing, but the UK must stand by it

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 28 December 2023. © Richard Kemp

As we look back at 2023, despite all of the problems we have faced, such as economic trauma and a spiralling immigration crisis, Britain can take at least some satisfaction in our role in the two most significant conflicts this decade and perhaps of this century so far: Ukraine and Gaza. But much greater challenges lie ahead.

In Ukraine, Putin’s leading propagandist just gave a back-handed compliment to the UK, blaming us for the latest blow to Russia’s Black Sea fleet with the claim that it was a British-supplied Storm Shadow missile that struck the Novocherkassk landing ship in the Crimean port of Feodosia on Boxing Day. Devastating though that attack was, however, the prospects for Ukraine in this war remain bleak.

Kyiv’s long-fought counteroffensive has failed. At tremendous cost and despite heroic fighting, it has taken little ground and there is no immediate prospect of further advances. The opposite, in fact. While defending against Ukrainian efforts to break through their lines, Moscow has also been on the offensive and on Christmas Day its forces appear to have captured the town of Marinka in eastern Donbas. This would be the greatest battlefield success on either side since Russia captured Bakhmut in May. It provides a pivot point to allow Moscow’s forces to attack Ukrainian defences further south.

But it has even greater strategic significance; it is yet another body blow to Ukraine’s international support, which has been flagging for months, with worse to come. The US has hit a political wall, with the delicate bipartisan support breaking down. It will be difficult for presidential candidates, in an election year, to justify spending more billions on Ukraine while Americans suffer from the legacy of a year of high inflation.

The EU has also hit a wall. Yes, it can work around Hungary’s Viktor Orban by funding trusts with all member states bar one. But across Europe, nationalist parties that need to gain electoral traction by focusing on their own people are now on the rise as the liberal international order is increasingly brought into question. As with the Continue reading →

Articles

Hamas’s antisemitic influence is even bigger than the Nazis’

Article published in The Jerusalem Post, 22 December 2023. © Richard Kemp

Hamas is by far the most successful antisemitic entity in the world today.

Beyond all competition, it has mobilized Jew-hatred around the world, using the State of Israel both as its target and its primary weapon. By waging war against Israel over many years, Hamas has inspired and energized international organizations such as the UN and the EU; governments and parliaments; the Western media; university authorities, professors, and students; human rights groups; businesses; and large sectors of the general population.

All dance to its pernicious tune: some out of malevolence, some out of ignorance, and others blindly jumping on the virtue-signaling woke bandwagon.

Consequently, the global scope and scale of Hamas’s antisemitic influence dramatically exceeds even the Nazis from whom it takes much of its own inspiration.

The foundations of Hamas’s success lie in the Soviet Union. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, when Israel aligned with the West rather than the USSR, the Soviet leadership decided to undermine American and British influence in the Middle East by fomenting a war of national liberation against Israel. Moscow invented a Palestinian national identity in order to turn religious malice against the Jews of Israel into a struggle over land, a cause it correctly understood would gain much greater traction and support in the West than a religious war.

That developed into the most successful slur campaign in history, giving rise to accusations of land theft, unlawful occupation, illegal settlement, apartheid, and all the other lies and distortions that are now accepted as undisputed facts by so many around the world. Decades of this anti-Israel propaganda have taken us to the dangerous position we are in today.

That means that whatever is done to Israel and its Jews is justified as legitimate resistance. I’ve even heard some saying that the people of Continue reading →

Articles

Time to attack Houthi assets in Yemen

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 20 December 2023. © Richard Kemp

The way to respond to a terrorist group that is menacing shipping in one of the world’s most important sea routes is not to just keep shooting down cheap drones with ultra-expensive naval missiles.

The purpose of the just-announced US led coalition in the Red Sea is to protect shipping and provide reassurance to ship owners and insurers. But however many naval assets are deployed, the Houthis seem likely to keep attacking as long as they have missiles and the shipping companies are likely to keep re-routing their vessels round Africa, adding weeks to their journey and pushing up prices of oil, gas and other commodities.

Since the current upsurge of aggression began, the Houthis have fired over 100 drones and missiles, targeting 10 commercial vessels, according to the Pentagon. They are still holding the cargo vessel Galaxy Leader seized on 19 November, with 25 crew members unjustly detained. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin describes this assault on international shipping and global commerce as ‘unprecedented’.

That simply cannot go on and the way to put a stop to it is by directly attacking the Houthis in Yemen. Their leadership can be targeted and military infrastructure such as missile systems, drone storage sites, radars and coastal guns hit by missile and air strikes. Aside from other ships in the naval coalition, the USS Eisenhower carrier strike group is now positioned off the coast of Yemen and should have an arsenal ready for such action.

The need to take on the Houthis goes beyond their recent targeting of shipping in the Red Sea. They are an ongoing regional threat, having attacked Saudi Arabia as well as Israel. An intensive assault against them would not only degrade their offensive capabilities and perhaps deter further aggression outside Yemen’s borders, it would also give Tehran a bloody nose. The Houthis are effectively Iranian proxies, with their drones and ballistic and cruise missiles believed to be supplied by Iran. Continue reading →

Articles

UK’s former defence secretary has played right into Hamas’s hands

Article published in The Jewish Chronicle, 19 December 2023. © Richard Kemp

Well intentioned though he may be, former defence secretary Ben Wallace, in an article in the Telegraph, gets much wrong about the Gaza conflict and risks stoking antisemitic hate. He supports the eradication of Hamas but says Israel is doing it all wrong. He doesn’t explain in any detail how they should do it differently. What he does offer are lessons from Northern Ireland. But Wallace doesn’t seem to recognise that Gaza is nothing like Northern Ireland. Not only that, he draws the wrong conclusions about how the IRA terrorist campaign ended. He seems to think it was because the Nationalist population ‘recognised that the IRA didn’t have its wellbeing and economic interests at heart’, which it was not. He seems to imply from this misunderstanding that Israel should be prioritising winning the hearts and minds of the civilian population over destroying Hamas.

The reality is that the vast majority of the Nationalist community never supported IRA violence but were largely powerless to do anything about it. On the other hand the people of Gaza, as well as the people of Judea and Samaria — the West Bank — are overwhelmingly behind Hamas’s violence. Nothing like the level of visceral hatred for Israel and the Jews that exists in these territories was ever present against the British in Northern Ireland. It is virtually bred into Palestinians almost from birth. Despite what Wallace suggests, nothing can change that, at least for generations.

The IRA was in fact beaten by British military and police action and almost total intelligence penetration of their terrorist networks, not by some kind of popular uprising against them. Likewise, Hamas can only be defeated by overwhelming force. It was never necessary to use the same level of violence against the IRA as it is against Hamas, because their very nature, and the environments of the two conflicts, were utterly different. Northern Ireland, where I did seven operational tours of duty, was and remains a part of the UK, with a constant level of policing and security. Gaza on the other hand is effectively a separate country, and has been totally controlled in all aspects by Hamas.

Hamas fights among civilians and designs its tactics to ensure Israel kills as many civilians as possible. The IDF on the other hand have become world leaders at attacking an enemy while minimising the extent of civilian casualties. I was in Israel a few years back with a delegation of about 15 former generals from democracies around the world. Every one of them said their own armies would not be able to achieve Israel’s standards of avoiding unnecessary civilian deaths.

Wallace does not appear to accept this, writing that Israel is carrying out indiscriminate attacks. That is the opposite of reality. According to a former US State Department official and Marine Corps fighter pilot, Israel is using a greater percentage of precision aerial weapons in this conflict than any country in the history of urban warfare. Israel only carries out attacks against terrorists and does all it can to warn civilians to leave an area that is going to be targeted. That is their obligation under the laws of war, but inexplicably Wallace suggests this very action breaks those laws by ‘forced movement of civilians’. Hamas of course consistently does the opposite, often forcing civilians to remain in an area they know is about to be attacked.

Wallace also suggests there is a danger of Israel breaching the Geneva Conventions by disproportionate use of force. Proportionality has a specific meaning in humanitarian law: an attack may only be carried out if the expected harm to civilians is not excessive in relation to the expected military advantage. He cannot possibly know whether or not this is the case and should not make such irresponsible allegations. If he is suggesting that Israel is killing a disproportionate number of civilians compared to combatant casualties, again he cannot know.

The former Defence Secretary appears to accuse Israel of illegal collective punishment of the civilian population. This is not accurate, either. If he’s talking about Israel denying or restricting goods required to alleviate civilian suffering which could fall into the hands of the enemy, that is both necessary and lawful under the Geneva Conventions, provided it is not intended specifically to harm civilians. I know Wallace does not intend to do either, but his words play right into Hamas’s hands and risk fuelling the sort of antisemitic hatred that we have already seen too much of on the streets of Britain.

 

Articles

Ben Wallace is wrong: Israel’s tactics are the only way to crush Hamas

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 18 December 2023. © Richard Kemp

In his Telegraph article today, Ben Wallace repeatedly misunderstands the situation in Gaza. To accuse Israel of ‘a killing rage’ and ‘indiscriminate’ assaults is untrue and unfair to an army that surpasses all others in its ability to attack an enemy while doing everything possible to minimise civilian casualties. As General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a few years ago: ‘Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties. In fact, we sent a team of senior officers to get the lessons from the measures they took to prevent civilian casualties.’

I have been in Israel and in the Gaza Strip since this war began, and I know that the measures Israel took back then are the measures they are taking now; except they have been improved on by further battlefield experience in the intervening years.

Despite that, yes, many innocent civilians have been tragically killed. But Hamas plans all of its operations with one overriding aim: to force Israel to kill civilians in Gaza. That is an even higher priority for them than actually killing IDF soldiers and civilians, because it achieves their objective of delegitimising, vilifying and isolating Israel among the world community.

Wallace accuses the IDF of breaking the Geneva Conventions, using disproportionate force, collective punishment and forced movement of civilians. How can he know whether or not the force Israel uses is disproportionate?

Proportionality has a specific definition in the Geneva Conventions. It means that an attack may only be carried out if the expected harm to civilians is not excessive in relation to the expected military advantage. How is he in a position to judge that? Perhaps he is thinking about the civilian to combatant casualty ratio, in which Israel has a better track record than most other armies in the world – but that statistic is impossible for him to know. Unless of course he is working on Hamas figures, which are likely to be inflated, take no account of the many Palestinian civilian deaths they themselves have inflicted, and make no distinction between civilian and combatant deaths.

Where too is evidence of collective punishment? If military operations that bring death, suffering and destruction on civilians is collective punishment, then that applies to virtually every war that has ever been fought. If he means denying or restricting supply of commodities needed by civilians, but likely to be used by enemy forces, then that is permissible under the laws of war.

The idea that Israel is somehow breaking the Conventions by forced movement of civilians is also incorrect. Under the laws of war combatants on both sides are required, where possible, to warn civilians of an impending attack and take whatever steps they can to move Continue reading →

Articles

Shijaiyah: In one of history’s most treacherous battlefields, friendly fire is almost a given

Article published by Ynetnews.com,  18 December 2023. © Richard Kemp

I can’t envisage a more terrible military tragedy in this situation than the killing of Israeli hostages by IDF soldiers last week in Shijaiyah. It is of course unimaginably heartbreaking for the three men’s families and friends, but also for the soldiers that pulled the trigger. Now all of them will have to live with this nightmare for the rest of their lives.

And, sickeningly, the usual suspects in the media have gleefully rushed to judgment, wheeling out so-called experts to say how this tragedy shows just how trigger-happy, ill-disciplined and gung-ho the IDF is. That’s because they don’t understand the situation in Gaza, have limited understanding of hard fighting on the ground and only too often want the IDF to be the bad guys.

As for myself, I am always surprised that disasters like this don’t happen more often when you think about the confusion, danger, fear, speed and unpredictability of events as well as the sheer number of sometimes uncontrollable moving parts that make up ground combat. Indeed, I was involved in a blue-on-blue some years ago when my troops and I opened fire on some of our own soldiers. As with the hostages in Gaza we had misidentified them as terrorists.

Like Hamas, the terrorists we faced were fighting on their own turf and adept at sophisticated deception to drag us into their killing zones. In Gaza, the hostages were waving a makeshift white flag and calling out in Hebrew. One escaped into a building and then re-emerged before running back. Each of these actions could easily have been read as a dangerous terrorist ploy and presumably were by the soldiers on the ground.

There is every reason for that. Hamas has previously feigned surrender and then tried to kill IDF troops moving to capture them. Continue reading →

Articles

Defenceless Ireland couldn’t stop Father Christmas crossing its airspace even if it wanted to

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 14 December 2023. © Richard Kemp

Speaking in the Dail yesterday, Leo Varadkar confirmed Father Christmas has been given permission to enter Irish air space from December 24 to 25 this year. Perhaps he thinks that will make amends for past misdemeanours, including his admission of pulling Santa’s beard off in a supermarket when he was five.

Although Varadkar thanked the Irish Department of Agriculture and Revenue Commissioners for allowing the necessary exemptions, if we assume the toy-laden sleigh will first touch down in Britain and Northern Ireland before flying on to the Republic, how can this be made to square with the Windsor Framework? In any case, the North Pole is not in the European Union, so the sweetmeats on board will presumably have to be labelled ‘not for EU’. I am sure we will not be witnessing any double standards from the Irish capital.

Even more seriously, I hope Varadkar has been coordinating the arrival of Santa with the RAF. After all, without an air force, Ireland is unable to monitor its own skies, far less police them. Under a once-secret defence pact between our countries that has been in place since the 1950s, the job of defending Ireland falls on the UK. British jets frequently have to get airborne to intercept Russian planes entering Irish airspace. The last thing we need is for the RAF to have to scramble on Christmas Eve to deal with an unidentified flying object over Dublin.

Our aerial assistance comes without any price tag despite Ireland being the second richest country in the EU by GDP per capita. Perhaps as a Christmas goodwill gesture, Varadkar could offer at least some reimbursement for the services of the boys in blue. But maybe that’s expecting too much from such a Scrooge-like figure, who once famously pronounced A Christmas Carol to be his least favourite seasonal movie, saying that Tiny Tim ‘should get a job’.