Israel has shown ideology is no match for technology

When the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was asked why he was defeated in the 1967 war, he said it was due to Israel’s air superiority. “That is why it fought us (Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) simultaneously.”
A journalist responded: “But Egypt also has a large fleet of fighter jets?” At the time, Egypt had 420 fighter aircraft, including the superior MiG-21.
Nasser answered: “They have more pilots than Egypt, three Israeli pilots for each fighter jet, meaning they can fly the same plane several times a day.”
His justification was correct, but Israeli superiority was not based on acquiring advanced aircraft; it stemmed from developing the entire Israeli military institution and its support networks based on highly advanced programs.
More than 4,000 people were killed or injured in recent days in two sophisticated technical operations carried out by Israel against Hezbollah, using pagers and walkie talkies. We are in the age of technological wars, not wars of bravery, and the concept of conflict is “civilizational,” not historical.
Phones, as well as other communication devices, computers, televisions, electric cars, and drones are all potential weapons. A car such as a Tesla, equipped with eight cameras, could be hacked by someone who can monitor everyone inside and outside the vehicle and even hack it from a distant country, turning it into a weapon.
Using wireless phones and pagers as tools for killing widens the gap and makes it impossible to win conflicts through military means. Nasser complained about Israeli superiority half a century ago, and today the gap has doubled, making the idea of change through armed force almost impossible, if not naive.
Throughout history, technology has played a decisive role in wars and in one empire’s superiority over another. The Mongols designed composite bows that allowed their horsemen to shoot arrows accurately and continuously while on horseback, enabling them to conquer half the world at unprecedented speed.
The Arabs crossed continents after developing chemical incendiary weapons made from tar.
Similarly, the Ottomans excelled by inventing massive cannons that allowed them to demolish formidable fortresses like Constantinople.

Scientific superiority is the key to human victories.

Abdulrahman Al-Rashed

 

Britain, a small, distant island, conquered the world by utilizing the technology of cannons mounted on ships that could destroy fortresses from the sea, building armored ships, and extending railways that accelerated the transportation of supplies and soldiers.
We cannot forget the nuclear bomb, the pinnacle of human intellect in destruction, which decisively ended the Second World War in favor of the US and its allies — its effects still resonate today.
Scientific superiority is the key to human victories, and the development of war machinery is a direct result of the advancement of institutions and society.
What makes Israel superior is its focus on intellect in the field of technology, which has granted it continuous victories to this day in both peace and war, and distinguished it economically despite the small size of its markets.
Israel advances in the fields of cybersecurity, military manufacturing, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, medical technology, and irrigation and agricultural technology.
As for Hezbollah, like Iran, its strength lies in its willingness to sacrifice its fighters, as well as recruiting cheap fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, and adapting cloned weapons from Russia and China, naming them “Martyr,” “Conqueror,” “Al-Qassam,” and “Al-Zalzalah.”
Like Al-Qaeda, the party relies on bravery and ideological preparation for sacrifice. Yet even this strategy is ineffective in modern wars, as one analyst remarked on the shock and heavy casualties within Hezbollah ranks due to the detonation of booby-trapped pagers by Israeli intelligence: “You cannot fight technology with ideology.”
All the dead from both sides, Hezbollah and Israel, believe they are going to heaven, but the most important thing in wars is who wins.
These wars will continue without a decisive result because one side is diligently working to develop its capabilities, and using its war with its adversaries as a field for experimentation, while the other side is entrenched in metaphysical beliefs and places no value on the loss of human life.

• Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a Saudi journalist and intellectual. He is the former general manager of Al-Arabiya news channel and former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article was originally published.