Israeli Tank Losses Could Foil Occupation
by James Buchanan
An Associated Press article reports “Hezbollah’s sophisticated anti-tank missiles are perhaps the guerrilla group’s deadliest weapon in Lebanon fighting, with their ability to pierce Israel’s most advanced tanks. Experts say this is further evidence that Israel is facing a well-equipped army in this war, not a ragtag militia. Hezbollah has fired Russian-made Metis-M anti-tank missiles and owns European-made Milan missiles, the army confirmed on Friday. In the last two days alone, these missiles have killed seven soldiers and damaged three Israeli-made Merkava tanks — mountains of steel that are vaunted as symbols of Israel’s military might, the army said. Israeli media say most of the 44 soldiers killed in four weeks of fighting were hit by anti-tank missiles. ‘They (Hezbollah guerrillas) have some of the most advanced anti-tank missiles in the world,’ said Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior military intelligence officer who retired earlier this summer. ‘This is not a militia, it’s an infantry brigade with all the support units,’ Kuperwasser said.”
If most of the 44 soldiers killed in recent fighting were inside tanks, this could be anywhere from five to twenty tanks badly damaged or destroyed. Even going with the low figure of five, this is a disaster for the Israelis. Their opponents have a means of destroying their most formidable armored weapon.
This isn’t the first time the Israelis have run into a formidable anti-tank defense. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Israelis lost over 100 tanks to “suitcase Sagger” anti-tank missiles. The Sagger was a wire-guided missile acquired from the Soviets. Today, there are arms merchants willing to sell weapons to almost anyone. The fighters in Lebanon know the Israelis have hundreds of tanks. No doubt they stocked up with as many missiles as they could afford. It’s a safe bet that the Syrians and the Iranians have much greater quantities of these missiles and will prove more than happy to share them with the Lebanese.
In a recent military channel documentary, a US Army officer remarked that during the invasion of Iraq our tanks destroyed about 85 percent of the enemy forces. (In other words, the Air Force failed to destroy -or even see- the vast majority of targets on the ground.) Almost every modern military occupation comes down to tanks. The Soviets sent in tanks to Hungary and Czechoslovakia when those two satellite nations rebelled. The Czechs and Hungarians did not have enough anti-weapons to stop the Soviet invasion or to undermine the later occupation. The Lebanese had to endure an Israeli occupation before. They know how heavily the Zionists depend on their tanks. It seems the Arab fighters in the south of Lebanon have stocked up on weapons that can make a difference.
If the Israelis can’t rely on their tanks to be virtually invincible, if the Hezbollah fighters can knock out one or two tanks per week, then the situation will quickly become untenable for the Zionists. The Israelis can demand that the US send them more tanks to make up the losses, but that will undermine the US effort to control Iraq. Any replacement tanks may be slow in coming. The terrific cost of these tanks, not to mention the loss of the soldiers inside will make a second occupation of Lebanon incredibly expensive if not impossible.