October 7th And The Lingering Importance Of Mass

Long ago, Jewish rebels overran a Roman Garrison on what seemed to be an impregnable fortress on a plateau. Built by King Herod the Great, the fortress was seemingly unconquerable until the rebels massed their forces and massacred the Roman garrison. Failing to realise the key to their original success, mass, the rebels rested behind elaborate and expensive fortifications. Lying behind the tall walls, the rebels themselves were either massacred or committed mass suicide due to the mass of approaching Romans who were able to breach the defences by building a large ramp to surmount the walls. Centuries later this lesson learnt at that old fortress, lying under 200 kilometres away from the Gaza border, seemed to fade from memory. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a large-scale invasion of Israel by sea, air, and land bypassing what former defence minister Benny Gantz called a “defence of the first order”. Like the Romans of old, breaching the sophisticated defences at Masada, Hamas militants used paragliders to fly over Israeli barriers on the border evading sophisticated air defences, catching Israeli soldiers and border guards unprepared. Sparsely populated and sophisticated outposts were overwhelmed by waves of Palestinian militants. Instead of relying on a sizeable amount of ground forces to secure the border with Gaza, the Israelis relied on sophisticated technology and fortifications to counter what they considered an unsophisticated militant group. 

Without a sufficient amount of mass to counter attacking forces, the defences at the border were breached. To lessen casualties in frequent attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip the Israeli military invested heavily in fortifications, weapons, remote-controlled systems, and surveillance equipment. While these investments led to a dramatic decrease in Israeli casualties they were also accompanied by a decrease in Israeli power where it was most needed, the Gaza Strip. On October 7th, heavy armour systems like the Merkava 4 tank, which cost the Israeli taxpayer around 3.5 million dollars, were able to survive multiple anti tank missile hits protecting their most prized position, the crews. While one might argue that the investment in these systems saved the lives of the nation’s pride, its people, the crew of at least one Merkava 4 which lacked the protection of a mass of accompanying infantry was disabled and captured. 

The lack of mass did not just affect protection against traditional ground assaults but also those from the air. Slipping past the expensive but sparse Israeli air defence systems, a Hamas drone was able to damage a tank which was again without the protection of infantry. In turn, Israeli infantry were first not aware of the threat from the sky and second not equipped with counter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems. Unmanned positions filled by fixed remote-controlled machine guns were seemingly unable to raise their guns beyond a certain elevation and without a mass of infantry to help secure the fixed position were destroyed by drones. With the fixed positions destroyed, militants were free to advance into Israeli territory with little resistance from the army whose presence was both incredibly scattered and unaware of what was happening. Isolated army units were massacred in their barracks and others were captured and taken into Gaza. In 2012, then Chief of General Staff,  Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz told the Israeli public “In the face of the threats at our doorstep, we are poised and prepared along the borders of the country,” Yet, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were bested by the militants of Hamas who breached technologically impressive yet vulnerable defences.

Money was poured into creating the walls of a New Masada, impressive from afar, but vulnerable for those who reside behind it. Realising its critical vulnerabilities, the former CEO of Magal Security Systems Ltd Saar Koursh, who was responsible for constructing the barrier, admitted in 2018 that it could not stop a mass attack from Gaza when Hamas vowed to cross the border with tens of thousands of Palestinians at their backs during the March of Return protest. The barriers, according to Koursh, were supposed to supplement the IDF’s mission at the border and in Koursh’s own words “It would take about 30 seconds to cross.” Yet the glitz and spectacle of the high tech border could have induced leading IDF figures into making a dangerous strategic choice. That is, the army should primarily be stationed in the West Bank instead of a fortified Gaza border. Beaming with pride after the completion of the project, former defence minister Benny Gantz called the fortifications “…(a) technological project of the first order…” One has to wonder if King Herod or the Jewish rebels of old thought the same of Masada. The fortifications were built to protect Israelis, but in the end, after the communication systems were destroyed, they obscured the ongoing attack that in turn resulted in confusion and heavy losses.

The faith placed in a limited amount of sophisticated weapons was misplaced due to the fact that Hamas was growing in one area key to giving a land power its strength, mass. Within Gaza, the extremist militant group was establishing an increasingly organised armed wing with the help of Iran. Iranian assistance ranged from the training of militants to the supply of weapons to the tune of almost $100 million dollars a year. Some of this aid included sharing the knowledge of how to manufacture rockets and drones which provided Hamas sufficient mass to overwhelm high-tech yet insufficiently massed Israeli defences. With an arsenal of cheap drones, Hamas was able to down the sophisticated surveillance and communications infrastructure which rendered the Israelis blind to the attack. Additionally, Hamas provided support to advancing forces by firing thousands of rockets, both from long and short-range artillery, that were able to overwhelm the Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems. These anti air and missile systems cost taxpayers between $40,000 to $100,000 and $1,000,000 every time a missile is launched, respectively. Through overwhelming the much vaunted Israeli Air Defence System, Hamas again proved that weaker actors retain the ability to best even one of the most sophisticated militaries. 

History is littered with precedents whereby one side with superior numbers is able to best a better equipped foe. In the not so distant past of World War Two, the allies were able to beat back the occasionally superior tank technology of the Germans because the allies had more tanks, largely thanks to the industrial might of the United States, which numerically overwhelmed the German panzers. The French, despite having superior weapons and being sufficiently fixed into the Valley of Dien Bien Phu were humiliated precisely because of the overwhelming mass of the Vietnamese. 

Now much like their French forebears, the Israelis were bested by a mass of militants who overcame the scattered defences on the Gaza border. This can be best seen on a tactical level when militants were able to overwhelm the seemingly limited manpower stationed at the Erez crossing which was the only crossing that allowed Gazans to travel into Israel. Hamas after years of small-scale engagements and periods of rocket fire into Israel capitalised on an Israeli unwillingness to use mass in its military operations. Precision strikes delivered by airpower thousands of feet up in the air, a reliance on the Iron Dome, and fortifications were the modus operandi of the Israeli military. In the past 17 years Israel has rarely mounted incursions into Gaza and the incursions it did make, never threatened the survival of Hamas. Fighting against the same enemy for so long violated Napoleon’s famous pronouncement “You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.” Taking the lesson of Napoleon into account, the militants of Hamas capitalised on the IDF’s reluctance to commit to bloody house-to-house fighting and brought the war to the Israelis’ doorstep. 

Instead of stationing a sufficient amount of forces to secure its border against an increasingly powerful enemy, Israel relied on technological advantages that don’t fare well in the face of massive enemy assaults. It is reported that thousands of gunmen poured across the border and killed over a thousand Israeli citizens. While the Israelis poured in mass to plug the defences at the Gaza border and recapture territory won by Hamas, it was too late. Over a thousand Israelis died in brutal fashion as a result of the military’s failure to secure the border. 

Technology and fortifications can not defeat an organised overwhelming mass of attackers, only a mass of defenders can. History is littered with precedents whereby a less-equipped force bested their better equipped foes, all due to the fact they had numbers on their side. Technology is not a determinant factor in war, mass remains as important in war as it was at Masada, Dien Bien Phu, and the Gaza Strip.