HEZBOLLAH vs ISRAEL:

Confronting Information Strategies in the 2006 Lebanese War

Wars have changed in recent times in many ways, not least because of the role played in warfare by the media and communication technologies. The ‘art of war’ has inevitably felt the consequences of the information revolution that has left traces in all spheres of social life and in every part of the world. Various phrases have been invented to describe the result of this change, such as Fourth Generation War, Information Warfare, and the Sixth Military Revolution².

There is no complete agreement on the most accurate definitions³ and categories are often controversial, especially within the domain of social sciences. Nevertheless, many scholars and practitioners, both in the political and military fields, have highlighted such changes in war history. An exemplary quotation comes from Colonel P.J. Crowley, speaking in the U.N .Security Council on June 10, 2000: “I don’t think you can fight a war today without taking into account the media focus. So you have to plan a media strategy, just as you have to plan your operational strategy for any campaign”⁴. There is general agreement that conflicts and international interventions - peacekeeping, peace enforcement or humanitarian - have their own media dimension, and that all the actors have to integrate information and communication elements into their strategic plans.

The interaction between the information and military aspects brings into play some key words: information warfare, information strategy, cyberwar and netwar. The first refers to a new type of war in which the use of information equipment – computers, satellites, communication networks, databases – with a military aim has a crucial importance (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1997); the second one indicates the strategic approach to this new aspect of the conflict, and that includes attentive planning, not only for the direct use of communication technologies by the army and the various military forces, but also for a strategic use of the media that takes into consideration the new characteristics of the global system (Fachot, 2000). The cyberwar and netwar are two models of conflict included in the spectrum of the information-age wars. The first one ‘stands for the information era as the blitzkrieg for the industrial era’, while the second one is characterized by an information-oriented approach to social conflict (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1997).

The relationship between armed forces and mass media is quite complex, and it is often contradictory and full of tension because of different characteristics and structural priorities. On the one hand, we have a military apparatus that is hierarchical by definition and for which secrecy is a fundamental value, but that at the same time is forced to take into consideration the media as a crucial factor in the dynamics of the conflict. On the other hand, we have the press, phobic with respect to control and external authority, and dedicated to maximizing the traceable information, with bare and flexible constraints, as soon as possible. We have two antithetical weltanschauungen, forced to establish a relationship in the framework of a new type of conflict whose key word is ‘information’.

Not only is the interaction between belligerents and media inevitable, but it also plays a crucial role in the very dynamics of the conflict and could determine its outcome. The Lebanon War of 2006 is a significant example that confirms this theory. In terms of sheer military force, the two parties were not nearly comparable: on the one side, a world nuclear power, on the other, a guerrilla group that, even if supplied by Iran and Syria, was small and poorly equipped. Basically, a bet without risks. But in this case, the crucial element was not the ‘hard power’. This was not a traditional conflict in which the winner is generally the militarily stronger party. “In today’s information age, it is often the party with the stronger story that wins” (Nye, 2006). Between Israel and Hezbollah, it was the latter that told the best story. The most important thing for Hezbollah was to avoid defeat and to enhance its reputation as the only Muslim force able to resist an Israeli offensive. Although, at the beginning of the conflict, the Lebanese government and a number of other Arab countries – such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia - criticized the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers, Hezbollah was later lauded for its resistance and its ability to respond to the attacks, thanks mainly to its media strategy. With a narrative that transcended time and space, Hezbollah depicted itself as the vanguard of resistance against perceived Israeli and Western domination, melding elements of its own unique political culture of militancy and Shi'ism with the broader nostalgic themes of pan-Arabism. This allowed the group to gather support beyond its domestic constituency (Ajemian, 2008).

Israel used its hard power in a way that strengthened Hezbollah’s soft power and legitimacy in the eyes of the Arab world, even in the eyes of Sunni groups which have historically been hostile to Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian Shi'ite movement. Justifying its actions on security grounds, Israel launched a hard counteroffensive with large-scale aerial bombings that even in the era of precision weapons generate collateral damage unacceptable to domestic and international public opinion. At the political level, the results were still coming out months later, as was demonstrated by the debate generated by the Winograd report⁵.

The costs of the military campaign exceeded the benefits, and opened the door to an enormous psychological defeat (Emiliani, 2007). Israel weakened itself by its own actions and permitted Hezbollah to play the part of David, overturning the roles that until that moment had characterized the Middle East chessboard.

The Third Israel-Lebanon War: A Brief Summary

Before presenting the core analysis on the role of information strategies and media during the conflict, I briefly outline the main stages of the war: