Proportionality and collateral damage - Gaza compared to 'Trouble' Northern Ireland

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

Your point is well-taken, but surely that sort of thing is a job for Special Forces? I think we would have sent in an SAS raid, after intelligence gathering, rather than get the RAF to launch air strikes Cavan town and send in the tanks thereafter, which sounds to me like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut - back to proportionality again: why did Israel not (initially at least) use the Sayeret Matkal?

Also, your analogy would have been more accurate had the British government also imposed a blockade on a Sinn Fein-led Eire...which it wouldn't have done.

You don't know how much I appreciate intelligent discussion able to leave emotions aside. It is a breath of fresh air.

Good points. I think one thing is clear, nothing is as simple as it appears at first glance.

I don't know about your contentions. We are living in a different age and environment. It is clear that British forces were not above heavy-handed tactics in the situation as it was. This by no means makes light of IRA activities.

I do think that if a Sinn Fein Eire government supported IRA terrorism serious action would have been required. I think the analogy breaks down again over the difference between rocket launchers and a 'bomb factory.' Special forces could very well 'take out' a bomb factory in Cavan, but if IRA had rocket launchers in Cavan, Dundalk, Letterkenny, and other border towns air strikes would have been a reasonable response.


I had to look up Sayeret Matkal. I didn't know what the Israeli Special Forces were called . I think you have a point, perhaps that would have been a better option early on.

Again, thank you for a reasoned intelligent discussion.

 

[Matt Black]

Thanks, Roger! No, it's not clear-cut at all. The problem with rocket and missilse launchers, for example, is that they are mobile and therefore difficult to locate - as the SAS found out in Gulf War I when trying to locate Saddam's Scuds.

Another contra point re the Israeli tactics: the radicalisation issue - if you duff up large numbers of civilians, it tends to have the effect of radicalising their nearest and dearest and thus increasing the threat of a new generation of terrorists being raised up. The biggest recruiter for the IRA, and one which really acted as a turning point from them being regarded by the Catholic population as "I Ran Away" to them being an organisation worth joining, was Bloody Sunday...This is always going to be a risk when you have regular forces rather than elite*/specials involved in an operation where the lines between military and policing actions are blurred.

*Not that I'm saying the Parachute Regiment in Derry in January 1972 wasn't an 'elite' force, just that it was inappropriate to use them for counter-terrorist and quasi-policing operations in an urban environment. But there you are: hindsight is everything!