# The “34-day War” as Israel’s Tết Offensive



## FredDaHead (22 Aug 2006)

Here's a little something I came up with. Constructive criticism is welcome, flaming is not. Similarly, quoting me elsewhere is fine, as long as I am acknowledged and you notify me, in PMs, in this thread or via e-mail. (Though why anyone would quote me is beyond me.)



*The “34-day War” as Israel’s Tết Offensive*

After seeing Israel beat Hezbollah militarily, but suffer a crushing public opinion defeat thanks to the world media, it doesn’t take much for the astute historian to draw links to the Tết Offensive during the Viet-Nam War. First is the media treatment of the information. Similarly, there is the importance of the “perceived massacres” in Lebanon being spun to resemble My Lai. Finally, one of the easiest links to make is the comparison between the military victory and the moral loss Israel and South Viet-Nam suffered.

After his famous picture of a RVN General executing a VC Captain in Saigon during the Tết Offensive was shown around the world, then-Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams told the Times,

_“The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.
What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?'”_

One could ask of the doctored Reuters picture, and all the other pictures of the destruction in Lebanon: "_what would you do if you were the General at that time and place, and you knew where the so-called bad guys were hiding after they’d blown away one, two, three Israeli children?_” Would you order your fighters to drop a laser-guided bomb on them, knowing there was a chance some civilians might get caught in the cross-fire, or would you let the so-called bad guys act with impunity and kill more of your countrymen?
The images coming out of Lebanon only tell half-truths. They tell of the destruction one people is suffering from, but do not tell of the destruction that same people is condoning through it’s inaction. They also do not tell of the way the so-called bad guys indoctrinate youth so they hang around so-called bad guys when they fire at Israeli soldiers, or when they fire rockets at Israeli civilians, with the aim of raising civilian deaths so the so-called bad guys look like the good guys, and the good guys look like the bad guys.
These pictures, like Adams said, only tell half-truths, but they’re the half-truths that the so-called bad guys want the world to see. The half-truths that play into the so-called bad guys’ hand.
General William Westmoreland said the picture had “shocked the world, an isolated incident of cruelty in a broadly cruel war, but a psychological blow against the South Vietnamese nonetheless.” The same could be said about the Reuters picture.
What one has to ask himself, is whether the journalists mean to make Israel look bad, or if they’re being manipulated themselves.

A related problem is that of the spin the media has put on civilian casualties. In previous campaigns, both in Israel and outside, civilian casualties were counted, but not to the extent they have been during this last war. There has also never been this kind of problem for authorities—on both sides—to distinguish actual civilians from illegal combatants posing as civilians. This has lead to gross misunderstandings on both sides: Lebanon, and with it most of the world, believes Israel has killed mostly civilians, and Israel cannot know precisely how many Hezbollah fighters it has killed and thus evaluate it’s success. Unfortunately for Israel, both misunderstandings are against it; they cannot know how successful they have been, and the pressure and condemnation pouring from throughout the world make it difficult to proclaim even a tactical victory.
It seems almost surprising that the raids in Southern Lebanon were not characterized as a modern My Lai Massacre. After all, what would be better to stir anti-Semitic sentiments than to picture Israeli soldiers executing—murdering—poor, innocent Lebanese civilians, just like Americans had done to Vietnamese villagers 38 years earlier. It would be easy to portray Prime Minister Olmert as Captain Medina, Israeli military leadership as Lieutenant Casey, the Lebanese people as the Song My (My Lai) civilians, and the Hezbollah as Warrant Officer Thompson, threatening the evil soldiers to stop them from killing the poor, innocent sympathizers. After all, the Lebanese and Hezbollah supporters have time and again claimed Israel’s raids were “crimes against humanity.”
On the other hand, in keeping with the Viet-Nam comparison, Hezbollah’s incessant attacks against civilian Israeli targets resembles the Huế Massacre. The comparison can be taken further: like the My Lai and Huế massacres, the two instances of so-called atrocities received totally different levels of media attention—the “good guys’” so-called atrocities received massive attention, while the so-called atrocities perpetrated by the “bad guys” went almost unnoticed by comparison.
While the unfortunate events of March ’68 have not been directly brought up, the spin that has been put on the destruction in Lebanon has brought it to almost the same levels of international shame-mongering. It is, however, unfortunate that, just as it did almost forty years ago, a legitimate military operation is attacked because of some civilian deaths—legitimate or not.

Finally, the most significant link between the Tết Offensive and the “34-Day War” is the casualties. Although the two were on different scales, in both instances the so-called good guys’ loses were insignificant next to the so-called bad guys’ loses. According to statistics, there were up to 9 North Viet-Nam deaths for every “Allied” death in Viet-Nam, and some have suggested the ratio could be around 30 to 1 for the most recent action. The difference might be due to a number of things: the scale (there was around 1,000 Lebanese killed, as opposed to up to 100,000 North Vietnamese killed or wounded), the restraint of force (after all, Tết was an all-out war, while Israel’s action was a series of raids), or the use of deadlier, more precise weapons. Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that the so-called good guys won by a landslide.
In the 34-Day War, the Israelis have most likely destroyed a majority of Hezbollah caches, as well as greatly diminished their ability to fight. Similarly, the North Vietnamese Army paid a large price during the Tết Offensive and, had it not been for domestic pressure in the United States, it is possible, even likely, that the South could have defeated the North. However, in both cases, public opinion was spun the other way around, and the conclusion made it seem as though the war had been a defeat.
When General Westmoreland asked for 206,000 soldiers to mount a large counteroffensive and crush North Viet-Nam, even Walter Cronkite declared the war a stalemate and called for negotiation. Similarly, when the Israel Defense Force failed to crush Hezbollah in mere days, unlike what happened in most other conflicts involving Israel, analysts declared the battle lost and asked for negotiations.
In both instances, political and military leaders could not base their decisions on facts and figures; they had to decide based on polls and international opinion. In both cases, they understandably lost part of their credibility and perceived might as a direct result.
We see, then, that both Tết and the 34-Day War were military victories disguised as loses in the public opinion, and that, had the political wing decided otherwise, the military could have garnered a total victory instead of a negotiated, less-than-acceptable settlement.

We have seen, throughout this short study, that there are many parallels to be drawn between Israel’s 34-Day War and Viet-Nam’s Tết Offensive. Between the biased photographs being shown around the world, the portrayal of Israel as an evil killer of civilians and the denial, despite the facts, that a military victory took place, a major propaganda war has been won—by Israel’s enemies.
Only time will tell whether Israel’s 34-Day War will, like Tết was for South Viet-Nam, signify the beginning of the end.




Here's the picture I refer to, for those who aren't Viet-Nam buffs.


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