Antonio Navalón
Nothing is scarier than intelligence applied for war or inciting violence. Usually, violence and destruction have served as the antithesis of intelligence. Today, however, the world is in awe. And it is because anyone in their right mind can understand that everything we have been through in the last few months – but mainly in the previous month – is the beginning of the end of the way wars were fought in our time. Before, “he who kills with iron, dies with iron”. Now, with the supremacy and extreme dependence we have on technology and the fact that we want to have everything within the reach of our cell phone screen, a new world has been created. A world that, just as it has changed the meaning of peace, harmony, and development, has also changed how wars are fought and resolved.
Today, we know that we can live with almost nothing. However, today, we also know and are aware that it is impossible to live without the help of technology, especially without our cell phones. Just as it happened in the 1930s with the Spanish Civil War, the experimentation and use of new weapons of destruction – developed by the Germans in the resurgence of their nation – the new has always generated resistance and needed time to normalize. The use of Stuka bombers and what became known as the “Stuka Experiment” – the test conducted by the Nazis in Spanish territory with the use of these bombers that devastated four villages in Castellón – was of great help to the army commanded by Hitler to invade Poland and with it the beginning of the Second World War years later. But more than the “Stuka Experiment”, the world will remember the use of these bombers for the more than three hours of fire and blood at Guernica, an event that prompted Pablo Picasso to paint his most harrowing picture.
The “blitzkrieg”, also known as the lightning war, was put into practice and marched in the first brutal advance that the German army had in Poland. Today, when we can see that it is enough to hack a “pager” to blow up a person or give an instruction to a drone, we can realize that, just as technology can be a great ally, it can also become our condemnation. Nowadays, we manage our lives through our cell phones. In those small devices, we have deposited a large part of our existence, saving the photos of our loved ones, the data and records of our bank accounts, and an endless amount of information that, rather than giving us security, could put us in a vulnerable situation.
The celebration of Rosh Hashanah, commemorating the year 5785, is a good time to briefly review the infernal cycle that the Jewish people have gone through. I am not only talking about the attack on their security and integrity perpetrated last October 7 by Hamas but also about all the stages of pain and sacrifice they have had to go through throughout their history. A history with letters of blood and sustained on pillars of bones and in which the Jews have always been the victims of the story, however, for the first time this time, the outcome has been different.
This is the first time that Israel has not played the victim. After centuries of persecution, a Holocaust, and the implementation of cruel and constant anti-Semitism, for the first time, Israel has put a stop to this inhumane practice sustained for so long. This time, it was not up to the Israelis to lay the victims to rest, bury them according to the rite, and mourn for them. After all kinds of barbarity perpetrated against them and centuries of being a persecuted people, the people of Israel took courage and made it clear that they would not stand idly by. The world ignored it, and, as they had announced, this time, Israel’s response was not what it had always been. War broke out again, and the axis of evil built on the Balfour map remains dormant.
It is like a modern King David resurrected, with the eye of God seeing his hand. Today, the stone that brings down the Goliath is none other than technology, that omnipresent tool on which we have cemented the contemporary world. If intelligence is more fearsome than violence – and it certainly is – we must recognize that we are witnessing the first war conceived, developed, and executed through technology.
For many years, we have held the theory that somewhere between the expulsion of the Americans from Iran in 1979 and the fulfillment of the French-German agreements, a gap was created that allowed the technological foundations of the Ayatollahs’ state to be breached. Today, we know nothing is more devastating and effective than isolating a nation. We have also learned that any means of communication can be hacked and used by the enemy. Today, victory lies not in stealing the blueprints for a missile but in ensuring that the rocket explodes where it should and not in the wrong place.
Conquering the will is the first step in winning any war. If will is everything and it is God’s work, then the use of technology to generate war phenomena, convince, and intimidate has been a critical factor in this conflict. The question remains as to how the Israeli intelligence corps managed to anticipate the exact moment when the now-former leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, would be meeting with his generals, making possible the launching of the anti-bunker bomb that killed the only army that had demonstrated the strength, morale, and capacity to compete with Israel: the Shiite militia of Hezbollah. Surrounded by enemies – in this case by Sunnis – Hezbollah has witnessed how, with a simple tilt, a chip, and an equation, the most lethal weapons can be turned against their creators, like a biblical curse.
A new concept of warfare is emerging, driven by technologies that dominate this era. Most alarming is that the control of conflict is intrinsically linked to the same spirit and system that regulates road traffic, hospital operations, electricity supply, water management, and airport operations. In short, we cannot live without technology. And, the way things are going, by depending on it, we could be doomed to die from it.
In any case, the most important change that has occurred in the recovery of King David’s concept is that the weak, the almost insignificant within the total number of inhabitants of planet Earth, after suffering a terrorist attack that resulted in the largest number of Jewish deaths since the days of the Holocaust, have chosen to act differently this time. This time, the Jews have decided not only to continue to live with the support of the United States – without which they would probably not exist -but they have made it clear that, whatever happens from now on, their language will be one of strength and not resignation.
It should not be forgotten that the nations surrounding Israel, and who are its historical enemies, admire and value strength the most. What they respect most is power. And what they would most like is to be the ones who could approve an action such as the one that, at the time, the Council of Ministers chaired by Golda Meir called “Operation Wrath of God”. An operation that, in a nutshell, allowed the State of Israel to eliminate any individual who attacks, kills, or tortures them, all in the name of past Holocausts. Amen.
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