...The Defeat of the Vanquisher (A long read but a good one.) By Jacques Baud / The Postil From The Postil Magazine: We are pleased to bring you this excerpt from Colonel Jacques Baud’s latest book, which deals with the genocide in Gaza currently being carried out by Israel. The book is entitled, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood: The Defeat of the Vanquisher. We will update this page as soon as this book becomes available, in the meantime, here is the excerpt. — The Postil Magazine Doctrinal Apparatus Ill-Suited to an Asymmetrical Conflict The BETHLEHEM Doctrine This doctrine was developed by Daniel Bethlehem, legal advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu and then to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It postulates that states are entitled to preventive self-defense against an “imminent” attack. The difficulty here is to determine the “imminent” nature of an attack, which implies that the terrorist action is close in time and that there is a body of evidence to confirm it. In February 2013, NBC News released a Department of Justice “White Paper” defining “imminent:” The imminent threat of a violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have proof that a specific attack against American persons or interests will take place in the immediate future. While the principle appears legitimate, it’s the interpretation of the word “imminent” that poses a problem. In intelligence circles, the “imminence” of an attack is defined in terms of its proximity in time and the likelihood of it taking place. But, according to Daniel Bethlehem, this is no longer the case here: It must be right that states should be able to act in self-defense in circumstances where there is evidence of imminent attacks by terrorist groups, even if there is no specific evidence of where such an attack will take place or of the precise nature of the attack. In this way, a terrorist attack can be considered “imminent,” even if the details and timing are unknown. This makes it possible, for example, to launch an air strike simply on the basis of suspicions of an imminent attack. In November 2008, while a ceasefire was in force, an Israeli commando raid killed six people in Gaza. The explanation given by the Israeli army illustrates the BETHLEHEM doctrine: This was a targeted operation to prevent an immediate threat […] There was no intention to break the ceasefire, rather the aim of the operation was to eliminate an immediate and dangerous threat posed by the Hamas terrorist organization. This doctrine is similar to the one enunciated in 2001 by Dick Cheney, then Vice President of the United States, also known as the “Cheney doctrine” or the “1% doctrine:” If there’s a 1% probability that Pakistani scientists are helping terrorists to develop or build weapons of mass destruction, we have to treat that as a certainty, in terms of response. It’s the strategic/operational version of the Wild West “hip shot.” It’s symptomatic of the way we understand the law and the way we wage war: without values and without honor. The problem with the BETHLEHEM doctrine is that it has been systematically used by Israel to justify ceasefire violations. This is true of extrajudicial killings, which are not considered ceasefire violations. A study of Palestinian rocket attacks shows that they are always carried out in response to an Israeli attack, which does not generally appear in our media. From this stems our perception that Palestinian organizations—Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in particular—wantonly attack Israel with their rockets, and therefore engage in terrorist practices. In its February 2018 report, the Human Rights Council (HRC) reports that during the Gaza border protests (Return Marches), the Israeli army shot dead 183 civilians, including 154 who were unarmed and 35 children. In February 2019, he reports that the Israeli army “intentionally” shot children, medical personnel (wearing badges and shot in the back!), journalists and disabled people. The Palestinian children shot by Israeli snipers with fragmentation bullets while simply standing in front of the border in Gaza in 2018, or the handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian youth shot in the back in April 2019, are war crimes. Israel’s supporters claim self-defense, but this is fallacious, as the videos published by the United Nations show. Firstly, because the victims were in a 150 m security strip inside Gaza, separated from Israel by a fence and a wide berm, from which Israeli snipers fire. Secondly, because those killed were “armed” only with stones, and thirdly, because some of those hit (notably children) were shot in the back. So much for the world’s most moral army, which the United Nations has asked to stop shooting children. The DAHIYA Doctrine... More... Jacques Baud Jacques Baud is a former Colonel of the General Staff, former member of Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist in Eastern European countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He was the head of doctrine for United Nations peace operations. A United Nations expert for the rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional United Nations intelligence service in Sudan. He worked for the African Union and was responsible for the fight against the proliferation of small arms at NATO for five years. He was engaged in talks with top Russian military and intelligence officials right after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the Ukrainian crisis of 2014, then participated in programs of assistance to Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, including The Navalny Case, Conspiracy to Serve Foreign Policy published by Max Milo Editions, 2023.