As part of the fortieth anniversary of the Lebanon War, the anniversary of the Battle of Beaufort, which was enshrined in the Israeli Pantheon, was marked as one of the most heroic battles known to Israel.
This battle was one of the most controversial, as the justification for it was mostly political.
The Crusader fortress from the 12th century is considered to be of great symbolic importance for the Palestinians and therefore also for Israel, even though the main threat posed by it was for the Christian villages that inhabited it.
Thus, among senior IDF officers, a debate arose over the necessity of the occupation of Beaufort, because the IDF's course of action was different, and it no longer needed it - IDF divisions crossed the border and soon left the fortress behind them. The mission, however, did not reach its destination.
The difficult and unnecessary battle cost the lives of six Golani soldiers.
The struggle of the parents of those killed in the battle to clarify the facts and purpose of the battle later gave rise to the protest movement against the IDF's continued stay in Lebanon, which lasted 18 years. To the question, why the outpost was occupied.
In the same year, the Second Lebanon War, which included the military occupation of shaping consciousness to the level of worship, and the military and political echelons alike dealt with the question of "directing the victory."
Thus, IDF ground forces were ordered (no less than five times) to take over the town of Bint Jbeil, which was not a goal of great strategic importance, but where Nasrallah delivered his famous "Spider Web" speech after the Israeli withdrawal in May 2000. Given the operation in Bint Jbeil - "Steel Core" - testifies to the great conscious importance attached to it. Surviving it - even though the same force was already north of Bint Jbeil, on its way to take over territories from which Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets at Israel.
In both of these examples, without detracting from the heroism and stickiness of the fighters on the mission - dubious as it may be - military moves were carried out whose value and importance were questionable, and whose purpose was to establish in the minds of all target audiences the IDF defeated, without significant receipts on the ground.
Against the background of the declining willingness of decision-makers in recent decades to use force, military involvement in attempts to influence the opponent's consciousness increases, thinking that in this way his desire to fight can be influenced, and thus a lower price decision can be achieved.
But without materially impairing the opponent's fighting ability, Israel is doomed to repeated rounds of fighting, during which it pays the price of its hesitation in the round before it.
It is time to abandon terms such as "victory consciousness" and "image of victory" and strive for real and non-fictitious achievements, both in order to strengthen Israeli deterrence and for all mothers to know that their children were not sacrificed for the benefit of consciousness operators.
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