השפעת הלוחמה הפסיכולוגית בזמן מלחמה | ד"ר רון שלייפר

Psychological warfare has a very big impact on three groups. On the home, on the enemy and on the neutral, on the global environment. It depends in any case how the activist wants to influence people. Or on individuals as a group of leaders. Or on leaders in the army. Or on political leaders in the international arena. And of course on large communities in the international arena, which in turn will influence the leaders. And the leaders will make decisions that will influence the army, the arms shipment, the money shipment and general assistance, etc. One example that can be given in the current war, is that Italy announced that it will stop sending weapons to Israel. For anyone who does not know, Italy is the largest manufacturer of weapons in the world. With a very large support in this area. Many countries produce weapons, they are not proud of it, but that's what happens. So here is a way to reduce the pressure of manipulations on all kinds of hands. In this case, Italy was the first to break. And we see how it works. How do we arrange for things to work according to the activist's will? So you can use all kinds of manipulations. One mistake that should be removed from the table, is that psychological warfare uses lies. Psychological warfare does not use lies, but it really uses them creatively. There are exceptions in which the lie is included, and therefore it should be used. In Western countries, they do not like to use lies, because the credibility is very important. In the Arab world, there is no problem using lies. And the example, even if you are caught in a lie, then it is not the end of the world, because it is part of the conspiracy or disclosure of part of the truth. It is not caught as something negative. What is surprising is that the messages from the Arab world, in our case of Hamas, are recorded in the Western world, and are very influential. For example, number one is the number of victims. The number of victims is astronomical, and no one is in a hurry to check the lists, and even when checking the lists, there is something very interesting. Many young people, that is, at the ages of 10 and 20, are victims, and victims are men and women, but in none of the criteria that refer to the number of victims, there is a criterion of soldiers. That is, the victims are always citizens. This is not something new, it was implemented from the beginning of the war, and it goes back to previous operations. And maybe some anecdote from the past, in the First Lebanon War, after three days, the PLO announced, which was attacked by Israel, that in southern Lebanon there are 600,000 victims. 600,000 is not a number by chance, but it has a clear connotation, and it took a few days until someone started to notice that in all of southern Lebanon there are 250,000 people in general. So they use the data in a way in which they want to achieve maximum effectiveness, and the lies work. The goal of psychological warfare is to change the position of the individual in a way that will help those who carry out psychological warfare. And to bring it to a critical situation that says, it is true that at the moment I am helping the enemy, but there is no choice, we must cross this difficult side. For example, when Israel left Lebanon in 2000, we knew that we were bringing Hezbollah closer to our borders. But Hezbollah brought us to the conclusion that it is true that it is really dangerous, but we must leave Lebanon, and this is the first thing. The same thing with the release of Gilad Shalit, and the same thing today with the release of the hijackers. The goal of psychological warfare is to sow despair, to lower morale, to divide between different communities. I received a clip on WhatsApp of a crowd singing in an Eastern style about the Prime Minister, go, leave us, and so on. Until I noticed the surprise, and I also received some feedback from people who are close to the subject of psychological warfare, that this is actually an Iranian operation. So, in other words, we need to know to sow the information that we sow. We need to understand that everything that appears in news sites, in sites of stakeholders, is that every message that appears in the public has a purpose. It does not appear there for no reason. It may be that the interest is economic, it may be that the interest is political, it may be that the interest in general is based on someone else, from another area, from another enemy, and so on. We need to develop a very, very, very strong sense of criticism and understand that everyone wants an influence.