Israel, as it turns out, was not the only entity to have underestimated the enemy and fallen prey to hubris, mistaken assumptions, and an entrenched mindset (conceptzia). So was Hezbollah.It was this entrenched mindset before October 7 that led Israel to believe that Hamas was deterred, that the terrorist organization would never dream of invading, and that a super technological barrier would prevent any attempt to do so.Israel believed it could go along with business as usual with a genocidal organization on its doorstep that was building up its military capacity year after year. The country has since realized what a mistake all that was.
Now it’s Hezbollah’s turn.Hezbollah’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, prided himself on what he thought was a good understanding of Israeli society. He radiated a sense to his own people and the region that he – more than any of Israel’s enemies—knew Israel, understood its DNA, figured out what made it tick, grasped its fears and insecurities, and knew exactly what buttons to press and when.
In August 2018, this self-professed maven of Israeli society said this: “The Israeli leadership knows that it is difficult to convince people to enlist in the elite units and the combat units. Everyone prefers to serve in the rear units. They lost the will that they once had to sacrifice; they have no motivation to endanger their lives.”
Confidence that he could read Israel
His confidence in his ability to read Israel was behind the propaganda videos he periodically put out to frighten the country, the maneuvers of Hezbollah terrorists on the border, and, in the early part of the century, the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. He thought he had found the country’s Achilles’ heel and could exploit that weakness to victory.Nasrallah thought he knew Israel and could scare it. He didn’t. But he was so full of hubris that he didn’t realize this.In May 2000, days after Israel withdrew from Lebanon – a withdrawal he took credit for – Nasrallah gave his famous Spider Web Speech, likening Israel to an entity as feeble as a spider’s web, with the implication being that all you had to do was blow on it, and it would disappear.“The resistance has defeated the grand Israel. The resistance is conquering the great Israel,” he bellowed.He tried to blow on that spider web, kidnapping reservists Eldad Goldwasser and Ehud Regev, which led to the Second Lebanon War in 2006, an action he later admitted he would not have taken had he known how Israel would respond during that war.He misread us once, with tragic consequences. And now he has misread Israel again, this time with fatal consequences for him, his fellow leaders, and the entire organization.Nasrallah obviously did not believe that Israel would dare take the type of military action it has in the last ten days, essentially crippling his organization. This is the Israel of the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s – confident, brazen, daring, and taking the initiative.This is not the Israel of the last 20 years, which sanctified quiet and refrained from taking action when Hezbollah brazenly moved terrorists to the border, harassed Metulla residents with lasers and pitched a tent inside the borders of the Jewish state.Nasrallah’s rocket attacks on Israel intensified after October 7 as he gained confidence, forcing tens of thousands of people out of their homes as he took potshots at Kiryat Shmona, Nahariya, Safed, and Tiberias whenever the spirit moved him.Israel, he assumed, would not take serious action. It was too bogged down in Gaza, too wary of a frontal confrontation with his 150,000 missiles, and unwilling to provoke a confrontation with Iran.When the cabinet two weeks ago updated the country’s war aims to include returning citizens to the North, Nasrallah scoffed. He even scoffed after the pagers and walkie-talkies in the hands of his minions exploded, insisting that this would not happen until Israel stopped operating in Gaza.He misread the government and the country’s determination. How could he have been so wrong? What happened to the country he assumed was riven with dissent, demoralized, tired of fighting, lacking all trust in the government and military, and looking for any way out of the war in Gaza?Nasrallah assumed that Israel’s spirit was broken, that its confidence in its leadership was nonexistent, and that its faith in the future was shaken. And where could he have gotten that idea? By tuning into Israeli media and concluding that what he saw nightly on the news – massive protests, reports of internal division, fighting among government ministers, endless bickering and criticism – was a true reflection of Israel.He mistook the defeatism reflected in some of the media for the overall mood of the country and its soldiers. Nasrallah did not realize that this only reflected the mood of a portion of the population.This would not be the first time incorrect conclusions about Israeli society were drawn from the media. For example, in September 2009, during former US president Barack Obama’s first year in office, Obama pressed very hard on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare a settlement freeze.Obama’s assumption in making this a major issue – even as he was making outreach to the Arab world – was that the Israeli public detested the settlements and would back him on this matter rather than its own prime minister. Obama gambled that if asked to choose between a good relationship with a new US president or the settlements, the choice would be to pick the former.And where did his advisers get that idea? From their reading of the Israeli public as reflected in select media outlets. The administration confused headlines and certain columns in Haaretz with Israeli public opinion – a public that, unlike those columns and articles, saw the US demands as unreasonable, particularly because he was not making similar demands for concessions from the Palestinians and the Arab world. So, they rallied around Netanyahu instead.Likewise, Nasrallah was reading – and misreading – Israel from the debates swirling in the media, thinking the country had lost its way, its will, and its mojo. It is understandable how he could have drawn that conclusion. But the country’s strength, will, and determination are much stronger than how this often appears on the nightly news.