The Jewish state is strong. Anyone will tell you that. It is strong and can defend itself, as is its right.
One thing it is not is impenetrable, nor prone to fractures. This was displayed on a societal level – a near split – during the campaign to advance judicial reform legislation, a campaign the government pursued in earnest when it came to power in 2022.
And it was witnessed on a diplomatic-military level in the failure to repel and neutralize Hamas on October 7 and in the inability to take a clear, decisive stance against Hezbollah, Israel’s long-time existential threat sitting right on its northern border, when it launched rockets on October 8 in “solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.
As if another reminder of Israel’s vulnerabilities was needed; four IDF soldiers were killed and dozens were wounded in a Hezbollah UAV strike on Sunday evening. According to initial assessments – the military is still probing – the UAV was tracked, lost at sea, and evaded the Air Force’s monitoring systems, then exploded before it could be intercepted. No sirens activated as it hit a mess hall where Golani soldiers were eating dinner.
If Israel didn’t have the aerial defense technologies that it has, this would have been unimaginably catastrophic, as would the thousands of other identical, daily threats.
But one of the long-standing criticisms of the conceptzia – the approach and outlook – of the defense and diplomatic establishment from the two decades before this war is that it relied too much on being a technological and hi-tech powerhouse. Analysts say this blinded the defense establishment to Hamas’s multi-pronged sophisticated attack, and, as documents have shown, Hamas made efforts to loop in Hezbollah and Iran in the much more comprehensive operation to wipe Israel off the map.
State commission of inquiry
Only a state commission of inquiry will have the ability to point the blaming finger, and to show just how far this hubris went. Until then, over a year and counting, Israelis are still suffering the consequences of this misguided approach.
The military operates at the instruction of the political arm; we cannot lose sight of the decision-makers at this time. There was a government elected and seated on October 7. And on October 8.
On that day, when Hezbollah’s attack displaced approximately 60,000 residents from their homes and effectively sliced into Israel’s sovereignty, the government was faced with a difficult, multi-layered decision. The time has come to question if it was the right one. Because strength isn’t everything; smarts and calculation are.
The missiles were launched on October 8, but the ground invasion into Lebanon occurred nearly a year later – was this the most calculated decision, with Hezbollah piling up weapon caches right along the border? Should the invasion have occurred sooner to clear border towns of threats?
Journalists who were embedded in southern Lebanon on Sunday showed the extent of the threat amassed: Tunnels, firing positions, weapons and equipment, and command centers, all strategically placed and planned in a forested area. This wasn’t built in a day; it took 20 years to amalgamate a threat this sophisticated – to be this ready.
As Channel 12’s Palestinian affairs correspondent Ohad Hemo put it, “When the state commission of inquiry is established, Lebanon has to take up a massive chunk of it: to question how a monster grew here right under our noses, one with the potential for October 7 on steroids, while the State of Israel grew addicted to the quiet and shut its eyes in complacency.”
This question of complacency – of why nothing was done sooner – is one that will need to be answered on many levels.
Maintaining a standing fighting army for over a year is a mighty, multi-layered demand, one that requires diplomatic support, massive manpower, and morale. And fighting on two immediate fronts – not to mention five others – is by no means a simple task.
The soldiers are incredible and are doing everything they can after more than a year of fighting, of strains on personal relationships, of mental and physical health overloads.
But the issue with the decision-makers remains: a government that can’t protect its people, not from Hamas and not from Hezbollah, and continues to do so systemically with such a painful war perhaps needs to reevaluate its paths, old and new.