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Just as 9/11’s terrible toll changed America, so too is the terrible toll of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack changing Israel. The attack’s savagery — the sheer magnitude of the 1,200 murders, the added horrors of the rapes, the torture, the mutilation of the dead — has shocked and traumatized Israel.
But the Jewish state is far from paralyzed. With a cold fury, it has acted on the imperative to restore deterrence. The war will not be short. And it is unlikely to be limited to Gaza. In the past few days, Israel has warned that rocket attacks by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group on its northern border, might soon prompt strong measures to restore security.
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The profound changes in Israel wrought by the Oct. 7 attack have been astutely described by Times of Israel senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur, who has charted them in his columns and in interviews, especially his weekly appearances on Dan Senor’s podcast “Call Me Back.”
The serious, clear-eyed Rettig Gur describes the emergence in Israel of an implacable resolve: that such a murderous killing spree of its civilians cannot happen again. This necessarily means no enemy encampments run by fanatics will be allowed to remain within striking distance of Israel’s civilians living in its north and south.
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Stronger than ever is the resolve that Iran must never be permitted to gain the ability to produce a nuclear weapon. For the world can no longer deny — based on the lessons drawn from Hamas, an Iranian proxy militia — what the crazed rulers in Tehran would do with such a weapon. They would kill as many Jews as possible, no matter the cost to them and the world.
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Israel has prepared for sudden attacks since the shock of the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago. It is now defended by the 400-plus miles of the West Bank Barrier against suicide bombers, and by the Iron Dome and David’s Sling weapons systems against rocket barrages from Lebanon and Gaza. Israel adapts to the threats it has faced since the Jewish people reestablished their nation in 1948, a nation that had been destroyed and its people dispersed by the Romans in 70 A.D.
But even Israelis, ever wary of attack, seem not to have imagined that a barbaric pogrom waged by hordes of invaders could occur in the 21st century. The Jewish state is now awake to what Hamas, or Hezbollah, could and would do “again and again,” to quote a Hamas spokesman regarding more Oct. 7-style attacks.
Washington’s foreign policy professional class has not caught up with this fundamental change in Israel — yet. It will take years and years to understand all the consequences of the Oct. 7 attack, but the immediate and obvious result is a renewal of the old conviction: Never again.
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That is why the world must take seriously the possibility of a new front opening in this conflict. On Saturday, Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, spelled it out. Referring to Hezbollah’s elite killing team, he said, “We can no longer accept [the] Radwan force sitting on the border” and capable of unleashing its own pogrom. Noting that a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution obliging Lebanon to degrade Hezbollah and establish a buffer zone along the border has simply been ignored, Hanegbi said, “We can no longer accept Resolution 1701 not being implemented.”
He said the volatile situation at the northern border “must be changed,” preferably by diplomacy, but he doubts it will be possible. In which case, he said, Israel will be compelled “to impose a new reality.”
Let those who have ears hear. Israel knows now that decades of menacing rhetoric from Iran and its proxies have been translated into action as never before. Israel will not wait for another Oct. 7 before it acts to prevent the ravaging of its citizens, no matter the source of the threat. The United States should fully aid its ally in that effort.
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Catastrophic events produce enormous disruptions and profound transformations. The 9/11 terrorist attacks had that effect on the United States. Internationally, 9/11 prompted the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and counterterror operations worldwide. Domestically, the most obvious evidence of 9/11’s fallout is the now-familiar ritual of the airport security line as Transportation Security Administration agents daily check about 2 million U.S. travelers for weapons. Less apparent, but more far-reaching, was 9/11’s impact on the American psyche, causing a nation to rethink its security and relations with the world.
Just as 9/11’s terrible toll changed America, so too is the terrible toll of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack changing Israel. The attack’s savagery — the sheer magnitude of the 1,200 murders, the added horrors of the rapes, the torture, the mutilation of the dead — has shocked and traumatized Israel.
But the Jewish state is far from paralyzed. With a cold fury, it has acted on the imperative to restore deterrence. The war will not be short. And it is unlikely to be limited to Gaza. In the past few days, Israel has warned that rocket attacks by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group on its northern border, might soon prompt strong measures to restore security.
The profound changes in Israel wrought by the Oct. 7 attack have been astutely described by Times of Israel senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur, who has charted them in his columns and in interviews, especially his weekly appearances on Dan Senor’s podcast “Call Me Back.”
The serious, clear-eyed Rettig Gur describes the emergence in Israel of an implacable resolve: that such a murderous killing spree of its civilians cannot happen again. This necessarily means no enemy encampments run by fanatics will be allowed to remain within striking distance of Israel’s civilians living in its north and south.
Stronger than ever is the resolve that Iran must never be permitted to gain the ability to produce a nuclear weapon. For the world can no longer deny — based on the lessons drawn from Hamas, an Iranian proxy militia — what the crazed rulers in Tehran would do with such a weapon. They would kill as many Jews as possible, no matter the cost to them and the world.
Israel has prepared for sudden attacks since the shock of the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago. It is now defended by the 400-plus miles of the West Bank Barrier against suicide bombers, and by the Iron Dome and David’s Sling weapons systems against rocket barrages from Lebanon and Gaza. Israel adapts to the threats it has faced since the Jewish people reestablished their nation in 1948, a nation that had been destroyed and its people dispersed by the Romans in 70 A.D.
But even Israelis, ever wary of attack, seem not to have imagined that a barbaric pogrom waged by hordes of invaders could occur in the 21st century. The Jewish state is now awake to what Hamas, or Hezbollah, could and would do “again and again,” to quote a Hamas spokesman regarding more Oct. 7-style attacks.
Washington’s foreign policy professional class has not caught up with this fundamental change in Israel — yet. It will take years and years to understand all the consequences of the Oct. 7 attack, but the immediate and obvious result is a renewal of the old conviction: Never again.
That is why the world must take seriously the possibility of a new front opening in this conflict. On Saturday, Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, spelled it out. Referring to Hezbollah’s elite killing team, he said, “We can no longer accept [the] Radwan force sitting on the border” and capable of unleashing its own pogrom. Noting that a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution obliging Lebanon to degrade Hezbollah and establish a buffer zone along the border has simply been ignored, Hanegbi said, “We can no longer accept Resolution 1701 not being implemented.”
He said the volatile situation at the northern border “must be changed,” preferably by diplomacy, but he doubts it will be possible. In which case, he said, Israel will be compelled “to impose a new reality.”
Let those who have ears hear. Israel knows now that decades of menacing rhetoric from Iran and its proxies have been translated into action as never before. Israel will not wait for another Oct. 7 before it acts to prevent the ravaging of its citizens, no matter the source of the threat. The United States should fully aid its ally in that effort.
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