Israel’s successful operation to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah represents the culmination of a major shift in Israeli strategy. After the dramatic failure of its previous attempts to “manage” the terrorist threats on its borders, which led to the devastating Hamas attack on October 7, Israel’s leaders have learned the bitter lesson that any attempt to “peacefully coexist” with a terrorist enemy bent on Israel’s destruction is doomed to fail.
Over the last 11 months of the war in Gaza, the Israeli government has also learned the limits of the support that it can count upon from President Biden and his administration. U.S. military aid and cooperation have been vital in helping Israel defend itself. But the Biden administration has also been determined to avoid, at all costs, any serious Israeli military attempt to force Hezbollah to stop its missile attacks on northern Israel, or to complete its destruction of Hamas, for fear of escalating the conflict into a regionwide war against Iran.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel have failed because Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar now wants the fighting to continue indefinitely. At the same time, Hezbollah has rejected U.S. efforts to get it to halt its rocket attacks on northern Israel as long as the fighting in Gaza continues, forcing more than 60,000 Israeli residents who fled their homes near the Lebanese border to continue living in internal exile.
Writing in the Tablet on the strategy behind killing Nasrallah, Lee Smith observes that, “Just as the U.S. is no longer willing or able to win the wars it commits Americans to fight, the Joe Biden administration won’t let U.S. allies [both Israel and Ukraine] win [their] wars either.
“By ordering the strike on Nasrallah while attending the U.N. General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu underscored [Israel’s] independence from the global consensus that has resolved not to confront terrorists but rather to appease them, whether they’re plotting in the Middle East or living among the local populations of Western nations, including the United States.”
ISRAEL NOW CHOOSING VICTORY RATHER THAN APPEASEMENT
Lee writes that Israel’s leaders have learned the hard way over the past 11 months that “securing a nation’s peace has nothing to do with. . . balancing U.S. allies against your mutual enemies for the sake of regional equilibrium. . . Wars are won by killing the enemy, above all, those who inspire their people to kill yours. . . Thus, killing Nasrallah was essential. . .
“Taking down officers demoralizes a force. Wiping out its chain of command cripples it. . . Israel’s campaign went into high gear on September 17 with the detonation of Hezbollah’s communications devices, which Israeli intelligence had booby-trapped with explosives, decommissioning thousands of the terror organization’s medical and logistical support staff as well as fighters.
“Because Hezbollah’s. . . senior officials were [then] forced to meet in person. . . Israel was able to liquidate senior operations commander Ibrahim Aqil. . . and other top commanders from the elite Radwan force in a strike in the southern suburb of Beirut on September 20.
“In attacks on Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon, Israel has killed hundreds of fighters and destroyed thousands of long- and medium-range missiles and launchers. With Nasrallah and virtually all of its senior command dead, Hezbollah has been decapitated.”
This was contrary to the doctrine of the former Obama administration apologists for Iran who have been running Biden’s Middle East policies. Since October 7 they had been insisting that “the Israelis can’t reach their goals through force and the only way forward is through diplomacy [meaning trying to revive the failed 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the mythical two-state solution]. In fact, the harder Israel struck Hezbollah, specifically showcasing its ability to eliminate its leadership, the more desperate the White House became to end [the] IDF operations. . .
“The Biden White House had done everything in its power to stop Israel’s campaign against Hamas, like withholding ordnance that would have spared Israel risking the lives of its combat troops, while also openly opposing an Israeli campaign in Lebanon.”
Netanyahu had hoped that Israel’s success in achieving its military goals in Gaza and Lebanon would force the Biden administration to “come to their senses and recognize the threat Iran posed to U.S. regional hegemony.”
But when that didn’t happen, “Netanyahu was aware that if he meant to do more than just degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities until it regrouped and resupplied, he had only a small window of time.”
U.S ELECTORAL CHAOS GAVE NETANYAHU AN OPPORTUNITY
According to Lee, the bloodless coup that turned Joe Biden into a lame-duck president, and replaced him with his vice president who has been refusing to reveal where she stands on the issues, enabled Netanyahu to “seize the opportunity to lay siege to Hezbollah while the Oval Office was effectively vacant.”
Biden’s team reacted to Netanyahu’s lightning campaign to destroy Hezbollah’s chain of command by threatening to punish Israel during the transition period between the November election and the inauguration of the new president in January. But all that accomplished was to convince Netanyahu that he had no time to lose and that he had to take the first opportunity to cut off the head of the Hezbollah snake by eliminating Nasrallah, regardless of the cost.
Lee concludes that the success of Israel’s attacks, first in Gaza and now against Hezbollah’s leaders and missiles in Lebanon, “shows that almost everything U.S. and other Western civilian and military leaders have believed about the Middle East for the last 20 years was simply a collection of excuses for losing wars.”
Another influential voice raised in support of Israel’s strike against Nasrallah was the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. It points out the fallacy of those who accuse Israel of “escalating” the war which was started “October 7 with the Hamas massacre, followed a day later by rockets fired by Hezbollah that haven’t stopped coming and have made Israel’s north uninhabitable. [Israel’s] strike was a justified defense against the leader of an Iran-backed terrorist proxy waging war against Israel.
“Israel has changed its strategy from tit-for-tat responses to a pre-emptive campaign to degrade Hezbollah’s missile stores, launchers, and military leadership.
“It’s tragic when civilians are also killed, but that is more Hezbollah’s fault. Nasrallah, who knew he was a marked man, located his hideout under residential buildings.”
ISRAEL’S DISPLAY OF INTELLIGENCE, SKILL AND STRONG WILL
“Israel’s [current] campaign [against Hezbollah] has been a remarkable display of intelligence, technological skill, and above all political will. . .
“No victory is permanent in the Middle East, and Iran’s proxy network will strike back. . . But by degrading Iran’s front-line proxy in Lebanon, Israel has substantially weakened its enemies.”
Veteran military commentator Eli Lake, writing in The Free Press, predicts that “What Israel has managed to accomplish over the past two weeks will long be studied by military historians.
“In a series of brilliant operations — beginning with the simultaneous explosion of encrypted pagers belonging to Hezbollah’s commanders, and culminating with the coup de grace. . . that eliminated the organization’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and the rest of his high command — Israel managed to decapitate the entire leadership of the most fearsome terrorist army on the planet. In so doing, it ignored the advice of its allies in the West and radically disrupted the balance of power in the Middle East.
“Hezbollah’s war is not just with Israel. It has American, Syrian, and Lebanese blood on its hands as well.
“Recall that in 1983, the group killed 241 servicemen with a massive bomb at the Marines barracks in Beirut. The organization was also responsible for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Cultural Center bombings in Buenos Aires, in which 85 innocent people were murdered. In 2012, Hezbollah bombed a bus with young Israeli tourists at the port of Burgas, Bulgaria, that left five dead and 32 injured.
“But Western leaders have responded with reticence. In this, they have revealed their profound confusion about the enemy. It is not a nation-state, a terror group, or even an ideology. From Washington to Paris, they seem to believe the real enemy is escalation.”
BIDEN GETS IT ONLY HALF RIGHT
President Biden’s first reaction to the confirmation of Nasrallah’s death was refreshingly candid.
He began by recalling that, “Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror. His death from an Israeli airstrike is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.
“The strike that killed Nasrallah took place in the broader context of the conflict that began with Hamas’ massacre on October 7, 2023. Nasrallah, the next day, made the fateful decision to join hands with Hamas and open what he called a ‘northern front’ against Israel.
“The United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups.”
But after that encouraging start, Biden reverted to the tired and discredited talking points left over from the Obama administration’s foreign policy failures that he has been repeating for the past 11 months. “Ultimately, our aim is to de-escalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means … It is time for these deals to close, for the threats to Israel to be removed, and for the broader Middle East region to gain greater stability.”
BIGGEST BREAKTHROUGH FOR PEACE SINCE THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS
A much more realistic appraisal of the situation was offered by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who called September 27 [the day that Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s leader] “the most important day in the Middle East since the Abraham Accords breakthrough,” for which Kushner deserves much of the credit.
“I have spent countless hours studying Hezbollah and there is not an expert on earth who thought that what Israel has done to decapitate and degrade them was possible.
“This is significant because Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel. Iran spent the last forty years building this capability as its deterrent.
“Israel now finds itself with the threat from Gaza mostly neutralized and the opportunity to neutralize Hezbollah in the north. It’s unfortunate how we got here but maybe there can be a silver lining in the end.
“After the brilliant, rapid-fire tactical successes of the pagers, radios, and targeting of leadership, Hezbollah’s massive weapon cache is unguarded and unmanned. Most of Hezbollah fighters are hiding in their tunnels. Anyone still around was not important enough to carry a pager or be invited to a leadership meeting. Iran is reeling, as well, insecure and unsure how deeply its own intelligence has been penetrated. Failing to take full advantage of this opportunity to neutralize the threat is irresponsible.
“Anyone who has been calling for a ceasefire in the North is wrong. There is no going back for Israel. They cannot afford now to not finish the job and completely dismantle the arsenal that has been aimed at them. They will never get another chance.”
TIME FOR THE U.S. TO LET ISRAEL FINISH THE JOB
“The right move now for America would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It’s long overdue. And it’s not only Israel’s fight.
“More than 40 years ago, Hezbollah killed 241 U.S. military personnel, including 220 Marines. That remains the single deadliest day for the U.S. Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima. Later that same day, Hezbollah killed 58 French paratroopers.
“And now, over the past six weeks or so, Israel has eliminated as many terrorists on the U.S. list of wanted terrorists as the U.S. has done in the last 20 years. Including Ibrahim Aqil, the leader of Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization who masterminded the 1983 killing of those Marines.”
Meanwhile, Nasrallah had become the most successful surviving terrorist leader in the world. Over the past 30 years, with Iran’s help, Hezbollah had been transformed into the world’s most heavily armed non-state militia and had even won an aura of legitimacy by becoming a dominant force in Lebanon’s political system and government.
The elimination of Nasrallah was doubly important to Israel because after he ordered Hezbollah to begin bombarding northern Israel the day after Hamas launched its October 7 attack, he issued a public call to all of the other Iranian-backed terrorist organizations, from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq and Yemen. He said that they were duty-bound to participate in the “historic and decisive” fight against the “Zionist enemy [Israel],” which he said was “shaking and trembling” in fear and “weaker than a spider’s web.”
NASRALLAH UNDERESTIMATED ISRAEL AND OVERESTIMATED IRAN
In retrospect, Nasrallah made two critical mistakes. He grossly underestimated the determination and creativity of Israel, his enemy, and overestimated the abilities of his patron, Iran, and its network of terrorist proxies across the region.
As a result, today Nasrallah is dead, as is much of Hezbollah’s senior leadership. The remainder of the organization has been decimated by a succession of devastating blows by Israel’s intelligence services and air force.
Israel had warned repeatedly that it would not continue to tolerate Hezbollah’s daily rocket and missile attacks. But because nine months went by with no serious retaliatory action by Israel, Nasrallah did not take those threats seriously and assumed that the international community, led by a weak American president, would pressure Israel to stop if it ever did start trying to carry out those threats.
Meanwhile, the impact of Hezbollah’s constant attacks on Israel’s morale was devastating. By failing to stop the daily missile attacks, the government was failing to fulfill its basic duty to protect its citizens, and Israel’s inhabitable territory in the north had been effectively shrunk. Coming on the heels of the surprise Hamas attack in the south, the situation in the north had become intolerable, both politically and militarily.
That is why, after the war against Hamas in Gaza began winding down, the Israeli military began devoting more of its resources to developing an effective response to Hezbollah by escalating its attacks “step by step,” until the displaced Israeli residents of the north could safely return to their homes.
As the summer progressed, and the Israeli attacks began to take a serious toll on the senior Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, Israel’s political and military leadership was able to demonstrate that, in contrast to their previous empty threats, this time they meant business.
The result was a recent string of humiliating defeats for Hezbollah, despite its efforts, in close cooperation with Iran, to ferret out Israeli spies and detect electronic intrusions.
DECIMATING THE RANKS OF HEZBOLLAH LEADERS
The first target of the relentless Israeli assassination campaigns this summer against Hezbollah’s top military leaders killed Nasrallah’s longtime confidante, Fuad Shukr, who was a member of Hezbollah’s founding generation of terrorists. On July 30, three days after a Hezbollah missile killed 12 children from the Druze village of Majdal Shams in northern Israel while they were playing on a soccer field, Shukr received a phone call from an Israeli secret agent asking him to leave his second-floor office to go up to his apartment on the seventh floor of the same building in Beirut’s Fahiyeh neighborhood, which was targeted with pinpoint precision by a missile fired by an Israeli warplane.
Shukr was responsible for procuring Hezbollah’s most advanced weapons, including precision-guided missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range rockets, and aerial drones. Not only was Shukr high on Israel’s most wanted terrorist list, but he was also wanted by the U.S. for his role in the planning and execution of a 1983 barracks bombing attack that killed 241 American and 58 French soldiers in Beirut.
One of the Israeli raids, based upon information collected by Israel’s Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency (the equivalent of America’s NSA), destroyed a secret missile factory that Hezbollah and Iran built in Syria.
On September 17, Israeli intelligence carried out a spectacular attack involving the simultaneous detonation of thousands of pagers that Hezbollah had distributed to its senior members for more secure communications. To carry out the attack, over a period of years, Israel established several shell corporations that licensed the rights to manufacture a popular brand name pager, which it rigged to explode, and then sold in bulk quantities to Hezbollah after penetrating its supply chain.
ISRAEL’S SPECTACULAR PAGER ATTACK SUCCESS
Israel had done the same thing with a large batch of walkie-talkies that Hezbollah had also bought and distributed to its members, and which exploded the day after the pagers did. Altogether, the exploding units killed a total of 37 people and wounded 3,000 more, the vast majority of whom were active Hezbollah terrorists.
On September 20, Israel killed Ibrahim Aqil, the military commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan attack unit which had been planning an October 7-style mass tunnel terror attack on Israel’s Galil region. Israeli intelligence had been tracking Aqil as he moved back and forth from Radwan’s Beirut headquarters to southern Lebanon, where he oversaw the training of the Radwan fighters and inspected the tunnels they were to use in the invasion. Because Hezbollah’s communications network had clearly been compromised, Aqil had to call a rare in-person meeting with Radwan’s top officers in a Hezbollah war room in another apartment building in Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood, This time, the Israeli air strike killed Aqil as he was walking down the stairs to the war room, as well as 15 other senior Hezbollah commanders.
Additional Israeli air strikes in southern Beirut last week killed Hezbollah’s top missile commander and another commander in the group’s aerial unit.
Following each new round of air strikes, Israel paused briefly to determine whether Nasrallah had gotten the message that the targeted killings would continue to wipe out Hezbollah’s leadership as long as Hezbollah continued firing rockets into northern Israel, and refused to withdraw its forces from Lebanon’s border with northern Israel. But each time, Nasrallah indicated that the rocket attacks on northern Israel would not only continue but escalate, daring Israel’s leaders to carry out their threats.
In a televised speech, Nasrallah admitted that the Israeli attack using explosive-laden pagers and hand-held radios had delivered a “strong blow” to Hezbollah’s organization, in addition to the targeted assassinations of his closest advisors and commanders, but he still refused to call off the missile attacks and the Galil invasion plans, and seemed to ignore the implied threat to his personal safety.
According to the Israeli Air Force, its jets launched more than 3,500 bombs and guided missiles at Hezbollah sites during that past week, taking out many of their rocket, missile, and drone capabilities, along with intelligence sites.
HOW ISRAEL FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH NASRALLAH
Meanwhile, according to a New York Times report based on three senior Israeli defense officials, Israel had been using its surveillance capabilities for months to closely track Nasrallah’s movements and whereabouts. Nasrallah knew that he had long been a top assassination target for Israeli intelligence, and had spent more than a decade avoiding public appearances in an effort to stay out of harm’s way.
But it was not until recently that Netanyahu and other senior Israeli government leaders decided that the benefits of killing Nasrallah outweighed the risks, including the diplomatic ramifications. They only approved the air strike to kill the Hezbollah leader last Friday afternoon, when it appeared that Israel’s window of opportunity to take him out might be closing.
At around 6:20 p.m. near sunset, Operation New Order was launched from the Hatzerim Air Base. Squadron 69, flying F-15I Ra’am jet bombers carrying U.S.-made BLU-109 2,000 pound “bunker buster” bombs, fitted with JDAM precision targeting equipment, led the attack on the Hezbollah headquarters in a bunker more than 60 feet beneath another group of apartment buildings in Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood.
These are the same 2,000 lb. bombs that Biden refused to ship to Israel earlier this year for fear that it would use them indiscriminately to kill large numbers of civilians in crowded Gaza cities.
Israel’s operational planning for the strike began months ago, with Air Force officials determining the best way to pierce an underground bunker with a series of timed explosions, with each blast paving the way for the next one.
General Amichai Levin, the commander of the Hatzerim Airbase, said that more than 80 bombs were dropped to set off a series of precisely aimed, chained explosions every two seconds to penetrate the subterranean bunker.
“Everything we planned was executed precisely, with no errors, both in intelligence, the planning, with the planes, and the operation itself. Everything went smooth,” the commander of the IAF’s 69th Squadron told reporters.
When the raid was over, a pillar of orange smoke rose above Beirut as the sun was setting in the western sky.
A TRIUMPH OF ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE
The mission that killed Nasrallah would not have been possible without exact intelligence that not only identified the precise location of Hezbollah’s underground bunker but also when to launch the dozens of munitions, including bunker-busting bombs, to destroy it and kill those inside. The Israeli intelligence also allowed the pilots to calculate the exact angles that the bombs should hit and the altitude from which they should be launched to hit the part of the bunker where Nasrallah would be.
All of the sophisticated Israeli attacks in Lebanon over the past two weeks were the result of years of painstaking intelligence gathering that ultimately resulted in the elimination of much of Hezbollah’s leadership and the systematic degrading of its massive arsenal of rockets, missiles, and drones.
The sequence of strikes in September showcased how thoroughly Hezbollah had been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence. According to Israeli security sources, the Mossad began planning the fight against Hezbollah over a decade ago, by studying the group’s strengths and weaknesses and by carrying out a series of daring operations on the ground.
First, the IDF’s 8200 unit used cyber technology and electronic intelligence gathering to intercept Hezbollah’s cell phones and other communications. Then the military used visual observations to identify precise coordinates and locations and the military’s 504 unit gathered information from human sources. While the Mossad was taking advantage of new and improved technologies, it still mostly relied on intelligence from its human agents on the ground.
ISRAEL LEARNED THE LESSONS FROM ITS 2006 WAR IN LEBANON
Part of the credit for last week’s impressive intelligence success was a direct result of Israel’s decision to devote far more intelligence resources to targeting Hezbollah after the disappointing results of Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah. Because of a lack of sufficient Israeli intelligence on the locations of Hezbollah’s missiles, the Israeli army failed to achieve a decisive victory in that 34-day conflict. As a result, the war ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire that was effectively a draw, which allowed Hezbollah, despite heavy losses, to regroup and prepare for the next war with Israel.
Since then, Israel has spent years bolstering its intelligence-gathering operations in Lebanon to enable it to collect the vital information about Hezbollah’s leadership and strategy that it would need to win that next war. Its current success in pinpointing Nasrallah’s location and penetrating Hezbollah’s inner circle has enabled Israel to decimate Hezbollah’s senior and midlevel leadership, and has left it reeling.
Unit 8200 has created new teams within the IDF’s combat ranks to ensure that the valuable information it obtains is quickly passed on to soldiers in the field and the Air Force.
Israel also began flying more drones and its most advanced satellite over Lebanon to continuously photograph Hezbollah strongholds and document even the smallest changes that might, for example, reveal a new weapons depot that the Israeli Air Force would then add to its target list.
FOCUS AND PATIENCE WERE THE KEYS TO INTELLIGENCE SUCCESS
According to Chip Usher, a former top C.I.A. Middle East analyst who has worked extensively with Israeli intelligence, “The secrets of their success come down to a couple of factors. They have a fairly defined target deck. That makes it easier for them to bring a tremendous amount of focus to what they do.
“They’re in a shadow war with Hezbollah and Iran. They understand this has been and will be a protracted conflict. They are putting in capabilities to serve their needs for the long term. And they’re extraordinarily patient,” Usher added.
The strike that killed Nasrallah took place shortly after Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He gave a defiant speech to a largely empty chamber after many of the delegates from Muslim and other nations supporting the Palestinians walked out in protest.
Netanyahu then asked those diplomats from the Free World remaining in the chamber: “Whose side are YOU on?”
Netanyahu declared that Israel “won’t rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes. We will not accept a terror army perched on our northern border able to perpetrate another Oct. 7-style massacre.”
After noting that Hezbollah had fired 8,000 rockets and missiles into Israel since Oct. 8, he warned that “Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for nearly a year. Well, I’ve come here today to say enough is enough.
“There’s no place in the Middle East that Israel cannot reach.”
He then directly warned Iran. “If you strike us, we will strike you. There is no place… in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”
Netanyahu gave final approval for the air force to launch the strike that killed Nasrallah shortly before he delivered the address at the U.N.
In an initial planning meeting earlier last week, IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi, Mossad chief David Barnea, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, and Gallant gave their unanimous backing to the attack plan. The decision was then approved in principle by the entire Israeli cabinet last Thursday evening, even though Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem were concerned that the strike could harm the IDF’s ongoing military operations in Gaza.
ISRAEL STRUCK WHEN ALL OF THE PIECES FELL INTO PLACE
The exact timing of the strike was opportunistic, coming only after Israeli intelligence learned that Nasrallah would be attending a meeting in the bunker just a few hours before it occurred.
“We had real-time intelligence that Nasrallah was gathering with many senior terrorists,” said an Israeli military spokesman, Nadav Shoshani.
Then, on Friday afternoon, Halevi reportedly told Defense Minister Gallant, “We have what we need. We can go ahead with the operation. We know that Nasrallah is in the bunker.”
Gallant and Halevi then phoned Netanyahu in New York, as he was preparing to speak to the General Assembly, and told him they recommended proceeding with the operation, which he then approved.
An hour after the attack, Netanyahu’s office released a photo of him on the phone in his New York City hotel room, giving the green light for the strike. After he received word that the attack had been carried out, Netanyahu decided to return to Israel earlier than planned, flying on Shabbos to get back as soon as possible in case of a major retaliation from Hezbollah or Iran, which did not materialize.
Speaking shortly after he landed in Israel, Netanyahu said, “At the beginning of [last] week, I came to the conclusion that the powerful blows that the IDF has been landing on Hezbollah in recent days were not enough. Eliminating Nasrallah was an essential condition for achieving the goals that we have set out — returning the residents of the north safely to their homes and changing the balance of power in the region for years.”
WHY NASRALLAH WAS THE MOST DANGEROUS TERRORIST
“As long as Nasrallah was alive, he would have quickly rebuilt Hezbollah’s capabilities, Therefore, I gave the directive — and Nasrallah is no longer with us.”
“We have settled accounts with someone responsible for the murders of countless Israelis and many nationals of other countries, including hundreds of Americans and dozens of French.”
“Nasrallah was not just another terrorist. He was the terrorist.
“Those who strike at us, we will strike at them,” Netanyahu said. “There is nowhere in Iran or the Middle East beyond the reach of the long arm of Israel, and today you know how true that is.”
He also said that taking out Nasrallah would bolster the chances for a ceasefire and hostage deal by pushing Hamas further into a corner.
“The more that [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar sees that Hezbollah is no longer coming to save him, the greater the chances for the return of our hostages,” Netanyahu said.
“During Nasrallah’s 32-year tenure as the leader of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, he was responsible for the murder of many Israeli civilians and soldiers, and for the planning and execution of thousands of terrorist acts against the State of Israel and around the world,” according to the official Israeli statement that announced his assassination. “Nasrallah was the main decision-maker and the sole approver of strategic-systemic decisions, and sometimes also tactical decisions in the organization.”
KILLING NASRALLAH WAS A GREAT ACCOMPLISHMENT BUT IT ISN’T OVER YET
“On October 8, Hezbollah, led by Nasrallah, initiated a war and has since escalated the situation,” Chief IDF spokesman Hagari said in a televised statement. “Israel warned them, but they continued their aggression against our citizens and sovereignty. The Air Force continues to strike terror targets to diminish their capabilities.”
Hagari said that Nasrallah “was one of our greatest enemies of all time — but it’s not over yet.”
Gallant called the killing of Nasrallah “the most important targeted strike since the founding of Israel [in 1948].” IDF Chief of Staff General Herzi Halevi said that the killing of Nasrallah was “not the end of our toolbox” indicating that as long as Israel was being bombarded with missiles from Lebanon, more strikes were coming against Hezbollah’s surviving leaders.
Israeli warplanes continue to strike Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including in the southern suburbs of Beirut. “We are continuing, in these very hours, to strike, eliminate, and kill the commanders of Hezbollah,” IDF spokesman Hagari told reporters at a televised briefing.
Meanwhile, taken together, the Israeli air force’s attacks on various Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut, which had previously been off-limits, wiped out nearly an entire generation of Hezbollah leaders, throwing its military command and control structure into disarray.
During the last weeks of his life, Nasrallah had found himself increasingly isolated from his most trusted lieutenant and senior Hezbollah colleagues, such as fighter Fuad Shukr. The series of targeted killings by Israel wiped out nearly an entire generation of Hezbollah leaders, throwing Iran’s most valuable terrorist ally into disarray.
HUNTING DOWN NASRALLAH’S HENCHMEN
The week before his assassination, the Israeli Air Force was carrying out a “hunting package,” which operated around the clock over all of Lebanon with the aim of eliminating every senior Hezbollah official whose position could be identified by Israeli intelligence.
The strike on the Hezbollah bunker that killed Nasrallah killed a total of 20 terrorists, including Iranian Brigadier General Abbas Nilofouroshan, a deputy commander in the IRGC (Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps); Ibrahim Hussein Jazini, the head of Nasrallah’s personal security unit; Samir Tawfiq Dib, Nasrallah’s long-time confidant and advisor on terrorist activities; Abed al-Amir Muhammad Sablini, the head of Hezbollah’s force-build up; Ali Naaf Ayoub — who was responsible for coordinating Hezbollah’s firepower, and Ali Karaki, a Hezbollah commander.
Jazini and Dib were also identified by the Israeli military as two of Nasrallah’s closest associates, who played a significant role in Hezbollah’s day-to-day operations/
Even after that strike, the Israeli Air Force continued its efforts to hunt down the remaining Hezbollah leaders.
The Israeli military reported that it had also eliminated Hassan Khalil Yassin, a senior Hezbollah intelligence officer, who located military and civilian sites in Israel to be attacked; Ahmed Muhammad Fahd, the head of a Hamas network in southern Syria, Muhammed Ismail, the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile unit in southern Lebanon, along with his deputy Hussein Ismail; Nabil Qaouk the commander of Hezbollah’s Preventive Security Unit and a senior member of the Hamas Central Council responsible for the southern Lebanon area.
The list of killed Hezbollah leaders goes on to include its top missile commander and another commander in Hezbollah’s aerial unit.
Israel’s disruption campaign has been thorough. Hezbollah’s top leadership has been so depleted by Israeli strikes that the organization will be scrambling to establish new lines of reporting and decision-making. Israel’s decimation of the lower ranks of Hezbollah with the exploding pager and walkie-talkie attacks means that as many as 3,000 of its fighters are now dealing with potentially disabling physical and psychological injuries.
ISRAEL HAS DISCARDED ITS FORMER RED LINES
The attacks also showed a new willingness by Israel’s leaders to discard the red lines that previously defined the limits of their willingness to make war against Hezbollah in their determination to enable the residents of northern Israel to return safely to their homes.
The Beirut strikes that killed Nasrallah and his senior Hezbollah associates also revealed Israel’s continued willingness, despite U.S. objections, to the use of large bunker-buster bombs to achieve its aim to kill the senior leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, even in densely populated urban areas where there is a higher risk of killing civilians.
“What it says is that Israel is serious about stopping this persistent threat from Hezbollah, and they’re willing to accept a lot of risks of doing it,” said Joseph Votel, a retired four-star general and former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East. “The weight of the strike [last Friday] was designed to ensure they had the greatest chance of being successful in killing Nasrallah.”
At close to midnight last Friday night local time, several hours after the strike that killed Nasrallah, Israel’s military warned many residents in Beirut’s south neighborhoods to evacuate their homes immediately. The air strikes began 90 minutes later, targeting Hezbollah’s long-range Chinese and Iranian-made anti-ship missiles that were stored under three residential apartment buildings. Less than three hours later, air strikes hit Hezbollah weapons production and storage facilities, as well as what the IDF said were key Hezbollah command centers.
As dawn broke Shabbos morning, smoke hung over much of southern Beirut, with narrow columns still rising from the targeted sites. Live local TV broadcast images showed the destruction in residential and commercial streets, with burned-out cars, debris strewn across roads, and fires still raging. Other areas of the city were unusually full with residents of southern neighborhoods who fled their homes overnight after they had been warned to evacuate.
HEZBOLLAH EXPANDING ITS MISSILE TARGET LIST TO CENTRAL ISRAEL
Meanwhile, on that Shabbos morning, a surface-to-surface missile fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon landed in an open area in central Israel, doing no physical damage, but close enough so that the sound of its explosion could be heard through Tel Aviv and surrounding cities.
Since the fighting started last October 7, over 11,000 rockets, drones, and artillery shells have been fired from Lebanon into Israel, almost half of the total of 24,000 such projectiles fired at Israel since Hamas’ October 7 attack.
In response, through September 20, before the latest round of heavy Israeli bombardment, the Israeli military has struck Lebanon more than 8,000 times with bombs, drones, missiles, and artillery fire.
But during last week alone, the Israeli air force hit Lebanon with more than 2,000 airstrikes. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, those recent Israeli strikes killed more than 700 people in Lebanon and injured around 2,000 more. Meanwhile, not a single Israeli had died as a result of Hezbollah retaliatory strikes since September 19.
“These strikes are enormously devastating for Hezbollah publicly and operationally, obviously. But what is going to grow out of this new situation is unclear,” said Andrew Tabler, a former White House and State Department official working on the Middle East who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy.
Despite the deaths of Nasrallah and many senior commanders, Hezbollah still retains thousands of battle-hardened fighters and a large rocket arsenal that it could use to inflict significant casualties on Israeli soldiers invading the prepared terrain in its southern Lebanese strongholds.
HEZBOLLAH’S AURA OF INVINCIBILITY SHATTERED
But Hezbollah has clearly lost the aura of invincibility that has allowed it essentially to control Lebanon and its government. Lebanon has not had a president since October 2022 because of political obstructionism by Hezbollah and its allies which has prevented the Lebanese parliament from holding a vote for president.
Hezbollah is now risking its standing with its political base within Lebanon’s Shiite community because so many of the residents in the mostly Shiite areas in the south and the Bekaa Valley have fled their homes because of the Israeli airstrikes.
“Hezbollah’s war has backfired, large parts of the South are destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of Shiites are on the road or basically refugees in their own country. How does Hezbollah ensure it doesn’t lose these people?” said Lebanese political analyst Michael Young. “The other problem is that, domestically, Hezbollah is isolated when it comes to the opening of a second front with Israel.”
Fouad Siniora, who served as Lebanon’s prime minister when Hezbollah and Israel fought in 2006, also believes that Hezbollah is losing support. “We have seen a very important thing in the present clashes: While Hezbollah is acting like an army, they are no match to Israel in terms of firepower, in terms of air power, in terms of intelligence, and in terms of technology.”
IRAN READY TO FIGHT DOWN TO THE LAST LEBANESE
He also observed that Iran has demonstrated that its “unity of fronts” concept is a one-way street. Iran expects its allies, such as Hezbollah, to be willing to shed their own blood for them, but without a similar commitment to their allies in return “Iran is ready to fight until the last Lebanese,” Siniora quipped.
“What Israel is doing with this campaign against Hezbollah has opened the door to a new era in which Iran’s influence in the Middle East is going to be significantly weakened,” said Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute, a think tank based in London.
On the other hand, Israeli military commanders are also well aware of the perils of ground combat in Southern Lebanon and remember the heavy losses that were suffered there during the 2006 war. But the problem for them is that Israel’s stated goal, the return of the Israelis displaced by Hezbollah attacks along the border, is very hard to achieve with the use of air power alone.
Nasrallah’s death is an enormous blow not only to Hezbollah but also to its main backer, Iran, and the network of terrorist proxies that Iran has built across the Middle East to join in attacks on Israel. His death leaves a power vacuum at the top of the world’s most heavily armed non-state-controlled militia.
NASRALLAH’S MULTIPLE ROLES MADE HIM UNIQUE
Nasrallah played multiple roles for Hezbollah, serving simultaneously as its religious guide, political strategist, and commander-in-chief.
As the head of Hezbollah, Nasrallah sat atop not only an elite global terrorist force but also a powerful Lebanese political machine and a private army. He directed its expansion for more than 30 years, and turned it into the most powerful and effective force in Lebanon, completely overshadowing the Lebanese government.
Hezbollah’s fighting force was bigger and better armed than the Lebanese army; its social services are about the only thing in Lebanon that functions efficiently; and its political party controls the Lebanese Shiite population. As a result, while he was alive, all decisions of any consequence in Lebanon had to go through Nasrallah.
He also was welcomed as a valuable ally in the halls of power in Damascus and Tehran.
Nasrallah’s global Hezbollah terrorist network was responsible for hundreds of deaths of U.S. service members, from the 1983 bombings in Beirut to the countless U.S. soldiers and Marines who were killed by Hezbollah homemade IED “explosive devices” in Iraq.
As one senior Israeli official explained, “[Nasrallah’s] powerful leadership was different. Some people are irreplaceable.”
WHY NASRALLAH’S DEATH IS A CHALLENGE FOR IRAN
The dramatic weakening of Hezbollah and the death of its leader, Nasrallah, who was hand-picked many years ago by Iran’s leader, creates a particular challenge for Iran, which has relied on Hezbollah’s huge arsenal of missiles and rockets as a deterrent against a potential Israeli attack on its Iran’s nuclear program.
“Hezbollah is not just another proxy for Iran. It’s very much part of Iran’s own defensive doctrine and its main tool of deterrence against Israel,” said Michael Horowitz, the head of intelligence for the consulting firm Le Beck International. “This puts Iran in a very difficult position, because Hezbollah was built to defend Iran, but now Iran is faced with the dilemma of potentially having to defend Hezbollah.”
Iran’s decision about how and whether to retaliate for Nasrallah’s killing is further complicated by its uncertainty about exactly how deeply Israel has penetrated its own security establishment.
After Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran in July, Iran vowed retaliation against Israel but held back. Its response to Nasrallah’s assassination could be similar, given Israel’s high state of military readiness as well as the reinforced U.S. military presence in the region, which helped Israel to successfully repel Iran’s attempted missile attack in April. Another attempted Iranian strike on Israel is likely to be futile while giving Israel legal cause to unleash a powerful counterattack on Iranian territory.
In reaction to Nasrallah’s death, Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, declared three days of mourning in all parts of Iraq. Hamas also released a statement saying that Israeli assassinations “will only make the resistance in Palestine and in Lebanon more determined and persistent.” But that appears to be the full extent of the help that Hezbollah can expect to get from its allies, at least in the short term.
With Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, trying to launch another charm offensive in the West, Tehran is more likely to refrain from taking direct action on Hezbollah’s behalf at this time, said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
“The mood in Tehran all along has been not to take the bait. They know that Israel wants war now, because it has the intelligence and military advantage, because there is a political vacuum in the United States and because the U.S. Navy is sitting in the Mediterranean,” Nasr said. “Iran is not ready right now because it’s not the right time. But there will be a right time.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi was spreading the message at the United Nations that Iran wants the international community to stop Israel from broadening the conflict. Araghchi warned on X that he had warned his British counterpart, David Lammy, that “Israeli attacks [on Hezbollah] must cease immediately to avoid the unprecedented risk of all-out catastrophe in the region.”
Araghchi also told reporters that Hezbollah “makes its own decisions and is fully capable of defending itself, Lebanon, and the people of Lebanon on its own,” which was taken as another signal that Iran is not willing to rush to Hezbollah’s defense and that it is now on its own against Israel.
WHY IRAN HAS LOST RESPECT FOR THE U.S.
Iran believes that it can still pull the wool over the eyes of the Biden administration and the Kamala Harris administration that may follow it. They have a bad habit of saber rattling, but then doing nothing. They are so desperate for peace in the Middle East at any price that they will forsake their best friends in the region, starting with Israel, by enabling Iran to achieve its nuclear ambitions.
That has proven to be especially true during this election season, with Harris, the Democrats, and the lame-duck Biden administration trying to buy the votes of American antisemites and progressive apologists for Hamas in November by slowing down the delivery of the arms that Congress has already approved for Israel’s military, and tying strings to their use.
Fortunately, Israel and its leaders are much more clear-eyed about Iran’s and Hezbollah’s malevolent objectives. Israel is no longer making idle threats, because it has learned that the only reliable path to peace in the face of determined enemies is through strength rather than appeasement.
This is not a new approach. Peace through strength has been the posture of successful national leaders throughout the ages, and the corollary is also true — weakness invites aggression. As the ancient Romans used to say, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Unfortunately, this is a lesson that Biden and Harris, and most of America’s European allies have yet to learn. Instead of directing their ire at Hamas for starting the war against Israel on October 7, and at Iran for encouraging its terrorist proxies to join in, Biden and much of Europe have spent much of the last year ramping up pressure on Israel to give in to Hamas’ demands, which is a sure formula for starting more wars in the future against Israel, as Hamas’ leaders have publicly declared time and again.
The Biden White House has also been trying to use the war in Gaza as an excuse to revive the claim that peace will only come to the Middle East when the Palestinians have a state of their own, an idea that has failed time and again over the past 30 years and which is more impractical today than ever.
Meanwhile, the White House has accepted the cold brutality of Hamas holding hostages in Gaza, some of them American citizens. Rather than take action to force Hamas to release them, Biden and Harris keep issuing ultimatums to Israel to agree to Hamas’ ceasefire demands. While they were quick to blame Israel for the mounting civilian deaths in Gaza, the real culprit is Hamas because it uses civilians as human shields. But the Biden administration has refused to demand that Hamas surrender or at least stop using Gaza’s schools, hospitals, and mosques as its military bases.
NETANYAHU STILL RESISTING PRESSURE FROM BIDEN
Netanyahu has rightfully refused to buckle down in the face of pressure from the Biden administration to permit Hamas and its leaders to survive the war, enabling it to attack Israel again, or to release thousands of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons, including many with Israeli blood on their hands.
The Biden administration has also refused to stand up to the threats from Hezbollah and Iran, which have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers, first in Lebanon, and then in Iraq.
In the wake of the October 7 attack, when Israeli intelligence detected signs that an attack by Hezbollah was imminent, and told the White House that it was preparing to launch a pre-emptive strike, an alarmed President Biden called Prime Minister Netanyahu, to warn him that if Israel were to kill Nasrallah, it would set off a regional war. Israel then waited 11 months for the U.S. to keep its promise to restore peace along the Lebanese border and let more than 60,000 Israelis go back to their homes.
ISRAEL IS NO LONGER WAITING FOR U.S. DIPLOMACY TO WORK
But now Israel has run out of patience and has taken matters into its own hands. Hezbollah has been decapitated, and the IDF is mobilizing three more battalions of reserve troops and sending them to northern Israel to prepare for a possible ground invasion of Lebanon if all else fails.
President Biden’s Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin berated Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a tense phone call for failing to give the U.S. notice of the strike that killed Nasrallah until after the Israeli planes were already in the air, to which Gallant responded calmly, “We are not stopping.”
Earlier that day, Austin told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “An all-out war between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel would be devastating for both Lebanon and Israel, and again, we anticipate that we would see a number of people displaced, casualties that, you know, equal or exceed what we’ve seen in Gaza.”
THE WAR IN LEBANON IS STILL INTENSIFYING
Israel said it carried out over 140 strikes in Lebanon after the attack which killed Nasrallah Friday afternoon and into the next day, targeting Hezbollah facilities where rockets were being manufactured or assembled in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley.
That Thursday Israel carried out strikes on eight land crossings from Syria into Lebanon, as part of Israel’s long-running campaign to interdict weapons shipments from Iran to Hezbollah via Iraq and Syria.
Israel was also taking steps to prevent Iran from smuggling arms to Hezbollah via Beirut’s international airport in Beirut. An Iranian airline flight originating from Tehran, and apparently heading for Lebanon or Syria, was forced to make a U-turn over Iraqi airspace after the air traffic controllers in the tower refused to give the plane permission to land at the Beirut airport.
According to a Reuters report, Israeli jets attacked a target in an industrial area just 500 meters from the airport, but a Middle East Airline executive insisted that the airport was still operating normally.
Meanwhile, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency designated the airspace in both Israel and Lebanon as “high risk.” Delta and United Airlines suspended their flights to Israel citing security concerns. British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, and Emirates also cut service to airports in Tel Aviv, Beirut and Amman, Jordan.
As has long been its practice, Israel’s El Al Airline said that it was not canceling any of its scheduled flights, but added that all its seats were sold out on current flights to and from Israel.
THE ISRAELI ARMY IS PREPARING TO INVADE LEBANON
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that some Israeli special forces troops have been conducting reconnaissance raids exploring Hezbollah tunnels along the northern border with Lebanon in preparation for a possibly imminent Israeli ground attack in force, despite strong opposition to the idea from the Biden White House.
Meanwhile, an Israeli air strike in the Southern Lebanon city of Tyre on Sunday night killed the senior leader of Hamas in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, and a separate strike in the Sunni neighborhood of Kola in Beirut killed three members of the terrorist group known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
In an address to Israeli infantry and tank brigades in the north, Monday, Defense Minister Gallant confirmed that Israel was preparing to enter Lebanon using all of its available weaponry.
“The elimination of Nasrallah is a very important step, but it is not the final one. We will employ all the capabilities at our disposal,” Gallant said. “We will use all the means that may be required — your forces, other forces, from the air, from the sea, and on land.”
There is also no sign that Hezbollah was stopping its attacks on Israel, even after it publicly announced Nasrallah’s death the day after the strike that killed him.
The next night, Hezbollah responded by shooting dozens of rockets into Israel, including at least one that was apparently aimed at Yerushalayim but landed in the West Bank north of the city, starting a fire that disrupted electrical power to several nearby Jewish settlements.
A long-range surface-to-surface missile was also launched by the Houthis in Yemen towards central Israel which was intercepted, causing a large piece of shrapnel to land near the Yerushalayim suburb of Tzur Hadassah.
In addition, in the first public statement by a senior Hezbollah official since Nasrallah was killed, Naim Qassem declared on Lebanese television, “We are ready for ground engagement with the enemy if they [Israel] decide to enter.”
NETANYAHU’S DIRECT APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAN
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister used Israel’s successful attack on Nasrallah as the basis for a direct appeal for peace to Iran’s people.
He began by arguing, “Every day, you see a regime that subjugates you, makes fiery speeches about defending Lebanon, defending Gaza.
“Yet every day, that regime plunges our region deeper into darkness and deeper into war.
“Every day, their puppets are eliminated. Ask Mohammed Deif. Ask Nasrallah.
“There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach. There is nowhere we will go to protect our people and protect our country.
“With every passing moment, the [Islamic] regime is bringing you — the noble Persian people — closer to the abyss.”
On the other hand, Netanyahu said, “Our two countries, Israel and Iran, will be at peace.
“When that day comes, the terror network that the regime built in five continents will be bankrupt, dismantled. Iran will thrive as never before. Global investment. Massive tourism. Brilliant technological innovation based on the tremendous talents that exist inside Iran.
“Doesn’t that sound better than endless poverty, repression, and war?”
The prime minister then pleaded with the people of Iran, “Don’t let a small group of fanatic theocrats crush your hopes and your dreams. You deserve better. Your children deserve better. The entire world deserves better. . .
“The people of Iran should know — Israel stands with you.
“May we together know a future of prosperity and peace.”
ISRAEL STILL HAS NOT YET ACHIEVED ITS WAR GOALS
In a signed op-ed piece, David Horovitz, founding editor of the Times of Israel, reminded us that despite the recent dramatic events in Lebanon, “Almost a year after October 7, Israel has not fully realized any of its declared war goals. The Hamas threat and other future threats from Gaza have not been entirely laid to rest. Ninety-seven hostages remain captive in Gaza, and those who are still alive are in daily peril.”
In addition, at least “sixty thousand residents of northern Israel still cannot return safely to their homes,” which would make any celebration of Nasrallah’s death “premature.”
Horovitz cited IDF Spokesman Hagari, who stressed, when announcing the latest home front guidelines after Nasrallah’s death was confirmed, “It’s not over. Hezbollah retains… strategic capabilities it built over many years, with Iran’s funding and oversight.” There are “challenging days ahead of us,” Hagari noted. But, on the other hand, Horovitz cites with approval, Netanyahu has changed the rules of the game “by killing Nasrallah and targeting Hezbollah with ‘full force,’ and thus directly challenging Iran, even at the risk of regional war.”
“Israel has not remotely recovered from the shock, horror, and loss of what befell us on October 7. But [at least the] elimination of Hassan Nasrallah underlined that the military. . . [has learned from its failures] and is recovering its dominance.”
STOPPING A WAR TOO SOON JUST MEANS ANOTHER WAR IS COMING
Yaakov Katz, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, also reminds us that, “Now is not the time to stop the fight. Stopping the fight now would only ensure one thing: another war, whether in a year, five years, or 10.
“We know this because it has occurred repeatedly. Every war with Iran’s proxies over the last 25 years has always just been the precursor for the next.
“When Israel withdrew from [the security zone it occupied] in southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah didn’t waste time; a mere five months later, they abducted three soldiers.
“Six years after that, they kidnapped two more, sparking a 34-day war. Now, 18 years later, Israel is once again embroiled in a conflict with Hezbollah.
“The same cycle played out in Gaza. Israel pulled out in 2005, and within a year, military operations resumed. Large-scale confrontations occurred in 2006, 2009, 2012, 2014, and again in 2021. Should anyone have been surprised by what happened on October 7?
THE LESSONS FROM GAZA MUST BE APPLIED TO LEBANON
“Israel cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past. The same logic that applies to Hamas in Gaza must now be applied to Hezbollah in Lebanon. . .
“Stopping the war prematurely would be repeating the very mistakes that led to the devastation of October 7. It would give Hezbollah, like Hamas, the opportunity to rebuild, regroup, and prepare for yet another assault against Israel.”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial, and the op-eds by the Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz and the Tablet’s Lee Smith all come to the same conclusion, that “October 7 taught us [at a terrible price] that half-measures will not work, [and that] victory [over terrorism and the restoration of its deterrence] is the only path to Israel’s long-term security.”
A New York Post editorial also reminds us that Americans should give thanks to the IDF for finally bringing to justice the Hezbollah leader who still has the blood on his hands of 241 U.S. service members who died in the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983.
It also drives home the fallacies underlying the Biden administration’s push for a two-state solution while ignoring the real barriers to peace in the Middle East today:
- The Tehran regime and its imperialist ambitions, and
- The refusal to recognize that Israel can and will continue to exist.
The NY Post editorial also reminds us that the only significant progress that has been made recently towards a true Middle East peace has come from the signing of the Abraham Accords by Israel and several friendly Arab states, thanks to the work of Netanyahu, President Trump, and Jared Kushner, but which the Biden team unwisely ignored.
The editorial also notes that “The IDF isn’t done with Hezbollah yet, nor should it be: Whether or not it takes a ground invasion, this threat must be eliminated now as surely as Hamas must be wiped out.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s cynical effort to hide behind the attacks by its proxies on Israel, feigning innocence while continuing to pursue nuclear weapons with which to intimidate us all, has now been revealed.
The editorial concludes on a more hopeful note: “Exactly what’s next in the coming weeks and months [in Gaza and Lebanon] is profoundly uncertain, but at least the nonsense that has animated Biden-Harris policy toward the Middle East stands exposed as the poppycock it’s always been.”
