Israel Is Getting Its Mojo Back

Israel’s incredible attacks on Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies, aside from being a tactical success story, should provide a welcome boost to the country’s morale and image.

For many decades, Israel had a reputation for pulling off daring missions that could be right out of an action movie — from its targeting of those responsible for massacring its athletes at Munich, to its rescue of hostages at Entebbe, to its elimination of Iranian nuclear scientists. 

But October 7 and its aftermath have been not only a horrific tragedy but a blow to the national psyche. Israel’s vaunted intelligence services underestimated the threat from Hamas and completely missed the signs pointing to a major attack that morning, and after nearly a year of fighting, over 100 hostages still remain in Gaza while Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is alive. 

Now, bit by bit, Israel is starting to reclaim its reputation with a series of actions that leave even career intelligence officers stunned by the boldness and complexity.

Over the summer, Israel managed to plant a bomb in a compound in Tehran protected by the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and wait to detonate it until Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was staying there. 

The latest operation is even more jaw-dropping. First, Israel had to master the technological component of creating electronic devices that function as normal while containing explosives. Those explosives have to be able to be released at the right moment and produce a big enough blast to hurt Hezbollah fighters carrying these devices while not being too big so as to create mass civilian casualties. Then, Israeli intelligence had to somehow infiltrate the Hezbollah supply chain to get these devices in the hands of terrorists.

It is, simply, astonishing. And it helps Israel recapture some of the aura that was lost after the October 7 attacks. 

Over at the Free Press, Eli Lake wisely cautions that as tactically brilliant as the operation was, it doesn’t necessarily advance the ball in terms of neutralizing the strategic threat posed by Hezbollah, which has launched thousands of rockets and drones at Israel since last fall, displacing 100,000 residents from their homes in northern Israel, and which threatens Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with an arsenal of projectiles believed to near 200,000. “Israel cannot defeat its enemies by waging war only in the shadows,” Lake writes. I think it’s fair to say that at some point, a full-scale war with Hezbollah is the only way to truly eliminate the threat. 

It’s worth acknowledging that  Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is more risk averse than his reputation in the eyes of his biggest fans and greatest detractors, which is one reason he didn’t take more decisive action against Hamas prior to October 7. At the same time, Netanyahu is under tremendous pressure from President Biden to avoid a wider conflict with Hezbollah, and the possibility of an even more hostile Kamala Harris presidency looms. So while Lake is correct, for now, the choice for Israel might be between tactical victories that frustrate Hezbollah without incurring the wrath of the U.S., or no action at all.