If you want a better understanding of why the aftermath of Israel’s first election since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on its southern communities is so difficult to unravel, then knowing what happened behind the scenes among the Jewish state’s leaders and military commanders is a good place to start. That’s the conclusion JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin draws from the new book, In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel’s Fight Against the Iranian Axis.
He’s joined on this week’s episode of “Think Twice” by authors Elliot Kaufman of The Wall Street Journal and Jeremy Bob of The Jerusalem Post. The book discusses why a broad cross-section of Israel’s military, intelligence and political leadership failed to anticipate the Hamas onslaught.
It also details how the Biden administration, despite some rhetorical support for the goal of defeating the terrorists after Oct. 7, almost from the start opposed a war to achieve that end. Though the administration was under enormous pressure from the left wing of the Democratic Party to prevent the Israeli government from protecting its people, former President Joe Biden and his staff urged Jerusalem to merely repeat the same failed efforts to restrain Hamas that had been tried before. They were especially eager to prevent any attacks on Iran and its Hezbollah auxiliaries in Lebanon.
The disputes inside Israel’s war room between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi and the opposition leaders who joined the government after Oct. 7, such as former IDF chiefs of staff—retired generals Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot—hinged on whether or not to attack Lebanon before dealing with Gaza, as well as how to balance the two war aims of defeating Hamas and returning the hostages.
In the end, as the authors note, the argument against Netanyahu’s determination to persist in the conflict to defeat Hamas beyond mid-2024 “didn’t age well.” It was only by doing so that he was able to pivot to defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon, which led to the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and then to partnership with the Trump administration against Iran’s nuclear and missile threats.
Still, as Kaufman and Bob point out, in the aftermath of Oct. 7, Israel went on to win militarily on every front and returned home the hostages. But on the diplomatic front, Israel lost.
Whether it can preserve its advantages or grow them in the long run has yet to be determined, depending largely on whether the Trump administration can achieve the ouster of Hamas from power in Gaza and to finish the conflict with Iran.
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