Israel is a strong country because its home front endures impossible travails.
Imagine going through years of running to public shelters, safe rooms, or, when caught in a car during an Iranian, Houthi, Hamas or Hezbollah rocket, missile or drone attack, getting out and lying flat on the ground, hands protecting head.
Israel’s triumph last year over the vaunted Hezbollah—the most lethal weapon in the arsenal of the Islamic Republic of Iran—and its campaign against Iran dubbed “Operation Rising Lion,” will be remembered for generations as a biblical-like victory.
Israel must win its wars because defeat means doom for the Jewish people, not only in Israel but in the Diaspora as well.
In its 1948 War of Independence, Israel stood against well-armed Arab states and murderous militias. The war was right after the Holocaust, and despite tremendous odds, Israel’s small population repelled its enemies using improvised arms and desperate determination. The Jews vanquished the Arab armies, and the country’s narrow and vulnerable borders were expanded. Despite the tremendous casualties suffered by the yishuv, the Jewish community in British Mandatory Palestine, some 1% of its total population, the home front stood firm, knowing that there was nowhere to escape. It was victory or death.
On the eve of the Six-Day War in 1967, the entire nation mobilized. High school students even dug graves in anticipation of high casualty rates. Every family in Israel had a relative or a close friend mobilized in the service of the nation. The triumph against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, aided by contingents from Iraq, Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, was spectacular. Jewish pride swelled throughout the Diaspora. Gentiles were surprised by Jewish Israeli bravery and spirit. As one woman remarked at the time, “I didn’t know that Jews knew how to fight.” As an independent people, Jews proved that once free in their homeland, they prepared and trained themselves to defend and, when necessary, to fight like ferocious lions.
More than 2,000 years of antisemitism, persecution, the Holocaust and homelessness, a new breed had been created, native Israelis or sabras, named after a thorny but sweet cactus bush.
Steeped in biblical stories and dwelling in the land of the Bible, they rose to be Gideons, Samsons and Davids: thoughtful, resourceful and strong. They became hardworking farmers, ranchers, business owners and computer scientists, alongside combat soldiers, pilots and naval commandos. Most of all, their accumulated intelligence as a people helped to develop a most fearsome intelligence system.
Overconfidence and a degree of arrogance among the military brass resulted in early tragedies during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Once again, Israeli resilience coupled with the country’s credo of ayn breira, “there is no choice,” turned the initial debacle into a stunning victory, with the Israel Defense Forces reaching the gates of Cairo and Damascus.
Exactly 50 years later, the “conception” of the military brass proved erroneous, once again, by believing that the terrorist organization Hamas was contained. This gave Israel the “Black Shabbat” of Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. In the aftermath, it was ordinary Israelis on the home front who exhibited the spirit of the nation. People volunteered to help neighbors, especially the families of the bereaved. This connection was something that, just days earlier, would have been unthinkable as the Nation of Israel was on the verge of a civil war after endless antigovernment demonstrations and some pilots even refusing to return to duty as reservists.
Israel’s enemies had sensed that the Jewish state was crumbling, and Iran orchestrated its proxies’ multifront attacks. The will to live turned Israelis into lions. The Gaza Strip was mostly flattened, and Israeli ingenuity produced the beeper campaign that eliminated Hezbollah’s top command. The group’s extensive missile arsenal, which once threatened Israel, was also largely destroyed.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, described as the “head of the octopus,” is Israel’s ultimate target because it serves as an existential threat to the Jewish state. Almost like a repeat of the miraculous Six-Day War, in four days, the mighty Iranian threat has nearly evaporated, as Israeli jets control the skies over Tehran. Media in Arab Gulf states described Iran as nothing but a “spider web” following Israel’s brilliant operation that exposed the nation of about 90 million people as weak and vulnerable. Desperate to prove that they are still relevant and “strong,” the ayatollah regime unleashed barrage after barrage of lethal ballistic missiles and drones on Israel’s civilian population.
Israel’s aerial-defense system intercepted most of the missiles and drones. Unfortunately, the defense system that includes the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and the Arrow system is not a solid, hermetic defensive guarantee. Several direct hits caused death and destruction. Still, the nation of lions urged the government and the IDF to continue the job of dismantling the Iranian nuclear threat. The 10 million Israelis running into shelters and safe rooms have endured, as they have for years.
Significantly, no nation, including the United States, was willing to take on the Islamic Republic of Iran despite its provocations and attempted assassinations in Europe and an attempt on the life of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Israel alone has done what the rest of the civilized world was reluctant to do by taking on the head of the octopus. Israel deserves credit for saving the world from a nuclear-armed fanatical regime whose messianic beliefs call for an Armageddon that, according to its fanatics, would end with the appearance of the vanished 12th Shi’ite imam.
A nuclear Iran portends a nuclear Holocaust for Israel and the West. Israel displayed the courage and determination to actualize the promise of “Never Again.”