Photos: Flash90

Although the announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah garnered international favor, particularly with the United States and Europe, for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, it has stirred a cauldron of controversy on the domestic front. The center-right factions that form the bedrock of Netanyahu’s electoral support are raising a chorus of discontent, while security analysts insists a ceasefire is currently the only viable option.

Among the most vocal critics are the tens of thousands of evacuees from communities near the Lebanese border, who had been holding out for a different kind of resolution.

Avichai Stern, the mayor of Kiryat Shmona, a city perched on the Lebanese border, doesn’t mince words in speaking to Mishpacha. “This agreement brings us closer to the next October 7 in the North. And to my great sorrow, what Hezbollah planned to do a year from now will now be carried out in ten. But they’ll do it, because we haven’t learned a thing.”

Stern’s frustration is palpable. “The residents of Kiryat Shmona feel abandoned,” he says. “For over a year now, we’ve endured the situation quietly, despite the less-than-ideal conditions, without complaint. We were promised a different reality, a safer one. Now we’re expected to return, but nothing has changed. We’re going back to the same precarious situation we left behind more than a year ago.

“I’m not denying that significant damage has been inflicted on Hezbollah, and I’m not taking that achievement away. But give it a year or two, and they’ll rebuild. So, what’s different now? If people in Gaza are still prohibited from returning to border areas, why should we return in the North? We know what’s waiting for us on the other side of the border. We’ve lived it.”

Not everyone, however, is opposed to the ceasefire. Some experts see it as not only a rational decision but an essential one.

“The ceasefire isn’t just beneficial — it’s necessary,” says Ofer Shelah, a former MK and current director of the Israel National Security Policy research program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, speaking to Mishpacha. “What matters most is stopping the fighting, not what’s written in the agreement. The specifics of the document are secondary. It’s not a legal contract that people will litigate over for years. The important thing — and this is something we’ve learned from past agreements — is what happens after it’s signed.”

Shelah insists the ceasefire is necessary now because the current round of fighting has effectively played out. “In essence, the agreement signals that both sides want the current situation to end, mainly because neither sees any benefit in continuing,” he says. “The reality is that both sides have concluded it’s in their best interest to stop fighting. Now we enter a new phase, and in that context, the agreement’s written terms are irrelevant. For instance, Israel conducted an operation in Lebanon even after the agreement was signed.”

Checking Children’s Bedrooms

Since the government ordered the evacuation of northern towns, some 90 percent of Kiryat Shmona’s nearly 25,000 residents have been scattered across the country, relocated to 560 settlements and 320 hotels. Avichai Stern, who describes himself as the “father of 25,000 people,” is clear about what he wants the government to do.

“There needs to be a security buffer — a zone of three kilometers, maybe five — where no one can enter,” he asserts. “Otherwise, someone will come along tomorrow, build what looks like a house, but it’s not a house. It’s a weapons cache, hidden among civilians, with the sole purpose of attacking Israeli citizens. They’ll stash weapons in children’s bedrooms, and at the moment they choose, they’ll strike. That will be our next October 7.”

Stern is impatient with arguments that it’s in everyone’s interest to stop the fighting now.

“With all due respect to those now signing this agreement, they’ll be replaced in a year or two by someone else,” he argues. “The military commanders, the officials responsible for northern security — they rotate every two years. But we’ll still be here. Thirty years from now, fifty years from now, we’ll still be here. I want my children to grow up here and stay here. But who guarantees anything? What happens then?”

“I believe the army when they say they’ll push Hezbollah forces back. But do Hezbollah operatives walk around with ‘Hezbollah’ stamped on their foreheads? The people attacking us are civilians in their homes — families with children! They keep their kids in their beds, and right there in the same room, they store their missiles! That’s how terrorist organizations operate, they embed themselves within civilian society. No one — not you, not me, not even the United Nations — can prevent that. Are we going to check every child’s bedroom? That’s the fundamental difference between us and them.”

When asked about the northern residents’ criticisms, Ofer Shelah is empathetic. “I completely understand their position,” he admits. “They have every right to voice their frustrations. After all, the state evacuated them over a year ago, and they deserve to return to their homes.

“But it’s important to recognize that anyone who believes it’s possible to create a reality without threats from Lebanon is misreading the situation. Israel doesn’t have the military or diplomatic capability to achieve that.”

Shelah is just as adamant as Stern about the road to a solution in the North — but he advocates a different path.

“What needs to be done is threefold,” he asserts. “First, implement a defense system that residents can see and feel — something that offers as much assurance as possible that another October 7 won’t happen, though that doesn’t mean missiles won’t fall. Second, invest in rebuilding the North’s economy, which has been deeply affected since October 7. And third, take aggressive action to prevent Hezbollah from approaching the border again. That’s what’s achievable.”

He is dismissive of any call for creating a buffer zone inside Lebanon three to five kilometers deep. “Anyone who believes Israel can militarily subdue Hezbollah or create a security belt inside Lebanese territory simply isn’t reading the situation correctly.”

Thick and Thin

One of the most painful aspects of the current reality for Kiryat Shmona’s residents is the feeling that their loyalty to the ruling coalition has paid no dividends. They have stood by Netanyahu’s government through thick and thin, defending it against harsh criticism. Yet Stern left a recent meeting with the prime minister feeling profoundly let down.

“We met with the prime minister, and it was a disgraceful performance from the outset,” he recounts. “But we listened. I asked, ‘How will you protect us if they store missiles in their children’s rooms?’ I got no answers.

“We want our enemies to think twice before attacking Kiryat Shmona, just as they do before targeting Haifa. We’re right-wing voters, and we voted for this government. They promised us a strong right-wing leadership, and they haven’t delivered on that promise.”

Stern tells Mishpacha that if the government orders northern residents to return home, he will not only oppose the decision but also actively encourage his constituents to resist. “I don’t just think people won’t want to return — I’ll do everything in my power to ensure they don’t,” he says. “The risk of another October 7 hasn’t been eliminated. Going back now would be walking into a potential massacre.

“And I’m not alone in thinking this. Any mayor in the North, anyone who knows the reality of living near the border, thinks exactly as I do. There’s no debate. The shocking thing is that, until now, only we understood this. Now the whole country knows what’s on the other side. We all have to say birkat hagomel because we’re still alive.”

Ofer Shelah points to Israel’s significant military achievements in Lebanon but dismisses the idea of eradicating Hezbollah as unrealistic. “In Lebanon, we’ve achieved notable successes. Hezbollah has suffered considerable damage. But that damage won’t destroy them or make them surrender. Anyone who believed that was possible was fooling themselves.”

Shelah says the situation in the North has deteriorated to its current state due to the failures of past agreements, such as UN Resolution 1701, signed in 2006 to end the Lebanon War, which Hezbollah subsequently violated. He insists the proper course of action lies in enforcing Israel’s security, not adhering to the fine print in the current ceasefire agreement.

“The big question isn’t the agreement itself but whether Israel will make decisive, practical moves to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and approaching the border,” says Shelah. “That’s where Resolution 1701 failed. Ultimately, that’s all that matters — Israel’s unwavering resolve to prevent any Hezbollah advances in the region, not the agreement’s text.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1039)

The post Across the Firing Line   first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

A year after October 7, the nightmare scenario that the security establishment has warned of for decades is finally upon us. What began as an operation to destroy Hamas after the horrific massacre of Simchas Torah has become a multifront war that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East. And as Israel deals devastating blows to Iran’s proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, direct conflict between the two foes now looks inevitable.

Last week Iran launched 181 ballistic missiles at Israel in its “True Promise 2” operation, a spin-off of its failed April attack. The IDF says the Iranians didn’t hold back and used their best weapons, but thanks to chasdei Shamayim, adequate preparations, and responsible behavior by the public, not a single Israeli citizen was killed.

Effective air defenses also helped; 85 percent of the launches were intercepted or landed outside Israel’s borders, and only a few dozen missiles hit Israeli air bases, which suffered minor damage that didn’t impact their operational functioning. Not a single fighter plane was hit. The Iranians claimed to have fired hypersonic missiles, a laughable claim that was refuted by the IDF and international experts. The Iranians don’t possess such technology, and likely never will.

What do the Iranians have? Proxies. A lot of them.

Hezbollah is the most powerful Iranian proxy force, the IRGC’s flagship project. The regime has spent billions of dollars in founding and arming the Shiite terrorist group in the Land of the Cedars, and uses it to promote its interests across the region — in Iraq and Afghanistan, in propping up the Assad regime in Syria, and of course, in the ongoing conflict with Israel.

Hezbollah posed the biggest threat: weapons depots stocked with more than 150,000 rockets and missiles; regiments of elite, battle-hardened Radwan forces on the border; vast, sophisticated tunnel networks; and a sophisticated drone operation that threatened Galilee residents. For most of the last year, Hezbollah wore down northern towns and outposts with thousands of rockets and anti-tank missiles, in preparation for a war that was predicted to be magnitudes of difference harder than the war against Hamas.

And suddenly, the menace evaporated. It started with the beeper operation, widely attributed to Israel; continued with powerful, accurate strikes on the arms depots; and ended with a spectacular string of hits on Hezbollah’s leaders, culminating in the assassination of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and shortly afterwards, his successor.

This paved the way for what the IDF has been preparing for over the past 12 months, the ground operation in southern Lebanon. The invasion is seen as a critical step for returning northern residents to their homes. Until the tunnels networks and weapons stockpiles threatening the Galilee are dismantled, residents won’t return home, and that can only be done on the ground.

Turnaround

IT has now been revealed that the IDF has conducted dozens of cross-border raids over the past months, setting the stage for the full-scale incursion that began last week. Hezbollah’s response has been weak. While it’s expanded its range of fire to a distance of about 300 kilometers, from the border to Maaleh Adumim, between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, it hasn’t been able to rebuild its operational capabilities and carry out missile fire on a truly massive scale — mainly for the technical reason that there’s no one left to give the commands. The senior chain of command has been almost completely wiped out.

In addition, per foreign intelligence reports, the Israeli operations have cost Hezbollah 50 percent of its command-and-control capabilities and 85 percent of its launching capabilities. The arms depots may still be stocked, but there’s no one left to move the missiles into launching position, and even if there were, it’s almost impossible for them to do it without being detected. Even if that were possible, almost everyone responsible for giving the orders was taken out by the beeper operation.

The balance of power in the Middle East is beginning to shift away from Iran. Israel has regained much of the deterrence power it lost on October 7. But one worrisome consequence of this turnaround is the possibility that Iran will accelerate its nuclear program.

“The fact that Iran has clearly lost Hamas and Hezbollah as effective deterrents means that a growing number of figures in the Iranian establishment will want to develop nuclear weapons,” Boston University’s Professor Arash Azizi told the BBC.

Yezid Sayigh, a former Palestinian representative at the Carnegie Center for the Middle East, also warned that “it’s possible that in Iran’s perception, the only tool left in their arsenal is the nuclear program.”

For this reason, and because there may never be a better opportunity, Iran’s nuclear facilities are in Israel’s target bank for its retaliatory strike, which is expected at any moment.

Israel will try to replicate its successful attack on the Houthi oil facilities, which caused the Yemenite terrorist group enormous economic damage, with Iranian financial targets also on the table. However, Iran isn’t the Houthis, and Israel is determined to respond in a way that will preserve Israeli deterrence and keep Iran out of the arena for the next few years at least.

Since the sucker punch of October 7, Israel’s strategy has changed. Instead of trying to avoid escalation, the IDF has cranked up the heat. Tactics that were unthinkable are applied, targets thought to be off the table are bombed. Instead of fearing the outbreak of pandemonium, Israel instead wants to bring it on. Now the question is how far that strategy will go.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1032)

The post Taking the Fight to the Source first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photo: Flash90

A

fter Israel’s momentous preemptive strike on Hezbollah rocket and drone emplacements in Lebanon early on Sunday, the terror group signaled that it was satisfied with the 300 or so rockets it managed to fire off, and that it would make no further moves for now. That, in turn, satisfied the IDF and its American overseers that no escalation is forthcoming — but Israel’s tens of thousands of evacuees from northern towns and cities are still left hanging.

The 4:30 a.m. H-Hour for Sunday’s preemptive attack was set just hours before it began. But the operation had been planned weeks in advance and approved three days earlier.

In recent weeks, Israel increasingly recognized that Hezbollah wanted a symbolic “victory picture” to avenge last month’s assassination of Fuad Shukr, the organization’s chief of staff, and wouldn’t settle for an ordinary response. Meticulously collected intelligence, some shared with Israel by the Americans, indicated intentions of a pinpoint yet powerful strike.

The United States has repeatedly made clear to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi that it opposes a preemptive Israeli strike and won’t back Israel if such an attack draws Hezbollah into all-out war. But at the same time, per a senior political official, the Americans also feared that a successful Hezbollah attack could force Israel’s hand, leading to a regional escalation.

That’s why the US fully backed Israel’s preemptive attack Sunday morning. While it didn’t directly participate, the US shared intelligence with the Israelis that helped with the strike’s precise planning and timing.

Heavy Hail

Last weekend, Israel recognized that Hezbollah’s retaliation would occur within days, with early indications pointing to the 40th day since Shukr’s assassination on July 30. By Friday, needed reservists were mobilized and targets were updated at a dizzying pace. On Motzaei Shabbos, IDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari released a rare statement warning of a “significant week” ahead. It was around the same time that intel revealed Hezbollah’s H-Hour for the retaliatory strike: 5 a.m. on Sunday morning, day 26 since Shukr’s assassination.

According to a New York Times report, Israel had received indications that Hezbollah intended to strike Military Intelligence and Unit 8200 facilities in the Glilot military base in Tel Aviv, in addition to launching thousands of rockets at communities along the border and the Western Galilee. Among other things, the IDF identified the movement of missiles and launching systems.

The Israeli preemptive strike was scheduled for 4:30 a.m., about half an hour before Hezbollah’s attack. The Americans, who had been in on the planning from the earliest stages, made clear that Israel had their full support, but demanded that the attack be limited to preventative objectives. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Q. Brown arrived in Israel on Shabbos to make sure that US interests were upheld and to report directly to President Biden, who was monitoring the situation closely throughout the operation.

At 4:25, more than 100 fighter planes and attack drones armed with hundreds of barad kaved (“heavy hail”) bombs took off, attacking 270 targets at 04:30 almost simultaneously for about 20 minutes. Among the targets were launching pads loaded with thousands of short-range rockets aimed at communities along the border line and the Western Galilee and even Akko further south, as well arms storage and drone launching sites.

At 4:35, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari issued a special statement explaining that the IDF was attacking to eliminate threats in Lebanon. Forty minutes later, Ben-Gurion Airport was closed for departures. Only an hour after the preemptive attack began, Hezbollah began firing hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel, with sirens sounding in Akko, the Meron area, Katzrin, Maalot-Tarshiha, Tzfas, Kiryat Shmona, and Shlomi. Most of the rockets were intercepted, while some landed in open areas, causing small fires, and some hit homes directly, causing significant damage. UAVs launched toward central Israel — reportedly headed for the Glilot base — were shot down. Not a single rocket or drone reached Gush Dan.

During the offensive, the Iron Dome system intercepted a drone off the coast of Akko. An initial IDF investigation indicates that a Dvorah-class navy ship was either hit directly by the intercepting rocket in a rare malfunction, or by shrapnel from the interception, resulting in three soldiers being wounded. Two were in light to moderate condition, while a third, Petty Officer First Class David Moshe Ben Shitrit, was critically wounded and later died of his wounds.

Over the course of the day, the IDF attacked in southern Lebanon several more times, but that was more or less it. Hezbollah would claim — both in official statements and in a Nasrallah speech Sunday evening — that its meager rocket attack achieved its objectives, including the baseless claim that it hit the Glilot base.

Already a War

Israel believes that the heavy American presence in the region helped Hezbollah make do with its questionable achievements rather than plunge the region into all-out war. Not yet, anyway. Was Hezbollah really caught wrongfooted by the attack, or is just trying to lull Israel into unpreparedness? For residents of the north, the answer doesn’t really matter.

For more than ten months, northern communities have suffered continuous rocket fire. There was no preemptive strike to return the tens of thousands of evacuees to their homes; and no one took out the missile launchers that claimed the lives of 20 soldiers and 23 civilians, including adults, women, and small children, and wounded more than 180 civilians and soldiers.

At the start, Hezbollah was warned that it would come to miss the Second Lebanon War if it entered the war, as if the northern front isn’t already a war. Then the Shiite group was warned not to cross the border; when it was crossed, they were warned not to cross the “red line”; and when that was crossed too, they were admonished not to expand their range of targets — and that has now also happened.

The United States and Israel hope to use the latest exchange of fire as the starting point for a political settlement to restore quiet to the north. But Israelis post October 7 no longer buy “a settlement to restore quiet.”

There are close to 100,000 evacuees, thousands of “voluntarily” displaced persons, hundreds of thousands of civilians for whom sirens have become daily routine for the past 11 months, and thousands of devastated business owners who don’t believe in an “arrangement.” Everyone fears that anything short of neutralizing Hezbollah’s capabilities and throwing it beyond the Litani River while purifying southern Lebanon of all its tunnels, underground bunker complexes, weapons caches, and rocket launchers will bring about October 7 on steroids — if not today, then in six months or a year. Hezbollah isn’t going anywhere, and has already shown who’s dictating the tone and pace of events in the current campaign.

Meanwhile, senior IDF officials I spoke to in recent days are skeptical about the odds of a political settlement. As one of them told me, “I don’t engage with the question of whether an arrangement will be effective or not, because I don’t believe there’s a realistic chance of it even being drafted, much less signed. There’s no wording that both sides could agree to.”

The IDF will remain on heightened alert in the immediate future, with future strikes of a similar nature still on the table. Northern residents, meanwhile, are demanding the same rule for Glilot and Kiryat Shmona.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1026)

The post Landing the First Punch first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

DOWN TO EARTH: Israelis were sobered by a first glimpse of Hezbollah's extensive tunnel network

Whether it was intended as deterrence against an IDF attack or just as psyops, a video released by Hezbollah late last week is causing consternation among Israeli defense analysts.

The video, about four and a half minutes long, purports to offer a glimpse into the massive underground terror complex that Hezbollah has constructed beneath Lebanon. The clip depicts tunnels ranging in width between three and ten meters, with a clearance of four meters, capacious enough to accommodate trucks in two directions. The installation, called “Imad-4,” is between five and 25 meters underground and outfitted with electricity, lighting, air conditioning, and air filtration systems.

The footage begins with a close-up of an armed terrorist on a motorcycle inside a tunnel, opening a reinforced electric door opening into an expansive network. Trucks laden with missiles, drones, and other weapons drive through the tunnels. In other parts of the facility, Hezbollah terrorists are seen sitting in front of computer screens and other sophisticated intelligence equipment. At the end of the clip, rocket launchers emerge from various openings above ground.

The release of the Hezbollah video sparked outrage in Lebanon.

“If Hezbollah is able to build these tunnels, why can’t it provide electricity and water to its neighbors?” posted one angry civilian.

Samir Geagea, chairman of the Lebanese Forces Party, pointed out that the complex was built with Iranian funding, against Lebanese interests. “Hezbollah cannot determine the fate of Lebanon through war,” he warned.

Although many in Israel also found the video disturbing, almost no one found it surprising.

Already during Israel’s First Lebanon War in the 1980s, Hezbollah had begun digging massive tunnels, under the guidance of experts from North Korea and funded by Iran. An investigation by the French Libération newspaper found that the actual digging of the tunnels was carried out by an arm of Hezbollah called “the Construction Jihad.”

Hezbollah’s first tunnels were much smaller, built to carry out terror activity in the villages of southern Lebanon. Over the years, they expanded into a national network. Following the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah made the tunnels its flagship project. Digging at a rate of 15 meters a day using only manual tools, the Construction Jihad excavated hundreds of kilometers of tunnels leading to almost any point in Lebanon, from the Shebaa Farms in the south, past the Litani River, branching out to Beirut and the infamous Dahiya neighborhood up to Baalbec deep in the country, with some crossing into Syria, Jordan, and even Israel. One study using only open sources discovered a tunnel 45 kilometers long.

The tunnels serve a wide range of activities, from weapons storage out of the sight of Israeli intelligence, to attack tunnels that apparently cross into Israel. In Beirut they offer safe refuge for Nasrallah and senior terrorist operatives, while along the borders between Lebanon and Syria and Jordan, they facilitate weapons smuggling. Israeli intelligence estimates that there are more than 300 kilometers of terror tunnels in Southern Lebanon alone.

After Hezbollah accrued enough tunneling experience, it initiated independent mining operations under the guise of civilian construction companies. One of these, Mustafa Commercial and Contracting, even appears in United Nations development records as a contractor for civilian projects.

IN December 2018, the IDF began Operation Northern Shield to neutralize tunnels penetrating from Lebanon into Israel. For five weeks, the Engineering Corps, guided by the Military Intelligence Department, located and neutralized six attack tunnels.

Gadi Eisenkot, then IDF chief of staff, reported that Hezbollah planned to move 5,000 armed terrorists through the tunnels to raid a frontline border town. It seemed then like a farfetched scenario; last October, it became a waking nightmare in Gaza.

The first tunnel found in Operation Northern Shield had its entrance inside a private home in Kfar Kila in southern Lebanon; the other end was located within the boundaries of Metula, Israel. The IDF believes Hezbollah’s Radwan forces planned to take control of the access road to Metula and isolate it completely.

Other tunnels that were found including one that began in the Lebanese village of Ramyah and exited in the Israeli yishuv of Zar’it, and another that crossed toward Shtula.

“The Iranians provided ample funds to Hezbollah for the tunnel project,” said Lieutenant Colonel T., the commander of the intelligence team that worked to expose the tunnels, in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth. “We took these tunnels, but it’s safe to assume that Hezbollah did not abandon its plans to assault and occupy the Galilee, and its Radwan forces are still training to do that.”

Indeed, since the beginning of the war in Gaza on October 7, Hezbollah has been taking advantage of Israel’s maneuvers to learn and prepare. What began as small-scale rocket fire has become a real shooting war. First, Hezbollah terrorists destroyed the lookout posts along the border fence.

Then they began to target IDF bases and outposts near the border, with precision fire directed at the radar and advanced detection systems. The Tal Shamayim system was damaged about four months ago, as was the massive radar system at the Air Control Unit base on Har Meron, which is supposed to underpin Israeli aerial superiority from the center of the country to the northern borders and beyond.

Hezbollah then began to launch unmanned drones, to attack and gather intelligence. In at least three cases, Hezbollah was able to fly an advanced photography drones over dozens of strategic military and civilian sites, such as secret bases, the Haifa Bay, the Haifa Port, and others.

Hezbollah is also monitoring Israel’s tactics against tunnels in Gaza to learn more about defending its own. Every tunnel that is located and destroyed by Israel is studied carefully by the Shiite terrorist group and the conclusions are implemented immediately.

Israel is not resting on its laurels, and according to foreign sources, Israel dropped white phosphorous bombs in southern Lebanon after October 7 to burn off foliage in the mountains and forested regions, to expose tunnel openings. That action uncovered 12 more such openings, which were then destroyed. An Israeli military source told the French paper Libération that the IDF is using motion sensors, fiber optics connected to the G4 network, robots, drones, and information sources to map out the tunnel network.

Senior Northern Command officials I spoke to this week declare confidently that the IDF has a “sufficient” intelligence picture regarding the scope of the tunnels, their location and their routes, “at least in southern Lebanon and in areas that pose a direct threat to Israel.”

Given that this same IDF declared over and over again after Operation Northern Shield that there were no more tunnels crossing into Israel, despite repeated warnings by frontline residents that they could hear digging under their homes, these declarations should be taken with a healthy dose of salt.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1025)

The post Tunnel Vision first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photo: Flash90

AS the Druze community of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights buries its dead and cares for its wounded in the wake of the deadly Hezbollah missile attack last Shabbos, the entire region is on tenterhooks wondering what comes next.

Hezbollah, which is usually quick to take responsibility for its successful strikes on Israel, denied responsibility for the Majdal Shams strike — mainly due to fear of reprisals from the wider Druze community, which numbers 450,000 in Lebanon and 650,000 in Syria.

In addition, Hezbollah fears a powerful Israeli response that could lead to a wider escalation. It’s the same fear on the Israeli side that has led to the situation on the northern front, with dozens of soldiers and civilians killed and hundreds wounded; thousands of homes, as well as military and civilian infrastructure installations damaged; and hundreds of thousands evacuated.

A senior Northern Command officer says that when the evacuation order was received in the north, everyone knew it would last for a while, but no one thought it would be this long. The expectation among the IDF forces in the area was that they’d be attacking Hezbollah.

“In the early phase, it was clear that we were about to embark on a large-scale offensive in Lebanon before they did the same to us,” he says. “The equation was clear — Hezbollah wants to destroy us, and its capabilities aren’t negligible, to say the least. If we wait, we’ll suffer. If we strike first, we’ll be able to set the tone. There were plans, goals were outlined — it’s not clear why it still hasn’t happened.”

In one reserve group, a volunteer was needed for a particular role. To emphasize the attractiveness of the position, the job listing sarcastically advertised leave time as flexible as Israel’s “red line” versus Hezbollah. Since October 8, Hezbollah has been targeting the north intensively. The political echelon promised a harsh and powerful response if Hezbollah crossed the red line, but the goalposts somehow seem to keep shifting.

Sitting and Waiting

Tens of thousands have been evacuated, for ten months, with no date marked for their return. And that’s just for the lucky ones who still have a home to return to.

Hezbollah’s Radwan forces on the border are systematically taking down every layer of defense, targeting observation towers, monitoring and alert systems, and other sensitive military installations. Deserted northern villages are being gradually reduced to rubble by precision missiles, and anti-tank batteries and military posts along the border have been targeted nonstop.

“A war in the north is an event that will last not weeks but months, if not years,” explains a senior political official. “People need to understand that it’s not just Hezbollah — a war in Lebanon will escalate into a war against Syria, Iran, Yemen and others. We could go in seconds from a limited conflict to a wide regional war in which we’d have to deal with thousands of ballistic missiles from six or seven different fronts. We’re talking about a war that could last years, and we can’t be reckless. If we move too soon, we could come to regret it.”

The IDF has been complaining of manpower shortages, making a large-scale war fought simultaneously in Gaza and Lebanon not an option.

“We’re short on munitions, we don’t have enough troops, we’re not built to wage war on two fronts,” admits a senior official in the sector. “Until now, we held out for a deal or a long cease-fire in Gaza, during which we could focus on Lebanon, but that hasn’t happened.

“Do we have some kind of ‘master plan’ that we’ve been holding back? No. Absolutely not,” he adds. “Obviously there are offensive plans, including some game-changers, but not anything that would require delaying the preemptive strike. It’s not that we’ll be stronger in two days. On the contrary, in two days we could suffer another deadly blow. Every day of waiting costs us blood, and when you realize that we’re waiting for nothing, you start to despair.”

Hezbollah is fully invested in the campaign, but it can afford to take things at its own pace. Every camera shot down, every outpost abandoned, every radar system damaged, every observation device destroyed brings it closer to its goal, preparing the ground for a massive land invasion. Meanwhile tens of thousands of soldiers are on standby in the north, stifling the economy and drawing valuable resources from the southern front. Just sitting and waiting for the next surprise.

Fatal Impact

The explosion heard around sunset last Shabbos was unusual even for residents of Majdal Shams, who have become accustomed to the sound of missile impacts and interceptions.

“After ten months, you learn to recognize when it’s an interception, when it’s a distant impact, and when it’s a close impact,” says Yazan, a local resident.

The flames and screams from the direction of the playground left no room for doubt. There’d been an impact, a fatal one. The rescue forces rushed to the scene and immediately began treating the dozens of wounded. Twelve children and teens lost their lives in the brutal attack, and 29 more were injured to varying degrees.

“We arrived at a soccer field and saw destruction, burning objects, and casualties lying on the grass — it was a difficult sight” said MDA medic Idan Avshalom. “We immediately started sorting the casualties. Some of the wounded were evacuated to local clinics. During the incident, there were more sirens and the treatment of the wounded continued.”

“I was home — I got a call and heard sirens, and I realized there had been a bad event,” said Dr. Osama Halabi, a local physician. “I rushed to Majdal Shams’ emergency room. A lot of wounded poured in. It was hard to absorb. There were sights I’d never seen before. The saddest thing is that they were all so young — 14-year-old, eight-year-old children in athletic clothes. Shrapnel wounds, penetrating trauma all over the body. I had to pronounce a death.

“We were able to stabilize some patients and evacuate them to hospitals. It was a difficult situation, a real mass casualty event. We had to prioritize some cases over others. There were very difficult sights. The four villages here are one big community, the pain grips everyone. I felt as if these were my children. It’s hard to digest what happened.”

Residents say only several seconds passed between the alert and the explosion. A preliminary IDF investigation indicates that that the alert for Majdal Shams was activated instantly, but the short distance between the launch site and the town left little time for response. The reason the missile wasn’t intercepted was not because it wasn’t detected, but because of its trajectory and the complex topography of the area.

In addition to the fatal strike on Majdal Shams, sirens sounded in the border communities of Kfar Giladi, Hagoshrim, Misgav Am, Beit Hillel, and Tel Hai, among others. Another hit was identified in Kiryat Shmona, and a number of impacts in open areas in Kfar Szold led to huge fires and power outages in Manara and Misgav Am.

As the standoff in the north enters a dangerous new phase, tension reigns as the two sides weigh their next moves.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1022)

The post Awaiting the Next Surprise first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photo: AP Images

T

he flames burning in Yemen’s port of Al Hudaydah for hours last weekend were meant to send a message: If you attack Israel, you can expect retaliation, now matter how far away you are, or how many other battles Israel is fighting.

The official IDF explanation for Operation Outstretched Arm against Yemen’s main port on the Red Sea was retaliation for the Houthi drone attack launched against Tel Aviv on July 19, which left one civilian dead (Yevgeny Ferder Hy”d, 50) and dozens injured. However, many experts suggest that the Israeli Air Force’s bombardment was intended for a broader audience than the Houthis; it was aimed at the terrorist masterminds in Iran.

“I don’t think this attack will stop the Houthi assaults, because Iran is behind them, and Tehran doesn’t care how many Houthis or Arabs die,” says Alexander Grinberg, a retired captain from the IDF Military Intelligence research department and an expert on the Israel-Iran conflict for the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. “But on the other hand, part of Iran’s strategy and that of its proxies is that they don’t believe Israel will be able or willing to do anything. This attack changed the calculus.”

Part of Tehran’s calculus, Grinberg tells Mishpacha, is based on the vast distance separating Yemen from Israel. “The crucial point is that the Israeli Air Force planes, we’re talking about several dozen, traveled a distance of about 2,200 kilometers [1,400 miles] — greater than the distance to Iran. They flew low to avoid detection by enemy radars, which usually takes more time, and yet they completed the mission and returned home without problems. The Iranians understand that Israel could do this in Tehran.”

A Simple Drone

Operation Outstretched Arm also showcased a new aspect of IAF prowess — the F-35 fighter jet, known as “Adir.” These jets, part of Israel’s fleet upgrade from older models like the F-15 and F-16, are harder for enemy radar to detect, have sophisticated sensors that improve targeting accuracy, and can strike dozens of different targets, hundreds of kilometers away. The IDF has acquired 50 of these aircraft from Lockheed Martin, and the success of this mission suggests it was a wise purchase.

However, the defense establishment does not want to let this success overshadow the miscue that led to a relatively simple drone breaching Israeli airspace and killing a civilian.

The Houthi Samad 3 drone, of Iranian origin but modified by the Yemeni terrorists, managed to travel for 16 hours over 2,500 kilometers. The UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) was launched from Yemen west toward Sudan, then it veered north through Egyptian airspace, east across the Mediterranean Sea, and finally hit Tel Aviv. There are reports that Israel’s defense monitors detected a blip, but it was overlooked due to human error. This account would contradict Houthi assertions that their drones were “undetectable by Israeli radar.” Regardless, the drone’s impact on Israeli soil should set off alarm bells among security officials.

“Israel has limited capacity to defend against drone attacks,” says Liran Antebi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies who manages the Advanced Technologies and National Security program. “This is because some drones cannot be detected by radar, and sometimes human errors come into play.”

Antebi tells Mishpacha that the Houthi drone in the deadly attack was detectable, but human error led to its impact. She acknowledges, however, that a Hezbollah attack would be harder to thwart. “If Hezbollah decided to launch a massive drone attack from closer proximity in Lebanon, Israel has systems to counter such attacks, but it depends on the types and duration of the offensive.”

Direct Approach

The Houthi drone attack shifts Israel’s focus to a new front in its war against Iranian proxies, in addition to Hamas and Hezbollah.

“Israel cannot handle a war in Gaza, Yemen, and Lebanon simultaneously,” says Grinberg. “Moreover, the IDF is not interested in initiating a war with Hezbollah now, nor does Iran want that — essentially because the Iranians and Hezbollah are not willing to sacrifice themselves for the Palestinians.”

According to Grinberg, Iran’s strategy is “to save Hezbollah for a more critical situation. As long as Israel doesn’t attack their gas supplies or significant residential areas, Iran isn’t interested in harshly attacking Israel.”

Nonetheless, despite both sides preferring to avoid direct conflict, the situation in northern Israel has become unbearable. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced, and it’s known that they won’t return to their homes until the Hezbollah threat is neutralized.

“The problem is that, despite talks of a diplomatic agreement with Hezbollah, no Israeli living in the north will believe in any deal with Hezbollah that they won’t attack,” Grinberg says. “To reach a permanent solution, Iran must be dealt with directly.”

He emphasizes that the US elections could significantly impact the conflict’s development. “Things take time, but time is also limited: Iran cannot be allowed to possess a nuclear bomb. Suppose Donald Trump wins the elections, as seems plausible. The Iranians take Trump seriously, so they might accelerate their atomic plan before he takes office. The big problem is that nuclear powers usually reserve that strength to deter attackers, not to actively destroy opponents. No one assumes Russia intends to use its nuclear power to destroy the US, or vice versa. However, Iran does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, making it extremely dangerous for Iran to become a nuclear power.”

Grinberg says the Iranian people themselves could factor into Israel’s defense plan. “We must not forget that most Iranians hate the regime and would be happy if Israel launched strategic attacks on military targets. They don’t hate us like the Palestinians do. There are ways to gain the support of the Iranian people.”

Although Grinberg believes confronting Iran is the only way for Israel to achieve lasting peace, he is skeptical it will happen. “Much of Israel’s leadership fears acting without US approval. But American mentality poses a problem for us. The US can live with the possibility of Iran becoming a nuclear power. Israel cannot afford that.”

Grinberg believes the military success against the Houthi port is a necessary first step. “What happened is not enough, but it sends a clear message to the Iranians, and this is the path Israel should follow.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1021)

The post Can Israel Fight on Three Fronts?   first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Hunted by Israel’s security forces for decades, Hamas mastermind Mohammed Deif was a shadowy figure who was central to the terror group’s operations. Targeted in a massive airstrike last week, his probable removal ratchets up the pressure on Gaza’s overlords

Around midnight on Friday night, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar convened for a special meeting. A few hours earlier, the Shin Bet and Military Intelligence had received valuable information about the whereabouts of one of the most wanted men in Gaza, Hamas chief of staff Mohammed Deif.

The defense minister’s orders were simple: Eliminate Deif, with as many bombs and munitions as it takes. After eight failed assassination attempts, this time it seemed they would finally get it right. Due to his proximity to a refugee camp deep in the humanitarian zone, the IDF and Shin Bet estimated that the collateral damage could amount to dozens of casualties, but the decision was made to go ahead. The prize would be well worth the cost.

On Shabbos morning, the signal was given and several tons of bunker-busting bombs were rained on the site, destroying everything within a radius of several dozen meters from his location. There was only one goal: to ensure that this time he wouldn’t escape.

Live by the Sword

Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, a.k.a. Abu Khaled, better known as Mohammed Deif, was born in the mid-1960s in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. After joining the Muslim Brotherhood as a teenager, he joined Hamas’s military wing and at 24 was arrested for the first time, sentenced to 16 months.

After his release, he joined the ranks of the Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, describing himself as a “student” of terrorist Yahya Ayyash (“the engineer”), head of the al-Qassem Brigades in Judea and Samaria. A year after joining the organization, Deif commanded the squad that kidnapped and murdered the soldier Alon Caravani Hy”d.

Deif, known for extraordinary cruelty toward his own people, rose rapidly through the ranks of the terrorist organization. After the assassination of Emad Akel in November 1993, he was appointed commander of the organization’s military wing in the Gaza Strip and began a campaign of murderous terrorism the likes of which the region had never known. Less than a year after his appointment, he carried out the abduction and murder of soldiers Nachshon Waxman, Aryeh Frankenthal, and Shachar Simani.

After the assassination of his mentor, terrorist Yahya Ayyash, Deif masterminded the Dizengoff Center and Jaffa Road bus bombings in retaliation, murdering 58 Israelis in one week. Israel launched a manhunt and Deif fled to Egypt. Two years later, he returned to the Gaza Strip to plan additional attacks, some of which were successful, and he was imprisoned by the PA apparatus for almost two years. He was released at the outbreak of the Second Intifada, returned to the ranks of Hamas, and was appointed deputy to Salah Shehadeh, commander of the Al-Qassem Brigades in the Gaza Strip, who was assassinated less than a year later. After Shehadeh’s assassination, Deif got his old job back, a position he held until the IDF operation last Shabbos.

The defense establishment estimates that more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered in terrorist attacks carried out under Deif’s direct command and oversight, in addition to those killed in the current war.

“Deif was known for acting independently,” explains Lt. Col. D., a senior official in the Palestinian arena who’s been following Deif for years. “In a way, he’s very similar to Sinwar. They both have a radical agenda that’s sometimes more extreme than others’, and they’ll do anything to realize it. They don’t care about politics, they don’t care what the organization’s political arm will say, they live by the sword.”

Adding to His Aura

Israel has been hunting for him almost since the start of his career. The first time he was almost eliminated was only a few years after he joined Hamas. In 1998, Deif and several other terrorists were ambushed by the Nahal Brigade while trying to cross the Philadelphi Route, but he managed to escape.

Four years later, an Israeli Air Force Apache helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at Deif’s car as he was returning from a condolence call in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of the Gaza Strip. Deif was injured and lost an eye in the incident, but survived. A year later, his house was targeted as he hosted senior Hamas figures including Ahmed Yassin and Ismail Haniyeh, but all three survived.

Two years later, intelligence was received regarding his location in the Strip. The site was attacked from the air and Deif was seriously wounded. For almost 18 years, Israel was certain that Deif had lost his arms and legs in the strike, until footage was found of Deif walking and using both hands in December 2023. Following his injury, he fled to Egypt and kept a low profile for almost six years, during which Ahmed Jabari took over the reins as Hamas chief of staff until his assassination during the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense.

After Jabari’s assassination, Mohammed Deif returned to action. During the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, his home was bombed and his wife and son were killed, but Deif himself wasn’t there. A few months later, intelligence placed him in the home of a Hamas operative in the Strip. The Israeli Air Force fired tons of munitions at the site, killing one of his wives, son and daughter. Israeli intelligence assessed at the time that Deif had been killed in the attack, but less than a year later, then-IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz reversed that assessment.

During the 2021 Operation Guardian of the Walls, Deif played a significant role in the incitement, releasing recorded messages calling on Israeli Arabs to rise up. During the two weeks of the operation, the Air Force tried twice to eliminate him, again without success.

“The assassination attempts only added to his aura,” explains Lt. Col. D. “On the Gazan street, he was seen as the messenger of the Prophet, no less. And the fact that he never appeared in public, and everyone, including most Hamas operatives in the Gaza Strip, thought he’d lost his arms and legs and was confined to a wheelchair, only earned him additional points. I remember that during one interrogation, a terrorist said to me: ‘Mohammed Deif beats you without arms or legs.’ That’s how they saw him.”

In retrospect, the intelligence community quietly admits, the faulty intelligence about his condition helped Deif escape. “We were looking everywhere for a disabled man in a wheelchair, while he was actually running around on his own two feet. So yeah, we know that one of his legs was injured and potentially amputated, but he could get around on foot.”

Heavy Hail

Israeli intelligence believes Deif escaped to the southern Gaza Strip before the start of Operation Iron Swords and spent most of his time in the tunnels of Rafah and Khan Yunis, managing to stay one step ahead of the IDF as the operation progressed. Following recent developments in the cease-fire negotiations, Deif felt ready to emerge from the tunnels. Last Friday, intelligence placed him at the above-ground compound of the Salameh family, where he arrived for a meeting with the commander of the Khan Yunis brigade Rafa’a Salameh, who had also avoided the compound since the start of the war for fear of being assassinated.

The military censor has approved for publication that the intelligence about the pair’s location was obtained from several different sources, including HUMINT (human intelligence). The intelligence indicated both the location of the two men and the fact that they planned to stay there only briefly. Air Force drones covered the area from above to make sure no one left before the attack.

As soon as the signal was given, IAF planes dropped eight JDAM bombs (known by its Israeli name — barad kaved, “heavy hail”) designed to penetrate bunkers, and rescue teams trying to help the injured terrorists were also attacked. Hamas quickly announced that Deif had survived the attack, but Israeli intelligence assesses that he may have been eliminated.

Hamas confirmed that Rafa’a Salameh, Rafah brigade commander, was eliminated, and the Palestinians claimed dozens of fatalities. Israel points to the fact that the targeted compound was used as a military base and most of the victims were likely engaged in direct terrorist activity.

If Deif is ascertained to be dead, the IDF hunt can now focus on the four senior commanders still remaining: Yahya Sinwar and his brother Muhammed; Gaza Brigade commander Haddad; and Rafah Brigade commander Shabana. Israel is promising to get to all them.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1020)

The post Deif Wish first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photos: Flash90

IN the middle of an existential war and a societal clash around military service, the inscription on one matzeivah has sparked a storm that highlights the gulf between the IDF and the chareidi values of some of its soldiers. The case that ignited this controversy is that of Captain Yisrael Yudkin, a deputy company commander in the religious Netzach Yehuda battalion from Kfar Chabad, who fell in battle in the Gaza Strip on May 22. Following his death, the Defense Ministry proposed to the Yudkin family that he be buried in the Mount Herzl military cemetery, something they explained was considered an honor. However, the family’s hopes were dashed by the proposal’s outcome.

“At first, there was a back-and-forth about what to put on the tombstone,” Tzipi Yudkin, Israel’s mother, told Mishpacha. “The problem arose when we requested Hy”d, as has been the custom for centuries when a Jew is killed at the hand our enemies. They refused.”

Tzipi explained that the refusal did not come from the IDF — “they always maintained a good dialogue with us and respected us” — but from the Defense Ministry. “There was no one to talk to, they treated me very disrespectfully.”

Faced with the refusal to include Hy”d, the Yudkin family decided to leave the tombstone blank, a situation that painfully persists.

It was Yisrael’s brother, Dovi, who decided to take action, reaching out to political figures to fulfill his family’s wish. Ironically, his cause was embraced by one of the forces historically at odds with the Orthodox world in Israeli politics: Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party.

“I am not a religious woman, but this issue transcends my personal stance,” MK Yulia Malinovsky of Yisrael Beitenu told Mishpacha. “It is a disgrace that a soldier who fell defending the Land of Israel from its enemies has a blank tombstone to this day.”

Malinovsky stated she had submitted a bill, already signed by 26 other MKs, to allow the Yudkin family to fulfill their wish. The law change would permit the families of any fallen soldier to inscribe whatever they wish on the tombstone, provided it does not “include expressions that might affect the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic country, or offend another’s sensibilities, and is within the scope of texts traditionally written on tombstones.”

This bill comes at a time of heightened sensitivity surrounding the chareidi draft. The High Court recently endorsed the call to draft yeshivah students, yet cases like that of Yisrael Yudkin seem to demonstrate that chareidim will not be warmly welcomed in the army.

“One ends up believing that this is all politics, and that they do not really want chareidim in the army,” Tzipi Yudkin asserted. “Why claim to want chareidim if, when one of them dies in battle, they don’t even afford him the basic honor of respecting his wish, following Jewish tradition, to have Hy”d inscribed?”

MK Malinovsky also argued that rejecting the Yudkin family’s request is a failure to understand that the army needs to make changes if it intends to incorporate chareidim.

“Let me be very clear: I want chareidim to join the army,” the MK told Mishpacha. “For that very reason, I understand that certain adaptations and modifications in some areas are necessary for this sector of society to integrate into the IDF.”

Faced with the Defense Ministry’s refusal to inscribe Hy”d on Yisrael’s tombstone, the Yudkin family even considered exhuming the soldier’s body and transferring it to another cemetery. “It crossed our minds, but for now, we have faith that we will reach a satisfactory resolution.”

MK Malinovsky agreed: “I believe the Defense Ministry will accept this change. I even hope the law passes and can be approved in Yisrael’s honor. The last thing we want is for the body of a soldier who died defending Israel to be removed from the cemetery. That would be a great sorrow for the family and a disgrace for the State.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1018)

The post A Painful Empty Tombstone     first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

The war in Gaza that began after Hamas’s horrific October 7 attack has occupied all of Israel’s attention — and a good share of the world’s — for the past seven months. And while world leaders fret about the outbreak of a wider war that draws Hezbollah into fighting with Israel, almost no one notices the daily toll that the Shiite terror group is already exacting. Troops along the northern border report that they’re in a hellscape under constant withering fire.

To be fair, there’s a reason the nation’s attention is diverted toward Gaza: Hamas is proving to be resourceful at recapturing areas that the IDF has already spent too much in blood and toil pacifying. This, even as the enemy’s redoubts were thought to have been winnowed down to Rafah at the border with Egypt.

For months, soldiers of the 98th Paratrooper Division have been engaged in grueling training ahead of the invasion of Rafah, the most complex combat environment they’ll face in Gaza yet. But the best-laid plans, the poet said, often go awry. Last Shabbos morning, the division had to embark on an extensive operation around Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, returning to an area that had been cleared by the IDF months ago and remained under full operational control for some time.

Veterans of the Vietnam War recounted the frustration of fighting over the same ground for years, or losing territory to the Vietcong in their rear when they advanced forward. In Gaza, the situation seems to be exactly the same. IDF forces have been operating in the Gaza Strip for over six months, and wherever they leave, Hamas comes back in a big way.

“At the end of the day, there’s no such thing as a vacuum. It doesn’t matter how extensively we purify an area, if we don’t control it, someone else will. And that ‘someone else’ is Hamas,” says Lt. Col. R., an officer in one of the reserve divisions operating in the area, which has been in service continuously for the past seven months. “Everywhere the IDF has operated in the past two weeks is an area we’d already cleared. Zeitoun, Jabaliya, Khan Yunis, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun. We already operated there, we lost precious men, we secured the territory and held it, and as soon as we left, Hamas reestablished itself. Sometimes we saw it on the very same day. At 8 a.m., we left location X, and by one o’clock in the afternoon, Hamas had already launched rockets or led an anti-tank ambush from there.”

This reality, which senior IDF officials warned about from the first day of the war, has exploded in our faces again and again. And now, even divisions that were being reserved for specific operations, such as Rafah, are being rerouted as needed and returning to places they already left. One such formation is the 98th.

The Shabbos morning raid in Jabaliya came after the IDF received intelligence about additional terrorist infrastructure located in the area. And Jabaliya is not the only such case.

Two days earlier, forces of the 99th Division raided the Zeitoun area, where the IDF had previously operated no less than three times. The raid there had the objective of locating a large quantity of weapons, mainly in schools, as well as additional combat tunnels that had yet to be destroyed. During the operation, fighter jets attacked and destroyed about 50 terrorist targets, including military buildings, attack tunnels, observation posts, and sniper positions.

At the beginning of the week, the 143rd Division, led by the 8104 Reserve Battalion, operated in the neighborhoods of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun to destroy terrorist infrastructure. Again, these are neighborhoods that the IDF had already captured several times, with some, such as Beit Lahia, characterized at one point as “completely clean.”

Pinpricks

“Everyone’s talking about Rafah as some kind of critical goal of the war, and they’re not wrong,” adds Lt. Col. R. “But if we don’t learn from the mistakes we made in the areas where we’ve operated until now, Rafah will only become another in a long list of targets we have to clear again and again. Without a concrete plan for controlling the area, there’s no point going in, especially if all we’re talking about is a ‘pinpoint action.’ The past seven months have taught us that limited operations are a joke.”

The voices from the field are not being heard at the top, and lessons learned in blood are not being converted into concrete decisions. The raid on Rafah, which is progressing, is still characterized as a “pinpoint action,” even as the IDF stresses that it’s an essential step on the road to toppling Hamas.

To understand why Rafah has assumed such outsized importance, one has to look beyond purely military considerations. Contrary to popular perception, Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt, is not the enclave’s largest city. Before the war, it had a total population of about 200,000. But with most residents of the Gaza Strip having fled south, the current population stands at over a million. And with the four battalions of Hamas’s Rafah Brigade operating from within the civilian population, the risk of harm to “non-combatants,” to the extent that Gazan civilians can be described as such, increases drastically.

And that’s what scares Israel the most. The US has already made it clear that it won’t accept further harm to civilians, and the ominous procedures in the Hague are further complicating the decision-making. A ticking bomb on the one hand, the loss of international legitimacy and the halt of arms shipments on the other, and in the middle — a million Gazans serving as human shields and effectively propping up what remains of the Hamas regime with their bodies.

At the same time, giving up on Rafah isn’t an option either. Why? Look at how desperate Hamas becomes at any talk of capturing its final redoubt, which includes its two key lifelines to the east: the Rafah and Salah-a-Din crossings — the latter built by the Egyptians especially for Hamas.

Capturing the Rafah crossing could enable Israel to shut down Hamas’s primary arms smuggling artery, control exit from the Gaza Strip, control the flow of goods entering the Gaza Strip, and stop the collection of customs taxes by Hamas, which would be a very severe financial blow to the terrorist organization.

But will the IDF retain control of the crossing in the future? It’s unclear. Senior Egyptian officials were quoted in a number of Arab media outlets as saying that Israel had provided Egypt with assurances that it doesn’t intend to retain control of the crossing, and that once the operation is concluded, it will be transferred into other hands. Whose hands? Also unclear, although some in Israel are trying to promote an outline for integrating “Palestinians who are not Hamas” into the management of the crossing as part of preparations for the “day after.”

Northern Front

And with all eyes on the south, we’re losing the north. Literally. In the past month alone, there have been 37 Israeli casualties, civilian and military, on the northern border. That includes four fatalities, one civilian and three soldiers; five wounded in serious condition; and 28 wounded in moderate and light condition. In the past month alone, more than 50 homes in northern communities have been damaged. In the past month alone, dozens of IDF positions have been hit.

Hezbollah is escalating the situation in an alarming progression, with intelligence showing that Hezbollah intends to fire missiles at Meron on Rashbi’s hilula, just a week away. The Home Front Command has already announced the cancellation of the annual celebration, a decision met with rare agreement from the heads of all the kehillos, even those from extreme kehillos in Jerusalem, who were also presented with the intelligence.

“On Mount Meron, a group of ten people is like a crowd of 150, and a crowd of 100 people is like 1,500,” explains a senior IDF official at the center of the decision-making. “The conditions are appalling. There are no bomb shelters, there’s nowhere to run, and Hezbollah is pummeling the mountain with precision missiles. This is not classified intelligence material. This is information that’s available to every Israel citizen.

“People ask me if they’ll be allowed to hold the annual celebration on the mountain. Have you lost your minds? Is this about permits? Does it even matter if the mountain is officially shut down? If it isn’t shut down, will Hezbollah disappear? Only someone with a death wish would go there at such a time.”

Indeed, just over the past few days, a number of impacts have been identified in Meron, some of them on the Burma Route, which serves as an emergency route for the hilula, while others landed in the lighting compound of Rabbi Meilech Biderman. In recent months, the Shiite terrorist organization has fired hundreds of precision missiles at the air traffic control base on Mount Meron, and the IDF has acknowledged several hits on the base. The Home Front Command says that the number of launches at Meron is among the highest in the sector, as is the number of impacts.

Nevertheless, Meron is only the tip of the iceberg. A short tour of the abandoned northern settlements provides a bigger picture. Rows of damaged houses, hundreds of burned vehicles, and communities that will take years to rebuild.

And if that’s true of the yishuvim, all the more so of the military outposts.

“There’s not a single outpost in the entire sector that hasn’t sustained damage,” say soldiers who have been at the front for seven bloody months. “We’re talking about critical systems completely destroyed, buildings, infrastructure, cameras and radar systems. The signs of war are everywhere. We feel like sitting ducks. You hear the hum of a drone, count to three for the explosion and silently pray that it won’t hit you or your friends. Escaped from one? Five minutes later, there’s another UAV, or an anti-tank missile, or a mortar shell or some other weapon. Hundreds of wounded, dozens of dead — they’re just mowing us down here.”

As of now, the IDF is responding with relative restraint, but it’s long been understood that only military action can restore quiet to the north as well as the residents to their homes.

One cabinet member told me last week that “anyone who says that residents of the north will be able to return to their homes on September 1 is either lying or misleading the public. It won’t happen by then.”

What will happen? The war cabinet will have to decide. And as long as the fighting in the south has the country’s full attention, the north will continue to burn.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1011)

The post In Search of Strategy first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photo: Flash90

T

he scene in Jerusalem’s Yitzchak Navon Train Station on Sunday night neatly captured the stark tribal divisions that have rent Israeli society over the government’s justice reforms. On the upward escalator was a stream of flag-waving, largely secular protesters arriving from Tel Aviv to demonstrate in the capital. On the downward escalator was another river of flag-waving protesters — this time mostly religious and traditional — heading from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, to demonstrate at the Kaplan Interchange that has become protest Ground Zero.

Over the barrier in the middle, to the delight of those observers hungry for signs of pre-Tishah B’Av reconciliation, were a few handshakes — Israel’s equivalent of the famed New Year’s Truce of 1914, when British and German soldiers briefly emerged from their trenches to play football.

The dueling demonstrations were both sides’ last-ditch effort before Monday’s vote on the “reasonableness” law — the first tranche of the judicial reform to pass.

So, now that the High Court can’t strike down the appointment of government ministers on the basis of a subjective test, what’s next?

Will the government press on with other, even more contentious parts of the original agenda, or will Bibi quietly bury the whole thing? Will the opposition come to the table over the Knesset’s summer recess and try to achieve some form of compromise to stop the chaos in the streets? Having tasted defeat, will the protest movement lose steam, especially as families head out on summer vacation?

The simple answer to these questions is that nobody has the faintest idea.

Not for the first time in recent years, Israel’s political system has sailed into a nautical zone beloved of commentators, known as “uncharted waters.” But even in that unmapped maritime region, certain dynamics will shape the way forward. Here are six.

1: Any Compromise Will Do

One of the most important aspects of the week’s drama was something that didn’t happen: The coalition and the opposition almost came to an agreement over the law. The distance between the two sides narrowed to almost nothing, but the real story is about what would have happened had that breakthrough taken place. With the opposition co-signatories to even a small sliver of the reforms, the left’s united front would have crumbled from within, likely reducing the street protests to a die-hard rump. In parallel, Bibi would have had to slam the brakes on the reform thrust, promising to move ahead with the opposition wielding a veto. So, going forward, any agreement whatsoever could end the deadlock, reining in both sides’ flanks.

2: The Economy, Stupid

Of all the levers pressed by the Israeli left over the past few months, in a bid to pressure Netanyahu to abandon the reforms, the most serious external one is the economy. As demonstrated by Britain’s short-lived Liz Truss government last year, few leaders can survive a credit downgrade, which pushes up mortgages and hits ordinary people quickly. Israel’s protest leaders know what they’re doing by talking up the so-called “threat to democracy” overseas. The hysterical headlines, which the global media lap up, create a narrative of emergency, discouraging investment and weakening the economy in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Any push for further judicial reforms will be done with one eye on Israel’s credit rating.

3: Back to Barracks

Perhaps the most shocking development of the reform crisis has been the left’s use of army service as a lever against the government. With Israel’s military deterrent heavily dependent on the air force and intelligence —units still dominated by the old left — reservists in these positions have warned that they would stop serving if reforms continue. That lever is so potent that it was Defense Minister Yoav Gallant who blocked the first reform push before Pesach, and he was the government’s weakest link this time round as well. But unless widespread refusal to serve materializes, the government will press forward, with an anxious eye on the men in green.

4: Privileged Tribe

The long spasm of protests has fed into a widespread belief across the right that left-wing protestors get away with more than anyone else. National-religious politicians point out that when their protesters blocked roads in the run up to the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, they were clubbed. Others have contrasted recent heavy-handed treatment of Ethiopian and chareidi demonstrators with the laissez-faire approach sometimes seen in recent months. Whether allegations of privileged treatment are empirically true or not, protest leaders will be mindful that to keep public opinion onside, they can’t go too far, such as by repeating the Ben-Gurion Airport blockade. Hell hath no fury like a Israeli vacationer delayed.

5: Eisenbach’s Funding

As the protesters never tire of telling the rest of the country, they contribute more to GDP than their boorish, uneducated opponents. So it’s no surprise that their protests are well-funded and well-heeled; backed by slick PR campaigns and able to erect overnight in Jerusalem’s Gan Sacher a tent city that looks like an ad for a glamping company. All of which leads to an intriguing thought about how organic these protests really are: If the spigots were shut off, would the protests continue with quite the same intensity? Or would the rent-a-balagan division shut down, like an Eisenbach hafganah starved of funding?

6: Long-Term Thinking

Regardless, with former military men thick on the ground of both campaigns, both sides will be sitting down for a post-vote debrief. They’ll stress that the fight for Israel’s identity is a long-term campaign, and that the war will be a series of actions, rather than a single Napoleonic-style showdown. The struggle is as much about public opinion and the Home Front as it is about Knesset votes. And so, as Israelis head to tzimmerim in the North, or commit themselves to the tender mercies of budget airlines and overseas, they can rest assured that neither side has any intention of laying down arms.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 971)

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