What if the Oct. 7 invasion had been “intercepted”? Imagine the same Hamas attack but better Israeli defense, with more than 90% of the terrorists stopped before the border or shortly thereafter, and only minor Israeli casualties. President Biden would probably have done then what he is doing now, in the aftermath of Iran’s intercepted attack: urge Israel not to respond in any serious way. Let Hamas live to try it again.
To learn the lessons of Oct. 7 is to reject that advice after the long night of April 13. Israel will respond to Iran, it announced Monday. It has learned the hard way that air defenses don’t relieve you of the duty to subdue a determined attacker. Hamas’s intent to slaughter Israelis was hardly a secret, but Israel allowed it to survive and grow stronger because its rockets could be intercepted.
It was no harm, no foul. Israel agreed to “take the win” against Hamas—as Mr. Biden now advises with regard to Iran—all the way to catastrophe.
Rocket fire from an Iranian proxy became normal, not worth a response in most cases, until it was too late. It’s the same story with Hezbollah, whose expanding arsenal and occasional rocket fire became facts of life in northern Israel. Another war would have been costly, and what damage were the rockets really doing in the meantime? As the smart set says about Iran today, Hezbollah’s attacks were merely “symbolic.”
Israel never stopped the trickle, so it became a flood. Hezbollah has fired on Israel more than 3,000 times since Oct. 7, depopulating the country’s north. Yet this, too, has become normal. “Man is a creature who can get used to anything,” writes Dostoevsky, and all the more so if it’s the other guy who has to live with the consequences. Biden administration officials now regularly implore Israel not to “escalate” with Hezbollah—that, they say, would cause a war.
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Author: Ruth King
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