Can Israel 2024 be Israel 1967?

Be Bold or Be Cautious

In what was maybe the most creative and arguably the most successful of the Mossad’s many successes over the years the question is to what strategic advantage will Israel use this attack.  

  

 

The first thing that entered my mind after hearing and understanding what happened – lets face it, this was not one of those things you read once and understood – was Israel’s pre-emptive attack in 1967 that destroyed the Egyptian Air-Force.  That attack was followed up directly with an invasion of the Sinai Peninsula and less than a week later with victory.  My thought was that this was a 21^st century pre-emptive attack that disabled not only enemy communications networks and much of their military leadership but also created chaos in the country. The  “beeper-plosion” created the most favorable situation Israel could hope for in order to destroy the enemy and return the country’s north to normalcy by an immediate air and ground attack into southern Lebanon.

But (so far) Israel has not done this which makes us ask the question would Israel 2024 have stopped with the destruction of the Egyptian air force and said Egypt is longer are a threat to Israel or would Israel 2024 have acted as Israel 1967 did and invade and capture Sinai?  Would Israel have “taken the win” (Biden’s contribution to foreign affairs) and patted each other on the back or done what Eshkol, Dayan, Rabin and Weizman did and taken the fight to enemy territory?

The quiet aftermath of this incredibly sophisticated attack makes one wonder if this is strategic ignorance or if the strategy that dominated Israeli thought for the past decades has not changed since October 7.  The past 30 years of post-modern military and geo-political thought and policy has downgraded victory over the enemy and depended on an imagined balance of power combined with a desire for “quiet”.   The Israeli aristocracy drank all the post-modern Kool Aid and licked the bottom of the glass.   October 7 was a wake up call for the country who accepted the ‘quiet” the tactical victories and appeasement brought since it was trained to trust the IDF command.  The question has always been does the IDF General Staff and the political class want to prove they can recover from mistakes, or do they want to prove that they made no major mistakes?  We will know very soon  if Israel considers this operation a “message” or a prelude to something greater.  

Israel has been sending messages warning the enemy of what might be for 30 years and the results have not been pretty.  If this is yet another, much stronger message to Hezbollah that will allow them to lick their wounds and re-group – much as we have been doing with them since Lebanon 2 in 2006 the future will look like the past.  If we allow them to re-group after this they will re-group stronger than before.  The error of the “quiet, no victory” philosophy is that it assumes the enemy wants the same when what the enemy wants is not your house or your business but your life.  There is no territorial dispute between Hezbollah/Iran and Israel, there is an existential dispute and the tragedy is that one side’s leadership does not understand this.    Hezbollah/Iran wants to end Israel’s existence while Israel wants quiet on the border.   One side wants the destruction of its enemy and the other wants to come to an arrangement with them, official or not, whether favorable or not.

Unlike a chess match, where you must wait for your opponent to move before you make your next move, here Israel needs to make the next dozen moves before Hezbollah responds.  When Israel hit the Houthis they hit them where it counted but there was no follow through.  It was a “message” that was answered with yet another missile attack on israel just a few days ago.  But, like in the past, if it didn’t kill anyone, it didn’t happen, and Israel, so far, has let that attack stand.   It is time for Israel to be ruthless and merciless when fighting Hezbollah and others. If this was an opening move, then it was brilliant.  If this was Israel’s opening move and it is waiting for Hezbollah’s response to see what to do next, this is the missed opportunity we will long regret.

In short -I think that Israel should have immediately bombed and invaded Lebanon with a goal of destroying Hezbollah’s military capabilities in southern Lebanon, if not in all of Lebanon.  It combines a brilliant surprise attack with massive force.   It is the element of surprise, par excellence.   It could be that the correct thing to do tactically, is to wait a day or two.  Maybe there is another surprise Israel has for them first.   We will know in the next few days if this was a “pat on the back” operation or a prelude to something greater.  

Will Israel be opportunistic here and take advantage of a situation it created, or will it be cautious and ‘take the win’?

Great generals see an enemy’s weakness and exploit it mercilessly.  That was Ariel Sharon when crossing the canal in 1973 and Ezer Weizman when destroying the Egyptian air force in 1967.  That was Ben-Gurion in  many places in 1948. 

The overcautious Prime Minster, Defense Minister and General Staff can still be bold. The next few days will let us know if they are.