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The October 7 War Is Only the First Act
The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed during a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The majority of the Israeli public has been eagerly awaiting the deal to release the hostages and is deeply invested in its completion. There is, however, strong opposition from a significant portion of the public, mainly on the political right, who see the deal as a military defeat and fear the risk Israel is taking on by freeing terrorists and withdrawing from Gaza.
The public debate is focused on values. Do we lay our emphasis on the value of saving lives and redeeming the captives, or on national resistance and the ensuring of future security? Opposing political approaches are contained within this debate. Parts of the right have not concealed their belief that the goals of the war should include the occupation and settlement of the Gaza Strip, and even the collapse of the Palestinian Authority’s rule in the territories of Judea and Samaria.
The values debate is of course important, and the political dispute over the Israeli vision is not new. But alongside these two debates there is another question that in my view has not received the attention it deserves: What is the role of the October 7 war in Israeli strategy?
Two strategic approaches can answer this question.
The War on Terror approach. According to this approach, the Hamas attack proved that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war for the Land of Israel, has not subsided. Since their historic defeat in 1948, the Palestinians have been pushed into a war of terror and even underwent a second radicalization when their struggle changed from a nationalist to a religious struggle. The October 7 attack proved that Israel’s withdrawal from territories did not reduce terrorism but in fact intensified it to the point that it now poses an existential threat. The obvious conclusion, according to this way of thinking, is that the Gaza Strip and the cities of the West Bank must be captured and held to ensure the IDF’s freedom of action in the war on terror. This approach tends to draw the same conclusion about south Lebanon and the Syrian Golan Heights. Fighting terrorism and protecting civilians are not possible only from the border line. Therefore, Israel must expand territorially and claim buffer zones for itself in Lebanon and Syria as well as in Gaza.
The Iran-Israel War approach. According to this view, the October 7 attack is the moment that Israeli strategy finally woke up to the nature of the war launched against it by Iran. The more Israel focused on the Iranian nuclear threat, the less it understood that Iran’s strategy relied as much, if not more, on its axis of proxies as a weapon against Israel as it did on pursuing nuclear weapons. Although Iran’s proxy war on Israel had been discussed by the Israeli defense establishment for years, Israel failed to formulate either an appropriate strategy or an appropriate form of warfare to combat it. The October 7 war, therefore, was effectively a double disruption of Israeli strategic thinking that had gone on for decades.
The first component of the disruption is the fact that for years we made the mistake of thinking that the terrorism and popular uprisings we faced in Lebanon, Gaza, and Judea and Samaria marked the dying throes of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Peace and settlement processes on the one hand, and the weakening of the Arab states and trend of reconciliation with moderate states of the region on the other, created a false sense of security in Israel. In fact, Iran entered the vacuum during those decades, first quietly and then with great force, to unite the radical-religious forces in the region into a rising strategic vector that culminated in the October 7 attack.
The second component of disruption was at the military level. During the 1990s and 2000s, Israel developed an original military approach. Cutting-edge tactical intelligence and precision strike capabilities developed to counter enemy armor were creatively stretched to the point of creating an unwritten military doctrine for combating terrorism. On the tactical level, this doctrine relied on locating and attacking terrorist leadership and infrastructure targets; and on the political level, on deterring the state hosting the terror through the threat of enormous damage that would be inflicted on it, mainly from the air, if it did not curb the terrorism hosted on its territory. But behind the seductive tactical efficiency, this approach hid a fundamental strategic failure. Undeterred and free to control territory, the terrorist organizations gradually developed into armies ready to attack Israel’s border fences.
According to the Iran-Israel War school of thought, the current war is the point of contact between the war vision carefully prepared by the Iranian axis and the Israeli military concept of fighting terrorism, which was rooted in the “end of wars” thinking of previous decades. This approach did not meet the challenge. The fact that Israel suffered such a catastrophic intelligence surprise, despite an abundance of information preceding the attack, shows that Israel was not looking at its enemies through the right glasses.
In reality, of course, the two approaches are not interchangeable. The current war reflects both the continuing trends of the historical war between the two national movements in the Land of Israel, one of which has become religiously radical, and the relatively new historical trend of the Iran-Israel war. Israeli strategy cannot afford to simultaneously pursue both approaches. It must determine which trend is the more dominant, as the practical implications of each are in sharp tension with each other.
The war’s achievements, as well as its failures, can be understood through the tension between the war on terror approach and military-war theory.
The failure of October 7 resulted from a deep belief that had developed in the Israeli system that deterrence operations in Gaza and the MBAM (the campaign between the wars) in the north constituted a substitute for a war approach, both defensively and offensively.
The rapid and relatively low-casualty occupation of the Gaza Strip was made possible, on a professional level, by a creative and successful extension of the counter-terrorism paradigm into a war context. Israel’s intelligence and airstrike capabilities were stretched with great skill, thanks to preliminary efforts made in recent years, to cover the more ill-prepared ground forces. Land maneuvering, after all, belongs to the era of war… However, the extension of the war over 15 months, the postponement of Rafah to the last stage, Israel’s failure to destroy Gaza’s “metro” system of underground terror tunnels, and the fact that the war became an attrition campaign in which Hamas’s pace of recruiting exceeded its pace of destruction all indicate that extending counter-terrorism tactics to a war context, without an appropriate strategy, is not enough.
In Lebanon, the IDF was content for almost a year to manage response equations dictated by the enemy, and had a “zero targets” policy on the border. However, in the late summer of 2024, a series of tactical successes out of the “war on terror” playbook, from the pagers and walkie-talkie attacks to a series of targeted assassinations, changed the situation. It returned the initiative to Israel while dragging the enemy into a spiral of errors that greatly weakened its strength. The fact that at that operational high point, Israel chose not to attack the Hezbollah army and defeat it in battle highlights the lack of a principled war approach. Instead, Israel chose to be content with clearing physical infrastructure from villages that Hezbollah had already abandoned. Even Israeli excellence in counterterrorism tactics, despite its fine achievements in the north, could not bridge the lack of a convincing military-war approach and capability.
The direct confrontation that developed during the war in distant circles indicates a similar gap. The Air Force demonstrated an impressive ability, backed by the massive Israeli intelligence enterprise, to reach and strike targets in both Iran and Yemen, and even penetrate Iranian air defenses. At the same time, it is clear that the war caught Israel without a principled approach or a practical strategy. It is clear, for example, that the attack on ports and energy facilities in Yemen made no impression on Houthi decision-makers. The war increased rather than reduced their power, influence, and possibly income. Iran’s decision to attack Israel directly – twice – can be understood as a display of self-confidence that had grown stronger against the backdrop of the shuffling that characterized the war until September 2024. Even after the destruction of an Iranian S-300 radar system in April and the series of strikes on Hezbollah in September, Iran thought it would be able to deter Israel from attacking Lebanon in October. Iran deviated from the strategy we had previously attributed to it – distancing the war from itself by employing proxies to do the war-making. Israel’s strategy regarding the actions carried out against it from Iraqi territory was to ignore it.
What is Israel’s current assessment of the strategic situation? Have the achievements of the war, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and the rise of the Trump administration in the United States removed the threat of the Iranian “ring of fire” strangulation strategy?
If the answer is yes, then it is possible that we can once again perceive the terrorist organizations around us as weak and isolated remnants of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In relation to these organizations, which were severely damaged during the war, Israel has returned to the status of a power capable of conducting protracted wars of attrition in Gaza and Lebanon. Such an approach would place buffer zones along the borders and a Sisyphean continuation of operations at the center of Israel’s strategy for the coming years. As for Gaza, we would renew the war as soon as possible to complete the goals that had been defined for it.
But in my opinion, the notion that Iran’s war on Israel has ended is too optimistic. It is more accurate to estimate that Iran and its allies will take a strategic time-out to learn the lessons of the war, improve, adapt to the new reality (including the fall of Syria), and wait for the wrath of the Trump administration to pass. After all, the American administration could be significantly weakened as soon as 2026, when the midterm elections will take place.
Moreover, the developments in Syria have brought the influence of the other neo-imperial power in the region – Turkey – very close to Israel’s border. Turkey is also a power of political Islam, Sunni in this case, and hostile to Israel. Iran and Turkey are expected to compete and perhaps even reach the point of real strategic friction. At the same time, it is possible that the threats they both pose to Israel will accumulate rather than be offset.
Israel should view the Iron Swords War as the first campaign against the Shiite alliance. Moreover, Israel’s strategic environment has changed dramatically, and its strategic thinking must take into account not one but two regional power threats: Iran and Turkey. The Middle East may be just a reflection of a neo-imperial global environment, a second Cold War. The American-Chinese-Russian confrontation may further shift the tectonic plates in our region, and not in a positive way.
If we perceive the strategic picture in this way, we can congratulate ourselves on the war’s achievements: we repelled the attack, we are in the process of rebuilding the two regions of the country that were abandoned, we are returning our captives, we have undermined the self-confidence of the Iranian enemy, and we have negated most of the military capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah within our borders. In military theory, it is accepted that the goal of defense is to block the enemy’s initiative, gain time, and create the conditions for the next phase.
The Iron Swords War caught us by surprise because we continued to think we were conducting a war on terror while across the border, offensive armies were being built under the auspices of a regional power. The war dragged on to become a war of attrition due to our insufficient conceptual and practical readiness, and its achievements were limited for the same reason. Nevertheless, thanks to Israeli heroism, resilience, and steadfastness, and also to the successful extension of war-on-terror tactics into a war context, the war can be summarized as a successful historical defensive phase.
Now it is necessary to formulate the strategy for the next stage.
Israel must preserve the achievements of the war as much as possible by strictly and aggressively enforcing the demilitarization agreements in the north, as well as those that will be reached in the south. This enforcement will not only slow the renewal of threats in those areas but will provide Israel with a justification for war, should it become necessary.
The more we slow the build-up of our enemies (and we must not fall into thinking we can prevent it entirely), the more we will deepen Iran’s isolation and impose a higher cost on its attempts to reestablish its strongholds in the region.
Aggressive enforcement will serve Israeli strategy, if we accept that we are in the context of a historic Iranian-Israeli war. Aggressive enforcement – yes. Dragging Israel into a war of attrition against guerrillas in Gaza and Lebanon and possibly Syria – no. Such a war would drain Israeli energy, slow down and disrupt the pace of rebuilding the IDF, and breathe life into the “axis of resistance”.
The strategic lull and the energy of the new administration in Washington should be exploited to renew the anti-Iranian momentum in the region, encouraging both regional and western support for the renewal of the war against the Houthis in Yemen.
In the next year or two, we must formulate a more appropriate military theory and capability and an Israeli strategy for the Iran-Israel war. In short, the IDF must be built so it can remove the military threats in Gaza and Lebanon without being dragged into a war of attrition. We have detailed what is needed for this on several occasions in the past. Israel’s Air Force, Military Intelligence, Navy, and cyber and space components must focus on the more distant threats and develop a capacity for significant disruption of enemy launch systems. Attacking “value targets” – energy and infrastructure – will not be enough. Hitting “force targets” like missile launching systems will leave Iran and its proxies exposed and insecure.
It is too early to assess where Turkey’s infiltration into our neighborhood will lead, but it can be assumed that at least some of the trends described here will be relevant in this context as well.
The State of Israel was mistaken in seeing itself as a secure regional power. October 7, 2023 taught us that we are neither invulnerable nor omnipotent. The current counterinsurgency, the perception of war as an “all-you-can-eat” meal, is a result of exactly the same error. We are being lured into a long confrontation with Iran, on its terms. Self-exhaustion is not a good strategy.
Israeli security doctrine has always relied on the merit of operational-level crushing and decisive power, and has avoided contests of endurance. Either way, whatever the definition of our strategic situation may be, the strategy must be precise and focused.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal recently retired from military service as commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking. His book The Battle Before the War (MOD 2022, in Hebrew) dealt with the IDF’s need to change, innovate and renew a decisive war approach. His next book, Renewal – The October 7th War and Israel’s Defense Strategy, is about to be published by Levin Publications. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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The Dreaded Moment Is Finally Here
A drone view shows Palestinians and terrorists gathering around Red Cross vehicles on the day Hamas hands over the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children Kfir and Ariel Bibas, seized during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
JNS.org – The moment we had all been dreading came to pass on Feb. 20, as four coffins draped with Israeli flags traveled from the Gaza Strip to Israel in a convoy led by the Israel Defense Forces. Two of the caskets were markedly smaller, in a heartbreaking confirmation that Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the two little boys abducted to Gaza with their mother, Shiri Bibas, during the Hamas-led pogrom on Oct. 7, 2013, did not survive their ordeal.
As I was writing these words, I received a video from my youngest son, who is studying in Israel, of two rainbows etched high in the sky above Tel Aviv’s Florentin district. As I choked back tears, I wanted to believe that this spectacle—God’s tribute to these two complete innocents—was a sign of hope for the rest of us.
But then I remembered that once again, Jews are on the defensive even as we grieve for these children, whose smiling faces became emblematic of the plight of the Israeli and foreign hostages seized on that terrible day. For it is impossible to grieve peacefully without remembering the sight of posters bearing the photos of Ariel and Kfir, as well as Shiri and their father, Yarden Bibas, being violently ripped from walls and lampposts by the antisemitic Hamas cheerleaders who have poisoned our lives. It is impossible to grieve peacefully without recalling the cruel barbs about the “weaponization” of the hostages issued by insidious pundits like Mehdi Hasan, the British-born Islamist antisemite who, shockingly and inexplicably, was granted US citizenship in 2020.
Most of all, it is impossible to grieve peacefully with the memory of the grotesque ceremony staged by Hamas before the coffins carrying the four bodies set off still fresh in our minds. Jaunty Arabic music blared through loudspeakers, and children posed with the guns carried by Hamas terrorists as their parents grinned and leered for the cameras.
Many hours later, an even more shocking development was reported. Ariel and Kfir were not killed in an airstrike, as falsely claimed by Hamas, but were brutally murdered in November 2023, as was the fourth hostage, 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz, according to the autopsies on the bodies undertaken in Israel. Forensic analysis also revealed that Hamas lied about Shiri being returned since the body in the coffin was not hers. The agony persists, and we continue to cry out, “Where is Shiri Bibas?”
The giant screen at the ceremony mocked Shiri and her children even in death—their images dwarfed by a vile, crude caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire, his fangs dripping with blood. Don’t be fooled by the apologists who will tell you that this representation of Netanyahu is merely trenchant criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza—a war that only erupted because of the monstrous atrocities of Oct. 7. It is better understood as a symbol of the sickness enveloping Palestinian society, which regards Jews as subhuman, and which liberally borrows from 2,000 years of anti-Jewish iconography to make that point.
The depiction of Netanyahu as a vampire is no accident, just as images of him dressed in a Nazi uniform are no accident. The Palestinians and their admirers are expert at selecting images that recycle the worst canards about Jews: that they have eagerly adopted the methods and ideology of their worst persecutors and that their collective goal is to suck out the lifeblood of non-Jews without mercy—to the point of sacrificing their own people should that turn out to be necessary, with the Bibas family on display as Exhibit “A.”
The association of Jews with blood dates back at least to the Roman era, spawning anti-Jewish “Blood Libel” riots from Norwich in England (one of the earliest examples) to Damascus in Syria (one of the more recent.) It has been embraced by both Christian and Islamic theologians, as well as by the more secular antisemites who asserted their hatred of Jews in the language of science rather than religion. In the literature and journals of the 19th and 20th centuries, the fictitious figure of the vampire emerged with unmistakable Jewish associations.
“It’s impossible to have this discussion without bringing up the blood libel, the unsubstantiated claim that Jews murdered gentile children to use their blood in rituals,” wrote Isabella Reish in a recent essay on the 1922 film Nosferatu. “Thus, European vampires of old are intrinsically linked to Jewishness.” In my view, that linkage is as true of Hamas now as it is of a Berlin salon in the dark years that ushered in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.
We cannot live with this hatred, which has seeped from the Palestinians into the wider world, especially among Muslim communities in North America, Europe and Australia—nor should we be expected to. Combating it effectively means that we must be honest about the sources of the problem.
The main source is the Palestinians themselves. All the current discussions about the reconstruction of Gaza and the possible relocation of its civilian population miss the bigger issue. If Palestinians are to live successful, productive lives, then their society must be thoroughly deradicalized, foremost by challenging the antisemitic hatred that has consumed them. The United States, in particular, must prioritize the complete transformation of the Palestinian school system, installing and supervising a curriculum that will educate Palestinian children about Jewish history and religion, about the abiding, uninterrupted Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, and about the cynical manner their own plight has been exploited by Arab leaders happy to project internal unrest onto an external, “colonialist” enemy.
The second source is harder to pin down and cannot be dealt with in a school environment. I’m talking about the fans of the Scottish soccer club Glasgow Celtic, who waved banners urging “Show Zionism the Red Card” at a match in, of all places, the German city of Munich; about the Muslim and far-left vigilantes who last week descended on one of America’s most Jewish neighborhood, Borough Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they were gratifyingly confronted by local resistance; about the cowardly arsonists burning down synagogues and Jewish day-care centers in Canada and Australia. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies need to do more than just respond to each outrage. What’s required is a comprehensive global strategy aimed at rooting out these organizations, their communications networks and their propaganda outlets. No measures, including deportation and loss of naturalized citizenship, should be off the table, and no country—looking at you two, Qatar and Iran—should escape scrutiny for fueling these fires.
For decades, our elected leaders have cynically used Holocaust commemoration and education as evidence of their commitment to fighting post-Hitler antisemitism. That hasn’t worked very well, and as the black-and-white images of the Holocaust fade into history’s depths, replaced by decontextualized social-media video bursts of Gazans fleeing Israeli bombing, it’ll work even less so. If the soul-crushing pictures of the coffins bearing the Bibas children don’t result in a fundamental strategic pivot, then perhaps nothing will.
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Is Religion Rational?
Moses Breaking the Tables of the Law (1659), by Rembrandt. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – When it comes to religion, how much is belief, and how much is rational? Is Judaism a rational religion? Does being religious require a leap of faith?
Perhaps other faiths do. I mean, I respect everyone’s right to choose the religion they subscribe to and want to practice, but some religions do require extraordinary leaps of faith from their followers.
Judaism, on the other hand, is based not on any incredulous leaps of faith, but on the shared firsthand experience of an entire nation.
With other faiths, the starting point is a supposed revelation reported to have been experienced by the founder of that faith. You either believe it or you don’t believe it. Your choice.
But Judaism was founded at Mount Sinai where millions of Israelites, fresh out of Egypt, experienced the Revelation at Sinai. Each and every Israelite, personally, heard the Ten Commandments from the voice of God, not Moses! And it wasn’t virtual, it was personal. They were all there, and it was an in-body experience.
That’s not faith. That is fact. Not only Moses and his disciples but the entire nation of men, women and children—a few million in all—were eyewitnesses to that revelation. And this was handed down by father to son, mother to daughter, throughout the generations wherever Jews lived. European Jews and Yemenite Jews have the very same tradition, the very same Torah. Yes, there are differences in custom and variations on a theme, but the basic traditions are identical.
How? Because they all came from the very same source—Almighty God at Mount Sinai!
This week, we read Mishpatim, a Torah portion that deals with civil and social laws that are very logical. Everyone understands and accepts that society needs a code of law and justice to be able to function.
So, if your ox gores your friend’s ox, you will be liable for damages. If you’re making a barbecue and your negligence causes the fire to spread to your neighbor’s property and it burns down his house, you will be liable. And if you’re going on vacation and deposit your pet poodle at the Lords & Ladies Poodle Parlor for safe keeping and when you come back, they tell you they lost your poodle, then they will be responsible for paying you for your poodle. And so on.
But even the logical mitzvot have much more to them than meets the eye. There are layers and layers of depth, meaning, symbolism and profound spirituality behind every single mitzvah, rational or not.
There are only a handful of chukim, statutory decrees that we were not given an explanation of and for which we must take on faith, like kashrut or shatnez, the law of not mixing wool and linen garments together.
But the truth is that every mitzvah needs faith.
Why? Because without faith, we do something only humans are capable of. Do you know what that is? Rationalization.
Everyone understands that you’re not supposed to steal. And yet, studies have shown that no less than 59% of hotel guests steal from their hotel rooms. Now, I don’t think the hotel really minds if you take the shampoo. I imagine if you asked them, they would say it’s fine.
But no hotel will let you take the towels or the robes. And no hotel will let you take the TV. I was shocked to read that some guests even took home a mattress! (Apparently, in the middle of the night, they snuck it into the elevator, went down to the basement garage and stuffed it into the trunk of their car.)
If you ask these people, they will likely give you all kinds of reasons why their actions are justified. The hotel overcharged me. It calculates shrinkage into their price, so I actually paid for it. If I wear the hotel’s towel on the beach, I am advertising for them, so they should pay me.
This is classic rationalization.
So we do need faith after all, even for logical commandments like not stealing. Otherwise, we fail. Badly.
Interestingly, the very same Torah reading of Mishpatim, with its logical, civil laws also has the famous phrase, Na’aseh V’Nishma. These were the words of the Jewish people when asked if they would accept God’s Torah. They replied Na’aseh, “we will do” and only thereafter Nishmah, “we will listen” and understand. It is the core of simple, pure, absolute faith, beyond any logic or understanding.
And this explains why the Ten Commandments, which we read last week, begin with Anochi, “I am God,” the lofty, abstract mitzvah to believe in God. To have faith.
And then the other commandments go on to tell us the most basic laws that every low life knows he should keep. Not to murder, commit adultery, steal, lie or be jealous.
How did we get from the highest, metaphysical commandment of belief to the grossest of the gross in a few short sentences?
Because without faith, a human being is capable of justifying anything.
The accursed Nazis justified the Holocaust. REAL genocide, not make-believe South African genocide. How did they justify it? By saying Jews are scum, sub-human. We are doing the world a service by eliminating them. The world will be a better place for it. Rationalization.
Without the first commandment of faith in God, there can be no adherence to any of the other commandments.
Logic gets you pretty far but not far enough. As logical as Judaism may be, we still need the foundation of faith to do what we must do and avoid that which is tempting but wrong.
May we all embrace Judaism with knowledge and reason and by understanding its philosophy, without losing that pure and simple faith that every one of us possesses.
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Israeli Security Control of Gaza Is an Existential Necessity
Orthodox Jewish men stand near a tank, ahead of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as seen from the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, Jan. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
JNS.org – Thursday was a national day of mourning, as the bodies of hostage Shiri Bibas’s children Ariel and Kfir, along with that of Oded Lipshitz, returned to Israel. Hamas also handed over a fourth coffin, falsely saying it held Shiri Bibas‘s remains, but it was subsequently determined that it contained the corpse of an unidentified non-Israeli woman.
Their dire fate, along with that of some 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, stand as an unbearable reminder of the consequences of allowing a genocidal, jihadist army to entrench itself on Israel’s border.
The sorrow that grips all Israelis, reinforced by months of war, adds up to a clear national imperative: Israel can never again allow Gaza to be a staging ground for an Iranian-backed terrorist army. Once Israel has exhausted all efforts to secure the release of its hostages, Hamas must be eliminated from the face of the Earth as a terror army. No one on Israel’s borders can be allowed to build an ability to send death squads and invasion brigades over the border in an organized manner.
Ensuring Israeli security control over Gaza is the only way to achieve this. This work cannot be outsourced to anyone; the idea that a foreign force or paid mercenaries would have the ability to deal with Hamas is absurd. Israeli security control of Gaza is not just a military necessity to prevent future Hamas barbarity, it is an existential imperative.
The ongoing professional inquiries by the IDF into the events of Oct. 7 aim to provide answers to the public, the bereaved families and affected communities about the multiple system failures of that darkest of days.
But these investigations are not just about accountability—they are about learning from history in real time. As one IDF official put it this week, Israel must “carry out the lessons learned during the war, not afterward, and prepare for future conflicts.”
The scope of the IDF’s inquiries is broad, covering four main areas: Israel’s long-term strategy regarding Gaza, intelligence failures leading up to the war, the decision-making process between Oct. 6 and 7, and the first 72 hours of defensive operations.
But even before their conclusions are published, likely in the coming days, it is possible to draw some key conclusions.
Not deterred, not a rational actor, not seeking prosperity
Before the attack, every day that Israel did not act to prevent Hamas from building its capabilities, and every day that Israel gave up on the idea of achieving security control over Gaza, was an opportunity for Hamas to develop further its murderous plans and prepare for the massacre.
The Western-oriented idea that Israel could afford to refrain from continuous security operations in Gaza, and that the IDF could stay back behind the border, was fueled by deluded concepts of Hamas being deterred, that it was a rational actor, and that it sought economic prosperity.
These delusions stem from a catastrophic inability to grasp the jihadist mindset of a fundamentalist Islamic death cult, and from the tendency that was rampant in the defense establishment and the political echelon before Oct. 7 to project Western thinking onto our enemies. This allowed Hamas the space and the time to prepare its attack. Those who wish to indefinitely delay Israeli operations to prevent Hamas from rebuilding these capabilities have returned to the pre-Oct. 7 misconceptions. The “day after” is today.
During the Oct. 7 attacks, Hamas behaved like an army intent on genocide. It seized land, executing civilians in the most brutal manner imaginable, and taking hostages to act as insurance policies for the survival of its leadership. It was only able to do these things because it controlled its own territory, giving it the ability to develop an arms industry, smuggle in weapons and develop its intentions with minimal interference.
Meanwhile, the chief of the IDF General Staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, who is due to step down on March 6, has spent recent days in the United States discussing strategic and operational issues with top American military officials.
Halevi visited the Pentagon to meet with Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with staff officers, and with Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the commander of CENTCOM (responsible for the Middle East), to discuss Lebanon and Iran, and ways to strengthen U.S.-Israeli cooperation.
But Gaza trumped the other arenas. Halevi expedited his return to Israel due to the agreement to return the bodies of the hostages.
No international diplomacy or security guarantees can obviate the necessity of full Israeli freedom of operation in Gaza for the foreseeable future. Failure to recognize this would invite, once again, catastrophe, and Israel cannot afford to repeat its mistakes.
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