They can’t say they weren’t warned.
For nearly a year, Israel made it clear it would not tolerate Hezbollah’s daily rocket and missile attacks, which had driven 60,000 Israelis from their homes near the border with Lebanon.
The pounding the Jewish state delivered to Hamas after its Oct. 7 invasion fortified the message that Hezbollah would get its turn in the crosshairs unless it stopped.
But Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a survivor of many conflicts with Israel, assumed past was prologue and that the international community, led by a feckless American president, would pressure Israel to stop.
No doubt Nasrallah’s paymasters in Iran concurred, and so the daily barrage continued with the aim of diverting Israeli troops and resources from Gaza and making northern Israel uninhabitable.
The impact in Israel was devastating. The nation was failing to protect its citizens and its borders were shrinking. Coming on the heels of the surprise Hamas invasion in the south, the situation was intolerable, politically and militarily.
The first major Israeli response was the sensational beeper-go-boom operation, which delivered both a military and psychological wallop to Hezbollah.
The attack showcased the depth of Israeli intelligence and its ability to carry out an unimaginably difficult operation.
When Nasrallah foolishly ignored the point again and kept up his assaults, Israel upped the ante with its targeted assassinations of his closest commanders.
After Bibi’s UN speech
The wipeout of everyone around him led me to wonder if Nasrallah was being spared because he was an Israeli agent.
When I suggested as much to an American friend living temporarily in Israel, he answered with an informed response: Nasrallah had been allowed to live, he said, because Israel wanted him to see the utter destruction he had caused.
The hope was that he would realize it was his turn unless he called off the attacks.
He didn’t, and now he’s dead, too.
It was no coincidence that Israel pulled the trigger shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s blistering speech at the United Nations.
“There’s no place in the Middle East that Israel cannot reach,” Netanyahu ominously declared, with delegates from some Arab nations and others walking out of the room.
After noting that Hezbollah had fired 8,000 rockets and missiles into Israel since Oct. 8, he warned that “Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for nearly a year. Well, I’ve come here today to say enough is enough.”
Boom!
The Israeli way of war and diplomacy ought to be a lesson for American and European leaders. The West’s habit of saber-rattling, followed by more saber-rattling and then . . . nothing, isn’t working.
The malignant actors, especially Mideast jihadists trained and directed by Iran, no longer take the threats seriously. It was Osama bin Laden who noted that most people naturally favor a strong horse over a weak horse.
Terrorists understandably see President Biden and Kamala Harris as a weak horse. They sense that Americans are so desperate for immediate peace that they will forsake their friends and mortgage the future.
That has proven to be especially true in this election year, with the Democrats trying to buy the votes of American antisemites by hobbling Israel’s military.
Fortunately, Israel marches to its own drummer. Because it has little room for error, it is clear-eyed about its objectives and doesn’t make idle threats.
Most important, informed by history, it does not bet its survival on even its best friends. Netanyahu has many flaws, but being too trusting of a fickle America is not among them.
The report that the US was informed of the raid on Nasrallah only when the planes were in the air means the attack was non-negotiable. It also lets America off the hook for any responsibility.
Peace through strength
Thus America gets no credit for the joyful outpouring in Syria and elsewhere over Nasrallah’s death.
Imagine Arabs celebrating an Israeli attack on other Arabs.
None of this is to suggest Israel has discovered a uniquely new approach to its enemies. Peace through strength has been the posture of bold leaders throughout the ages.
The flip side is also true — weakness invites aggression. As the ancient Roman maxim puts it, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Israel has been forced to do that since its founding, but the situation today is even more complicated because Iran has launched war on four fronts. In addition to Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and terror units in the West Bank are trying to create the impression that Israel is trapped.
Meanwhile, Biden and much of Europe have turned a desire for Mideast peace into a demand that Israel appease its enemies.
Instead of directing their ire at Iran and its murderous proxies for the Hamas attack, Biden and our NATO allies have spent much of the last year ramping up pressure on Israel.
They say next to nothing about Hezbollah, as if Israel should just take the endless assault on its citizens for the good of the team. What team?
Certainly not the UN team, which has fostered antisemitism in the region and encouraged delegates in New York to find endless reasons to condemn Israel — and only Israel.
Unfortunately, that’s not new, but what is different is that this White House accepted the brutality of Hamas taking hostages into Gaza, some of them American citizens. Rather than set deadlines for Hamas to release them, Biden and Harris set deadlines for Israel to agree to a cease-fire.
They were quick to blame Israel for mounting civilian deaths, and refused to demand that Hamas surrender and stop hiding in schools, hospitals and mosques.
Had Netanyahu agreed to the lopsided terms Biden offered, Hamas would have survived and been fortified by the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, some convicted of murder.
That would have rejuvenated Hamas and boosted its stature, putting it in a position to again take control of Gaza’s government.
And Hezbollah would have remained free to turn the spigot of terror on or off at its pleasure. The porous cease-fire would have erupted into another war with Israel whenever Iran saw an advantage.
2-state nonsense
The most absurd aspect of the last year is the willingness of the White House to claim that peace will come when Palestinians have a state of their own.
There is no historic or factual basis for that claim. Gaza was a Palestinian state that became a terror state the moment Hamas seized power.
As its leaders made clear, it would repeat the horrors of Oct. 7 again and again if given the chance.
Hezbollah was similarly determined to keep attacking Israel — until Friday.
The crucial question is what Iran does next. If the White House is smart, it won’t wait for an answer.
Instead, Biden should make it clear that any attack on Israel will not be tolerated.
But only if he is prepared to show he’s serious is there any hope the guns will go silent.
