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Steve Kramer: Israel finally takes the initiative
Israel has achieved remarkable success against Hezbollah and other enemies in the last few weeks. Hezbollah is reeling, with its top leadership assassinated, including its charismatic chief Hassan Nasrallah. Its potent rocket and missile inventory (including launchers) has been halved, assuaging Israelis’ fears of non-stop bombardment. In the south, Hamas has lost its ability to field a large number of terrorists to attack Israel, and its leader, Yahya Sinwar, hasn’t been heard from in weeks. (If alive, he is most likely in hiding surrounded by most of the remaining live, kidnapped Israelis).
The Houthis in Yemen have been struck by a second, more devastating attack on their major port while shooting infrequent and impotent missiles at Israel. (Why the Western powers allow the Houthis to disrupt international shipping is a conundrum.) And Iran has failed in its second direct attack on Israel, which soon will be answered by the IDF. The US and Europe should breathe easier knowing that Israel is doing the job to stymy Iran’s jihadist plans to overtake the West, a huge problem that the West has disregarded.
Iran is in a quandary with the debilitation of Hezbollah, its most potent proxy. In addition, its economy is in the toilet, its people fear and despise the leaders, and its confidence is at a low point, having failed in its efforts to devastate Israel and finding itself vulnerable to Israeli firepower. With Hezbollah unable to strongly assist Iran if it attacks Israel, Iran’s plans to destroy Israel could be unfulfilled. In fact, Hezbollah leaders (what’s left of them) complain about Iran not coming to their aid.
At this juncture, Hamas and Gaza have both been largely decimated. The large guerrilla army of Iranian proxy Hezbollah is looking increasingly impotent, with most of its leadership assassinated! This happy turn of events wasn’t preordained. For decades Hezbollah has fired rockets into Israel, only suffering bouts of “mowing the lawn” periodically which never finished it off. Yet, Hezbollah continues to attempt to destroy Israel.
Israelis feared Hezbollah’s threats to destroy Israel using its purported 150,000 inventory of rockets and missiles. Israelis believed that if it seriously attacked Beirut, thousands of daily, retaliatory rocket attacks could continue for weeks. Since October 8, Israel’s north has been in a precarious state, with 80,000 Israelis having fled their homes, refugees in their own country. It was feared that Israel would suffer hundreds, perhaps thousands (in fact 9,000+) of civilian deaths from rocket attacks if a full-blown war broke out. Consequently, Israel felt stymied. But in the last few weeks that fear has been replaced by the determination to send Israel’s soldiers into southern Lebanon, a necessary step to defeat Hezbollah.
While the IDF had used measured responses to Hezbollah bombardments since it began attacking Israel on October 8, Hezbollah’s terror attacks on Israel have destroyed much property but killed few Israelis, civilian or military. Now, the IDF has changed its tactics, with devastating results for Hezbollah. The idea of VICTORY is now prevalent among some of Israel’s leadership, replacing the policy of reticence. Israel’s intelligence services have successfully ferreted out and killed Hezbollah leadership, from commanders in the field all the way up to its Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah. In addition, the Mossad has accomplished “Fauda-type” operations, with pinpointed attacks on Hezbollah operatives using pagers and walkie-talkies. Those tactics have disabled thousands of terrorists with scores killed. There have even been limited rebellions of Lebanese civilians, mostly Sunni Muslims, Maronites and other Christians, and Druse against mostly Shiite Muslim Hezbollah.
Today, Hezbollah’s inventory of rockets and missiles is diminished, perhaps by half. Its highly trained, elite “Radwan” force is demoralized and depleted, unable to achieve its goal of storming across Israel’s borders and killing and kidnapping Israelis. A long-planned surprise attack, combining Arab forces across all of Israel’s borders, was planned to be a much larger one than what Hamas prematurely perpetrated on October 7. By that untimely attack, Hezbollah and the Iranian leadership were confounded. Their meticulously planned dream to destroy Israel by a combination of Arab forces has been dashed.
My hope is that Prime Minister Netanyahu will remain resolute and stand up to the “requests” for a ceasefire that American and other Western leaders are trying to force upon him. How many years of negotiations and ceasefires have failed? Who could trust anything that terrorists promise? UN Resolution 1701, dating back to 2006, was supposed to give Israel breathing space beyond its northern border by pushing Hezbollah troops north of the Litani River, a relatively safe distance. Also, Hezbollah’s armaments were to be stripped from it, leaving the Lebanese army the country’s sole fighting force. Neither action came close to happening. The UN has no stomach for fighting Arabs, especially when Israel is involved. (The UN busies itself with treating Israel as a pariah state.)
Instead, the UN welcomes initiatives that would destroy Israel. The United Nations General Assembly on September 25 overwhelmingly adopted a resolution that demands that Israel ‘bring to an end without delay its unlawful presence’ in the ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ (Judea and Samaria). 124 nations voted in favor, 14 against, and 43 abstentions. The resolution orders Israel to comply with ‘international law’ and to withdraw its military forces, to immediately cease all new settlement activity, to evacuate all settlers from occupied land, and to dismantle parts of the security wall it constructed inside the occupied ‘West Bank’. In other words, commit suicide.
(https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/09/1154496)
Israel is being hounded to give in to the terrorists, to accept yet another ceasefire, and to lay down its arms. It cannot and must not give in. The Hamas sneak attack followed a day later by Hezbollah rocket attacks, has failed, as have many other attempts to destroy Israel. Encountering its enemies, the Israeli spirit is at a high point. Israelis know that our way of life is lost if we don’t fulfill our moral and Biblical mission to dwell peacefully in the Land of Israel. It’s essential that the residents of the north who fled their towns will return home as well as the residents of the South. Hezbollah and Hamas (if they still exist) will be deterred from attacking Israel for a long time – if Israel perseveres. There is even a slight chance that the Arabs in both areas will follow the path of the Abraham Accord states and prosper alongside of Israel. But I doubt it.
