The Turn Has Come

Israel counterattacks Hezbollah and resets the war's strategic calculus

Going…going…gone…and no great loss

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Last week was a bad week for the Biden/Harris Administration, Democrats, progressives, the legacy media, “anti-Zionists” and, above all, The Conventional Wisdom.

These, of course, are overlapping categories that share many common traits, one of which is antipathy to Israel. The Jewish state is a pebble in the shoe of Democrats and progressives who subscribe to such delusions as the “peace process” and the “two-state solution.” It’s a standing affront to leftists who embrace the dogmas of critical race theory and postcolonial discourse. And it’s a finger in the eye of people who see in “Palestine” an epic struggle to cleanse from the soil of that land a tribe of alien interlopers.

Since October 7, 2023, these allied groups believed themselves to be riding the wave toward a Radiant Future. To be fair, that future was differently interpreted group by group. The Biden/Harris Administration nominated itself for the role of peacemaker, bringing order out of chaos via ceasefires and negotiations. Other interpretations were less benign. The farther left one looked, the more evident was the desire that the crisis caused by the bloody Hamas pogrom in southern Israel would culminate in the annihilation of the Zionist Entity. On American university campuses, “antiwar” protests soon morphed into calls for genocide. Antisemitism in its ugliest forms, that would have made Doctor Goebbels smile, exploded across the country.

Conventional wisdom pronounced on the Gaza conflict with finger-wagging admonitions concerning Israel’s terribly misguided campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza. You can’t kill an idea, the critics solemnly intoned. Besides, too many innocent civilians would be killed. Yes, sure, Israel had the right to defend itself—though not by scoring a decisive victory over a vicious enemy pledged to Israel’s destruction. We need an immediate ceasefire, the safe return of the hostages, and a two-state solution. That was the mantra.

The “anti-Zionist” faction of progressivism and the radical Left started with that mantra but went much farther as time passed and the fighting went on. Soon there were cries, ludicrous in their falsity, that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces were condemned for targeting hospitals, schools, mosques, etc. The fact that Hamas was using such places to store weapons, shelter its troops, and fire on Israeli soldiers was left unmentioned. The fact that Hamas was using civilians as human shields, and that it sought to maximize civilian casualties for propaganda purposes, also went unmentioned. No, only the IDF was committing war crimes in Gaza. Hamas was a cohort of valiant freedom fighters, whose genocidal rampage in Israel “exhilarated” so many progressives and leftists.

Soon the mask slipped even lower, as protesters on and off campus began openly to call for the destruction of the Jewish state: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! But in the end, despite everything, including the roadblocks thrown up by its supposed ally, the Biden/Harris Administration, Israel prevailed in Gaza. The fighting there has died down; the remnants of Hamas are cornered and clearly doomed if they refuse to throw up the sponge.

Conventional wisdom then shifted its ground, arguing that Hezbollah in the north, which since 10/7 had been barraging Israel with rockets and drones, was much too tough of a nut to be cracked. This organization, the most powerful of Iran’s proxies, could never be defeated by Israel, because the cost would be far too high. What was needed was—wait for it—a ceasefire. Also sprach The Conventional Wisdom. The obsessive-compulsive Biden/Harris Administration busied itself with another effort along that line. Having failed to save Hamas, our hapless president and his minions seemed determined to save Hezbollah.

But Israel has clearly had enough. During the Gaza fighting, the Israeli government acceded to the US Administration’s demand for a pause in the fighting. And at every point, it was open to any ceasefire proposal that would get some or all of the hostages held by Hamas released. But Hamas balked at every such proposal, no doubt calculating that America and European countries would lay the blame on Israel. And so it transpired, via the demonization of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Supposedly, he was the obstacle to peace and the two-state solution. Inside and outside the Administration, Democrats and progressives whipped themselves up into a fine fit of fury over Bibi. That was stupid and mendacious. It also turned out to be counterproductive.

It now seems obvious that the conclusion drawn by the Israeli government from the Biden/Harris Administration’s behavior was that the Jewish state could rely only on itself—which was why Israel summarily rejected a last-minute ceasefire proposal cooked up by the US and France. Then, without consulting the US, and with little or no advance notice, Israel moved to solve the problem on its border with Lebanon.

It was a spectacular, stunning demonstration of long-term planning and military prowess. The first stroke, exploding pagers and hand-held radios that killed a number of Hezbollah members and wounded many more, was the fruit of a long-prepared covert operation by which Israel, through the medium of a shell corporation, delivered the booby-trapped devices to Hezbollah. It was like something out of Mission Impossible. And hard on its heels came a series of precision airstrikes that systematically eliminated Hezbollah’s top leadership, including the organization’s general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, a gruesome mass murderer who’d bathed his hands in torrents of Jewish, American, and Arab blood.

In short, Iran’s most important Middle East proxy has been effectively decapitated.

The IDF also went after Hezbollah’s arsenal of missiles, rockets, and drones, demonstrating in the process that it has good intelligence on the locations where these weapons are stored. And over the weekend, the IDF commenced what appears at this point to be a limited ground advance into Lebanon with the objective of securing the border area by wiping out any Hezbollah installations on the Lebanese side.

It was surely no accident that the Israeli offensive commenced while Prime Minister Netanyahu was in New York, delivering an address to the United Nations General Assembly that bitterly reviled that organization for its shameful antisemitism. This was in its way a restatement of the Jewish state’s unofficial motto: Never Again.

And once again, therefore, the conventional wisdom was refuted. The IDF has proved quite capable of dealing with the threat posed by Hezbollah, having thereby reestablished deterrence, which is the key to Israel’s security in a troubled region. For some time after 10/7 it seemed that deterrence had been irretrievably lost. The people of Israel were in a state of shock; anguish over the fate of the hostages led many to demand peace at any price. But that mood was a phase. It passed.

What has not passed is the Biden/Harris Administration’s delusional obsession with ceasefires. The President himself renewed his call for a ceasefire upon receiving the news of Israel’s ground operation in Lebanon. One could be forgiven from assuming that the policy of the United States government is to prevent an Israeli victory at any price.

Another thing that hasn’t passed is the blatant antisemitism of so many Americans progressives and leftists. Many Arabs, for instance in Syria, may have received with satisfaction the news of Hassan Nasrallah’s elimination, but on American university campuses and in much of the media it was greeted with expressions of sorrow and anger. The man who in 1983 organized the killing of 241 US military personnel (220 Marines, eighteen U.S. Navy sailors, and three U.S. Army soldiers) in Beirut was lauded in those quarters as a “respected cleric” and a “charismatic leader.”

The New York Times, to its everlasting shame, marked the monster’s passing with an article describing him as a “gifted orator” (so was Hitler) who provided “social services” to the people of Lebanon. And of course, campus “anti-Zionists” are sure to be out in force, waving the flag of Hezbollah and demanding the destruction of the Zionist entity.

As ever, the outlook is cloudy, for there’s no doubt that Israel’s counterattack against Hezbollah has raised the stakes in this conflict. For one thing, it’s a slap upside the heads of the Iranian ayatollahs. Hezbollah is the apple of their eye, a de facto branch of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces and its advance guard against Israel. Now Hezbollah is on the ropes and may soon be reduced to impotence. What, if anything, will the Iranian regime do to prevent that? Given recent events, would Iran risk a direct confrontation with Israel? Or will it limit its response to some symbolic gesture, such as another missile/drone barrage? Only time will tell. Right now, just one thing is clear: Israel has reset the strategic calculus of this conflict.

And so the turn has come. Those in America and around the world who believed—and were happy—that Israel was on the ropes have received their comeuppance. They may shake their heads, ruefully. They may whine and cry. They may succumb to nihilistic rage. But their rhetorical war on the Jewish state has come to naught—simply because the people of Israel remembered why their country exists, and what must be done to ensure its survival.