Israel’s Amazing Military and Security Services

 According to a report on Israel’s Arutz Sheva channel, former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp, said no Western country’s military has achieved “anything even remotely close” to the progress Israel has made against Hezbollah in Lebanon the last two weeks.  He continued: “Israel’s rapid attrition against Hezbollah in the last two weeks is unprecedented in any military campaign that I know of.”

In a word, the actions of the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad, over the last year since the massacre of October 7^th have been beyond what any outside analyst could have predicted.  Its instructive to enumerate what we have accomplished.

In response to the October 7^th attack Israel issued a reserve callup to which the response was 120% of the desired result.  Reservists, who were working or vacationing in far flung places worldwide, dropped whatever they were doing, grabbed any flight available and returned to Israel to fight for our survival.  The demand was so great that ELAL, our national carrier, was willing to let people sit on the floor of passenger planes in order to return and fight.

The oft referred to “pampered generation” of 18–25 year-olds exhibited courage, strength, determination and resolve beyond anyone’s imagination as they spent months away from their friends, families and businesses to defend Israel against Hamas in Gaza.  We will be forever grateful to them for their dedication and fortitude.

Every military analyst agrees that while we have not eliminated Hamas, a goal which was probably unreasonable from the outset, the capabilities of Hamas to wage war have surely been dramatically reduced.  While their remnants continue to fire occasional rockets at our south, all of their fighting units have been decimated and their military leadership almost totally eliminated.  Sadly 101 hostages remain in Hamas captivity and Yahya Sinwar presumably remains alive somewhere in Gaza.   Hopefully, we will continue working on both the return of the hostages and the elimination og Sinwar as well.

Ismail Haniya, the political head of Hamas, was also assassinated by Israeli agents while he was resident in a building of Iran’s security forces in Tehran.  This was a double victory, as it took out Haniya and did it inside Iran, showing the Iranians that we have the capability to get to anyone even in a secure location in Tehran.

The explosion of pagers held by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon two weeks, ago, followed the next day by exploding walkie-talkies, killing many and injuring thousands was an operation literally beyond belief.  While Israel has not taken responsibility for this, as one retired US three-star general said on NBC’s Face the Nation 10 days ago, there is no other country in the world that could have pulled this off, could have infiltrated the supply lines, secured an order for the pagers from Hezbollah, and put this operation to bed successfully.  This operation crippled Hezbollah’s command and control network and made every Lebanese resident afraid to use their electronic equipment.

The assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. via the bombing of central Beirut last week by the IDF completed the elimination of the full complement of the terror organizations management, including all first and second level commanders.

Further afield, Israel has successfully inflicted damage on Houthi infrastructure in Yemen, 2,200 km away, showing that we have the capability of longer range destruction as well, when needed.   We did what the West chose not to do, inflicting damage on a country that was terrorizing not only us but world shipping as well.

In short, we have shown that the “ring of fire” that Iran has tried to create to encircle Israel using its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq has more holes than the best Swiss cheese on the market and that Iran can no longer depend on its proxies to fight in its behalf.  The world should thank us for this effort.

We can be very proud of our military, its leadership and even the strategic leadership shown in these past few weeks by Prime Minister Netanyahu.  Nevertheless, lest those who point to these successes as reason enough for him to stay on, I sill believe it is time for him to leave the scene. We can give him credit for the recent military accomplishments achieved under his watch, but he has been in and out of the prime minister’s office since 1996….much too long for any one person to head a government.

There is still much work to be done, we are not out of the woods yet by any means, but the future belongs to the next generation.  The sooner they step into the political fray the better off all of us will be, especially if they choose to clean it up as well.  As for life here without Bibi at head, no one is indispensable.

Charles de Gaulle once said, “The graveyard is full of indispensable men.”  Indeed, it is.  May we continue to be successful in doing the world’s work against the tyrants whose aim is to crush western democratic values.