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After the Israelis learned that Hezbollah was intending to strike their country with a massive rocket attack — some 6,000 rockets — at 5 a.m. on August 25, the IDF “rose up first” and launched its own preemptive attack, sending more than 100 planes into Lebanon to destroy thousands of rockets in their launches. Hezbollah managed, in the end, to send not 6,000, but 320 missiles into Israel. They were aimed at the Mossad headquarters in Glilot, the Defense Headquarters known as Kirya, and several military bases. Not one of those military targets was hit. Only one Israeli died — a sailor — in the raid, hit by shrapnel from a missile that had been intercepted by Iron Dome. And after Hezbollah published photos of a chicken coop it had damaged in northern Israel, the terror group was subject to endless ridicule on social media by people from all over the Arab world.
The editorial board of the Jerusalem Post praise for the smashing success of the IDF’s preemptive strike, and call for more such actions in the future, can be found here: “Israel’s decisive preemptive strike thwarted a major Hezbollah attack. It’s about time – editorial,” Jerusalem Post, August 26, 2024:
The IAF, in a pre-dawn preemptive raid in southern Lebanon on Sunday, struck at thousands of rocket launchers that were poised and timed to fire at Israel at 5:00 a.m., preventing a major Hezbollah attack and its “revenge” for last month’s killing of its chief of staff, Fuad Shukr.
It’s about time.
Nearly 11 months after Hezbollah – completely unprovoked – started firing on Israel, forcing dozens of communities in the North to evacuate, and upending life for hundreds of thousands of people, this was the first significant Israeli offensive against Hezbollah inside Lebanon.
No, this wasn’t Israel’s preemptive attack against Egypt’s air force on the first day of the Six-Day War in 1967 that determined the fate of that war and altered history, but it was definitely more than Israel has done against Hezbollah since this war began.
Granted, Israel has taken out several senior Hezbollah terrorists, and it has engaged in an effective tit-for-tat response with the Iranian-backed Shia terrorist organization, extracting a heavy toll in men and material since they started firing on Israel on October 8. But this is the most significant military act that Israel initiated to change the rules of the game in play since the war started and to signal to Hezbollah that what was, and what has become a crazy new normal, will not last.
It cannot last. It is unsustainable….
With this massive attack inside Lebanon, Israel has signaled that it will no longer be content with tit-for-tat responses to Hezbollah’s firing of rockets into northern Israel, but will let loose with all barrels. On August 25, it destroyed 5,680 Hezbollah rockets and rocket launchers. And it successfully intercepted almost all of the 320 rockets that Hezbollah did manage to launch toward Israel. Not a single one of Hezbollah’s rockets hit either the Mossad headquarters at Glilot or any of the military bases that were the terror group’s main targets.
Sixty thousand Israelis have had to abandon their houses in northern Israel since the Gaza war began because of Hezbollah rocket attacks. Until now, Israel has not struck with sufficient force to persuade Hezbollah to halt those attacks so that those internally displaced Israelis can return home. Israel’s preemptive strike shows that the IDF in the future is going to be far more aggressive in attacking Hezbollah fighters and weapons, and will do so at any moment of its choosing, without waiting for a Hezbollah attack to respond to.
The preemptive attack is a warning to Hezbollah, and even more, to Hezbollah’s puppet-master Iran, about what the IDF is capable of. And it provides its own citizens, who after ten months of war, that still have not brought the hostages home, a much needed boost in morale.
The Jerusalem Post editors are advocating for more such preemptive strikes like the one unleashed by the IDF on August 25. It should hit Hezbollah much harder, with many more targets hit simultaneously, and more often — without waiting for Hezbollah to strike first. Only thus, they argue, can Hezbollah be forced to stop its attacks on northern Israel so that 60,000 Israelis can return home.
The IDF has already dismantled 20 of Hamas’ prewar 24 battalions. It has killed 17,000 Hamas operatives, or about half of the estimated 35,000 combatants Hamas had on October 7. Among those who were not killed, many thousands must surely have been wounded and are now unsuitable for combat. That means that while the IDF is conducting mopping-up operations in Gaza, many of its troops can turn their full attention to the Hezbollah threat on the Lebanese border. The IDF need not wait for a Hezbollah attack, but can be ready, the Jerusalem Post editors say, “to keep its foot just above the gas pedal in Lebanon, ready to press down and strike Hezbollah with overwhelming force at a minute’s notice.” The Talmud supplies the only justification that is needed for such attacks: “When someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” That’s what the IDF did so spectacularly on August 25, and it’s what it should be doing from now on.