In June, Hashem Safieddine, the possible heir to the now dead Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, threatened Israel by saying, “Let (the enemy) prepare himself to cry and wail.”

But for quite some time, and especially since October 7, Israel has not been content to just mourn its dead, to watch idly as bombs rain down on its cities, or to be the world’s scapegoat for all the troubles in the Middle East.