Raymond J. de Souza: Netanyahu’s post-October 7 strategy has made Israel safer, but not safe

In the three years since the October 7 Hamas massacre, Israel has demonstrated enormous military might and ingenuity against the Iranian octopus entangling it from near and far. But the octopus lives and is inflicting wider, if lesser, damage. Israel is safer, if not safe, in a more dangerous world. Has its post-October 7 policy thus failed?

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Certainly, the pre-October 7 failure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was complete and catastrophic. Recent reporting has made it clear that Israel was warned but that Netanyahu was asleep at the switch. Literally. In recent weeks, he has modified his earlier claim that if only he had been woken up earlier on October 7, he would have prevented everything. He now claims that security officials deliberately let him sleep through the attacks so that he could not prevent them. Such is the state that Israel’s longest-serving prime minister has reached.

After October 7, Netanyahu took an overarching strategic decision. He would unleash the power of the Israel Defence Forces against the Iranian octopus with maximum ferocity. He knew that it would isolate Israel diplomatically and in global public opinion, but reasonably calculated that the hostility toward Israel was such that it would be blamed unjustly regardless, and thus could not give hostile critics a veto.

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Recall that pro-Hamas, anti-Israel demonstrations started in global capitals within days, before there was any significant Israeli response. Less than a week after the Hamas invasion, then-New York State assemblyman Zohran Mamdani accused Israel of being on the “brink of genocide” against Palestinians, even before IDF ground troops entered Gaza. He is now mayor of New York, the most important Jewish diaspora city in the world.

Netanyahu’s pulverization strategy decimated Hamas forces, killing tens of thousands of their fighters — and tens of thousands of civilians. Hamas shares the blame for that, as it embeds its militants and weaponry in civilian populations. Vast swaths of Gaza were reduced to rubble. Devastating attacks were launched against the arms of the octopus in Lebanon and Syria. Finally, with Netanyahu hardly believing his good luck to have in the White House a gullible and easily outmanoeuvred president, Israel managed to get the Americans to sign on to not one, but two wars against Iran itself.

Israel is safer for all that. Notably, Iran has not attacked Israel directly after the second Israeli-American air war. Attacks from Gaza and the West Bank have been stopped, and Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon have been pushed back.

The price to pay for all this is not insignificant. Israel is diplomatically more isolated than ever, and has tied itself inextricably to U.S. President Donald Trump, not only the most unpopular figure on the planet, but also massively unpopular at home, where both Democrats and Republicans are turning against Israel. Recall that within days of October 7, then-president Joe Biden was in Tel Aviv declaring “I am a Zionist.”

If Trump were to say it, against the antisemitic wing of his own coalition, it would likely not help Israel’s cause. It is more likely that Trump would declare himself a Qatari than a Zionist. It was, after all, Israel’s attempted assassination of a Hamas official in Doha that prompted Trump to act with lightning speed, offering Qatar a NATO-like security guarantee and ordering Israel to end operations in Gaza. Later, Trump forced Netanyahu to call the Qataris to apologize — from the Oval Office, in front of photographers.

So where does Israel stand now, shackled to Trump, isolated in the world?

The Iranian octopus has been seriously wounded. Its capacity — and even willingness — to strike Israel has been greatly diminished. Yet it remains a wicked regime, and the folly of the second Israeli-American war — pulverization without a plan for the consequences — has expanded its scope for destabilizing mischief.

The entire region is now attempting costly and dangerous operations simply to achieve safe passage in and out of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. The American armed forces have expended enormous munitions and are now struggling to achieve what existed before. And they will not achieve it, given that it now requires an immense military presence and costly shipping practices — some $40 million per supertanker — to get less oil flowing than before. Whether the United States manages to stumble into winning, or at least not losing, its war with Iran, the clear winners have been China and Russia, which have taken careful note of what Israel and America cannot do to their Iranian ally, even with overwhelming firepower.

It is more than a little embarrassing when Iranian threats are able to chase Trump off both his Qatari jet and his original Air Force One onto a catering truck. It is not only embarrassing when Iranian operatives can prompt the Pentagon to evacuate its heavy bombers from an air base in Britain. And when Iranian forces can disable the American base in Bahrain, meaning that aircraft carriers can no longer be easily resupplied, it is clear evidence that there are limits to the power of pulverization.

Closer to Jerusalem, Hamas remarkably controls nearly half of Gaza’s territory, and is estimated to have replenished the ranks of its fighters. After two years of total control of Gaza’s land, sea and air, the IDF could not eliminate the tentacles of the octopus on its very doorstep. Israel is safer, but not safe, and further pulverization will not make it so.

Jews around the world are less safe, subject to lethal violence, intimidation and harassment. At home, the uglier aspects of Netanyahu’s coalition have compromised Israel’s moral standing.

Israel’s lack of preparedness for October 7 does not transfer the fault from Hamas. Likewise, Israel does not bear responsibility for those who wish it ill. It does bear responsibility for the path it has chosen, which has now, three years on, apparently run its course. What will follow invites foreboding.

National Post

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