October 7 – Lessons Learned or Relearned
(inFOCUS Quarterly) – What are the lessons of October 7 and Israel’s subsequent war against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their allies in the Strip, from fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, terrorists in Judea and Samaria, Houthis in Yemen and the puppet masters of them all in Iran?
Eight lessons – not necessarily a comprehensive list – follow. Perhaps obvious, but no less inescapable for that:
Believe Your Enemies
Interpret their actions according to their beliefs. Gaza-based Hamas (Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) has called for the destruction of Israel and genocide of Jews since its original 1988 charter and repeatedly launched terrorism and mini-wars before October 7 to further those goals. Its visible rehearsals for the 2023 massacre were just that, visible rehearsals, even if discounted by Israeli officials.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas’ patron, has labeled Israel “the Little Satan” and the United States “the Great Satan” since its founding in 1979. Government-organized rallies from then until now chant “Death to Israel” and “Death to the United States.” No matter the costs imposed through economic sanctions and dissatisfaction among much of the Iranian public, Tehran’s theocratic dictatorship continued its pursuit of nuclear weapons and improved ballistic missiles. It wasn’t for defense.
Defang the Mullahs
Israel’s destruction of much of Iran’s air defenses in retaliation for the Islamic Republic’s launch of nearly 200 ballistic missiles at the Jewish state last October presented the best opportunity to heavily damage if not destroy the mullah’s accelerated drive for nuclear warheads. Having learned to believe its enemies, Israel struck on June 13.
Although Israel, the United States and other countries cooperated to intercept most of Tehran’s missile barrages in October and April of 2024, the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said early this year that the mullahs had pushed on with nearly weapons-grade uranium enrichment. Iran insisted its nuclear program supported only peaceful uses – medicine, electrical power generation, etc. – but its enrichment levels far exceeded those needed for non-weapon purposes.
Washington renewed talks with Iran to end its nuclear efforts, with President Donald Trump imposing a short deadline. He warned of military action by Israel, backed by the United States, if Tehran failed to make a deal. But talking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about attacking Iran before the latter met with Trump reportedly helped explain why Mike Waltz was pushed from national security advisor and instead nominated as US ambassador to the United Nations.
In any case, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could not abandon Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, according to Shay Khatiri, Vice president of development and a senior fellow at the Yorktown Institute, Khatiri argued that American administrations from presidents Barack Obama through Trump’s first term and that of Joe Biden miss the point of Iranian nukes.
He asserted the Islamic Revolution that ousted the American-backed Shah in 1979 rested on three pillars: “public practice of Islamic law, economic leveling and anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism. … Half a century later, the state is facing a crisis of legitimacy for its failure to deliver on its promises.” Mosques have never been quieter, poverty spreads among those not connected to ruling cliques and revolutionary-minded youth see the regime failing against the Little Satan and Great Satan, Khatiri says. “The nuclear program is Khamenei’s last chance to save his regime and leave a legacy.”
Iran bought time by negotiating a deal with the Obama administration. Trump withdrew and imposed punishing economic sanctions. Biden’s unsuccessful attempt to restart talks provided Tehran with more time for nuclear development. The mullahs tried for a faux negotiation sequel, with newer and more numerous enrichment centrifuges spinning, and missile development continuing. Russia and China might have assisted in rebuilding air defenses. The regime, an Islamist police state with aggression as part of its DNA, wreaked havoc across the Middle East when unprotected by a nuclear umbrella. What might Tehran have attempted with one?
Fighting “Hate” Doesn’t Work
If Dara Horn were to update her 2021 bestseller, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, which dealt with sterile, often eccentric ex post facto sympathy for victims of the Nazi Holocaust, then People Love Jews Dead would do nicely. A new chapter could detail that while not every Arab or Muslim or most Westerners despise Jews, their state and Judaism, plenty do and anodyne campaigns against “hate” will not end this detestation.
The biggest one-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust sparked an eruption of ecstatic anti-Zionist antisemitism. In Berlin, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C. among many other cities, tens of thousands of Israel-haters – routinely excused as “pro-Palestinian” by news media – marched in the streets. On campuses, online, as news and entertainment there was more of the same. In the United States for 2024, the Anti-Defamation League tallied 9,354 antisemitic incidents, up 893 percent in 10 years and the most recorded since the organization started tracking this category in 1979. A vehement compulsion to be done with the Jews and their country spreads under the perverse banner of “intersectional anti-racist resistance.” Meanwhile, non-Jews often mistake antisemitism as only “a Jewish problem” instead of also a warning sign of social disintegration.
The “Two-State Mirage”
A “two-state solution,” meaning an Israel inside pre-1967 armistice lines and a West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem “Palestine” was always a mirage envisioned by many Israelis, Americans and Europeans. But not by Palestinian Arabs. Their leaders said so, rejecting two-state opportunities or outright offers in 1938, 1947, 1979, 2000, 2001 and 2008. To underline their refusal, they often turned to violence. The sole time they agreed – the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 – they did so in bad faith. Palestinian terrorists murdered as many Israelis in the first five years of this “peace process” as in the 15 years preceding it. Two states – one Jewish, one Arab, at peace in the 40-mile-wide sliver west of the Jordan River – will not be part of a post-Gaza war settlement.
Not only has “Palestine,” tested in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and Palestinian Authority (Fatah/Palestine Liberation Organization)-led West Bank proved to be a failed state, but Palestinian Arabs also have shown themselves a failed people. It hardly could have been otherwise since Palestinian nationalism is based not on the construction of a twenty-second Arab country but on the destruction of the one Jewish state. Hence the annihilationist language of the Hamas charter and PLO Covenant.
Like Soviet man and Yugoslav man before it, Palestinian man is an artificial construct spawned by a negative ideology enforced primarily through violence. Though no ‘two-state” Israeli-Palestinian settlement is possible, Israeli-Arab peace remains desirable. The Abraham Accords among Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco suggest how.
The US “Bear Hug”
The close US-Israel relationship can become a diplomatic and military bear hug squeezing Jerusalem. Hence, to avoid manipulative slowdowns or domestic American political obstructions, Israelis must expand their ammunition, spare parts and fuel resupply capacity for any but the shortest conflicts. Israel also should attempt something even more difficult – leveraging close intelligence and security/weapons assistance to some European and Arab countries into diplomatic backing.
Israel’s ambassador in Washington during much of the Gaza war, Michael Herzog, this past April disclosed how tight the bear hug can get. He said the Biden administration exerted heavy pressure on Israel, repeatedly urging restraint – especially regarding retaliation for direct attacks from Iran. “We told them, ‘That’s not how the Middle East works. For us, this is existential.’” But “more than once, they went crazy on me. They yelled, ‘You’ve lost your minds! You’re dragging us into a regional war,’” Then, when Israel went ahead successfully, US officials tried to take credit for stability in the Middle East, Herzog said.
“There are many within the State Department who are not just unfriendly to Israel, but outright hostile,” he asserted. “Some actively worked to block nearly every Israeli request.” Prolonged battles over basic military needs weakened Israel’s ability to act decisively, Herzog claimed.
Simultaneously, the foundation of Cold War US-Israel ties including overlapping national interests and shared Western cultural and democratic values appears to be cracking. Matt Brooks, chief executive officer of the Republican Jewish Coalition, warned in April that only 33 percent of Democrats now say they have a favorable opinion of Israel, compared to 83 percent of Republicans. But, Brooks added, among GOP supporters under 50, the positive-negative split is just 50-to-48 percent.
The Death Penalty
Nine days after the October 7 massacre, Hamas demanded Israel release 6,000 Palestinian Arab prisoners, among them hundreds charged or convicted by Israeli authorities for terrorist murders, in exchange for the hostages seized on October 7. During the sixth prisoner-hostage swap early this year, Jerusalem prepared to free up to 1,900 Palestinian detainees for scores of hostages, including more bodies of those who died in captivity.
Of the Arabs, Israel’s Justice Ministry published names of 737 men, women and teenagers involved in terrorist killings to allow time for petitions against their release.
Lopsided exchanges began with prisoner of war releases during the 1948 Independence War in which Israel repeatedly traded hundreds of Arabs for a few Jews. They include the 1985 “Jibril deal” with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which saw three Israel Defense Forces members exchanged for 1,150 terrorists and the 2011 deal with Hamas that released 1,027 Israeli detainees for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Historically, many Arabs freed in such agreements returned to terrorism.
To reduce Palestinians’ incentive to hold hostages as bargaining chips, Israel ought to impose the death penalty on terrorist murderers.
Failure to Draft Haredim
Israel’s population reached 10 million in 2024, including 7.7 million Jews. By Oct. 17, 2023, the defense ministry had mobilized more than 300,000 reservists to join the 170,000 members of the standing army, air force and navy in the battle against Hamas. But what became the Jewish state’s longest war endangered pre-conflict prosperity and highlighted underlying social difficulties. Among them, according to a Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA) report issued one year into the fighting, “lack of an appropriate economic and budgetary policy for the new [wartime] reality and a preference for nonproductive sectors while avoiding cuts in political and coalition funding [government subsidies to parties representing special interest voting blocs].”
Most glaring of these was the continuing failure to integrate ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews into the general society. Signs of progress have been noted in military enlistment by a small number of Haredi youth and rising employment among Haredi women. Nevertheless, the JCFA report stated, “the high growth rate of the Haredi population [14 percent of the total and fastest growing portion] and its lack of integration in the labor market and the military” threatens the economy and the country. “The manpower needs of the army and the civilian economy have become acute, and Haredi conscription has become an operational problem, not only a moral one.”
The Allon Plan
As Israel needs continued Jewish population growth and greater unity (not uniformity), so too with territory. Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War brought with it the Golan Heights (formerly Syrian), the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip and Egyptian Sinai Desert, and Jordanian-occupied West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. The next year, Yigal Allon, a general in the 1948 War of Independence and cabinet member in several Labor Party-led governments, proposed a new security arrangement eventually given his name. The plan was meant to remedy Israel’s geographic vulnerabilities, including the narrow coastal waist (less than nine miles wide north of Tel Aviv), exposed and divided capital and essentially naked Jordanian Valley front without adding a large Arab population.
Modified over time, the Allon Plan called for annexation and settlement of the Jordan Valley, the Etzion bloc and Latrun salient south and north of Jerusalem, a united capital city and the addition of other parts of Judea and Samaria with relatively few Arab inhabitants. In all, a sizable portion of the former Jordanian West Bank.
Never officially adopted by any Israeli government, the outline became the de facto security consensus until overtaken by the Oslo “peace process.” Nevertheless, in 1995 in his last Knesset speech, presenting that year’s Oslo II provisions, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reasserted a vision of Israeli security control that overlapped significant parts of the Allon Plan.
Area C of the Oslo Accords comprises much of what remains of the Allon Plan’s strategic but lightly Arab-populated West Bank. According to Oslo Two, it is under Israeli administration. Area A is overseen by the Palestinian Authority and supervision of Area B is shared by the PA and Israel. Time may be running out to make strategic Area C part of sovereign Israel, just as time nearly lapsed for Israel and the United States to strike Iran’s nuclear program.
Much depends on lessons learned and relearned.
