No longer going gently: Israel’s new resolve in the face of Hezbollah

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

So goes the final stanza of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s most famous poem: “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Last Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood at the podium of the United Nations General Assembly and, after quoting a verse from the Book of Samuel – “The eternity of Israel will not falter” – paraphrased Thomas.

“Israel will not go gently into that good night,” he said. Then, connecting Thomas to that quote from the Book of Samuel, he added: “We will never need to rage against the dying of the light because the torch of Israel will forever shine bright.”

As Netanyahu spoke those words, events were already in motion. Some two hours later, the IAF swooped down on Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood and dropped the bombs that killed Hezbollah head and arch-terrorist Hassan Nasrallah.

Talk about rage and not going gently into the good night.

After 11 months of tens of thousands of residents evacuated from their homes in the North because of Hezbollah’s unprovoked attacks – and Israel responding in a tit-for-tat fashion – this action showed Netanyahu was serious when he told the UN that, when it comes to Hezbollah in Lebanon, “enough is enough.”

The killing of Nasrallah marked a turning point, but it was far from the final chapter. Early Tuesday morning, Israel took the next calculated step in what appears as a carefully prepared escalation – a limited, targeted ground incursion into southern Lebanon aimed at the Hezbollah strongholds that threaten the communities along the border. All this underscored the seriousness of Netanyahu’s declaration to the UN.

Friday night's assassination of Nasrallah marked a high point in the stunning shift in mood and fortunes as the Jewish people stand ready to usher in a new year on Wednesday night.

If, two weeks ago, the country was reeling from the worst year since its inception – wounded, divided, riven by self-doubts, concerned about the future – the turn of events that began on September 17 with the mysterious exploding beepers in Lebanon and culminated (so far) in the killing of Nasrallah has led to newfound confidence and cautious optimism that out of the ashes of October 7, something positive may yet emerge, though at a horrible price.

If, two weeks ago, things looked only bleak – a failure to free the hostages; an ongoing war in Gaza, though on a low burner; Hezbollah depopulating the North; Iran surrounding the country with a “ring of fire”; the nation once again drifting into confrontational camps – today things look brighter.

“These are momentous days,” Netanyahu said Saturday night upon returning from the UN and addressing the country after Nasrallah’s demise. “We are at what seems to be a historic turning point.”

He is not exaggerating.

The decimation of Hezbollah’s leadership and significant degradation of its military capabilities, the defanging of Hamas (it cannot carry out anything like the October 7 attack perpetrated a year ago), and the paranoia, doubt, and hesitance in Iran create a new, better reality.

This does not mean that Israel should be in a state of euphoria. On the contrary, euphoria leads to arrogance, underestimating the enemy, hubris, and mistakes. The country cannot – must not – go there. The hostages are still rotting in Hamas’s tunnels, IDF soldiers are now perilously on the ground inside Lebanon, the challenges are enormous, and the concerns just as great.

But over the last two weeks, the ground has shifted, and – after a year – the tide seems to have begun to turn.

Looking at Kushner's response to Nasrallah elimination

Soon after the killing of Nasrallah, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser, Jared Kushner, wrote: “September 27 [the day Nasrallah was killed] is the most important day in the Middle East since the Abraham Accords breakthrough.” That’s no overstatement.

First, the killing of Nasrallah, and all the precision actions that came before and after, including a significant attack on Houthi assets this week in Yemen, helped restore Israel’s deterrence.

Not only are Israelis looking at these precision attacks with jaw-dropping amazement, but so is everyone else. If anyone thought that, following the colossal failure of October 7, Israel had lost “it” – that X factor, that “Entebbe” factor – then the last two weeks surely went a long way in changing their minds.

Now, the country’s enemies are concerned and paranoid, wondering what will come next, where, and when. Reports that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was moved to a “safe location” following Nasrallah’s assassination illustrate the depth of that concern – and with good cause. If Israel could kill Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps heavily protected facility in Tehran and Nasrallah in his bunker in Beirut, there is no telling what might come next.

Iran has spent decades and billions of dollars building up Hezbollah as a second-strike option against Israel if Jerusalem were to go after Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Now that this second-strike asset has been hobbled, the Iranian leadership needs to think long and hard about whether to provoke an Israeli strike.

If the Iranians do launch an attack of some kind, it will then be Jerusalem’s turn to think long and hard how to respond more forcefully than they did following Iran’s missile and drone attack in April, and whether this is the time to set back Iran’s nuclear program by striking at its nuclear facilities. 

Iran built Hezbollah to monstrous proportions to serve as a deterrent to an Israeli attack against its nuclear facilities. Now, it is watching as Israel – because it feels it has no choice – systematically dismantles that deterrent. As Netanyahu said at the UN, no country would tolerate missile fire and the threat of missile fire depopulating its territory.

It is now clear that as Iran was building up Hezbollah, Israel was not sitting on its hands. It was not as if Hezbollah was getting stronger and stronger while Israel was whiling away the hours doing nothing.

In contrast to the cavalier manner in which the military and intelligence branches were dealing with threats from Gaza in the South, in the North they were focused and paying attention, planning and preparing – step by step – how to fight the world’s largest terrorist organization, a terrorist organization that hijacked a state.

This explains the disconnect between how well prepared Israel was for Hezbollah, as opposed to how unprepared it was to face Hamas in Gaza.

Israel viewed Hezbollah as a monster and prepared accordingly. It viewed Hamas as a mosquito, so it focused on it much less, thinking it could be swatted away easily. Ironically, it appears it may be easier to swat away the monster than deal with the mosquito.

The progression of events in Lebanon shows the level of preparation that there was a guiding hand behind all this: first chip away at Hezbollah’s arsenal and fortifications over the last 11 months, then go after the communications systems (exploding beepers and walkie-talkies), then take out top military commanders, then their leaders, then go after crossing points into Syria to prevent the Iranians from transferring more weapons, then bring in the troops to destroy the fortifications in southern Lebanon posing a direct threat to the northern Israeli communities.

Israel has Hezbollah reeling, and its ground actions Tuesday morning show that it has no intention of letting up on the blows – at least not yet.

At a certain point in time, however, the US and probably France will inevitably put forward a ceasefire resolution that will call for the implementation of relevant UN Security Council resolutions regarding Lebanon, including the disarmament of the organization and its removal from southern Lebanon. After being pummeled, Hezbollah is likely to have little choice but to accept the terms.

This time, however, Israel will surely not leave implementation of any agreement in the hands of a UNIFIL force with no mandate to confront Hezbollah, or a Lebanese Army unwilling to do so.

Implementation will have to come from the IDF, meaning that it will act this time whenever it sees any movement or action near the border that could threaten the Israeli communities there. Unlike in the past, it won’t register a complaint with UNIFIL, but will instead remove the threat on its own. Only in that way, without Hezbollah breathing down the necks of the residents of Metulla, Shlomi, and Kiryat Shmona, will those residents be both willing and able to return home.

A year after Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles, and drones into Israel, and as the Jewish year 5784 transitions to 5785, talk about creating the conditions that will allow residents of northern communities to return home finally seem more than just an empty promise. Actions are now being taken on the ground to make this happen.

Netanyahu, in his speech to the UN last week, quoted from one Dylan Thomas poem to press the point that Israel is not going to sit back and absorb Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s blows passively.

He could have quoted from another Thomas poem, “Death shall have no dominion,” to encapsulate the nation’s perseverance and spirit in the face of unspeakable adversity, to contrast where the country was on October 7 to where it is today as this tragic year comes to a close:

“Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again.”