Israel didn't take Hamas seriously before Oct. 7 - Will it learn from the mistake? - analysis

Israel has fought wars before: in 1948 and 1956, 1967 and 1973, 1982 and 2006.

It has also dealt with terrorism before; in fact, since the very dawn of Zionism, and – more recently – with great intensity during the First and Second Intifadas.

It has also dealt in the past with deadly rockets from distant enemies falling on its cities, such as Saddam Hussein’s Scuds that accompanied the US invasion of Iraq in 1990.

What makes the past year stand out, however, is that the Jewish state is now dealing with all of the above simultaneously: war in Lebanon and Gaza, terrorism throughout the country, and missiles from afar. The past month has witnessed the widening of the October 7 war to include a ground incursion into Lebanon, brutal terrorist attacks in Beersheba, Jaffa, and Hadera, and missiles and drones fired from Iran, Iraq, and Yemen.

It feels almost as if all the tactics used during this conflict for the last century have been compressed into a single month.

Gains and losses cause emotional rollercoaster

During this same month, however, Israel has also had some staggering successes: beginning with the exploding Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon on September 17, the walkie-talkies that blew up a day later, the decimation of Hezbollah’s top leadership – including arch-terrorist Hassan Nasrallah and his replacement – the continued degradation of Hamas’s military capabilities in Gaza, and the defense on October 1 against 180 ballistic missiles Iran fired at Israeli cities and military installations.

But intertwined with these successes have been losses: victims of brutal terrorist attacks and additional soldiers killed in action – in Gaza, in southern Lebanon, and in a base near Binyamina.

All of this takes an enormous emotional toll on the nation: the satisfaction at seeing mortal enemies like Nasrallah fall, followed by the deep anguish of seeing the faces of fallen soldiers or terrorist victims on the front pages of the newspapers. It’s a pattern that repeats itself with awful regularity: exhilaration at news of another successful air force strike, followed by sorrow at news of another fallen soldier – light and shadows commingling.

That all of this unfolded around the October 7 anniversary, as that horrific day was relived and recounted in the media and at emotional ceremonies, only added to the collective psychological toll.

And as if the ceremonies on the Gregorian calendar were not enough, next week’s Simchat Torah holiday will once again stir nightmarish memories from a year ago, amplified by the recently announced National Day of Mourning, which will begin next Saturday night with more commemorative events.

These solemn occasions will weigh heavily on millions of Israelis – from those who lost loved ones on October 7, to those whose family members are still held captive by Hamas, to the parents and spouses of soldiers who have died since, trying to bring the kidnapped home and decisively defeat Israel’s enemies. Add to that the spouses of reservists who have been torn from home repeatedly over the past year, their children struggling to understand why their fathers have left yet again, and the parents of soldiers and reservists whose breath is at times simply taken away by the constant anxiety and concern for their sons and daughters very much in harm’s way.

Will Iran succeed?

ISRAEL, AFTER this type of year, is a changed country – and that is even before this multifront war has run its course. The traumas everyone in varying degrees has suffered over the course of the past year will leave deep marks that will have far-reaching societal and political consequences for years and decades to come.

One such consequence will be to take the enemy at his word, something Israel has historically, and at its own peril, failed to do.

For years, Iran has preached Israel’s destruction. The Islamic Republic’s revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, burned with a theological and ideological hatred of Israel, declaring the Jewish state a “usurper” just months after taking power in 1979. The ayatollahs believed it then and believe it even more fervently today.

When Iran’s fanatical president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a “World Without Zionism” conference in Tehran in 2005 and said Israel was a “disgraceful blot” that should be “wiped off the face of the earth,” there were learned debates, including in Israel, about whether he really said “wiped off the face of the earth,” when quoting a comment he attributed to Khomeini, or merely said that the regime in Jerusalem “must vanish from the page of time.”

The meaning is clear and has been clear since 1979: Iran wants to destroy Israel. Many have not taken those threats seriously.

Ditto Hamas, whose foundational documents call for the destruction of Israel. Even though the terrorist organization’s ideology is all there in black and white, Israel chose to turn a blind eye to these documents, believing variously that they had been changed or that what was written or said by its fanatical preachers was aspirational yearnings that Hamas realized would never be fulfilled.

Except that they did mean it, very much so.

In going down that “they can’t really mean it” route, Israel was falling into well-worn patterns. Consider the Oslo Accords.

In 1994, some eight months after the Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn and many imagined that they heard the fluttering of the doves of peace, PLO head Yasser Arafat went to a Johannesburg mosque where he called for a “jihad” to liberate Jerusalem and suggested that the Oslo Accords were merely a tactical measure that could be reversed. The Rabin government chose to ignore his words.

“He can’t mean it,” went the refrain at the time. “This is only for his domestic audience.” The same was said about later demands to divide Jerusalem and allow for a right of return for all the descendants of Palestinians who fled in 1948. He can’t really mean it.

Yet he did mean it, and Israel’s refusal to concede to these maximalist demands led to the Second Intifada, because if you can’t get from the Jews what you want through negotiations, his rationale went, bloody their noses, blow up their buses, and then you’ll get it.

THESE PRECEDENTS came to mind this week when reading the minutes of Hamas documents that were obtained by the IDF from Hamas head Yahya Sinwar’s command bunker in Khan Yunis and leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post.

What is telling about the documents is that Hamas’s attack was part of a plan to destroy Israel, to bring about its collapse.

These documents show that seeking to destroy Israel or cause its collapse is not just an empty slogan that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran mouth; rather, it is something they all believe in and consider very much possible. But Israel did not take those threats seriously enough.

For years, Hamas has been threatening to send terrorists across the border and conquer villages and IDF bases. Likewise, for years Hezbollah has said that its elite Radwan Force is primed and ready to invade and conquer Israeli towns in the Galilee, and even periodically released videos – accompanied by doomsday music – of its forces training for such attacks or showing simulations of these attacks.

Israel largely dismissed this as bluster, thinking that the organizations would never try such a move because of the realization that if they did, they would get clobbered.

What the Hamas documents show is that neither Hamas, Hezbollah, nor Iran were ever bluffing. They did believe the slogans they shouted. They did believe that it was realistic to bring about Israel’s demise.

Israelis, for the most part, believed that the country had made it, that it had arrived at safe shores and was a permanent feature on the Middle East landscape.

The Hamas papers show that Israel’s enemies genuinely had a very different idea. Not only the papers, but the discoveries the IDF made this week of Hezbollah attack tunnels in southern Lebanon well stocked with ammunition and equipment for an October 7-type attack on the North show that the fanatical words were not empty.

The only difference between Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran had to do, according to the Hamas documents, with timing. They all bought into the “big project” – the code name given to Hamas’s plan for a major attack that would cause a regional war and bring about Israel’s destruction – they were just disagreeing about when to launch it.

Hamas said the time was ripe now, as the country was deeply divided and before Israel developed a laser defense system against its rockets and drones, while Hezbollah and Iran thought that more time was needed.

What is striking about this is that all three genuinely believed Israel could be destroyed and, as a result, were keen on developing concrete plans to bring it about.

The lesson: when your enemies say they want to destroy you, take them seriously – they are neither bluffing nor posturing. Taking them seriously means denying them the capability to ever carry out their plans.

The traumas experienced by the entire country since October 7 will ensure that this lesson from the massacre and its aftermath will be learned, something sure to shape policy decisions now for generations.