Hassan Nasrallah crushed: The end of an 18-year reign of terror - opinion

With a heavy delay of 18 years, Hassan Nasrallah met his death yesterday. He managed to terrorize and intimidate an entire nation for over two decades. He established a balance of fear and deterrence against the most powerful regional force around. He lashed out, attacked, humiliated, threatened, and in the last year and a half, crossed all redlines and broke all the rules between us and him.

He lost the little fear he had. Yesterday, he lost his life in the most fitting way: crushed under 60 to 80 tons of bombs dropped on his hiding place by the world's most efficient and precise air force, guided by jaw-dropping intelligence from Israeli Military Intelligence.

Nasrallah died like a lizard in its burrow. It is unclear if there is anything left to bury. This event, along with all the amazing operations attributed to Israel in the past month, will resonate in the Middle East for many years.

We still have 101 hostages in Gaza, and every day without them is a colossal failure for Israel. It will take us a long time to rebuild the scorched South and to resettle the abandoned North. But there is no doubt that we have restored our deterrence. It took us time and cost us dearly, but we have proven that those who rise up to destroy us end up being destroyed themselves.

A patriotic Israeli prime minister would do only one thing at this moment: establish a national unity government. Concerning the current prime minister, I am not naïve, but I hold a modest hope that he still has what it takes to do the right thing right now.

Few are the moments in the life of a nation when it stands before a rare, glowing opportunity for a decisive turnaround. Such is the current moment. The streak of successes by the IDF, the Air Force, Military Intelligence, Shin Bet, and Mossad in the past month has brought us to a peak.

If the pendulum was on the far, dark, negative, and horrifying end on October 7, it has now swung back to a similar height, only on the positive side: Hamas is severely beaten and dismantled. The entire Hamas leadership has been eliminated. Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar will be eliminated sooner or later (it may have already happened). Hezbollah is on the ropes; it has never been hit like this before.

He has no leadership, no "top echelon," no commanders; he has lost hundreds of fighters, and thousands of his top officials have lost many limbs. He is hated in Lebanon, bleeding and confused. Iran, which until a few minutes ago seemed undecided about when to strike us, is stunned by what we have done to the "ring of fire" it established around us.

The Middle East, and quite a few eyes around the world, are watching all this in amazement. On October 7, they were eulogizing us; by September 27, they admire our strength, capability, and determination (even if they won’t admit it publicly).

The collapsing economy and other challenges Israel faces

It is impossible to know where the pendulum will swing now. The economy is collapsing, and the double downgrade by Moody’s yesterday is a terrible omen. Iran is debating its next move; Hezbollah is licking its wounds and arming its missiles. Therefore, now is the time for great deeds. It is time to bury small politics, personal survival, and sectoral interests. It is time for actions that will enter history, replacing madness with sanity and responsibility.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must call all Zionist parties to immediately join an emergency, victory, and reconstruction government. The entry of Gantz, Eisenkot, Lapid, and even Yair Golan would render as redundant the two pyromaniacs who have held Netanyahu hostage in the most sensitive place for two years. The right thing to do is to fire them. They can be dismantled from their influential roles, or perhaps they will resign on their own.

Such a government would make it clear to the whole world that the people of Israel are united as never before against the challenges they face. The American administration would understand this as well. The conditions for its formation would be an agreed election date (say, next October), an immediate halt to all attempts to continue the judicial overhaul and silencing the machine of poison until further notice.

Also essential is to focus efforts on the following: doing everything possible to bring back the hostages; continuing the blitz on Hezbollah until the last Radwan is pushed beyond the Litani River and signing an agreement that cements this situation with solid international guarantees; beginning the reconstruction of the economy and clearing the debris left behind by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich; a solution in Gaza that includes an alternative body to Hamas that will manage it and a subterranean barrier similar to the one we built along the border with Gaza on the Philadelphi Corridor; and of course, establishing a state inquiry committee to investigate the events leading up to October 7.

Alongside all this, this unity government must reach another unanimous decision and publish it—perhaps even as a basic law: Israel’s security policy will change dramatically. Israel will no longer allow any enemy to strengthen on its borders. Even after agreements are signed, barriers are built, and international forces are established, Israel will strike immediately, without warning or prior notice, any buildup that could endanger it now or in the future.

Every Radwan fighter identified south of the Litani will be killed. Every missile, rocket, grenade, or pop gun transferred there—ditto. Every truck, ship, plane, kite, or scooter delivering weapons or ammunition from Iran to Lebanon, Syria, Judea, Samaria, or Gaza will be intercepted at any cost. Every head raised against us will be decapitated. This will be the norm, not the emergency.

The model is simple: Judea and Samaria. What the IDF and Shin Bet have done in the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield, for 22 years, will also happen in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and along the Jordan River. No one will build a ring of fire or stranglehold around us again. The fire and stranglehold will be the lot of those who try. Period. No more "containment." No more firing near Hezbollah members attacking an Israeli outpost. No more wounded by day and flying them to Rambam Medical Center to appease Nasrallah. It’s over.

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi after Nasrallah’s assassination: “This is not the end of the toolbox. The message is simple: to anyone threatening the citizens of Israel—we will know how to reach them.”

If there were a sane and true patriot leader here, the principle would be clear and simple: the prime minister is responsible. For the failures and successes; for the peaks and troughs – that’s how life is. He himself said it dozens of times. So, if he wants credit for killing Nasrallah, he also gets credit for the massacre on October 7. Both are fully his.

The Israel Air Force dropped dozens of tons of explosives on Nasrallah and his gang on Friday. The lessons of July 20, 2006, were fully learned when 23 tons of explosives were dropped on Nasrallah’s bunker but failed to penetrate it. This operation was more precise, powerful, and sophisticated.

According to a publication on the Al-Monitor website, this was the third time Nasrallah found himself in Israel’s sights since the war began. The first time was likely on October 11. The planes were in the air armed; there was intelligence about Nasrallah’s whereabouts; the chief of staff recommended to make the hit, the defense minister recommended, and Netanyahu flinched and stopped.

The second time was sometime recently. The same exact thing. Again, no approval from the political echelon. Perhaps because the intelligence wasn’t stable enough or because of Netanyahu’s fears and nightmares. Or both. All of that doesn’t matter now.

The third time was successful. History will judge what would have happened here if Nasrallah had been eliminated on October 11. If there had been brave leadership here, aiming for contact and uncompromising, changing the face of the Middle East four days after the October 7 massacre, and not a whole year later.

Soon, we will also hear the hindsight engineering of the Netanyahu couple’s trip to New York. The mouthpieces will argue that the whole trip was a brilliant deception exercise designed to signal to Nasrallah “business as usual” so he would emerge from his den and be eliminated. This claim is expected, but it does not align with reality.

Ron Dermer told American National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that Netanyahu would speak at the UN on Monday, two days before the assassination was approved. The intelligence that enabled the assassination arrived shortly before the assassination itself. But it doesn’t really matter. If to get rid of Nasrallah, we had to send the Netanyahu couple to New York, with the laundry and all, then we got off cheaply.