operation shield and arrow Confusingly similar to the biennial fighting between Israel and Gaza.
There are always some differences in the details, but broadly speaking: Palestinian terrorists fired a bunch of rockets at Israel, and Israel responded with airstrikes. There are more rockets and more airstrikes. Egypt jumps negotiate a ceasefire, There’s one final rocket salvo just before it goes into effect, and the mini-war is over until next year.
Israel’s Enemies Proved Wrong
There is good reason to believe that Israel’s enemies thought this period would be different and that they would strike harder. Thanks to the resilience of the Israelis, however, the enemies were proved wrong.
Rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon and Gaza in April during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, both backed by Iran, met in beirut, is releasing a photo of the occasion below a photo of Iran’s former and current Ayatollahs. The message was clear that terrorist groups on Israel’s borders are working together under the guidance of Iran.
Days before Operation Shield and Arrow began last week, the Iranian news site Tasnim published a lengthy article predicting an “Israeli winter” in contrast to the “Arab Spring” of the previous decade. The lengthy analysis provides a list of Iran-backed threats from Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza, Judea and Samaria to the sea, and other parts of the Middle East, and points out that Israel has dealt with narrow victories. And that too without mentioning Iran’s own nuclear program.
“The unification of all areas of resistance and the beginning of Zionist rule is a scenario that Israelis predicted a decade ago. Despite this, why has no serious action been taken by Israel to prevent the unity of the resistance fronts?” Tasnim’s analysts expressed surprise, expressing confidence in Israel’s imminent defeat.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Commented on the first day of Operation Shield and Arrow that “95% of Israel’s security problems come from Iran.”
“We are dealing with an attempt by Iran to launch a multi-front campaign against us. My instruction to the IDF and the security branches is to be prepared for a multi-front campaign … If we need to, we can do it,” Netanyahu told a conference for the right-leaning platform Habithonistim, a group of former senior defense officials. said in.
Written by Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies vaccine, “Israeli military officials are now openly warning that Israel’s first multi-front war since the 1973 Yom Kippur War may be imminent.” That war would be “coordinated by the Islamic Republic of Iran, but fought on Israel’s borders by terror proxies of Tehran.”
Iran has threatened Israel on many fronts over the years, but in 2023 the boldness of its proxies and fellow travelers is more acute.
Israel has been threatening for years
The mouthpieces of the mullahs in Tasnim gave some reasons for the times in which Iran tried to tighten its noose around Israel. “Israel is in a worse position than ever to face these threats after the defeat of the United States in Afghanistan and Ukraine and at the same time being involved in a major internal crisis … rapid developments in the region [are] Not in favor of this regime at all.”
article cites Major-Gen. (Res.) Amos Gilead saying that “the Iranians are sitting back and watching how the Israelis destroy themselves.”
Gilad, in fact, wrote in N12 last month that Israel’s internal division over judicial reform, which he called “regime change,” has left Israel with “deep division, intense opposition, weakness in the economic strategic alliance with the United States and severe cracks.
Gilad wrote, “All of this…leads the leadership of Iran and Hezbollah to rub their eyes in disbelief and wonder whether perhaps Israel has decided to commit suicide and undermine itself, justifying Israeli power.” Quite the opposite of the image that was up until now.”
Schanzer pointed out that rockets from Gaza and Lebanon in April came days after Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Galant for speaking out about the judicial reform process, and Israelis flooded the streets in protest, leading to various protests the next day. There was a strike in the regions. He wrote, “Iran and its allies believed they were taking advantage of the chaos in Israel, perhaps even hastening the collapse of the Jewish state.”
The 102-rocket attack from Palestinian Islamic Jihad earlier this month that led Israel to launch Operation Shield and Arrow may have been revenge for its superiors terrorist khader adnan Killed himself through hunger strike, but terrorists know all of the above for sure.
After all, PIJ is more an Iranian proxy than Hamas. As Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhlah said in April 2023, “The weapons the Palestinians use to fight come from Iran. The Iranians either pay for these weapons or provide them. This has been going on for 30 years.” If Iran thinks Israel is weak and now is the time to strike its soft belly, PIJ feels the same way.
Iran’s analysis proved wrong
Unfortunately for PIJ and thankfully for Israel, their analysis was off.
You almost can’t blame Israel for hating Islam; Even in Israel, people feared that something was irreparably broken in our society. Air Force pilots and military intelligence officers were to be shirking his duties, The public is believed to have been going to Europe or America.
Yet in the moment of truth, when the rockets rained down, Israel did not crumble.
For Israel’s leaders, and especially the heads of the IDF and other security organs, this means that they successfully changed politics. While he didn’t want politics to reach the pitch he would have to tune out — Gallant’s distressing call to halt judicial reform in March made that clear — he might have to get used to it.
Shimrit Mir, a former diplomatic advisor to then-prime minister Naftali Bennett, tweeted, “The military needs to understand that the public discourse is distorted.” ,[It needs to] Pay less attention to it and have a genuine internal discussion, understanding that, due to the extraordinary political circumstances in recent years, most of the strategic burden is on its shoulders and it needs to take a more comprehensive approach than usual.”
For most Israelis, the solidarity that characterized society in past wars still remains, despite our internal strife. The army of the people acted as it should have done; It is the very parts of the IDF that were considered a risk to the reserve—the dodgers who are behind the precision attacks that characterized this operation. Israelis open their homes and their businesses to residents of the south without asking whether they are from leftist kibbutzhes or Likud- and Shas-loving cities.
The divisions exposed in Israel over the past few months are real, but they are not what Iran thinks they are. Islamic State strategists, apparently, are not used to freedom of expression in a democracy and for a society that loves to protest, like the Israelis, and mistook this for genuine weakness. An attempt at a multi-front war will have to wait and Israel’s defense establishment is preparing for it.