In April,former Israeli national security adviser and major general Yaakov Amidror warned that Iran was pushing Hamas and Hezbollah “to act more boldly” against Israel because Tehran believed the months of protests against the Netanyahu government were evidence that the country was weak.
And indeed,Iran has repeatedly said over the past year that Israel is ripe to be destroyed. Just last week,Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted about Israel:“The usurper regime is coming to an end.”
Moreover,credible reports are now appearing,sourced to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah,thatIran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was directly involved in preparing the attack. The reports say the corps organised meetings in Beirut with Hamas,Hezbollah and other proxies to finalise the details of Saturday’s mass attack across the Israel-Gaza border. Further,it’s claimed that Tehran gave the final go-ahead for these attacks on Monday last week.
Iranian and Hamas perceptions of Israel as weak,vulnerable and divided were almost certainly strongly encouraged by repeated warnings inside Israel that the Israel Defence Forces’ military readiness was being compromised by thousands of key reservists refusing to report for voluntary duty and training in protest against the judicial reform proposals.
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We do not yet know if the protests,and refusal of the reservists to report for duty,were major contributors to the catastrophic intelligence failure and breakdown of Israeli defence systems around Gaza that allowed Hamas to overrun 22 towns and villages and massacre more than 900 Israelis,most of them civilians. This certainly will come under severe scrutiny when the reasons for these catastrophic failures – arguably the worst intelligence and defence debacles in Israel’s history – are studied in coming months.
For now,Israelis are still profoundly shocked and united in grief and horror. While these events are being equated to the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001,the impact is even deeper because Israel is such a small country,with only 9 million citizens. Today,there is overwhelming agreement that nothing else matters but burying and mourning the dead,seeing what can be done to rescue the hostages Hamas seized,and dealing with the severe threat from Hamas and other Iranian proxies.
Politically,Israel appears to be moving towards an emergency national unity government,including both the government and leaders of the protest movement.Netanyahu has called for this,and the two key opposition leaders,Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid and National Union party head Benny Gantz,also agree in principle.