This is an existential war, as Netanyahu has always described it

Photo: Flash90

1.

This column is being written from a public bomb shelter, our ears still ringing from the deafening roar of an impact on a street near our home in Rechovot. When we emerge, we’ll see the shattered glass and hear the rescue forces at the apocalyptic impact site.

The explosion, caused by a half-ton warhead, was unlike anything we’d ever experienced. We’d heard countless impacts by now — from Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Gaza — but never anything so deafening.

It was the home front’s worst night since Saddam Hussein launched a barrage of Scud missiles at Israel during the 1990 Gulf War. Around the same time, a young Likud politician named Binyamin Netanyahu started talking about the Iranian nuclear threat, making its destruction his life’s mission.

On Thursday night, hours before the country awoke to the astonishing news of Israeli dominance of Iran’s skies, we were wakened by the roar of jets taking off from the Tel Nof airbase near our home. In peacetime, night flights end shortly after sunset, but in this protracted war, we’ve grown used to round-the-clock missions. Still, this time was different: The deafening noise of hundreds of jets taking off, struggling to gain altitude under the weight of heavy munitions, told us something extraordinary was underway.

Israelis have gotten used to almost everything — even ballistic missiles fired from over 1,000 kilometers away have become routine. But this is new.

During the Shabbos night seudah, 18 hours in from Israel’s preemptive attack — and long after the initial Iranian reprisal had been expected — Israelis sprinted to their shelters. But the booms made it clear that this was a different order of magnitude. These weren’t Hamas or Hezbollah rockets, whose payloads are comparatively puny, but ballistic missiles carrying over a ton of explosives each.

Those without protected rooms in their homes, until now accustomed to seeking shelter in the stairwell, were forced to sprint for nearby public shelters, underground parking garages, and even train tunnels, evoking the 1940 Nazi blitz on London.

Even those spending the night in underground parking garages, as well as the tens of thousands of Israelis stuck overseas as part of the deception campaign preceding the strikes, are hardly complaining. This is an existential war, as Netanyahu has always described it.

2.

Turning one of the most anticipated operations in modern military history into a surprise attack was an almost impossible feat. Yet that’s exactly what Israel achieved in the early hours of last Friday morning. Despite the evacuation of US personnel and the apparent collapse of the nuclear talks, senior Iranian military leaders, Revolutionary Guard commanders, and top nuclear scientists were caught in their beds — utterly unprepared and exposed.

For two decades, Netanyahu has been seen as the boy who cried wolf with regard to Iran. Following his 2009 return from the political wilderness, he was accused of hijacking the defense budget for an attack that never materialized. Then-defense minister Ehud Barak, who would become one of his harshest critics, worked with Netanyahu to plan the strike. But in the moment of truth, Netanyahu found himself at odds with the heads of the defense establishment: then-chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi and late Mossad chief Meir Dagan. The latter would admit after his retirement that he’d worked with Obama administration officials behind Netanyahu’s back to scuttle the plan.

It wasn’t only Tehran that was caught off guard. Earlier this month, Israeli politicos sensed that Netanyahu was out of steam, unwilling or unable to attack. When Netanyahu requested to limit his court appearances to twice a week instead of three, he refused to elaborate, clarifying that the prosecution doesn’t have the required security clearance. The opposition saw this as a cynical abuse of his executive power, and only in retrospect did it become clear that Netanyahu was in fact hard at work planning the attack.

Winding back the clock one month and rereading the headlines and punditry that followed Trump’s recent Gulf tour, it’s clear no one saw this coming.

How many times were we told that Trump had turned on Bibi and was headed for a deal at any price? That the Emirates and Saudis had flipped and staunchly opposed an Israeli strike that could destabilize the region?

Just weeks ago, I watched from the Knesset Visitors’ Gallery as opposition leader Yair Lapid castigated Netanyahu — “You’ve lost Trump” — only for Bibi to smile wryly and give a gesture that said “wait and see.”

We didn’t have to wait long. The coordination with the Americans continued then, with Netanyahu avoiding a public spat and going along with the president as he sought a diplomatic resolution. When Trump summoned him from Hungary to Washington to inform him of the direct talks with Iran, Netanyahu stayed mum and gave the process a chance, confident the Iranians would procrastinate and give Trump nothing.

Netanyahu looked ahead to the expiration of Trump’s 60-day ultimatum to the Iranians, bringing Trump on board the deception campaign in the home stretch. Last Thursday, when the president announced that the talks would resume on Sunday, he already knew.

3.

It’s hard to believe what the Israeli political system was preoccupied with up to the last moments before the strike. For an entire week, Israeli politics revolved around the chareidim and the draft. Gur went all in, with its MK Yitzchak Goldknopf resigning from the government, while the litvish faction dithered before accepting a deal that includes harsh sanctions on yeshivah students. Only one chareidi politician knew what was coming and used all his influence to push for a compromise.

Shas chair Aryeh Deri, who’s been part of the limited security forum since the start of the war, was one of the few Israeli politicians in on the secret. Unintentionally, he and the chareidi parties became part of the Israeli deception campaign. With the government on the brink of collapse, President Trump announcing the renewal of talks, and the Netanyahus preparing for the wedding of son Avner amid leftist threats to crash the event, it was natural to conclude that nothing was happening on the Iran front.

Three hours before the strike, cabinet members were ushered into a closed room without their phones. When the jets took off, the chief of staff and defense officials left the room and the kippah-wearing cabinet secretary Yossi Fuchs handed out sifrei Tehillim to the ministers. Much will be written about the preemptive attack, which eclipsed even the beeper operation, but that was the moment that distilled the siyata d’Shmaya that has seen Israel through its most challenging period in decades.

The best illustration of the new reality was Hezbollah’s unofficial announcement that it would avoid the fray. It was for just such a moment, with its nuclear facilities under attack, that Iran invested billions of dollars in building up its proxies — Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south. Netanyahu has been threatening Iran’s nuclear facilities for 30 years, but even he couldn’t have chosen a better opportunity than the one arranged for him by Divine Hashgachah.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1066)