Israel, Iran, and Magical Enchantments

Leaders around the world (including from Russia, which you'd think would be a joke, but here we are...) are calling for Israeli restraint following Iran's attack late Saturday night, yet how many of these leaders are also calling for action against Hezbollah, which has been attacking Israel nearly every day since October 8th? More than 100,000 residents of our northern communities have been internally displaced for six months, and the homes they left behind have been damaged and, in some cases, destroyed. These attacks are sometimes deadly – on several occasions, people have been wounded and killed.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 was approved in 2006, and according to Wikipedia, "the resolution calls for a full cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon to be replaced by Lebanese and UNIFIL forces deploying to southern Lebanon, and the disarmament of armed groups including Hezbollah." In addition, other than UNIFIL and the Lebanese, the resolution states that no other armed forces (such as Hezbollah) will be allowed to operate south of the Litani River.

So here we have a binding UN Security Council resolution intended to disarm Hezbollah and keep them out of Southern Lebanon, yet the UN has done nothing to ensure that either of these stipulations are being enforced. Hezbollah, as you hopefully know, is an Iranian proxy, and is supported by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force. The Quds Force is responsible for extraterritorial operations and, in addition to Hezbollah, provides support for Hamas, the Houthis, and Shia militias in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In other words, the Quds Force essentially exists to provide Iranian support for terrorists around the region in their operations. Quds (or al-Quds) is the Arabic word for Jerusalem.

Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the Brigadier General targeted in Israel's pinpoint attack on a consular annex in the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, was the commander of the Quds Force, serving as a liaison between Hezbollah and Iran. In other words, Israel targeted the person responsible for influencing and providing support for terrorist organizations to carry out attacks against Israel and ships passing through the Red Sea.

Since Hezbollah initiated attacks on Israel on October 8th and we’ve responded in retaliation, the world has been silent. Actually, that’s not completely true. Israel is condemned if its response is deemed as being too harsh, but otherwise, they say nothing, as though the Hezbollah attacks are somehow acceptable and not in breach of Security Council Resolutions – I guess that whether or not these types of resolutions are truly binding depends on the context… I also keep seeing comments from people complaining that Israel is attacking Lebanon, but they fail to mention Hezbollah and their regular, deadly attacks across our northern border. The world is either ignoring the situation or calling out Israel as the aggressor, but not taking Hezbollah to task for dragging us into this battle or for what they are doing to our northern residents and communities.

The UN is clearly not interested in doing anything to keep this from happening, and the rest of the world doesn’t want to get involved, preferring to turn a blind eye to Hezbollah aggression – though apparently, the US and its allies trying to deter Houthi aggression is acceptable and to be applauded. So where does that leave Israel in this situation? It should come as no surprise to anyone that if the world chooses to force us to defend ourselves without so much as a word of warning to our attackers, we are going to take matters into our own hands – in this case, by taking out the key military commander responsible for orchestrating multiple violent, vicious attacks on our country from the north, the south, and other parts of the region.

And Iran responded. I’ve lived in Israel for nearly 33 years, and Saturday night was, without a doubt, one of the scariest I’ve ever experienced here. We were made aware of the fact that Iran had begun its attack, but that it would take several hours until their ballistic missiles and drones arrived. What do you do with that? What do you do with yourself, when it’s the middle of the night and you know something terrifying is going to happen, and there’s nothing you can do but wait?

As it turns out, you watch the news while playing on your phone, responding to texts from loved ones and doomscrolling your way through Facebook like all of your other friends in Israel – because who can sleep when your country is collectively waiting for the inevitable to happen? Of course, if you are like me, your mind wanders to strange places – my strangest place was Hogwarts (my dirty little secret is that Harry Potter movies are, for me, the cinematic equivalent of comfort food), when everyone is gathered in the castle knowing that the attack by Voldemort and his followers is imminent, and they are all hoping that the magical enchantments protecting the castle will do the job.

And for Israel, the “magical enchantments” – aka, the outstanding technology and the skill of our military, kept most of us safe. But it was a harrowing, sleepless night. For many (including my son, who was staying with friends outside of Jerusalem), it meant running to bomb shelters and entering reinforced safe rooms. For others, it was watching the skies incredulously as the IDF and its allies achieved a 99% success rate in shooting down hundreds of incoming missiles and drones. I sat there on my couch, watching the television screen display localized alerts with alarming speed while listening to the constant, roaring sounds of military aircraft and the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system (which is considerably louder than the roaring of Air Force jets) screaming overhead.

I’m not really sure how to end this, so I’ll just share what I thought was one of the more interesting things to note about the events of Saturday night. Apparently, the most popular internet search term in Israel during those long, dark, uncertain hours was the word “psalms”.