Turn the clock back one year. Israel had just suffered an unprecedented military humiliation, with its precious intelligence services unable to predict the most brutal terrorist attack in its history.
The borders of the Jewish State seemed ready to be attacked with force on multiple fronts, as the initial movements of the war underway today outlined: Hezbollah, Palestinian groups in the West Bank, Hamas itself and even the distant Yemeni Houthis were putting pressure on Tel Aviv.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the longest-lasting prime minister of the Jewish State, commanded a divided country, with giant demonstrations against his authoritarian assault on the Judiciary. His coalition of religious radicals demanded a general reckoning, focusing on the financier of all enemies, Iran.
Bibi’s situation, as the prime minister is called, was bleak. He was forced to set up the now defunct war cabinet with opponents to demonstrate the necessary national unity after the rape led by Hamas on October 7th.
Set the clocks for this October 17, 2024. The psychotic Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the mega-attack that changed the history of the Middle East, is dead. His predecessor as head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, did too, as did almost the entire group’s leadership in Gaza.
Hezbollah saw not only its leader Hassan Nasrallah, but successive layers of commanders and their deputies exploded out of existence. Lebanon is once again under Israeli invasion. The Houthis remain a distraction, as do pro-Iran jihadists in Iraq and Syria.
After two missile attacks on the Jewish state, Iran is exposed to certain retaliation. Thickening the situation, by even sending soldiers to the ally, the United States has so far endorsed the ongoing warmongering while pretending to be horrified by the destruction of Gaza in strategically leaked documents.
That said, for all the negative that Netanyahu’s policies and those of his inspire, it is undeniable that he begins this second year of war with unlikely and powerful trump cards at hand. No ruler of Israel had so much to show in so little time.
This is the main problem, of course. From Sun Tzu to Clausewitz, passing through Marcus Aurelius, generations of thinkers on the art of war warn against pride. Magnanimity is not a quality usually associated with Bibi, someone who not even former allies say is an easy-to-read man.
The risk is that there will be nothing to read and, if its critics are to be believed, Israel’s unprecedented military successes after the October 7th debacle only serve to prolong the power of Netanyahu and his ilk.
Thus, the much-vaunted “redesign of the Middle East”, which is in fact underway, could serve the purpose of establishing a State that, if it was already a warrior since it emerged in 1948, could support its rhetoric in the same religious messianism that guides the Iranian theocracy.
It remains to be seen, of course, what Israeli society, much more diverse and dynamic than its leaders might suggest, has to say.
The country is, unlike its neighbors, a democracy for its citizens — even though there is a clear degradation in the situation of Arabs with that title, not to mention the obliteration of Gaza and the precariousness of life in the West Bank.
As for now the so-called Palestinian issue is being faced with bullets in the territory that belonged to Hamas and with violence and expropriation in the corrupt area under the Palestinian National Authority, the question remains: if it comes to blows, total or partial, with Iran , what will Netanyahu do next?
The suggestions are not encouraging for those who defend the failed two-state solution. But opting for a state of endless war has its cost, and if an icon like Golda Meir had to face scrutiny after leaving power, the current prime minister could remember the end of “Patton” (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970).
In it, the American general who gives the film its title remembers Roman conquerors in their victory parades, in which a slave carried a crown behind them and whispered in his ear: “All glory is ephemeral.”
