Two years ago today, I was awakened by my wife with the startling news that Israel was at war.
Hamas had attacked southern Israel in an unprecedented rampage of murder, rape and pillage that caught Israel unprepared in an intelligence failure of epic proportions. The invasion launched by 3,800 Hamas terrorists led to the deaths of roughly 1,200 civilians and soldiers and resulted in the kidnapping 251 Israelis and foreign nationals.
October 7 was like a bolt out of the blue, a sudden and shocking disaster that would convulse and traumatize Israel and transform the political and military landscape of the Middle East.
It would trigger the fifth cross-border Gaza war in 15 years, the longest and most divisive war Israel would fight. It would lay waste to Gaza and devastate its population of 2.2 million Palestinians. It would create deep tensions and divisions inside Israel. It would isolate Israel globally amid widespread accusations that it had committed genocide in Gaza.
It would set off skirmishes, followed by a war, between Israel and Hezbollah. It would trigger Israel’s first war with Iran. It would push the Houthis of Yemen, an Iranian proxy, into armed conflict with Israel.
And it would set off a wave of global antisemitism whose latest manifestation was the foiled attack on a British synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur that caused the deaths of two Jewish congregants.
Although Hamas’ invasion came as a surprise, Israel had received periodic reports that Hamas, the ruling authority in Gaza since 2006, was preparing to invade Israel. These warnings were downplayed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which was confident that Hamas had been deterred and contained and would exercise restraint in exchange for generous subsidies from Qatar.
Israel’s complacency reminded some observers of its cocky insistence on the eve of the 1973 Yom Kippur War that Egypt had no intention of storming the Bar-Lev line along the Suez Canal in a bid to recapture the Sinai Peninsula, which had fallen to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.
Hamas, an Islamist outfit which rejects the existence and legitimacy of Israel, struck 22 communities, 12 army bases and a music festival on October 7, which has since been recognized as Israel’s 9/11.
The attackers, accompanied by scores of fighters on paragliders and some 2,000 looters, broke through Israel’s vaunted high-tech security fence in 110 places and advanced 22 kilometers into the country. Hamas fired 4,300 rockets and a multitude of drones in the first minutes and hours of the invasion.
The border area near Gaza, from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005, was defended by a relatively small contingent of Israeli soldiers. They were overwhelmed by the heavily-armed invaders. Kibbutzniks fought back heroically, but in most cases were defeated because they were significantly outnumbered and outgunned.
The Israeli Air Force, which theoretically could have turned the tide of the battle in Israel’s favor, was of relatively little assistance on that day of infamy, the worst single slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
Hamas, which had converted Gaza into a bristling armed camp, hoped to achieve several objectives.
It regarded the invasion as a stepping stone toward Israel’s destruction. It assumed that Iran and Hezbollah, its closest allies and Israel’s deadliest foes, would join the fighting. Iran supported Hamas in terms of fiery political statements denouncing Israel. Hezbollah went much further. In a tangible gesture of solidarity with Hamas, Hezbollah launched daily rounds of rockets and mortars at Israeli communities and army bases near the Lebanese border starting on October 8.
In what degenerated into a low-intensity war, Israel responded in kind with bombardments of Hezbollah bases and strikes on its commanders throughout Lebanon.
The Houthis, another Iranian surrogate, attacked Israel on the basis of the same rationale beginning in November of that year. They targeted Israeli-owned and international shipping in the Red Sea and fired missiles and drones at Israel, 90 percent of which were shot down. Israel carried out the first of nearly two dozen retaliatory air strikes in Yemen after a drone hit an apartment building in July 2024 in central Tel Aviv, killing a middle-aged man.
Hamas, too, was intent on shining a light on the long-simmering and unresolved Palestinian issue, which was eclipsed by the 2020 Abraham Accords. These historic agreements, brokered by the United States, were supposed to lead to the normalization of relations between Israel and four Arab states — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
In this connection, Hamas sought to derail Israel’s developing rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, which endorsed but did not join the Abraham Accords due to Israel’s opposition to Palestinian statehood.
Three weeks after the Hamas massacre, Israel invaded Gaza in a massive ground offensive. The Israeli Air Force had paved the way with a concerted bombardment of Gaza that levelled many buildings and killed thousands of Hamas combatants and Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire.
The Israeli army struck major towns ranging from Gaza City to Khan Younis, only to pull out a short while later. Israel’s tactic was designed to reduce casualties, but it emboldened Hamas and enabled it to regroup. As the war wore on, Israel invaded Rafah and the Jabalia refugee camp.
These campaigns seriously degraded Hamas’ military capabilities and decimated 25 percent of its tunnels, but basically left it standing in survival mode.
Since October 7, Israel has lost more than 450 troops in Gaza, killed some 22,000 Hamas fighters, and wiped out the majority of its leaders and commanders, including Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif. Ever resilient, Hamas has of late adopted a strategy of guerrilla warfare instead of engaging directly in combat with Israeli troops.
Initially, Israelis from right to left were overwhelmingly supportive of the war. With the passage of time, they demanded a ceasefire and, in regular nation-wide demonstrations, a return of all the hostages.
Two ceasefires, the first from November 24 to December 1, 2023 and the second from January 19 to March 18, 2025, brought about the release of 148 hostages.
From the outset, Netanyahu called for a complete victory over Hamas and the continuation of the war, prompting accusations that his primary concern was the preservation of his right-wing government and the delay of his trial. Five years ago, he was charged with three counts of corruption. If found guilty, he could be imprisoned.
With civilian casualties in Gaza rising, Israel was accused of genocide, a charge it staunchly and correctly denies. Israeli operations have been aimed at Hamas’ military structure, which is embedded in civilian neighborhoods. In effect, Hamas has cynically used civilians as human shields.
Sixty seven thousand Palestinians, including combatants, have been killed and 90 percent have been displaced in the past two years. Hamas has inflicted a humanitarian disaster upon the Palestinian people on a par with the 1948 nakba, the dispossession of 700,000 Palestinians.
This catastrophe was exacerbated by Israel’s periodic practice of stopping the flow of aid into Gaza. It created hunger and even famine in several instances, further blackening Israel’s image abroad.
On the northern front, Israel’s constant clashes with Hezbollah morphed into a fullscale war. By one estimate, Hezbollah fired 17,000 rockets and 600 drones into Israel from 2023 to 2024, forcing the evacuation of some 60,000 Israelis from nearby towns, villages and kibbutzim.
In quick succession, starting in the late summer of 2024, Israel retaliated. Israel, having secretly rigged the walkie-talkies of Hamas foot soldiers and commanders with explosives, maimed and killed thousands of them in one fell swoop. Israel proceeded to assassinate its capable and charismatic secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, and his associates. And in October, Israel invaded southern Lebanon for the fourth time since 1978.
In precise and deadly air strikes, Israel managed to destroy 70 percent of Hezbollah’s drones and 80 percent of its rockets before agreeing to a U.S. and French-arranged truce that ended the war on November 27, 2024.
By then, 86 Israeli soldiers and 46 civilians had been killed.
Israel, having obliterated its base south of the Litani River, has greatly weakened Hezbollah. Israel still maintains five outposts in southern Lebanon and says it will not evacuate them until Hezbollah’s disarmament in the south.
During this period, Israel’s shadow with Iran broke into open warfare as they clashed in two rounds of Israeli air strikes and Iranian ballistic barrages.
This past June, Israel fought a 12-day war with Iran, during which Israel and the United States separately bombed three of Iran’s major nuclear sites, setting back its atomic bomb program by several years.
Last December, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a key ally of Iran and Hezbollah, was overthrown by a coalition of Islamic forces led by Ahmed al-Shara, now Syria’s interim president. Assad’s fall was a severe blow to Iran and Hezbollah, leaving Syria weak and virtually defenceless.
Israel took advantage of the power vacuum in Syria — destroying much of its military assets, occupying the Syrian side of Mount Hermon and the United Nations demilitarized zone adjacent to the Golan Heights, intervening on behalf of the Druze minority in southern Syria, and establishing nine outposts insouthern Syria.
In the process, Israel has all but eradicated Iran’s Axis of Resistance, which had planned to build an aggressive ring of fire around Israel.
Israel, in the West Bank, has stepped up and upgraded military operations to stem terrorism. Approximately 1,000 Palestinians and some 100 Israelis have been killed. In the meantime, Israel has expanded settlement activity and thereby tightened its grip on the occupied West Bank.
Due to all these events, Israel has never been militarily stronger.
On the downside, a wave of global antisemitic incidents have rocked Jews in the Diaspora since October 7.
Surveys conducted by the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of North America found that almost one in five American Jews were the victims of an assault, threat or verbal harassment over the past year.
Pro-Palestinian protests have taken place in major cities, and much to Israel’s chagrin, a long line of Western countries, notably Britain, France and Canada, have recognized Palestinian statehood.
Israel’s attempt to establish formal relations with Saudi Arabia, the seat of Islam, has stalled due to its resistance to a two-state solution.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has sparked fierce condemnations of Israel, which has never been as isolated internationally as it is today. Arab and Muslim states, notably Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain and Turkey, have been particularly critical of Israel.
Israel’s standing in the United States, its chief ally, has cratered.
Israel had a cordial relationship with the U.S. under the presidency of Donald Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, a Christian Zionist, and Israel scored well in public opinion surveys. But a growing number of Americans demanded a ceasefire and an arms embargo applied to Israel.
Today, nearly six in 10 Americans hold an unfavorable view of the Israeli government, according to the Pew Research Center. Thirty nine percent of Americans believe that Israel has “gone too far” in its military operation in Gaza.
The Washington Post reports that, while most American Jews are supportive of Israel, 39 percent believe that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Among Jews from the ages of 18 to 34, 50 percent claim that Israel is guilty of genocide.
The Gaza war has torn Israel asunder, with many Israelis charging that Netanyahu has prolonged it for personal gain. No less a figure than Moshe Yaalon, his former defence minister, has lambasted him and his government, the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israeli history.
“We have lost our way,” he told The New York Times recently. “Eighty years after the Holocaust, we are talking about ethnic cleansing, Jewish supremacy, clearing Gaza City of its inhabitants. Are these the values of the state of Israel?”
“I fought to defend the Jewish, democratic liberal state in the spirit of our Declaration of Independence,” he added. “What we have now with this government is a tyrannical, racist, hateful, corrupt and boycotted leadership. That must be the main issue for the next election.”
Israelis who have grown weary and disillusioned are leaving in droves. Last year, 83,000 emigrated, 50 percent more than in 2023.
While about 90 percent of Gaza-border residents have returned, and more than 2,500 newcomers have moved there, some kibbutzim, such as Nir Oz and Be’eri, are still in recovery mode.
But hope springs eternal. The Israeli government intends to double the population in that region to 120,000 in the next few years.
In the north, around 70 percent of evacuees have returned.
What seems clear at this point is that Trump’s 20-point peace plan may finally break the political impasse and lead to the release of all the hostages and an end to the war in Gaza.
The vast majority of Israelis will breathe a deep sigh of relief should this happen. They are sick and tired of this protracted war. But the problems that Israel faces in the Middle East will remain intact.