One Without the Other Is Insufficient

Over the past 12 months, Israel’s military and intelligence achievements have stunned the world. First came the simultaneous explosion of 3,000 beepers in the hands of Hezbollah fighters and the subsequent explosion of the group’s walkie-talkies the next day. As far as I know, no one has fully explained how Israeli operatives managed to convince Hezbollah to purchase thousands of ticking time bombs. But doing so forced Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah to call Hezbollah’s senior leadership to an in-person meeting, at which nearly all of them, including Nasrallah, were eliminated by Israeli bombs.

Similarly, at the start of the “12-day war” with Iran, Israeli intelligence succeeded in luring all of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) senior air force commanders to a meeting in a reinforced location, which was soon thereafter reduced to rubble, leaving no one to order reprisal ballistic missile attacks against Israel — of which Iran had promised 1,000 — that night.

The same night, the Israeli Air Force, operating with pinpoint intelligence, succeeded in killing most of Iran’s senior nuclear scientists in their beds, while leaving their apartment buildings, and in some cases even their own apartments, intact. Over a period of at least three years, the Mossad, operating within Iran, managed to create an entire drone factory. On the night of the initial Israeli bombings, those drones were used to take out missile launchers and anti-aircraft batteries. These achievements and many others of the IDF will be studied in military academies for decades to come.

MY CONCERN, however, is not with recounting the skill of the IDF and intelligence services, but rather in how we should discuss those awe-inspiring achievements without falling into the trap of a kochi v’otzem yadi (“my might and the strength of my hand [did all this]”) mindset that erases Hashem from the picture, on the one hand, and that of treating dismissively the bravery and skill of Israel’s intelligence operatives, on the other hand. (The latter danger exists with respect to the bravery and sacrifice of all IDF combat soldiers defending our borders.)