Israel has every right to strike Hezbollah

Anyone who doubts Israel faces multiple threats to its existence should consider last weekend’s exchange of fire with Hezbollah. Only a quick and determined pre-emptive strike from Israel’s air force saved it from widespread devastation.

On Sunday morning, about a hundred Israeli fighter jets attacked and destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rocket launchers in southern Lebanon that were about to target central and northern Israel. If the rockets had been fired – even allowing for some to be intercepted by Israel – they could have done extensive damage.

In the event, Hezbollah managed to fire about 230 rockets and 20 drones, a fraction of what it had planned to deploy. These did minimal damage. Nevertheless, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed the operation was a success. He said it was revenge for Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in July.

Hezbollah is the most powerful member of an Iran-backed coalition of Islamist groups, known as the ‘axis of resistance’. Others in this terrorist international include Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen and assorted Shia militias in Iraq. All of them are avowedly anti-Semitic and openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Hezbollah announced its intentions in its 1988 open letter, stating that its struggle against ‘the Zionist entity… will only end when this entity is obliterated’. It declared that it would recognise ‘no treaty with [Israel], no ceasefire and no peace agreements’ – sentiments its leaders have repeated numerous times over the past few decades.

These words are not idle threats. According to a study by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, Hezbollah has ‘at least 150,000 missiles, rockets and other lethal weapons, including hundreds of precision-guided medium- and long-range missiles, covering Israel’s entire populated areas’. It concluded that ‘together with advanced cyber systems, this broad and diverse arsenal can cause massive fatalities and critical-national-infrastructure destruction to civilian and military targets in Israel’.

Indeed, Hezbollah nearly did precisely that by attacking northern Israel in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s attacks on 7 October. Fortunately, Israel reacted quickly to the threat and deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to the border with Lebanon. As a divisional commander in the Israeli military put it, if Hezbollah had been quicker off the mark, ‘we would have managed to stop them only at Haifa’ – that is, at Israel’s third-largest city, 26 miles south of the Lebanese border.

There have been regular exchanges of fire across Israel’s northern border from 8 October onwards. The IDF has recently estimated that Hezbollah has fired 6,700 rockets, missiles and drones over the past 10 months. At times, the border area has literally been in flames. Thanks to Hezbollah aggression, tens of thousands of Israelis have had to leave their homes, while many Lebanese on the northern side of the border have also had to move.

The overall, long-term strategy of Hezbollah and its Islamist sister organisations is to try to grind Israel down. They know they cannot destroy Israel in one go, but they calculate that they have time and demography on their side. In addition, they have substantial backing from the likes of Iran and Qatar.

What’s more, these Islamist forces now have allies in the West who are determined to delegitimise and isolate Israel. Not for nothing did Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, recently write a letter to American university students. He congratulated the young activists for forming ‘a branch of the resistance front’ against ‘a [US] government which openly supports the usurper and brutal Zionist regime’. No doubt few American students side with Iran. But there are many in universities and beyond – some naïve, others more ideologically committed – who do support the idea of eradicating Israel.

Israel is strong enough to face down its opponents individually, but it is still facing an uphill battle. The economic and human costs of maintaining the large military it needs to defend itself are high. At present, Jewish Israeli men are conscripted for a minimum of 32 months in the army while women serve a minimum of 24 months. Those who serve in specialist or elite units have to serve longer. Individuals may also be committed to serving in the reserve forces for many years. Admittedly, there are widespread exemptions from military service for certain groups, most notably the strictly orthodox haredi community. Nevertheless, military service puts a huge burden on Israeli society and families.

Unlike its enemies, Israel cannot afford to make mistakes. The pogrom of 7 October was bad enough. But the devastation could have been far worse if Hezbollah had broken through in Israel’s north.

Israel faces an existential threat from Hezbollah, Hamas and their Islamist allies. Their countless declarations of their desire to destroy Israel should be taken at face value. Israel has every right to defend itself against such threats.