TS from the Sidelines 
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
The above words were the opening sentence of the famous speech delivered by Franklin D Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States, to a joint-session of Congress on December 8, 1941.
Although the speech lasted for approximately 6 minutes 30 seconds, however, its impact was to reverberate around the world. Ultimately, it changed the course of history as the US, which had hitherto been reluctant to join in the war raging across Europe despite the best efforts of the British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, to convince them to, left the fence and threw its mighty weight behind the Allies in their battle against the Axis Forces of Germany, Japan and Italy.
History, it is often said, has a way of repeating itself. So, some 82 years on, an almost exact scenario played out as Israel was caught literally ‘pants down’ when fighters of the Islamic Resistance Movement, more popularly known as Hamas, swarmed over the border from Gaza in their numbers to carry out an audacious attack on the Jewish state.
At the end of the well-coordinated assault, which lasted for many hours, the terrorists had killed 1,139 people (of which 300 were soldiers) and taken approximately 250 Israeli civilians and soldiers hostage. It was the deadliest one-day attack in Israel’s history.
Sadly, despite the massive military response from the Israelis which has left thousands of Palestinians dead and large swaths of the Gaza Strip a wasteland, a large number of hostages are still being held captive after the dastardly act – which turns one year on Monday.
And in his immediate reaction to the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “is at war” and vowed to exact an “unprecedented price” from the terror group.
Predictably, just like the US intelligence services came under the spotlight eight decades ago for their failure to warn of the Japanese attack, so did their famed Israeli counterparts last year.
The State of Israel, which has hardly known peace since its forced creation on May 14, 1948, has had to rely heavily on her intelligence services to keep it safe from many enemies in the area who are unhappy with the presence of the Jewish state in a predominantly Muslim region.
Outnumbered by an estimated Muslim population of 312 million in the Middle East-North Africa region, which includes 20 countries and territories, to their 9.558 million (2022 World Bank), Israel has defied all the odds stacked against her to remain an independent nation largely, as I pointed out, due to the efforts of the intelligence and military communities.
The core intelligence services behind these are: Aman (military), Shin Bet (internal security), and the well-known Mossad, which is responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counter-terrorism.
However, all three were on the wrong end of heavy criticism following the events of last October. As a result, within a month, the Israeli army announced the exit of Maj-Gen Aharon Haliva, the Aman commander.
However, events of recent weeks in Lebanon has shown once again how formidable the Israeli intelligence services can be when it comes to not only keeping the state safe but also taking their pound of flesh on her foes.
First, over two days (September 17 and 18), it took the fight to one of its most formidable foes, Hezbollah (Party of God), when in many cities in the nation on its northern border pagers and walkie-talkies suddenly began to explode.
At the end of the exercise, more than 37 members of the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group had been killed while over 3, 000 were injured, some of them very serious.
According to reports, in setting up this outstanding attack, the Israeli intelligence services went to great lengths to hide the identity of who was behind it by setting up a dummy company, BAC Consulting, in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, in 2022.
BAC Consulting was licensed to manufacture the pagers which are the original brainchild of a small Taiwanese electronics manufacturer: Gold Apollo.
However, officials in Hungary say the firm was merely a “trading intermediary with no manufacturing or operational site” in the country.
Again, Israel was to secure its biggest coup in recent times when on September 27 it launched a massive air raid on Hezbollah’s Central Command Headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs; this left its leader of the past 32 years, Hassan Nasrallah, and a number of other high ranking members of the group, including a senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Deputy Commander, Abbas Nilforoushan, dead.
Speaking after the assassination, Netanyahu said: “We settled the score with the one responsible for the murder of countless Israelis and many citizens of other countries, including hundreds of Americans and dozens of French.”
He was alluding to 1983 bombings in Beirut that killed 63 people at the US embassy and 241 US marines and 58 French paratroopers at their barracks.
According to reports, Israel’s assault on the leadership of Hezbollah was 18 years in the making, having been conceived as far back as 2006 when the Jewish nation was unable to settle the face-off and was forced to eat humble pie by retreating from its invasion of the northern neighbour without achieving its goals of creating a buffer zone.
On Monday Israel was once again in Lebanon on what it described as “limited, localised and targeted ground raids” in southern Lebanon, marking an escalation in its continuing offensive against the militant group.
According to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), the operation was aimed at the Iran-backed group’s “infrastructure,” which it said poses “an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel.”
More than 100, 000 Israelis have been forced to leave their homes and farmlands in the areas due to consistent rocket fire from across the border by the group, which the 2006 invasion failed to stop.
Although Israel has come under intense pressure from its allies, including the US which has backed it with aid to the tune of $8.7 billion this year, it is very clear that their hard-line prime minister is not going to back down until he achieves his goal of severely decapitating the enemies of the Jewish state in order to make his people safer. This is sadly what the Nigerian government has so far been unable to do given its inability to decimate non-state actors that have made life miserable for many Nigerians.
However, the tension in the Middle East racked up further on Tuesday night when Iran launched around 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the assassination of Nasrallah and Nilforoushan.
And, although, as at the time of writing this piece Israel was yet to respond, however, I have no doubt that its intelligence services will be in the forefront of whatever the government decides to do.
Nevertheless, as events have so-far played out over the past few weeks, it is crystal clear that Israel’s intelligence services have redeemed themselves from the faux pas of last October!
