Managing Your Enemies

At our Rosh Hashanah table this weekend, the conversation turned to the extraordinary amount of reserve duty my sons have performed over the past three years. More than 500 days. That is not a statistic. It is birthdays missed, careers interrupted, families left waiting, and ordinary life repeatedly placed on hold.

We began “reminiscing,” if that is the word, about the summer of 2021. My younger son spent a month hiding in a ditch near the Lebanese border, waiting for a Hezbollah attack that never came. A few months later, before Rosh Hashanah, I drove to his base in the north to bring him and his soldiers a duck for their holiday meal. This was not exactly curbside delivery. I stopped the car, ran over, handed him the duck, and drove away as quickly as possible. The concern was that a Hezbollah sniper might see an inviting target. Israel had recently killed a Hezbollah operative. According to the prevailing logic, Hezbollah would now have to kill an Israeli soldier to “even the score.” Everybody understood the rules.

Those rules came with a carefully calibrated Israeli ladder of response. Shooting at a soldier justified the weakest response. Wounding a soldier justified something stronger. Shooting at a civilian was worse. Wounding a civilian was worse still. It was deterrence by spreadsheet.

The problem was that Hezbollah also understood the spreadsheet. It knew exactly how far it could push without triggering a decisive response. Israeli restraint was not interpreted as responsibility. It was interpreted as permission. At one point, the IDF reportedly considered “creating” a non-existent soldier and announcing his death at the hands of Hezbollah, just to calm things down.

By the summer of 2023, Hezbollah could pitch a tent along the border and leave Israel debating how to remove it without “escalating” the situation. The tent was not militarily important. Symbolically, it was everything. Hezbollah was testing whether Israel remained more frightened of escalation than Hezbollah was frightened of Israel.

Then came October 7.

Israel learned, at an unbearable cost, that enemies do not reward restraint. They exploit it. A threat that is allowed to grow does not become more manageable. It becomes more lethal.

The change is visible in Lebanon today. An American-brokered ceasefire was reached in November 2024. Israel nevertheless has continued acting against Hezbollah infrastructure and operatives whenever it judges that a threat remains. Most recently, the IDF captured and destroyed a major underground complex beneath the Ali Taher Ridge, which the military described as a Hezbollah command center containing tunnels and weapons. Hezbollah and its masters in Tehran warned Israel against such a move. When the IDF disregarded those warnings, it was met largely with silence, punctuated only by the laughter and scorn of anti-Iranian commentators.

The old equation has changed. Israel is no longer waiting patiently for the enemy to choose the time, place, and intensity of the next attack. Israel does what it needed to do to ensure that Hezbollah remains weakened and that Israeli citizens remain out of harm’s way.

That is the lesson: In today’s Middle East, the best response to an imminent attack is often not a proportionate response after it occurs, but a pre-emptive one.

In basketball, a full-court press does not guarantee victory. It does something equally important: it denies the opposing team the ability to advance comfortably, organize deliberately, and dictate the pace of the game. The same principle applies in the Middle East. Power that is concealed, apologized for, or constantly withheld does not create respect. Power must be credibly demonstrated.

Israel should listen politely when friends offer helpful suggestions. It should nod. It should take their concerns seriously. But then it must do what is required to protect its citizens.

For too long, Israel tried to manage its enemies’ escalation. Today, Israel is learning to manage its enemies.

That is a very different strategy.

It is also a much safer one.

Good Things,

Ari Sacher