A military evaluation of Netanyahu’s WSJ framing of the war

"The Post" analyzes claims made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a comprehensive interview with "The Wall Street Journal."

By YONAH JEREMY BOB DECEMBER 22, 2024 20:28 Updated: DECEMBER 22, 2024 20:30

(Illustrative) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a backdrop of IDF soldiers operating in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon. (photo credit: Canva, CHAIM GOLDBEG/FLASH90, IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

On October 7, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF began the Israel-Hamas War horribly, but have reached a point now of unprecedented fawning on the stunning rapid defeat Israel handed to Hezbollah, as well as the indirect contribution that had on the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal published one of the most detailed and valuable accounts Netanyahu has given, to date, of his narrative of key moments during the war. Below are passages of select answers Netanyahu gave during that interview, followed by detailed commentary and fact-checking by The Jerusalem Post.

The morning of

Netanyahu told the Journal that he was woken at 6:29 a.m. on that Saturday morning. Chronologically, this was “hours after senior security officials knew something was awry, but there’s no getting around the failure,” wrote the Journal. “It was clearly not just another round,” Netanyahu told the Journal, adding that he went to the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv, called the cabinet, and declared war. “And I said it’s going to be a long war,” he said.

JP: Netanyahu is correct that the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) completely misread and misunderstood Hamas’s intentions, despite warnings in the years, months, weeks, and nights before October 7.

Accordingly, all senior military intelligence officials involved had resigned or were fired some time ago. The first resigned in February, while two others – the top intelligence analysis official for the whole IDF and the top intelligence official in Southern Command – resigned in March.

IDF soldiers approach the building where former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was hiding before his death in Rafah, Gaza Strip. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

The chief of IDF intelligence resigned in April, though after Iran attacked, he was asked to stay on until August, while the Unit 8200 chief resigned in September. IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi is expected to resign around February-March – a full one-to-two years before his term would normally end. Several Shin Bet officials have resigned as well, though it is unclear if and when Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar will resign early or serve out his term until October 2026. He has hinted that he will resign early as a show of responsibility for the failure. In November, then-defense minister Yoav Gallant was fired by Netanyahu.

This account is glaringly lacking. What about Netanyahu’s responsibility as commander in chief? Netanyahu was prime minister from 2009, save for 18 months in 2021-2022. The defense establishment and much of the Israeli public, including many of his supporters, hold him responsible for being the architect of the idea that Hamas could be contained and economically bribed by Qatar, which Israel actively facilitated.

For fear of discussing this, Netanyahu has balked at the Israeli precedent from the Yom Kippur War, refusing to allow a state inquiry – as the IDF is due to publish a year-long inquiry of itself in the coming months.

In addition, Netanyahu’s critics and parts of the defense establishment blame Netanyahu for making the military look vulnerable by pushing through his judicial reform legislation and ignoring intelligence warnings about the impacts on Israeli security and readiness. This is more controversial and split down political lines because many Netanyahu supporters are in favor of the judicial reform, and some of the defense establishment was aghast at threats by reservists to refuse to serve.

Choosing a front

The Journal reported that on October 11, four days after the massacre, “the defense minister and the military chiefs suggested we go after Lebanon. That is, shift the whole war North, against Hezbollah, and leave Hamas intact in the south,” Netanyahu said, adding that he said, “We can’t do that.”

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“The perpetrators of the October 7 massacre couldn’t be left to stew,” added the Journal, “and ‘we shouldn’t conduct a two-front war. One massive front at a time.’” But the fog of war is real.” Netanyahu said intelligence had come through that “there were Hezbollah paragliders already going into the Galilee, into Tiberias.” The Journal added that the US urged him not to invade Lebanon. “But if we’re going to be attacked and invaded, what choice do we have?” he told The Journal. “I actually let the planes take off to have a full-scale attack on Hezbollah. And you know why it stopped? It turns out the gliders were geese. I called back the planes,” said Netanyahu.

JP: This is Netanyahu’s weakest point of the war; no one in the defense establishment was telling him to leave Hamas alone. Israel had tens of thousands of troops on both borders and sufficient air power to hit both fronts at the same time.

Mourners gather during the funeral of Hezbollah terrorists, who were killed during hostilities with Israeli forces, after a ceasefire agreement between the two parties took effect, in Maarakeh, southern Lebanon November 29, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/AZIZ TAHER)

Multiple top sources who do not agree on the beepers-walkie-talkie narrative agree that Israel had the same capabilities to strike Hezbollah with that surprise attack in 2023, and one narrative even argues that using the tech-sabotage strike in 2023 would have been five times more devastating than in 2024, due to specific military circumstances.

In hindsight, it appears that the IDF could have toppled Hezbollah in the first month; 80,000 Israelis would not have had to evacuate their homes for 14 months, possibly only the same two months that the war with Hezbollah took on the ground.

A whole one-third-to-one-fifth of the country would not have been partially shut down and devastated. It is even possible that Hamas might have fallen faster and cut a deal sooner, seeing its “big brother” get decimated right at the time that the IDF began tearing apart its strongest battalions in Gaza City.

If Netanyahu were more forthcoming, he might argue that he was simply afraid, as sources have indicated, that Hezbollah would kill 5,000-10,000 Israelis and destroy much of Tel Aviv and that he retained this fear until August 25, 2024, when the Israel Air Force bested Hezbollah in a one-day mini-war.

This single day suddenly convinced Netanyahu that he could beat Hezbollah in a more decisive way – which National Unity chairman Benny Gantz has been loudly and publicly arguing for since June.

Netanyahu is correct that the US opposed a major escalation with Hezbollah at all stages of the war and that all Israeli officials were concerned about the cost of going against the Biden administration on that.

How to beat Hamas

How to defeat Hamas was a major source of disagreement, The Journal wrote. “Nobody had ever fought with such intense tunnel warfare in such a dense urban area,” said Netanyahu. The Journal added that American military experts preferred a fight from the air over a ground invasion.

JP: Netanyahu is right that the US opposed a massive ground invasion. However, multiple sources told The Jerusalem Post that Netanyahu himself, too, held the same position; evidence for this is that the invasion was delayed until October 27, 2023. After the fact, many explanations were given about how additional training time likely aided aspects of the late invasion. Still, in real-time, top sources were pushing to invade Gaza within a week of October 7, arguing that troops were more than ready but that Netanyahu was the source of the delay.

In fairness to Netanyahu, those who were pushing for a massive invasion expected several hundred – if not thousands – of soldiers to die in the first months, but they were ready to pay the price. It appears that it took Netanyahu a bit of extra time to be ready for that price, but then the IDF prevailed over Hamas much more quickly in northern Gaza than expected.

Egypt in the picture

The Journal raised the issue of Rafah that troops were “parked” on the Gaza-Egypt border. “It’s not enough to destroy Hamas if you don’t control the southern closure,” said Netanyahu, adding that not securing the Philadelphi corridor would allow Hamas to rearm. The Journal noted that the US “predicted as many as 20,000 new casualties if Israel invaded Rafah” and quoted Vice President Kamala Harris as saying, “There’s nowhere for those folks to go.”The Journal noted that “When Israel finally advanced in May, casualties were notably low as civilians quickly went to the safe zone by the beach… In Rafah, Israel cut off Hamas’s supply route and later killed [Hamas Gaza chief Yahya] Sinwar. The Biden administration imposed a de facto arms embargo on Israel, delaying weapons shipments.”

JP: The defense establishment was ready to invade Rafah in February, as soon as Hamas was mostly beaten in Khan Yunis, which the IDF invaded in December. Netanyahu is correct that the US helped delay Israel’s invasion for nearly three months.

But, top defense officials said that in private, Netanyahu was also initially unsure about invading Rafah. Famously, former prime minister Ehud Olmert stopped then-major-general Yoav Gallant from invading Rafah in 2009 – there was no real experience with how to do it.

By late March, it seemed that Netanyahu was ready to invade, and the US continued to hold him up. American estimates that it would take four months to evacuate the civilian population, and reportedly that 20,000 of them would be immediately killed – all proved completely unfounded. Sources told The Post that Hamas, for once, actively evacuated most civilians within a week to make it easier for them to add more booby-trapped explosives to nearly every civilian house.

The partial arms freeze not only forced the IDF to hold back in using some of its heavy firepower for conservation purposes, but defense officials have also said that it empowered each of Israel’s adversaries to see the Jewish state as weaker and – even if unintentionally – encouraged them to view time as being on their side if they continued to attack.

The art of concessions

The Journal wrote that “Many senior Israeli officials argued that Israel should make concessions to Hamas to quiet Hezbollah and avoid escalation in Lebanon.” Netanyahu summarized the position of these officials as such: “We’re going to get a ceasefire anyway in the North – either we can get it after the fighting or before the fighting, and it’s going to be the same deal. So, why not skip the fighting?” The prime minister rejected it, “It makes a hell of a difference whether we make the ceasefire after we cut Hezbollah down to size or after we leave it intact. Some had misgivings about using it at all. But since it was time-sensitive, I pushed it through.”

JP: There was a huge disagreement between Netanyahu and the majority of the defense establishment from May through August. For the first time in the war, Netanyahu was on the side that wanted to be more aggressive.

Sources told The Post this had nothing to do with Hezbollah but with Hamas. All three defense chiefs believed that 70 or more live hostages could have been returned during that time period if a deal was made with Hamas.

Additionally, given that the last Hamas Rafah battalion was mostly defeated by late June, they pushed hard on Netanyahu to do so. They believed that withdrawing even from the Philadelphi corridor could be “fixed” – as Hamas would, at some point fail, to release all of the hostages, or would violate the ceasefire with rocket fire, which would grant Israel the legitimacy it needed to return to Philadelphi.

Netanyahu said they were wrong and that once there was an extended ceasefire, global pressure would prevent a return to Philadelphi, which would, in turn, allow Hamas to return to power. However – both at the time and in retrospect – the broader disagreement was less about Philadelphi and more about the Palestinian Authority and who would control Gaza once the war ended.

From October 2023 to January 2024, the position of the defense establishment was against giving the PA a role. But, once some of the more independent Gazan sheiks were killed by Hamas, they endorsed the PA, which would rule in coordination with the UAE, Egypt, the CIA, and possibly other players, along with overall Israeli security responsibility.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a situational assessment on Mount Hermon. December 17, 2024. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

Netanyahu still firmly rejected any role of the PA, or at least wanted to delay a decision on the matter pending the US election. National Security Council chief Tzachi Hanegbi even said on May 29 that the war would need to continue another seven months.

While few observers knew what the military logic was for seven months at the time, it later became apparent that the plan was to hope for a Trump win, which might lead to a more favorable global handling of the Palestinian issue, even if Netanyahu might need to make concessions at that later date.

Netanyahu and the IDF achieved one of the most stunning and one-sided military victories against Hezbollah that any military has accomplished against a formidable adversary in modern times. This, however, was a surprise to everyone.

Even more unforeseen was the incredible fringe benefit of the fall of the Assad regime once Israel weakened Hezbollah and Iran, while at the same time, Russia abandoned Assad for its war against Ukraine.

At the time, the view of Hezbollah was very complex. Gantz wanted to attack already in June, to try to finish before September, to allow northern schoolchildren to return before the start of the school year. The defense establishment was split over the need to attack right then, or to wait until a ceasefire might be reached with Hamas, which would in turn end the fight with Hezbollah without the need for a major attack.

Sources indicated that until August 25, Netanyahu was unsure of how or when to handle Hezbollah, given that he, along with much of the defense establishment, was fearful of the terrorist group’s rocket arsenal. That fear disappeared after the hits handled to Hezbollah. A plan was beginning to be hatched for attacking Hezbollah in October, though the date was somewhat spontaneously moved up by a few weeks when concerns arose that the beeper attack might be uncovered.

Gallant, who had pushed hard to strike Hezbollah in October 2023, was more hesitant about doing so without American support in September 2024, but Netanyahu overrode him on that; Gallant was not dead set against an attack.

What is victory?

The Journal quoted Netanyahu as saying, “I was arguing for ‘total victory, and they said there’s no such thing as victory.” The Journal wrote, “You don’t hear that so much anymore, now that Israel and its leader seem to have emerged on top.”

JP: Historians will debate what the best outcome was for decades to come. Militarily, Hamas was beaten basically by late June. There have been continuous mopping-up operations against smaller concentrations of Hamas fighters since then but little strategic military progress, given that most living Hamas forces went into extended hiding and can remain unarmed and unidentifiable until they believe Israel loses focus – even if that takes years.

Would it have been better to have gotten around 70 live hostages back in the May-August time frame – versus the only 50 still living now? Would the International Criminal Court have waited longer and maybe not have ruled against Netanyahu and Israel in November – if there was already a ceasefire and the court’s intervention might have been seen as disrupting a healing process instead of the judges feeling that their ruling might press Israel to end the war sooner? Might a deal at that time have started the process of replacing Hamas sooner, as well as led to normalization with Saudi Arabia before the exit of the Biden administration? Will the chance for Saudi normalization be unnecessarily delayed for an extended period now?

Or, would ending the war in the May-August period and giving the PA a role at that point have empowered Hamas to return sooner? Would the ICC have come after Israel regardless of the state of the war, given what was already a high casualty toll by the summer? Will a future deal with the Saudis under the incoming Trump administration be better long-term for Israeli interests than any deal cut under the Biden administration?