This is not the first time Israel has gone on high alert ahead of an attack by a Republican president on a dictator to its east. In 2003, for long months, panic gripped the country on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq. In the First Gulf War, Scud missiles fell on Israel, and the fear this time was that once Saddam realized he had nothing to lose, he would launch hundreds of such missiles—this time with chemical warheads.
In the end, it turned out that the chemical weapons never existed, and that dictators have two states of mind: in the first, they believe they will survive and therefore do not smash the furniture; in the second, they are already on the run, without the ability to strike back. The transition between the two is usually too fast to plan an attack on the "Little Satan."
Despite the concerns here, there is no decision-maker in Israel who would not vote in favor of an aggressive American move against the ayatollahs' regime. The potential damage pales in comparison to the benefits Israel would reap from the regime's collapse. A senior figure in the system recently calculated how much money—and how many divisions—the IDF would save if a revolution were to occur.
Hezbollah's collapse, he estimated, would happen within weeks, once the money for salaries, reconstruction and weapons runs out. The organization's fate in Lebanon would be bitter—not because of the IDF, but because of the Lebanese. Hamas would fall into a severe cash-flow crisis. The Houthis would not be eliminated, but their situation would also deteriorate. The Palestinian problem would not disappear, but it would no longer be fueled by money and weapons.
Without a nuclear project and the threat of ballistic missiles, vast sums could be redirected to other challenges. The immediate benefit to national security is estimated at 100 billion shekels. Amen.
What can Trump do? Perhaps take an interest in what Israel planned to strike on the very day he himself turned the planes back, a few hours after the cease-fire began. The operation our pilots were about to carry out would have caused a cascading, severe, unprecedented blow to regime targets. It would have produced, among other things, many columns of smoke in Tehran and deepened the damage to the institutions of a brutal government that represses the public.
"They don't know what the hell they're doing," Trump raged to the cameras then, about Israel and Iran. Now he is on his way to doing something even bigger and more consequential.
Where are they?
A veteran figure in Israel's election industry recently said he has never seen sums of money like those now being invested in the concentrated effort to defeat Netanyahu in the upcoming elections—not in 2015 with the V-15 NGO, not in the endless rounds of the early 2020s—nothing comparable.
Here are rich people's problems: what do you do with all the money? Campaigns usually focus either on mobilization or persuasion. In the current era, moving voters from one side to the other is almost impossible. One can focus on getting center-left voters to the polls—what is called "maximizing turnout"—and perhaps, in parallel, run a targeted campaign in the urban wings of Religious Zionism.
It is doubtful one even needs to spend a dollar to mobilize opposition voters. They have voted at very high rates for years. In 2022, there was indeed a small, marginal drop of 2–3% in turnout in places like Ramat HaSharon, Hod HaSharon and the like, the result of disappointment with the "change government." But the assumption is that this time they will flood the polling stations en masse. Avigdor Lieberman, for example, is convinced that if turnout rises by five percent, that will be enough to defeat Netanyahu—the question is whether that is even possible.
In normal times, most of the money would go toward boosting turnout in the Arab sector. But the leaders of the change bloc have not yet decided whether they want Arabs to turn out in massive numbers or stay home. If they believe some of the polls, only two or three seats separate them from a Zionist majority, and higher Arab turnout would shatter that dream. If they believe other polls, raising turnout is essential to prevent Netanyahu from securing a majority.
There is another issue that is discussed less. According to polls projecting 52 seats for Netanyahu's bloc, about 8–9 mandates moved directly to Bennett and another 3 to Lieberman—some due to the judicial reform, most due to October 7. The question is: where are they? In the 1996 election, Netanyahu presented a gallery of disappointed Shimon Peres voters. In 1999, Ehud Barak boasted of well-known figures in and outside politics who had voted for Netanyahu and defected. Where are they now?
How is it that every Saturday night there are demonstrations, but all those religious Zionists or Likudniks who speak of themselves as "the right" have not voted for Netanyahu's bloc for at least a decade? Those who defected to Lieberman are unlikely to appear, since most are immigrants from the former Soviet Union—but what about the rest?
One explanation is that this is not a direct shift, but rather Likud voters who will stay home. When that happened in 2006 and 2021, Netanyahu lost power. When they came out in droves, as in 2022, he won easily.
And here lies his opponents' main dilemma: if there is one lesson from past elections, it is that Israel is too small a country to mobilize half of it to vote while putting the other half to sleep. You cannot blast horns in your camp without the other camp hearing and waking up—assuming, still unproven, that Likud voters are asleep at all.
Criminal aerial highway
After many months of delay, the IDF has a name for the aerial highway along the Egyptian border: "a large-scale campaign to arm the area." It was a late ignition—a natural awakening—after enormous quantities of weapons were transferred into the State of Israel. The current pace is still insane: two tons of ammunition per month.
The affair is as mysterious as it is vast. The main party responsible on the Egyptian side of the border (or, as the IDF diplomatically calls it, "the western border") has not yet been identified. But recently, Southern Command issued an order to treat every smuggling attempt as a security incident unless proven otherwise.
The absurdity is that the drones seen crossing the border toward Israel were purchased in Israel. After all, there are none in Gaza, and in Egypt it is forbidden to purchase a drone weighing more than a quarter of a kilo. Only in Israel is the law not enforced and buyers not registered.
Behind the operation are Bedouin with blue ID cards, unlimited money and access to technology. Their drone skills surpass those of any parallel unit in the army, and the absurdity is that although the event is defined as a security incident, the perpetrators are Israeli citizens—which limits the ability to act against them.
The assumption in the IDF is that the Iranians are operating this vast network. There is simply no way to explain who would need such quantities for personal criminal consumption.
Where is it going? For a long time, there was an attempt to determine whether the weapons end up in the hands of crime families in the Triangle, terrorists in Judea and Samaria, or Hamas killers in Gaza. But in practice, it doesn't matter. If the goal is to undermine stability, any answer is correct and desirable for the Iranians.
In any case, Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021 already proved that the line between criminal and nationalist activity is blurred and porous—about as porous as the Israel–Egypt border.
For now, it is doubtful that the weapons are reaching Judea and Samaria, where rifle prices remain high. Some of it is certainly going to Gaza. Two months ago, a drone en route from Israel to Sinai was intercepted. Soldiers found advanced diving equipment on it. Clearly, the goal was to smuggle weapons into Gaza.
Why not directly from Israel to Gaza? Because that way, even if the smugglers are caught, they can claim it is criminal activity rather than a security offense. As is well known, the criminal activity of Arab crime families is not at the center of law enforcement attention.
