The Year Badass Israel Made a Comeback

In Alcoholics Anonymous, they say you have to hit your own bottom before you can make any progress.

Israel hit its own bottom on Oct. 7, 2023.

It’s impossible to overstate the monumental security breakdown that allowed a ragtag gang of Hamas terrorists to invade the Gaza border and massacre 1200 Israelis.

In a region where power rules and a fearsome reputation is a life insurance policy, Israel never looked so weak and vulnerable.

After 77 years of being the “strong horse” of the Mideast jungle, 77 years of miraculous rescues, technological marvels and victories over enemies sworn to its destruction, in one fateful day, powerful Israel suddenly became weak Israel.

In all the noise of recent events, from the horrors of Oct. 7 to the continuing tragedy of the hostages to daily political battles to the war against a nuclear Iran and to the U.S. bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities, it’s easy to overlook one extraordinary development: After the nadir of Oct. 7, a fearsome Israel has returned to the Middle East.

I say this not with a sense of triumphalism but for the simple reason that I want the Jewish state to survive, and there’s no way it can do so if it looks weak.

The return of Israel’s mystique began in Lebanon on Sept. 17, 2024.

If you recall, that was the day thousands of pagers exploded in the hands of Hezbollah terrorists, the kind of terrorists who would have loved nothing more than to murder every Jew in Israel.

Notice what has happened since that “pager day” 10 months ago: Israel has never looked so strong and its enemies so weak. Slowly and methodically, Israel has incapacitated the major threats to its borders from Lebanon, Gaza and Syria. And today, with U.S. help, it is incapacitating the head of the snake, the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose stated mission has always been to eradicate the “cancerous tumor” of Israel.

When we follow Israel’s historic war with Iran, we tend to forget that Israel also fought Iran when it fought its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria – what constituted the “ring of fire” Iran had spent years preparing to finally extinguish the Jewish state.

The Hamas invasion of Oct. 7 was meant to kick off that final solution.

“The Oct. 7, 2023, offensive suggested that Iran — through its proxies, chiefly Hamas and Hezbollah — sought to translate its longstanding vision of Israel’s destruction into reality,” former head of IDF Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin wrote in The New York Times. “Documents seized in Gaza show that Hamas believed it had the support of Iran and Hezbollah as part of a broader plan: a multifront offensive designed to overwhelm and destroy Israel.”

So it’s not just Israel’s reputation that was at stake on Oct. 7, it was also Israel’s existence.

The phrase “existential threat” has been bandied around so much over the years it’s almost gotten stale. Not in Israel. There, it is as palpable and alive as ever. Maybe that’s why Israelis overwhelmingly back their country’s military campaign against Iran, according to a poll released last week from Hebrew University. Despite having to brave daily missile onslaughts and duck into bomb shelters, 83% of Jewish Israelis support the war.

The cowardly targeting of civilian areas only reinforces the genocidal nature of Israel’s enemies, which in turn only reinforces the imperative of a formidable Israel that its enemies will fear.

What happened with the U.S. bombing of three nuclear facilities in Iran, including the big one at Fordow, has accelerated Iran’s regional decline. “What we’re witnessing now across the region is nothing short of the collapse of Iran’s decades-long strategy and ability to project influence,” said Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington in an interview with The Times.

Depending on what happens with the “ceasefire” Trump has negotiated, the next few days and weeks will be consequential. We still don’t know the extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program. Much remains up in the air.

But no matter how a weakened and isolated Iran reacts, one thing is no longer up in the air: As far as Israel’s neighbors are concerned, from its sworn enemies to its potential allies, the weak and vulnerable Israel that hit rock bottom on Oct. 7 is long gone, and in its place is a Badass Israel that is ready to help transform the region.

Badass, you see, doesn’t only mean a powerful army. It also means that the safer Israel feels, the more it can use its power to become a force for good; the more it can unleash its multiple resources to benefit the countries of the region. It means that even an imperfect Israel with many flaws can offer its neighbors an aspirational model with more freedoms and economic opportunities.

It means, in short, that the Abraham Accords can one day become the Middle East Accords, when the heroes will no longer be evil theocrats who oppress their people and terrorists who live to destroy, but good neighbors of a Mideast Union who live to grow and create.

We’re still far from that ideal, but the aspiration is also badass.