Go inside Israel’s war room on the day Hamas – Latest News
In July 2024, when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited presidential candidate Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Netanyahu was pictured presenting Trump with a baseball cap that mentioned “Total Victory.”
It was a reference to not Trump’s electoral hopes however to Israel’s war goals following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist assault. Israel demanded the return of all the kidnapped hostages. It additionally sought the elimination of the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza. And it needed to extinguish the functionality of Hamas, or of another terrorist group, to launch one other Oct. 7-style shock assault on Israel.
Nearly three years after Oct. 7, 2023, it’s simple to neglect all the subsequent twists and turns. One great achievement of “In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel’s Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob and Elliot Kaufman, is reminding readers of all the victories Israel has achieved since the day of the assault.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press convention in Jerusalem on March 19, 2026. Netanyahu mentioned that Israel and the U.S. have been “winning” the war in opposition to Iran, with the Islamic republic “decimated” and unable to complement uranium or manufacture ballistic missiles. POOL/AFP by way of Getty Images
Even readers who’ve adopted the war carefully could discover themselves cheered to recall that during a few days in December 2024, after Bashar Assad’s Iran-allied regime in Syria was toppled, “Israel destroyed the major assets of the Syrian military: Chemical weapons, air-defense batteries, combat aircraft, helicopters, drones, the naval fleet, weapons stockpiles, production facilities, and even tanks.”
In solely two days, “Israel carried out 480 strikes, wiping out an estimated 70 percent of Syria’s strategic capabilities. A Syrian rebel commander told the Syria Direct news outlet that it would take decades to rebuild the Syrian army.”
In Gaza, Israel killed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar. It killed Yahya Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed Sinwar, who took over Hamas in Gaza after his brother died. It killed Hamas’s army chief, Mohammed Deif. It killed the Hamas political bureau chief, Ismail Haniyeh, whereas Haniyeh was staying in a Tehran guesthouse that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps used for visiting dignitaries.
In Lebanon, Israel killed the army chief of the Hezbollah terrorist group, Fuad Shukr. It killed the general chief of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut “alongside around twenty Hezbollah military commanders.”
Yahya Sinwar, heart, the elected chief of Hamas, seems during a ceremony for fighters killed by Israeli airstrikes at Yarmouk soccer Stadium in Gaza City, Gaza, on Monday, May 24, 2021. Getty Images
Israel killed “3,851 Hezbollah terrorists and wounded around 9,000 more,” the ebook studies, citing the Israel Defense Force and recounting the story of the exploding pagers. Also killed: “more than twenty-two thousand Hamas fighters.”
On the Iranian entrance, the US and Israel collectively considerably set back the nuclear program and killed the supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “and nearly all of his top IRGC and military commanders.” Israel killed Iran’s high two army commanders, Hossein Salami and Mohammad Bagheri. Israel killed IRGC Air Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh. Israel killed the IRGC intelligence chief, Mohammad Kazemi, and his deputy.
And Israel introduced back from Gaza 168 dwell hostages and 87 our bodies of lifeless hostages, accounting for all these recognized to have been kidnapped.
Alongside the spotlight reel of Israeli and American accomplishments, this ebook offers a type of supercut of retrospectively ridiculous issues that Israeli and American politicians have mentioned alongside the manner. The compilation, in a single quantity, of all these gems is one other public service supplied by Bob, who’s The Jerusalem Post’s senior army analyst, and by Kaufman, who’s an editorial board member of The Wall Street Journal.
“In the War Room”
Israeli politician Benny Gantz bragged to an interviewer in 2018 that as Israel Defense Force chief of employees he had “prioritized cyber and intelligence over infantry and armor,” as a result of “unlike the threat of ground invasion, the threat of cyber is realistic.”
John Kerry, as President Obama’s secretary of state, cited the Afghan military to the Israelis as a model for Palestinian security forces and “an example of how local forces could be trained successfully.”
Kamala Harris, earlier than Israel’s invasion of the southern Gazan metropolis of Rafah: “I have studied the maps,” she mentioned, incorrectly claiming there was nowhere for civilians to evacuate to.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, who has since landed at the Harvard Kennedy School, the place he’s Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order, had written a Foreign Affairs essay “that went to print just before the October 7 attack and arrived in subscribers’ mailboxes later in the month,” boasting that Biden’s insurance policies made the Middle East “quieter than it has been for decades.” He claimed credit for having “de-escalated crises in Gaza” and having “enhanced deterrence” to discourage Iranian aggression.
The ebook particulars variations amongst Netanyahu, his war cupboard members Gantz and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Israel Defense Force chief of employees Herzi Halevi. Those inner discussions — and the parallel dialogues with the Biden and Trump administrations — formed the outcomes in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The personalities additionally mirrored the span of public opinion in Israel’s numerous democracy.
The authors are much less sure-footed when analyzing US and international sentiment. “Widespread destruction became a key driver of Israel’s diminished global standing,” the authors contend. “Videos of Gazan neighborhoods turned to rubble, with nothing left intact for as far as the eye could see, told a story of their own.” And, “a young generation’s first impression of the Jewish state has been formed by the destruction of Gaza.”
A satellite tv for pc image reveals a destroyed residence advanced belonging to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Sunday, March 1, 2026, in Tehran, Iran. by way of REUTERS
Somehow the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of Dresden, didn’t diminish America’s international standing for the younger technology during or after World War II. Any erosion will be blamed not on the destruction of Gaza however on a subtle social-media and on-the-ground marketing campaign by international actors to demonize Israel, coupled with social trends in America comparable to declining church attendance, a flood of Muslim immigration and biblical illiteracy.
The weakest half of the ebook is an creator’s observe from Yonah Jeremy Bob. Here, Bob claims Netanyahu “harmed Israel’s name with US Democrats and other parts of the fair-minded West (Germany is another notable example) by continuing the war for too long.”
He goes on: “Whether the war should have ended in late summer 2024, early 2025 or summer 2025 is hotly debated within the Israeli defense establishment. But close to zero of the Israeli defense establishment supported continuing the war beyond that point, and beyond that point is where Israel’s standing took the largest global walloping.”
Lebanese people go to the Haret Hreik space of the Dahieh neighborhood the place Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli assault final September, following a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024. NurPhoto by way of Getty Images
This timeline doesn’t cohere. It was solely in October of 2025 that Hamas agreed to disarm and to return all the Israeli hostages, lifeless and alive. Count me as skeptical that Israel’s international standing would have been improved had the Jewish state ended the war prematurely, with out getting the hostages back and with out a plan to disarm and dislodge Hamas. And the sniping by the “Israeli defense establishment” in opposition to Netanyahu, an unlucky function of Israel’s home political panorama, is the uncommon Israeli export that America may certainly be higher off boycotting.
So skip that part and admire the relaxation of the fast-paced narrative. Rerun the dramatic particulars of how Israel killed all these terrorists, and chuckle alongside the manner at Kerry, Sullivan and Harris. The victory is probably not totally whole, however for Israel and America it’s already been fairly an spectacular win, particularly contemplating how grimly this spherical started. And the war is just not absolutely over fairly but.
Ira Stoll is a senior author at the Washington Free Beacon.
