Israel's War Objectives

 

"The attempt by Iran's proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake."

"This will not deter me or the State of Israel from continuing our just war against our enemies in order to secure our future."

"I say to Iran and its proxies in its axis of evil: Anyone who tries to harm Israel's citizens will pay a heavy price."

"We will continue to eliminate the terrorists and those who dispatch them. We will bring our hostages home from Gaza. And we will return our citizens who live on our Northern border safely to their homes."

"Israel is determined to achieve all our war objectives and change the security reality in our region for generations to come."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives statements to the media inside The Kirya, which houses the Israeli Defence Ministry. (Jacquelyn Martin/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

In Israel, security measures for government ministers along with other officials -- in the wake of a drone attack launched from Lebanon by Iranian proxy Hezbollah in an attempt to assassinate the Israeli prime minister -- have been reinforced significantly. The October 19 targeting of Benjamin Netanyahu's private residence in Caesaria resulted in a direct hit on the home. In a photograph released several days ago, a bedroom window of the holiday home can be seen, smashed, the trees standing before the second-story window, scorched, their top portion torn off by the blast.

As it happened, neither the Prime Minister nor his wife Sara happened to be in residence at the time. Ultimately, although the drones fired at the Caesaria home came courtesy of the terrorist Hezbollah group, the responsibility is shared primarily with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the puppetmaster pulling the strings of its terrorist militias. Iran, in fact, was quick to deny it had any part whatever in the scheme to murder the Israeli Prime Minister, fearful of exacerbating an already-fraught landscape whereby it awaits an Israeli response to its own latest salvo of missiles dispatched into Israel.

Damage to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's home in Caesarea following a Hezbollah drone attack, Oct. 19, 2024.  JNS

One of three drones succeeded in striking the home. Hezbollah's Mohammed Afif representing the group's media arm, declared from Beirut during a press conference, that the organization takes "full, complete and exclusive responsibility for the Caesarea operation. If we did not reach you this time, then we will reach  you the next time. Between us lie the days, nights and the battlefield." That declaration of no-holds-barred will come back to haunt the terrorist group, as it most certainly will the Islamic Republic, who cast the die.

Al-Hadath television news (Saudi state-owned) channel reported that diplomatic officials at the Iranian embassy in Lebanon had been directly involved in the attempt to take Israel's Netanyahu's life in a high-stakes gamble that served as a warning the Islamists are willing to risk all, while at the same time catapulting both the terrorist group and the terrorist Republic into the steely eyes of resolve to continue the mission Israel has undertaken to destroy its Islamist enemies that have earned that goal through their incessant slavering to destroy the Jewish State.

 

Flames and smoke rises from buildings hit by Israeli airstrikes on the southern suburb of Beirut, October 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken several days later happened to have embarked on his 11th trip to the region since the Israel-Hamas war broke out a year ago. Hours previous to his landing, a barrage of rockets was launched by Hezbollah into central Israel, air raid sirens blaring in the country's most populated areas, and residents hurrying into bomb shelters. Before he left, en route to talks in Saudi Arabia, the hotel in which he stayed sat below plumes of smoke from other missiles sent into Israel, that had been intercepted and broken apart.

Israel lost no time in returning the compliment; in the process of which it is clear that Hezbollah, like Hamas, feels ordinary Lebanese citizens are expendable to their larger plans of conflict with Israel for their purpose of destroying its presence in the geography amongst Islamic nations. The history of the region makes it clear that were Israel to disappear, constant conflict would not evaporate and all the various Muslim nations would lapse to peace, for this is not the scenario of reality; tribal, clan and sectarian violence and conflict in the Middle East has been a constant, most particularly reflected in Lebanon itself.

A missile launched from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)