Ten years ago, when I wrote a perspective on the fortieth anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, I noted that between Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran roughly 60,000 missiles lay hidden waiting to be launched at Israel. I also observed the military threat that Iran posed to Israel conventionally and by weapons of mass destruction. This week marked the fiftieth anniversary of that war.

It is by no coincidence then that yesterday, Iran-backed Hamas sent 2,500 of those rockets skyward at Israel. Like 1973, it was a surprise attack on yet another Jewish High Holy Day, the final day of Tabernacles or Succot. And it was conducted with a coordination not seen since the Yom Kippur War when Egypt and Syria used the cover of the Jewish Day of Atonement to mask their invasion of Israel across the Suez Canal and Golan Heights.

In a first for Hamas though—a terror group funded by Iran and seen as the unofficial Palestinian government in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip—this missile barrage was followed-up by a paramilitary land assault. It attacked Israeli coastal towns, police and military installations, a civilian kibbutz and a Gen Z “peace” music festival nearby. It went door-to-door spraying bullets into rooms and cars, cutting throats and kicking corpses on the ground.

Twenty-four hours later, both the land and missile attacks continue despite the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) hitting back. Paralleling 1973 its reserves have been roused, its tanks are on flatbeds and its jets are flying air-to-ground sorties. The response already has a name “Operation Iron Swords”. Yet, as in 1973 no one, including the Israeli prime minister, knows what it will involve nor what its outcome will be.

What mostly differentiates this attack by Hamas with 1973, however, is its deliberate effort to take civilian hostages including women, children, the elderly and the young. As if inspired by ISIS, Hamas has televised these bloodbaths videoing itself defiling corpses, and parading its prisoners through Gaza’s streets.

This is the strategic and operational headache for Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel.

Hamas’ offensive reeks of Al Qaeda and Iranian influence. If, indeed, so coordinated its hostage-taking must be seen as part of a trap to lure Israel into the Gaza Strip which leaves Netanyahu with three bad options:

Air strikes killing Israeli hostages; going house-to-house in a densely populated, sniper-laden and booby-trapped equivalent of what was Stalingrad in World War 2 that annihilated an entire offensive army; or agreeing to a publicised prisoner swap.

Until the IDF can locate and destroy Hamas’ weapons and ammunition bunkers, surveil and close its Sinai supply tunnels, and cut off Gaza’s sea lanes, then every Gazan apartment block may well be a weapons cache set for a long urban fight.

And this doesn’t even touch the elephant in the room. Will Israel risk a counterattack into Gaza at all—or just rollback Hamas across the border?

That answer rests with the ghosts of a Ugandan town called Entebbe.

In 1976 after the Palestinian hijacking of an Air France Airbus A300 en route from Athens to Tel Aviv carrying 106 Jews and Israeli citizens, Israel ordered its Sayeret Matkal special forces to Entebbe, Uganda, where the terrorists had been given haven by dictator Idi Amin. At the cost of four hostages and the Matkal’s commander, the world looked on in awe when Israeli Hercules transports touched down at Lod airport with those freed.

That Israeli commander was Yoni Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother.

So, right now the question remains. After 12,600 Israeli Covid-19 deaths under Benjamin Netanyahu’s watch, are Hamas’ Israeli hostages as valuable as those rescued from Entebbe?

In other words, how valuable is an Israeli life in Israel today?

© 2023 Adam Parker.

Picture credit: “Then and Now a Numbers Game”. Yom Kippur feature by Adam Parker published in 2013 by The Australian Jewish News © 2013 AJN.