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It's not technically culture war, but Hamas has just attacked Israel en-masse, overwhelming the Iron Dome with 5000 rockets and even sending raiding parties into Israel. It looks like Haman and/or Shabak haven't done their job at all, and Israel has been caught with its pants down.
For the culture war angle, I think the biggest question is of retribution. On one hand, Israeli public will now demand a reaction that makes the ongoing Hamas attack pale in comparison. On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?
Nothing, especially as Hamas was smart enough to take dozens of hostages. Bibi was dumb enough to say "we're at war" when in reality it was a limited cross-border raid that affected the immediate vicinity border communities. A war would entail something like the 1967 or 1973 wars which were existential. This clearly is nothing even remotely similar. This miscategorisation has now boxed him in rhetorically and he can't be seen as backing down. It would have been better if he called it what it is: a major terrorist attack/raid.
In terms of propaganda, it seems clear that international opinion is (and should be) with Israel. But what I'm seeing from Israeli military experts is that this is being described as Israel's 9/11. It was a massive intelligence and military failure on their part and once the initial shock dies down, people will be starting to ask hard questions of the govt. So there will be a political angle to ramp up a massive response which may not be effective in the long run but needed to save the govt from its downfall.
Israel is now a very wealthy society and appetite for large-scale casualties which a major ground operation would necessarily require is very low. While you could do a lot of bombings which would level entire neighborhoods, you'd also risk killing your own hostages. It's really a gigantic failure on the part of Israel. I don't really see any good option for them. Gaza is this problem that they can't seem to solve and govt advisors have talked about "mowing the lawn" in the past, as you'd need to continually launch mini operations to degrade the militants' capabilities without actually solving anything at a root level.
I think this ties into Israel's larger failure of solving the issue with the West Bank situation. The left's "land for peace" formula is dead but the right-wing's continued settlement expansion invariably leads to ethnic tension. Bibi used to be good at "managing the crisis" which allowed the mainstream of Israeli society to sort of forget that there ever was an unresolved issue. This year has seen as a huge uptick in terrorist attacks and now this latest Gaza crisis just compounds the issue.
In a very weird way, Israel is safer externally than it has ever been from invasions from other Arab countries with Saudi normalisation on the tangible horizon adding to the Abraham Accords. On the other hand, the internal situation keeps deteriorating and not just between Moslems and Jews but even between religious and secular Jews. Seems like the place is just a perpetual cauldron of unrest.
Bibi is right. Israel has an image of deadly effective military and the initial attack has bloodied that image.
So he needs to respond with overwhelming force to restore the image.
It isn’t about the particulars here but the next invasion.
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First - don't underestimate the willingness of Israel to pay the butcher's bill. Second - there is always the Russian approach.
I am sure that Israel could outbid the Palestinians from Hamas on pointed extreme cruelty. And don't forget that half the country has Slavic roots. We can be very savage and cruel when push comes to shove.
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Yes, there are no good options for Israel with Gaza. The “best” solution would be to occupy and pacify it wholly, but it would be extraordinarily expensive, extremely bloody and would make relations with the Arab world worse. What they have always wanted to do is give it ot Egypt or even anothe Arab country, but of course nobody wants them, partially because it would be ‘surrender’ and partially because they’re 2m people with zero human capital and a high birthrate in a time of high youth unemployment etc etc.
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This was sort of my reading of what Hamas's goal is - do a very visible strike that lays bare the hollowness of Israel's invulnerable image (which is also, for instance, a basis for a lot of Israel's weapons trade), try to hunker down and weather the inevitable response, and once it dies down allow Israel to destabilize itself in internal recriminations.
Of course, Israelis also probably know that Hamas might want something like this, which would increase willingness to go the whole hog in attacking Gaza and Hamas so as to not allow them a win...
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