On October 9, 2023, two days after the Hamas attack that would ultimately reshape the region, Reuters carried a short report on a meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held with heads of southern local councils hit by the assault.
“Israel’s response to the unprecedented multi-pronged attack by Palestinian gunmen from the Gaza Strip will ‘change the Middle East,’ Netanyahu said on Monday. He was speaking to mayors of southern border towns hit by the surprise assault that began on Saturday, a statement from his office said. It did not elaborate on his prediction.”
Let’s imagine the prime minister’s spokesman had elaborated.
Let’s imagine he had said that Israel would largely destroy Hamas, decapitate Hezbollah, take steps that would ultimately bring about regime change in Syria, and – together with the United States – relentlessly attack inside Iran.
Who would have believed him?
Let’s imagine the Prime Minister’s Office had gone even further, predicting that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his top deputies, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and his inner circle, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and key figures around him would all be eliminated.
Who could have taken any of this seriously?
At the time, the country was reeling – bleeding, demoralized, afraid, aghast, and furious. The fury was directed first and foremost at Hamas. But a different kind of anger was also directed at Netanyahu and his government, which was blamed by many for what was widely viewed as a Yom Kippur War-style intelligence and security failure.
Against that backdrop, the words Netanyahu spoke to those local council heads – “I ask you to stand firm because we are going to change the Middle East” – sounded, at the time, far-fetched.
Two and a half years later, those words now sound prescient.
Israel has indeed changed the Middle East, and Netanyahu – in a brief statement to the nation Saturday night, a week after Operation Roaring Lion began – returned to those October 9 remarks.
“As I promised you two days after the seventh of October, we are changing the face of the Middle East,” he said.
Then came the key line.
“But we did not change only the Middle East. First and foremost, we changed ourselves.”
That is the crux.
Because if Israel had not changed itself – and if Netanyahu had not changed himself – none of what came afterward would have been possible.
So what changed?
Israel moved from passive to active, from cautious to willing to take risks, from sanctifying quiet to realizing that sometimes, quiet needs to be sacrificed.
Watching Israeli jets today fly to and from Iran as if they were flying over the Negev, it is hard to believe this is the same country that, in July 2023, hesitated to remove a Hezbollah tent provocatively placed inside Israel’s sovereign territory, fearing that doing so might spark a major conflagration.
Yet here we are.
In the summer of 2023, Israel did not act against that tent. Nor did it respond decisively to a Hezbollah infiltration attack near Megiddo in March of that year or to 34 rockets fired on northern Israel from southern Lebanon a couple of weeks later during Passover.
The paralyzing fear then was escalation. The concern was that it would trigger a wider conflict. The worry was that the upcoming summer tourism season in the Galilee would be harmed.
Just over a week ago, by contrast, Israel struck the heart of Tehran – fully aware that Iran would retaliate.
Israeli leaders knew missiles would fly. They knew millions of Israelis would be forced into bomb shelters day after day and night after night. They knew the economic costs would be enormous, from lost domestic tourism revenue to disruptions across the broader economy.
Yet Israel acted anyway.
Why?
Because Israel changed. Because October 7 changed it. Because the belief took hold that the old way of “managing” and “containing” threats had collapsed and that the price of inaction would be higher than the cost of taking the fight directly to its enemies.
And despite the hardship, Operation Roaring Lion enjoys overwhelming support – 82% overall, according to an Israel Democracy Institute poll, including 93% of Jews but only 26% of Arabs.
The prime minister said that “we changed ourselves.” But that change also reflects a shift in his own policies.
After all, Netanyahu has served in the position for 15 of the past 17 years – years largely marked by caution, by a reluctance to tip over the apple cart, and by a preference for reacting rather than preempting.
That reputation for caution was not only an Israeli perception. It was shared in Washington as well.
In October 2014, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic published a widely discussed article about the growing rift between the Obama administration and Netanyahu. At the time, tensions were high over both the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Washington’s push toward a nuclear agreement with Iran – a deal the prime minister vehemently opposed.
Goldberg quoted one senior Obama administration official calling Netanyahu “chickens***” and another saying he was a “coward” on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat, arguing that, despite his rhetoric, he would not actually order a strike.
Those assessments did not arise out of thin air.
Between 2010 and 2012, the prime minister explored the possibility of striking Iran’s nuclear program. But he repeatedly ran into resistance at home. Senior figures in the military and intelligence community questioned whether Israel had the operational capability to carry out such an attack successfully, and key cabinet ministers were also hesitant.
The result was a familiar pattern: security establishment skepticism, cabinet hesitation, and American pressure all combined to prevent a strike.
Netanyahu himself acknowledged as much last year in a Channel 14 interview, saying that in 2011-2012 he wanted to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities but “could not enlist a majority in the security establishment or among the cabinet” to support the move.
That point is worth remembering. While the prime minister set Israel’s strategic direction during those years, he often found himself pushing against a deeply cautious security establishment and a public that largely accepted the doctrine of containment and periodic rounds of fighting rather than risking an all-out war.
For much of the past 15 years, that instinct toward restraint defined Israel’s approach. Until October 7. That, as Netanyahu himself said Saturday night, has now changed.
“After the great disaster of October 7, I decided to lead a fundamental shift: powerful actions one after another, initiated and surprising actions, actions that dramatically change the balance of power between us and our enemies,” he said.
The fundamental shift is visible above all in his own policies.
Netanyahu also recalled a sign that hung in the dining hall of the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal), where he served: “He who dares, wins.”
“If you do not dare, if you constantly fear failure, you will lose,” he said. “But if you do dare, if you take calculated risks, if you take the enemy out of equilibrium, you break his spirit.”
Before October 7, Netanyahu – whose policies set the country’s strategic course – led governments and a security establishment that were not willing to operate that way. The risks seemed too great, the potential consequences too unpredictable.
After October 7, that calculus changed.
Israel decided it could no longer allow its enemies to dictate the pace, scope, and timing of confrontation. Instead, it began seizing the initiative itself. And that shift is now reshaping the region.
In his remarks Saturday night, Netanyahu urged both the Iranian people and the Lebanese government to take their fate into their own hands – the Iranians by wresting their nation from the ayatollahs and the Lebanese by reclaiming their country from Hezbollah.
What he did not say – but what the last two and a half years have demonstrated – is that the country that has already taken its fate into its own hands is his own: Israel.