The day after the war started

NICK EICHER, HOST: Up next, October 8th.

One day after the brutal attack by Hamas in 2023, Israelis began coming to grips with their vulnerability.

GORDIS: This was a country very much in shock.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Daniel Gordis is an Israeli historian. He says Israelis were horrified by the brutality of Hamas, but also shocked by the security failures.

GORDIS: It was a country wondering, how does Israel, which has always prided itself on the vaunted IDF, get caught so unaware and so unprepared?

EICHER: How could it have happened? WORLD’s Mary Muncy has our story.

MARY MUNCY: Israeli intelligence reportedly got a copy of the attack plan a year earlier, but dismissed it, thinking it was implausible that a poorly equipped group like Hamas could pull it off. A deadly assumption.

WILL INBODEN: …it's one of those things that you can get it right 99% of the time, but the 1% you get it wrong can be absolutely catastrophic.

Will Inboden was a national security council staff member for the George W. Bush Administration.

WORLD’s Washington producer Harrison Watters spoke both with Inboden and with historian at Shalem College in Jerusalem, Daniel Gordis.

According to Inboden, Israel assumed it had Hamas under control in 2005 when it withdrew from Gaza. So it turned its attention to larger threats.

INBODEN: Israel regarded Hamas as a second or third tier threat at the time, the two main threats to Israel was much more focused on then, where Hezbollah in the north, the Iranian sponsored Lebanese terrorist group that's based in Lebanon, and then Iran itself…

Israel was working on the bigger picture. Iran was developing its nuclear program, and supplying Hezbollah with weapons. So with a massive arsenal and battalions of fighters to Israel’s North, Hamas in the south seemed like a small threat.

INBODEN: And what Israel did not appreciate or realize is that Hamas, largely fueled by Iranian money and weapons, as well as you know, other Islamist radicals in the region, had gone literally underground, right? It had constructed this massive network of tunnels and underground headquarters and garrisons.

Six days after the initial attack, an explosion at a hospital in Gaza introduced a new Hamas weapon, its propaganda machine.

It prompted immediate disagreements over who was responsible and how many people were killed or injured. Hamas and others blamed Israel, but American and Israeli intelligence told Biden otherwise and the President said so during his first visit to Israel in wartime.

BIDEN: I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday. And based on what I’ve seen, it appears it was done by the other team. Not you.

Inboden says that on top of U.S. military aid, intelligence sharing, and rallying allies, Biden’s state visit sent a strong message.

INBODEN: Even though Biden has had a lot of tensions with Prime Minister Netanyahu, he wanted to stand with him there.

A week after Biden’s visit, Israel’s ground forces rolled into Gaza.

And soon, Biden started feeling the political heat

As months of war raged on, devastation grew, and Gazan casualty figures were taken at face value.

INBODEN: The Biden administration has been, you know, putting a lot of pressure on Israel for a ceasefire to either curtail or end its operations.

BIDEN: It's a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. That's why I've called for an immediate ceasefire, an immediate ceasefire. Stop the fighting, bring the hostages home.

A left flank of Democrats faulted the Biden administration for supporting Israel with weapons that kill Palestinians.

PROTEST IN DETROIT: We want divestment now now now…

… and protests against the administration overwhelmed university campuses this spring.

Iran has gathered strength under Biden, but before he took office, then-President Donald Trump followed what he called the maximum pressure campaign. Under it, the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, had a key Iranian general killed, and dialed up economic sanctions. President Biden sought to reverse course and offered to lift sanctions in exchange for oversight of nuclear development.

INBODEN: Interestingly, Ayatollah Khamenei, who is the Islamist theocratic dictator in Iran, had no interest in that. He doesn't trust any Americans, but he smelled weakness. He kind of pocketed their concessions. And he in turn, increased his aggressive activities throughout the broader Middle East.

Intelligence sources say Iran provided financial support, weapons, and training for Hamas militants who carried out the October 7th attacks.

One year after the war began, historian Daniel Gordis says that despite the damage Israel has inflicted on Hamas, it would be a mistake to say victory is at hand.

GORDIS: You are underestimating the rapidity with which they are recruiting new people, you're underestimating the way in which they're raising tons of money by stealing not most, but all of the humanitarian aid and then keeping some for themselves and then selling the rest to Gazans at obscene prices.

But for many Israelis, the most important goal has not been achieved.

GORDIS: We have 101 hostages still in Gaza. The government estimates that possibly 50 of them are still alive. Probably 50 of them are dead.

Late last year, Israel and its partners negotiated the release of nearly half of the 250 or so hostages. It has also rescued eight more people alive since then, but many remain unaccounted for. Inboden says the United States’ pressure on Israel to compromise to get a ceasefire deal may be contributing to the delay in freeing them.

INBODEN: When Hamas sees Israel being isolated from the United States, it certainly makes them, you know, less willing to negotiate for some sort of better settlement, or put down their arms.

Cease-fire negotiations are now off the table as Israel battles Hezbollah to the north in Lebanon. It’s also considering options to avenge a missile attack last week by Iran that targeted civilians in Tel Aviv.

GORDIS: This is getting to be very big. I don't think anybody expected this a year ago.

Gordis says what began as a war in Gaza has mushroomed into a multi-front conflict. Iran’s proxies the Houthi rebels in Yemen have attacked shipping in the Red Sea. Hezbollah fighters have displaced 60,000 Israeli civilians near the northern border, and soon Israel will likely be fighting Iran itself too.

GORDIS: This is clearly an axis of evil that is not interested only in killing Jews and Israelis. This is an axis of evil that is intent on destroying the West.

As Americans prepare to vote, Inboden says the broader axis of Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea is not something the U.S. can ignore.

INBODEN: We don't have the luxury of isolation or pretending that we can cut a nice deal with one or two of those countries. They're not going to be separated from each other anytime soon. They forged a real bond against us, and we just need to confront that reality.

For Israel, Gordis believes the Hamas attack has changed the nation’s outlook on the world.

GORDIS: I think Israel is going to become a country much more like Sparta, not at the expense of Athens, but in addition to Athens.

Meaning that while Athens in ancient Greece was the center of culture and liberal democracy, Sparta was a military society that prioritized battle-readiness and Israel needs to be both.

For WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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