If Israel is going to survive war with Iran, its people cannot lose hope

Amid the pain and devastation caused by the Iranian ballistic missile barrages – by the loss of life and the destruction of homes and neighborhoods – Israel must not lose heart.

Yes, the stories of innocent civilians killed in their homes are heart-wrenching. The images of familiar streets reduced to rubble are gut-churning. But Israel must not lose heart.

That, precisely, is what the enemy wants.

The damage caused by Iran’s missile salvos – while real and painful – pales in comparison to the damage Israel is inflicting on Iran.

Israel is relentlessly striking at Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, its intelligence capabilities, and key installations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and is doing so systematically and with precision.

There is no alternative, we must not lose hope

Iran is launching volleys of 40, 50, or 60 missiles at a time, gambling that a few will break through Israel’s missile defense network and cause maximum carnage. And yes, some do slip through, causing loss of life. But even then, Israel must not lose heart.

Nor resolve.

The pain is real, the pictures are hard to look at, and the reality is cruel and often feels unbearable. But it is something this country – if it wants to survive in this region – must bear. There is no alternative. A nuclear-armed Iran is not something Israel can tolerate.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said repeatedly, Israel cannot allow a regime ideologically and theologically committed to its destruction to acquire the means to carry out that destruction.

If Iran were ever to obtain those capabilities – or build an arsenal of tens of thousands of long-range ballistic missiles, which it is actively trying to do – then the devastation of the past few days would look minor by comparison.

Israelis understand this. Despite deep political divisions and the personal sacrifices everyone is being asked to make, an overwhelming majority of the public backs Netanyahu’s decision to attack Iran.

If Israel learned anything from October 7, it is that enemies who are ideologically committed to your destruction cannot simply be wished away. They will act on their ideology.

The lesson is clear: stop them while you still can. The internalization of that lesson – that painful but necessary shift in mindset – is what this war is all about. Alongside the imperative not to lose heart, Israelis must also do something else: believe in themselves – and in the country’s extraordinary capabilities.

Over the years, that self-confidence has been steadily chipped away, eroded by the drip-drip of voices insisting Israel can’t.

It can’t act alone. It can’t take out Iran’s nuclear program. It can’t defeat its enemies without help. It doesn’t have the leadership. It doesn’t have the will or the staying power.

But over the last week, it has shattered the assumption that it can’t fight back.

This is not a call for arrogance or overconfidence. That, too, can be fatal, as we saw on October 7 – overconfidence in our deterrence, technology, and intelligence capabilities – all of which helped pave the way to catastrophe.

But a lack of confidence can be just as crippling and dangerous.

Before October 7, Israel feared decisive action. We told ourselves that our enemies were only getting stronger, that Hezbollah’s arsenal was now untouchable, and that any strike on it would trigger a brutal barrage on Israeli cities.

We said the same about Iran – that the head of the octopus couldn’t be reached, only the tentacles. That hitting Tehran was off-limits. That the cost would be too high. That we didn’t have the capabilities. That we couldn’t do it alone.

But we can. And we are.

It’s not as if our enemies have spent the last two decades advancing while we’ve stood still. Yes, they’ve developed capabilities. But so have we – at an even faster rate. We’ve innovated. We’ve built. We’ve countered.

It’s dangerous to underestimate your enemies. But it’s just as harmful to underestimate yourself. Do that, and you may fail to act in time to neutralize a metastasizing threat before it becomes irreversible.

The amount of skill, patience, and cunning required to carry out Friday’s strikes in Iran – strikes that took years to plan – proves we didn’t underestimate Iran. It does not take these types of resources to defeat an enemy you underestimate.

But that we executed those strikes shows something no less important: we did not underestimate ourselves either.

And holding onto that belief – faith in our abilities, our resilience, and our purpose – is essential. Especially now, as the difficult and painful images continue to fill our screens, day after day.