A number of books have now been written about October 7, some of them very moving, even haunting. Today’s podcast focuses on a different kind of October 7 book, and this one is valuable because it is a first cut of the history of what followed October 7, and focuses on decision-making and leadership in the war Israel waged against Hamas, Hizballah, and Iran. We get to see inside the decision-making process as the military and political leaders of Israel determined who would be fought first, how, and when, and how they argued, maneuvered, and bore the weight of those consequential decisions.
That focus invites a particular kind of reading. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides believed that the war between Athens and Sparta, for all its particularity, could instruct statesmen in the future. He called his history of the war “a possession for all time.” Thucydides’ method was to place before the reader the speeches and deliberations of the main actors as they happened, with imperfect information and without knowing how any campaign would turn out. A future general or statesman, pondering what he would have done in the same position, could use Thucydides’ account to refine his own judgment.
Today’s podcast treats the last three years of Israel’s war in a similar way. Joining Mosaic‘s editor Jonathan Silver are Yonah Jeremy Bob, senior military correspondent and intelligence analyst at the Jerusalem Post, and Elliot Kaufman of the Wall Street Journal. Their new book, In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel’s Fight against Hamas and the Iranian Axis, draws on extensive access to Israel’s political, military, and intelligence leadership, and to officials in the Biden and Trump administrations.
This episode takes up three of the war cabinet’s decisions and tries, in each case, to understand the kind of problem the decision-makers thought they were responding to.
These decisions expose rivalries within the military establishment, that establishment’s struggle with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the ways each side used the American alliance against the other. We also see a Netanyahu many will not recognize, one who began the war cautious and only gradually became the author of its boldest strokes in Lebanon and Iran.