In 1666, the Jewish messianic pretender Shabbetai Tsvi was brought before an imperial Ottoman court on charges of sedition. Offered a choice between conversion to Islam and death, he chose the former. Most Jews who had believed in him were quickly disillusioned, but others maintained their faith secretly, viewing his conversion as an act of cosmic redemption, justified through the logic of his antinomian mysticism. While some of these true believers maintained outward conformity to Jewish orthodoxy, others, known as the Dönmeh, followed their leader into the Islamic fold. Cengiz Sisman explains:

After his conversion [to Islam], Shabbetai Tsvi’s worldly and spiritual merit was acknowledged by the Ottomans. He was granted a prestigious name, Aziz Mehmed Efendi. He was clothed in robes of honor and furs and presented with a few purses of silver; he was also granted the honorary position of a gatekeeper, with a royal pension of 150 aspers per day. According to a Dönmeh tradition, several more believers named “İbrahim, Murat, Suleiman, Mahmut, and Yusuf” followed closely in his footsteps. Their wives took the names Zehra, Ayşe, and Melike. Shabbetai Tsvi’s wife Sarah came to Edirne a week after the conversion episode and converted to Islam with the name of Fatima. We are not so sure how many believers followed in the footsteps of the messiah after the conversion event. Until Shabbetai resumed his missionary activity among his former believers two to three years later, the number of Shabbatean converts appears to have remained small.

Exhausted after an arduous conversion experience, Shabbetai Tsvi found himself partaking in a new social and religious world. He lived another ten years that were full of ambiguities and complexities stemming from his new identity as Aziz Mehmet Efendi, which began at the Edirne palace in 1666 and ended in Albania in 1676 as Sabbatai Mehmet Sevi. Interpretations of the conversion and his new identity were fashioned and refashioned during those years, by both himself and his followers. The dialectic between his self-perception and the perceptions of his devotees, his opponents, and the Ottoman authorities caused his identity to oscillate between and across the traditional boundaries of Judaism and Islam, leading to the emergence of a crypto-messianic sect that came to be known as the Dönmeh, who survived until the present day.

Earlier this month, an operative working for, or in conjunction with, Hizballah snuck across the Israel-Lebanese border and planted a sophisticated explosive near the town of Megiddo, which killed a civilian when detonated. On Thursday, another Iranian proxy group launched a drone at a U.S. military base in Syria, killing a contractor and wounding five American soldiers. The former attack appears to be an attempt to change what Israeli officials and analysts call the “rules of the game”: the mutually understood redlines that keep the Jewish state and Hizballah from going to war. Nadav Pollak explains how he believes Jerusalem should respond:

Israel cannot stop at pointing fingers and issuing harsh statements. The Megiddo attack might have caused much more damage given the additional explosives and other weapons the terrorist was carrying; even the lone device detonated at Megiddo could have easily been used to destroy a larger target such as a bus. Moreover, Hizballah’s apparent effort to test (or shift) Jerusalem’s redlines on a dangerous frontier needs to be answered. If [the terrorist group’s leader Hassan] Nasrallah has misjudged Israel, then it is incumbent on Jerusalem to make this clear.

Unfortunately, the days of keeping the north quiet at any cost have passed, especially if Hizballah no longer believes Israel is willing to respond forcefully. The last time the organization perceived Israel to be weak was in 2006, and its resultant cross-border operations (e.g., kidnapping Israeli soldiers) led to a war that proved to be devastating, mostly to Lebanon. If Hizballah tries to challenge Israel again, Israel should be ready to take strong action such as targeting the group’s commanders and headquarters in Lebanon—even if this runs the risk of intense fire exchanges or war.

Relevant preparations for this option should include increased monitoring of Hizballah officials—overtly and covertly—and perhaps even the transfer of some military units to the north. Hizballah needs to know that Israel is no longer shying away from conflict, since this may be the only way of forcing the group to return to the old, accepted rules of the game and step down from the precipice of a war that it does not appear to want.