Yesterday’s newsletter noted that eleven people were injured in the Hizballah drone attack on the Druze village of Hurfeish in northern Israel. Subsequently, one of them—Sergeant Refael Kauders—died from his wounds. Yoav Zitun describes the sophisticated way in which the Lebanon-based terrorist group used its drones to evade Israeli defenses, demonstrating

to what extent Hizballah and Iran have in the last eight months turned the Galilee not only into a land abandoned by its residents, but also into a research and development laboratory for weapons, to create accurate and deadly weapons in preparation for an extensive confrontation with Israel.

So far, nearly 1,000 rockets and drones have been launched from Lebanon, before a “real war” has even broken out in the north. Most of the launches are in daylight, because that way it is easier to aim and hit. The research and development of the Hizballah-Iran axis also surprises the Israeli side, so much so that the accurate and long-range anti-tank missiles have already [appeared in] a third-generation version in the last month.

The response of the IDF is not only defensive in the face of these threats but also offensive in the form of hundreds of bombings of weapons centers, [some] deep inside Lebanon, but Hizballah has used since the outbreak of the war quantities of weapons that could testify to a huge arsenal, possibly beyond what Israeli intelligence knows.

As the Israeli news website Walla reports, IDF officers believe they have “caused massive damage to Hizballah” with these airstrikes, yet the terrorist group still retains the ability to launch more significant and coordinated attacks. More worrisome still is their assessment that Hizballah’s supply of the most advanced missiles remains intact.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.