A year on, Israeli society is divided about the lessons of Oct 7

Hawks and doves, religious and secular, right and left – all the old cleavages are resurfacing.

“We have restored deterrence,” declares former head Amos Yadlin of Israel’s military-intelligence service, referring to the credibility Israel’s security services lost on Oct 7, 2023, when Palestinian radicals ran rampage across southern Israel, killing more than 1,100 people and kidnapping some 250.

This has been regained by Israel’s devastating assault on Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group that has been bombarding northern Israel for the past year, displacing some 60,000 civilians. In just two weeks Israel has killed and injured many Hezbollah operatives using booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies, assassinated several of its leaders in bombing raids and sent troops into southern Lebanon to destroy the tunnels, bases and rocket-launchers Hezbollah has been using in its attacks.

Whereas Israeli intelligence had little inkling of the plans of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that spearheaded the attacks in 2023, it had thoroughly penetrated and outwitted Hezbollah. Whereas the mastermind of Hamas’ attacks, Yahya Sinwar, remains at large despite Israel’s year-long war against Gaza, from which the attacks were mounted, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, was killed by an Israeli bomb on Sept 27.

Whereas 97 of the hostages seized by Hamas and other militant groups on Oct 7 remain unaccounted for 11 months after Israel sent troops into Gaza in part to rescue them, the war against Hezbollah seems likely to reduce attacks on northern Israel – at least for a while – and thus allow residents to return safely to their homes. Most notably, neither Hezbollah nor its backers in Iran have succeeded in causing many casualties in their various attacks on Israel, including Iran’s barrage of 180 missiles on Oct 1, in contrast with the massacres that took place on Oct 7. Fully 80 per cent of Israelis support the assault on Hezbollah, according to a poll commissioned by the Israel Democracy Institute, a think-tank.