THE OBVIOUS AND INTENDED POINT OF REFERENCE for the shattering surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 was the 1973 October War, the devastating invasion that Arab armies launched precisely 50 years earlier, plus a day. It was the last time Israelis awoke to a life-changing assault that its intelligence apparatus had not seen coming, and also the last time they found themselves, officially, in a "war."
Another analogue might be the Tet Offensive, the 1968 Viet Cong surprise attack that changed the course of the Vietnam War. Like the Hamas assault out of the Gaza Strip, it broke out on the morning of a holiday and seemingly everywhere at once; it demonstrated capacities unforeseen in a guerrilla force; it briefly overwhelmed a far superior military; and it produced images that challenged fundamental assumptions about a conflict that had ground on for years.
In Israel, the challenged assumption is that its conflict with the Palestinians can be "managed" rather than solved. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all but disavowed that assumption as he addressed the camera in the Kirya, the Defense Ministry highrise in downtown Tel Aviv: the coming conflict meant the country was in "not an operation. Not a round. At war."
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