Israel’s Tet Moment with Hamas Should be a Wake-Up Call for the West
Israel’s Tet Moment with Hamas Should be a Wake-Up Call for the West
One of the useful things about history is that when some new, significant event occurs, people can compare that new event to past events, as a means of understanding what is happening. However, it is only a useful exercise, if we get it right.
After the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, pundits and regular folks tried to compare what Israel endured to historical events that we felt were similar enough to provide context.
Many comparisons were made comparing October 7 with September 11, 2001, which is when the al-Qaida terrorist network attacked the United States. This event, of course, then led America to launch a largely futile 20-year war in Afghanistan. For many Americans, that made sense. Islamic Jihadist terrorists, out of the blue, launch attacks on a nation that the terrorists did not like. Easy for Americans to understand this one. Except…it is an inaccurate example.
Many Israelis looked at October 7 in parallel with another sudden and violent attack on their nation; the October War of 1973, in which Egypt and Syria launched well-planned attacks on Israel, sparking a major war. Hmmm…long-time Arab enemies spring a sudden attack against high-tech Israeli defenses, and break through, to everyone’s surprise. Well, everyone in Israel seemed surprised…
Again, not the best comparison, though a bit closer. Not until I read the Substack article published by the Ettingermentum Newsletter at https://www.ettingermentum.news/p/israels-tet-moment.
This intriguing article makes the (I believe) much more accurate parallel with the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. With Tet, American and South Vietnamese forces were caught off guard by a major offensive by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong. This is a better comparison with October 7 than the other examples. Here is why (based on Ettingermentum’s analysis):
The violence of Tet did not really come out of the blue. It was part of a major war in which tens of thousands of Americans had already died. It was just, to the American public, the biggest flareup in terms of an enemy offensive. Yes, it was a strategic surprise, but the attack ultimately failed in a purely military sense. But, the shock in America was huge, in large part because the American government and military had been promoting a PR campaign that said we were winning the war, and it was just a matter of time before ultimate victory. The Tet Offensive proved that lie in a very shocking manner.
Similarly, the Hamas attack on Israel was militarily a failure. Within days, the Israeli military had killed or captured all of the terrorists still on Israeli territory. But, because the Israeli government had for years belittled the real threat of Hamas as an existential threat, the shock to Israel was that much greater. The Netanyahu administration claimed that the Hamas threat was minimal and did not feel that it was anything to address with a major war. Prior to October 7, that is.
The Hamas threat (and behind them, the threat from their sponsor, Iran) was really always there. Just as the military threat from the NVA and Viet Cong in Vietnam was always present in that war.
Lesson for the West
A larger lesson here for the Western democracies that are now dealing with major wars in both Ukraine and Gaza. Keeping our heads in the sand about possible and probable aggression by non-democratic forces (looking here at Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and their proxies) is a losing proposition. The West needs to realize that the next Tet or the next October 7 could prove to be existential threats to our political, military, and economic power. The world is becoming a more dangerous place. The West needs to wake up, just as Israel is now awake to the results of ignoring real and present dangers.
See also, our updated page on the Wars of Iraq (including the 2023 fighting between pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite militias and the U.S.)
