Nine Critical Lessons from Israel’s October 7 War and What They Mean for SOF

Thomas Searle

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Early on the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas launched one of the largest and deadliest terrorist attacks in history. The attack and ensuing war between Israel and Iran’s Axis of Resistance is reshaping the Middle East. There are many lessons to be learned from this war. This paper looks at nine of the most important lessons from the perspective of Special Operations Forces (SOF).The U.S. and its allies will continue to underestimate terrorists.

Background: Terrorists are highly effective spoilers who routinely derail U.S. foreign policy, but the U.S. Government continues to underestimate them. President Biden and his administration knew that the terrorist attack in Benghazi in September 2012 and the rise of ISIS derailed the Obama administration’s foreign policy. They also knew the 9/11 terrorist attacks derailed the George W. Bush administration’s foreign policy. And yet, they still underestimated terrorists and were shocked when the October 7 terrorist attack derailed their foreign policy. The Israeli government also underestimated the terrorists and was similarly shocked, even though Israel has suffered terrorist attacks throughout its history.

While underestimating terrorists is a consistent theme throughout history, underestimating Palestinian terrorists in October 2023 seems particularly egregious. The Palestinian nationalist cause had been weakening for years, and the Abraham Accords threatened to make Palestinians irrelevant to the future of Israel and the Middle East. Under such circumstances, violent Palestinian groups, like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were forced to attempt a spectacular terrorist attack to make their cause relevant again. The exact time, place, and nature of their attack was not foreordained, but a major Palestinian terrorist attack should have been expected – and Gaza was the best place for Palestinian terrorists to plan, organize, and train for a major attack. With such an obvious congruence of interests between Palestinian terrorists and Iran, everyone should have anticipated ample Iranian resources to support whatever attack the Palestinian terrorists conducted.