Hi Gabi, thanks for reading the piece and providing this comment. First, you make a good point about Israel relying on high-tech defense systems at the expense of more traditional on-the-ground technical capabilities. This created a false sense of assurance, something that centuries of Jewish history should warn against having, shouldn't it?

You make the point that the IDF didn't have a lot of options. I would agree that the physical landscape coupled with the nature of its foe, Hamas, put Israel in an extraordinarily difficult situation. And it appears that Netanyahu and IDF leadership didn't think they had any options other than what they did. Yet here's the question: is that true? Did they really have no other options? I would argue that they had no good options—only terrible options, and the question was which option was less terrible. But they did have options.

One option was to pause before bombing—to use the time to secure the border and for the leaders to get their heads on straight. It's a basic principle of leadership that when you're purely emotionally reactive and you can take actions that protect people's safety (i.e. secure the border), then take those actions and no more.

The other options was a counterterrorism strategy—more targeted, happening over a longer period of time, with greater use of surprise, decoys, and targeted confusion of the enemy. The consensus of Israelis, as I understand it, was "We tried this for years. It didn't work. We have to do something different." But wouldn't you agree that this was an option?

Thank you for the respectful engagement with my essay.