The October 8th War

Excerpt

An unfathomable number of keystrokes (we don’t talk about spilling ink because that’s no longer a thing) was devoted yesterday to the anniversary of the October 7 massacre. Appropriately so. That attack by the Hamas terrorist organization kicked off a seven-front war that has now dragged on for a year. However, when historians look back on this conflict, October 8 may be viewed as a more significant marker.

October 8, 2023, was the day that Hezbollah, Iran’s more powerful proxy, began firing at Israel from Lebanon. The volume of fire that Israel has sustained since then is not well understood. Hezbollah has launched an estimated 10,000 rockets, missiles and drones at Israel since the fighting began. Entire swaths of Israel’s northern territory have been evacuated. The damage has yet to be assessed.

Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Follow him on X @JSchanzer.