Dear Readers: I am sorry to report that this will be my final time (after three decades!) to wish you all my very best for a sweet and productive New Year and shalom al Yisrael. I will be back one final time after Sukkos, please G-d, to share with you my lifelong reminiscences of The Jewish Press.
After the October 7 massacre, Israel had no choice but to strike back – to dismantle Hamas, rescue the hostages, and reassert deterrence. But how does an army invade a 141-square-mile fortress where every street is a trap and every shadow may conceal a killer?
Gaza is urban warfare at its most punishing. It is among the most densely populated places on earth – a maze of concrete, steel, and human beings. Every footstep is burdened not only by hidden explosives but by the legal and moral weight of fighting in a civilian landscape. The IDF must wage war in what is also a neighborhood, where every decision is measured against real-time global scrutiny and the unblinking eye of social media.
Hamas, well aware of this asymmetry, prepared a battlefield that bleeds into civilian life. In the first 72 hours of its assault, it launched more than 4,500 rockets. Tens of thousands more remained, aimed not just at Israeli cities but also at the advancing IDF troops.
Beneath the ground lies Hamas’ deadliest edge: a subterranean labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers stretching for hundreds of miles. These allow the terrorists to move unseen, to ambush without warning, to vanish before retaliation. The tunnels are both sword and shield – used to strike, then to slip away.
Above ground, Hamas uses buildings as fortresses. Snipers and anti-tank squads can turn a single strongpoint into a miniature Stalingrad. In World War II, a four-story structure known as Pavlov’s House held off a German division for nearly two months. Gaza bristles with dozens of such potential strongholds.
Compounding this is Hamas’s deliberate use of human shields. Weapons are hidden in schools and mosques; rockets launched from hospital courtyards. The goal is simple: force Israel into impossible choices and weaponize the laws of war against those who abide by them.
So how do you breach what amounts to a tunnel-riddled Omaha Beach on steroids?
At the tip of the spear are armored engineering vehicles and tanks, led by the hulking D9 bulldozer – an American-made, Israeli-modified behemoth weighing 62 tons. It clears mines, smashes barricades, and carves paths through concrete and steel. But the D9, although partially armored, is unarmed and vulnerable. Its survival depends on the protective screen of tanks, mechanized cannons, and air support. A D9 never enters enemy territory alone. Yet even with escort, protection is far from absolute. The enemy can erupt from tunnels, lurk in buildings, or pose as civilians until the moment they strike.
For the D9 crews, every advance is a crawl through lethal uncertainty. Bulldozers must break through the very walls Israel once built to keep terrorists out, then grind forward inch by inch – through mined soil, sand berms, and entire buildings turned into weapons. A child can poke his head out of a classroom window and then a second later he will unleash an RPG from his launcher.
This is not a war of maneuver. It is a slow, grinding, street-by-street campaign against an enemy embedded in every alley, hiding behind civilians, and fighting from below. The terrorists finely hone their concealment in a landscape akin to the rocky mountainous terrain in the Pacific islands where the Japanese machine gun crews had squirreled themselves, invisible to the advancing Marines.
The IDF’s challenge is compounded by the nature of its enemy. Hamas fighters are not a conventional army but ideologues who embrace death as victory and view it as their holy calling. It is the ultimate act of terrorist self-fulfillment.
Unlike soldiers who cling to life, Hamas terrorists crave so-called martyrdom, primed by indoctrination from the moment of birth. In their mother’s milk they were instilled with the belief that there is nothing more meaningful, important, and sacred that one can do to receive Allah’s blessing, their parents’ satisfaction (!), and a stipend for their family for their act of murderous insanity. This is not only the long-awaited moment they have been anticipating – preceded by a grim photo of the shahid sporting a Hamas bandana, gripping an AK-47, and looking as murderous as he actually is – but the very reason for the duration of their short lives.
It is their one-way ticket to the World to Come, accompanied by the bliss of 72 virgins. Why lead a law-abiding life encumbered by a day job, tax reports, and family and civic responsibilities when you can acquire eternal paradise by killing a Jew and dying in the process?
No sane person would run into a hail of bullets to launch an RPG or place an IED, but when you are bred on hatred, indoctrinated in school, brainwashed by society, dressed up as a child with toy suicide belts of explosives, we are no longer talking about sanity.
Against crazed youth raised on a cult of death, Israeli soldiers fight for a homeland, for families, for life itself. The asymmetry could not be starker.
To protect the D9s and their crews, commanders rotated them between offensive and defensive positions. Once enough ground was secured for infantry to maneuver, the bulldozers pulled back behind the line. But terrorists always sought to destroy the spearhead – and the bulldozer operators paid a dreadful price.
The D9 operator I spoke with told me that from his entire unit, only the most fortunate emerged merely injured – no one emerged unscathed.
Let us ponder the sacrifice that IDF soldiers make on our behalf and be eternally grateful.