“For three weeks, the Jewish calendar turns the height of summer into a time of mourning. Jews recall the Roman armies breaking through the walls of Jerusalem, culminating in the destruction of the Temple on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, or Tisha b’Av, marked by fasting and atonement for the sins that leave us vulnerable to our enemies.

This year, Tisha b’Av, which begins on the evening of Aug. 12, has been preceded by foreboding. Ever since Israel’s assassination of Fuad Shukr, military commander of Hezbollah, in Beirut on July 30 and the killing of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran the following day, we’ve been waiting for the inevitable retaliation.

Israelis are facing the threat with a resilience born of experience. My home in Jerusalem, like many homes across Israel, has a fortified ‘safe room.’ It is stocked with a two-week supply of water and canned food, a solar charger, a battery-powered transistor radio, an emergency light, a go-bag with clothes and cash and copies of essential documents. ‘Startup nation,’ as Israel’s high-tech success is known, has been superseded for now by survival nation.

Israelis greeted the assassinations of Shukr and Haniyeh with relief. Despite the intelligence catastrophe that enabled the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, and the seemingly endless fighting in Gaza, which months ago became our longest war, the precision assassinations deep in enemy territory meant that we were still capable of acts of daring. The assassinations, and the resolute response of the Israeli public, sent a message to our enemies: We’re not afraid.

But the truth is, neither are they. When an entire nation lives under the threat of imminent retaliation, deterrence—the core of Israel’s military doctrine—has failed. Why is it a given that Iran will retaliate? For all our determined effort to undo Oct. 7, the massacre exposed the fragility of our power.

Even as we maintain the pretense of daily life, a part of us is permanently alert. We tell ourselves that we’re steady and joke about the apocalypse, because that’s the Israeli way. But during one recent sleepless night, I literally jumped when a passing motorcycle sounded like an explosion.”

Read Yossi Klein Halevi’s full article in the Wall Street Journal here.