SETH MANDEL (Commentary.org 30-12-24)
The arc of history is long, but it bends toward a working air-conditioning unit. That’s one possible lesson from the revelations over the weekend about Israel’s incredible secret missions to assassinate terror leaders during the current war, especially Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
The more accurate lesson, though, might be: There is no arc of history.
The incredible chain of events that took place along the way had to be unbroken, and it was. But understanding what these missions entailed highlights the way success was dependent on the individual men and women and the snap decisions they had to make in the fog of war—and, in the air-conditioning case, sheer luck.
Haniyeh, for example, was killed in Tehran, in a well-guarded safe house. Israeli leaders had decided not to target him in Turkey or Moscow, the only other places he traveled when leaving Qatar. Israel also decided against killing Haniyeh two months earlier. On the day of the planned detonation of the explosive device in Haniyeh’s room, Haniyeh apparently walked out to find someone to fix his air-conditioning unit.
According to the Times of Israel, “He was gone for so long that Israel feared that Haniyeh was being moved to a different room, which would have scuttled the entire operation, Channel 12 said, citing a source familiar with its planning.”
Haniyeh probably thought whoever finally fixed the unit was a godsend, but his
