Instead, the IDF sought to weaken Hezbollah, attacking both Hezbollah military targets as well as Lebanese civilian infrastructure, including Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. But Hezbollah fought back for several intense weeks during what became known as the Second Lebanon War and held a seemingly much more powerful IDF at bay. It was a

In the aftermath of this attack, Ariel Sharon decided to respond, and shortly thereafter, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield.

The largest Israeli military operation in the West Bank since the Six-Day War, it was designed to uproot the terror infrastructures in the major Palestinian cities there. In essence, Israel took back the cities that it had transferred to the Palestinians in 1995 as part of the Oslo Accords. Israel did not stop there. Committed to stopping the terro

THE SECOND PHASE of the war began the next day. It would last until January 1949, consisting of three major phases of fighting, punctuated by two internationally mandated cease-fires. The first month would be the deadliest of the entire conflict. Israel would lose 876 soldiers and some 300 civilians. The Haganah (which would soon become the IDF, th

Palestinian and German terrorists hijacked an Air France plane and took it to Entebbe, Uganda, where they held more than a hundred hostages, most of them Jews and, of those, many Israeli. In a daring mission that became the stuff of Israeli legend, an Israeli Special Forces team flew to Entebbe on July 4 and rescued all the hostages (save for three