Swords of Iron Day 1072: Teruah, the Day of Blasting

Teruah means the blast. It is the biblical name for this holiday, the day the shofar is sounded, and on Swords of Iron Day 1072 the name landed differently than usual.

When I think about my time in this war, still ongoing, clearing Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon and dismantling Hamas in Gaza, one thing keeps coming back to me. None of that infrastructure appeared overnight. It was not built yesterday.

On Swords of Iron Day 1072, we are watching twenty years of patient enemy work come apart in a single blast.

This Infrastructure Did Not Appear Overnight

After the 2006 Lebanon War, which I served in myself, Hezbollah started rebuilding. UN Resolution 1701 was supposed to prevent exactly that. It required Hezbollah to disarm south of the Litani River and keep the area clear of weapons.

Instead the buildup accelerated. Year after year, while the international community kept describing the border as quiet.

Iran kept the money flowing. Israeli intelligence traces the Quds Force attack tunnel project back to around 2014, and from there it never stopped. Tunnels. Weapons depots. Drone factories. Command centers. All of it underground, all of it pointed at us.

A Quiet Border Is Not a Secure Border

That sentence is worth reading twice.

Quiet is what an enemy looks like while it prepares. Quiet is what you get when nobody is shooting because nobody is ready yet. Diplomats called those years a success. Our intelligence officers watched a countdown.

We learned the difference on October 7. Then we learned it again in the north, and Swords of Iron Day 1072 is the receipt for those twenty quiet years.

Swords of Iron Day 1072: The Blast Beneath Ali Taher Ridge

Then came the answer.

Israeli forces packed the Hezbollah tunnel complex beneath Ali Taher Ridge, near Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, with roughly eleven hundred tons of explosives and brought the whole thing down. The United States Geological Survey registered the shock as a magnitude 4.1 earthquake.

An earthquake. From a demolition. That is the scale of what was sitting under that ridge.

The IDF described it as the nerve center of Hezbollah’s Badr regional division, a strategic system built over two decades. Two tunnel routes running more than two kilometers. Inside, our soldiers found command rooms, weapons stores, generators, living quarters, showers, and a kitchen, alongside Iranian rockets, missiles and drones.

A kitchen. They were not visiting. They were living down there, waiting.

What Hezbollah Was Actually Building

This was not a defensive position. Israeli officials say the complex was meant to serve as a base for the conquest of the Galilee.

• A staging ground for a ground assault into northern Israel, the northern version of October 7.
• Surveillance and fire positions covering Metula and Kiryat Shmona.
• Command and control for Hezbollah’s Badr division across the whole sector.
• Storage for Iranian supplied rockets, missiles and attack drones.
• Living quarters built for fighters to hold position underground indefinitely.

Documented plans, not speculation. A cross border assault, hostage taking, and fire on our northern towns.

A Hundred Thousand Israelis Lived Under That Threat

Tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from communities along the northern border and spent years away from home. Around a hundred thousand lived under the daily threat of rockets and infiltration.

Families uprooted. Children changing schools twice. Businesses shuttered. Reservists giving year after year to guard a border against an attack that was being assembled a few hundred meters away, underground, the entire time.

When people ask why Israel does not simply stop, this is the answer, and on Swords of Iron Day 1072 it is still the answer. We were not imagining the threat. It had a kitchen.

The Same Doctrine Is Being Used in Iran

Here is what should worry everyone, not only us.

This is a method, and it is being applied elsewhere. Iran is doing the same thing with its own underground facilities, most of all at Pickaxe Mountain, the site we covered in Swords of Iron Day 1069. Build in darkness. Wait. Strike when nobody is prepared.

You cannot negotiate with something you cannot see. That is the entire point of building it underground.

The hidden plans beneath the ground have to be brought into the light. That is not only an Israeli job. The free world has to decide whether it actually wants to look.

Amos 9, Psalm 28, and Taking Responsibility

A friend of mine loves to quote Amos 9. “Though they dig into Sheol, from there My hand shall take them; though they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down.”

For twenty years they dug. On Swords of Iron Day 1072 the hand still found them.

Our Prime Minister said from the summit of Mount Hermon that Israel will not allow any terrorist army to establish itself on our border. They will keep trying. We will keep taking them apart.

For twenty years they built. Now we are taking responsibility for defending our families and our country. I believe every person alive has a portion of history entrusted to them, and a decision to make about what they do with it.

Psalm 28:7 says, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped.”

Happy holidays, friends. May this Teruah be the sound of walls coming down.

Watch the Full Swords of Iron Day 1072 Update

You can watch the complete Day 1072 briefing on Rumble. For the previous briefing in this series, see Swords of Iron Day 1071. You can also learn more about the work we do on the ground through the Aliyah Return Center.

About These Swords of Iron Updates

Swords of Iron Day 1072 is part of a daily series that the team at the Aliyah Return Center in the Galilee writes from Israel. Each update draws on Israeli and international reporting alongside firsthand perspective from the ground. Our work centers on welcoming and supporting new immigrants, training ambassadors for Israel, and helping friends of Israel around the world understand what is actually happening here. If you would like to visit, volunteer, or support this work, you can reach us through the Aliyah Return Center website.