In 2019, Aviv Kochavi, then the chief of staff of Israel Defense Forces (IDF), delivered a bullish speech. The IDF, he proclaimed, is “all about victory”.
Assessing that the primary threats to Israel’s security were from nonstate actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah, Kochavi would the following year usher in a new operational doctrine titled “decisive victory”. It envisaged “swift, offensive operations relying on
