Israel’s ‘Hand of God’ Operation

A certain type of spy operation is known as a “hand of God,” because to its victims it seems to come with such sudden and precise violence that it may as well have been a thunderbolt. The Iranian general Qassem Solaimani was struck dead in such an operation in Baghdad in 2020, as was Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran in July. (Hezbollah, like Hamas, is allied with Iran.) Everyone presumes that mortals in Israel are responsible for Pager-geddon, but the aura of divine wrath is the same, except here multiplied by a factor of a thousand or more.