When the news first broke of the Hamas attack early on 7 October, Itai Reuveni and the other reservists in his paratrooper battalion packed their bags and arrived at their muster point well before their call-up came from the army.
The paratroopers did not head south to Gaza but to the northern border, where they believed a far greater threat than Hamas was poised to join the fight: Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement backed by Tehran.
“We’re here to make sure that no one does to us in the north what they did to us in the south,” said Reuveni, 40, a master sergeant who in his civilian life does thinktank research on terrorist financing.
“We understand that Hezbollah
