JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The Hebrew date of Israel’s surprise attack on Israel, the eleventh of Adar, has historic overtones in the history of Zionism, as noted by Prime Minister Netanyahu in his speech on Saturday night.

Ever the son of a historian and sensitive to dates with profound significance, Netanyahu explained that he had called the current campaign against Iran Sha’agat H’ari, or Roaring Lion, because it coincided with Tel Hai day, the day on which Joseph Trumpeldor and seven other Jewish settlers died a heroic death while defending the Tel Hai compound in northern Israel (Kiryat Shmona is named for these eight heroes).

Trumpeldor and his comrades are immortalized in the “Roaring Lion” statue located in nearby Kfar Giladi. Since Netanyahu hails from a family that revered Jabotinsky and Betar (an acronym for Brit Yosef Trumpeldor), it is only natural that he should see his Iranian operation as a continuation of the Zionist enterprise of Trumpeldor, a soldier and farmer who never hesitated in his efforts to create both viable Jewish communities in Israel and provide the necessary protection for those communities.

However the date of the attack also coincided with Shabbat Zachor, and the timing of the initial strike was at the very moments that the Torah portion requiring us to remember the acts of Amalek and never forget them was being read in Israel in thousands of shuls. In our generation there was one regime which had both relentlessly called for the physical destruction of Israel and has done more than any other country to threaten and to fund its proxies who have ceaselessly attacked Israel in the past two decades. Eliminating Khamenei, the leader of the evil regime for nearly four decades, felt like a deja vu reenactment of the Haftorah in which Shmuel decapitates Agag the Amalekite king.

The operation in Iran is far from over, and as the painful tragedy in Beit Shemesh on Sunday proves, it already has a bitter price for Israel, but the timing is fortuitous, for as the Gemara says, if a Jew has to spar with a gentile in court, he should aim to set the case for Adar, which is a time of fortune for the Jewish nation.