Is Israel prepared for war?

The images beggared belief. Palestinian gunmen driving through an Israeli city, firing at passers-by from the bed of a pickup truck. The body of a dead Israeli soldier, his green uniform stained red, being dragged from a car inside Gaza and trampled. An elderly woman, seemingly in shock, taken hostage and paraded through the streets in a golf cart.

It is hard to make sense of the day’s events — because they are unprecedented. What should have been a quiet holiday-weekend Shabbat began with Hamas firing more than 2,200 rockets at Israel. The massive barrage seems to have been cover for an even bigger operation: infiltrating dozens of militants into Israel. Some went to Sderot, the biggest city near Gaza; others fanned out to the small kibbutzim that run the length of the border.