Following the first attacks Bibi called it “Our 9/11.” I think that was unfortunate because it vastly understates the issue, although the shock felt by the Israeli people was probably pretty much the same.
But Israel is a vastly smaller country than the US; the death toll on the first day - proportionally - was 30 times higher than 9/11. And saying ‘9/11’ conveys the idea that it was a couple dozen terrorists making a lot of noise.
In fact, there were 29 attack points within Israel. The attacks were carried out by dozens, even hundreds of terrorists on hang gliders, overland, and by sea assault on each target . Multiple cities were hit simultaneously, and hundreds were killed outright, an unknown number kidnapped and spirited away for future bargaining, presumably.
The scale of these attacks will surely bring the vaunted Israeli intelligence apparatus under question; how do you coordinate hundreds even thousands of jihadists in a coordinated attack against dozens of targets without so much as a peep?
(A dozen Saudis and airplanes on 9/11: diabolical but clever, and fairly easy to conceal. Hundreds of simultaneous terrorist attacks in disparate cities up and down the state of Israel? Almost unthinkable. It’s as though the 9/11 attacks happened in New York and Washington. And Philadelphia and Chicago and Los Angeles. And Dubuque and Milwaukee. And Atlanta and New Orleans.)
I am not letting Bibi, nor the Israeli treatment of Palestinians off the hook, surely they have not made the situation any better, but I do understand the emotional, political, and military response of the Israeli state given the size and scope of what has happened. (Any comparison to Germany in WWII is inapt, that was multiple nation states in a declared war following large scale military tactics over several continents. Not remotely the same.)