This officious template filtered out any variant views, subjugated any different thinking, snowed under any preventative military planning, stripped IDF ground forces of budgets and personnel, and otherwise routed preparedness for confronting a Palestinian “enemy.” Yes, a Palestinian enemy, not a peace partner.

This is what left Israeli leadership unsuspecting and thoroughly ill equipped to battle Hamas. I fear that even today Israel is conceptually unready to confront the Palestinian monster forces amassing in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria (with Iranian backing).

In contrast, Israeli leaders and their military-intelligence establishment have never entertained any doubts about Iran (and its non-Palestinian Hezbollah proxy force in Lebanon).

For more than 45 years since the Islamic revolution, Iran has been on a path of inevitable confrontation with Israel, seeking the annihilation of Israel out of clearly articulated theological-eschatological imperatives and hegemonic aspirations. It was always clear to Israel that Iran’s military and nuclear programs would have to be interdicted by the Jewish state, if not by global powers.

About Iran, there were no warmhearted, mushy misconceptions.

Therefore, Israel prepared accordingly. Its intelligence forces spent decades and millions of workforce hours penetrating every nook and cranny of the wicked Iranian regime and its military-nuclear juggernaut. Israel knew how and where to target every rogue Iranian and Hezbollah leader with missiles, drones, and exploding beepers. Israeli air force pilots had trained for years for the grueling 1,600-kilometer flight to Tehran.

But again, on the front much closer to home, on the Palestinian front where peace was divined to develop, no such provisions were made. War was simply out-of-mind, and Israel was caught off guard in every way – militarily, diplomatically, and societally.

IN MY view, the fact that Israeli society and the Israeli military recovered quickly from the shock of October 7 and have fought ferociously and with good success against Hamas is a greater miracle than the wonders of Rising Lion.

Israel’s brave conscript soldiers and reservists, along with their middle-ranking commanders (the lieutenant colonels and colonels on the battlefield with their troops), are the greatest heroes of this generation (not to mention their families at home.) These valiant Israelis are future leaders of Israel.

Therefore, now is the time to repair the errors of Oslo, to fix the blindness and blunders that led to October 7, and to carry forward from the victories over Iran to convincing victory over Hamas.

Make no mistake: Hamas retains significant residual power in Gaza. As long as this is the case, there will be no reconstruction for Palestinians there, and no security for Israel. No foreign government or NGO will enter Gaza to rebuild, and no Israeli will return to the once-magnificent towns and farms in southern Israel on the Gaza periphery.

There is much more work to do destroying Hamas’s terror attack tunnels, eliminating Hamas leaders, extinguishing Hamas as the ruling authority in Gaza, and forcing the release of hostages. Given the right military approach and sufficient diplomatic backing, these are not impossible goals.

Now is not the time to rush headlong into a ceasefire with Hamas that will bring neither immediate hostage release nor long-term security to Israel, nor real relief to Palestinians.

There is a broader point to be made here. As Einat Wilf has written, “Victories in the place of ceasefires with Palestinians are necessary for the unconditional defeat of jihadism against Israel. Only with such defeat will the Palestinians ever be able to direct their energies to creating better lives for themselves, in tandem with Israel.”

The leaders of Israel and the US may have their political reasons for topping their successes against Iran with a feat of instantaneous ceasefire in Gaza, but I question the wisdom of this. Vanquishing Hamas is no less necessary and feasible than the setback of Iran.

Published in The Jerusalem Post, June  27, 2025.