In the weeks leading up to Israel’s incursion into one of Hamas’s last remaining redoubts in Gaza, the notion that Jerusalem was acting against its own interests had become a pearl of accepted wisdom.
“Hamas is stronger today than it was on October 7,” University of Chicago professor Robert Pape opined in June. Even if it wasn’t, Hamas cannot be destroyed by military means alone. “It’s a brand,” stated Hussein Ibish, a resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute. “It is extremely stupid to declare a war [aim] that cannot be accomplished.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, citing the toll the war has taken on Gaza’s civilian population, accused the Jewish state of putting its own security on the line in an ill-conceived spasm of aggression. “How is any of this making Israel more secure?” he asked. “Or bringing the Hamas-held hostages home?”
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