On the Unprecedented Challenge Facing Israel in Gaza

Professor Azar Gat, the chair for national-security studies at Tel Aviv University, has a piece worth everyone’s attention at Haaretz (which came to my attention thanks to a post on X/Twitter by the great historian, Niall Ferguson). Pushing back against “the derangement that has come to play a significant role in public discourse in the West, especially in academia,” Professor Gat describes the unprecedented challenge that confronts Israel in the Gaza battle space:

For Israel, unlike its critics, the war is existential. Gat convincingly contends that the nation has “no future in the Middle East” if it fails to achieve the declared goal of the war: “the destruction of Hamas as a semi-state military organization with a massive military infrastructure that controls Gaza.”