Hillary Atkin

If there had been a genuine chance that the Palestinists who entered Israel from Gaza on October 7 could capture and hold territory, I would have had to acknowledge a military objective, however horrific their actions. Conquest has a purpose. That would never excuse the medieval butchery, but it would mean the operation had an objective beyond mere killing. Instead, not only did they fail to make an effort to hold territory, but most of the invaders drove back to Gaza themselves. What was the achievement they celebrated? The people they had murdered and the hostages they had abducted. The killing itself was the victory. The butchery was the goal. The slaughter was the endgame. That is what made it a depraved pogrom of medieval brutality and why Israel had a moral and natural obligation to respond. A state that allows its citizens to be slaughtered and abducted without responding abandons its most basic responsibility: protecting its people. A military response was necessary, even if some spoiled people found it too difficult. They gained no territory, celebrated the slaughter itself, and brought upon themselves a military response that any functioning state would have been compelled to undertake. What, beyond the killing, was there to celebrate? Nothing. But that is what you can expect from an ideology that stands for nothing other than killing Jews.