At least three Hezbollah members, an Israeli senior officer and two Palestinian fighters have been killed so far.

The Palestinian group's unprecedented attack shows strategy, planning and training beyond what many had anticipated.

“Not every German who bought a copy of Mein Kampf necessarily read it … But it might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read it before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there was still time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe.”

— William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

How many Israelis, or Jews, or anyone else for that matter, have read the 1988 Hamas Covenant or the revised charter that was issued in 2017? With 36 articles of only a few paragraphs’ length each in the former, and 42 concise statements of general principles and objectives in the latter, both are considerably shorter and more digestible than the 782-page original German-language edition of Mein Kampf. Moreover, unlike Hitler’s seminal work, which was not published in English until March 1939, excellent English translations of both the original Hamas Covenant and its successor can easily be found on the internet.

[Read: What would Hamas do if it could do whatever it wanted?]

Released on August 18, 1988, the original covenant spells out clearly Hamas’s genocidal intentions. Accordingly, what happened in Israel on Saturday is completely in keeping with Hamas’s explicit aims and stated objectives. It was in fact the inchoate realization of Hamas’s true ambitions.

The most relevant of the document’s 36 articles can be summarized as falling within four main themes:

The complete destruction of Israel as an essential condition for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a theocratic state based on Islamic law (Sharia), The need for both unrestrained and unceasing holy war (jihad) to attain the above objective, The deliberate disdain for, and dismissal of, any negotiated resolution or political settlement of Jewish and Muslim claims to the Holy Land, and The reinforcement of historical anti-Semitic tropes and calumnies married to sinister conspiracy theories.

Thus, as fighting rages in Israel and Gaza, and may yet escalate and spread, pleas for moderation, restraint, negotiation, and the building of pathways to peace are destined to find no purchase with Hamas. The covenant makes clear that holy war, divinely ordained and scripturally sanctioned, is in Hamas’s DNA.

Israel’s Complete and Utter Destruction

The covenant opens with a message that precisely encapsulates Hamas’s master plan. Quoting Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a constituent member (Article 2), the document proclaims, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

Lest there be any doubt about Hamas’s sanguinary aims toward Israel and the Jewish people, the introduction goes on to explain:

This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious … It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps.

After some general explanatory language about Hamas’s religious foundation and noble intentions, the covenant comes to the Islamic Resistance Movement’s raison d’être: the slaughter of Jews. “The Day of Judgement will not come about,” it proclaims, “until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

Article 11 spells out why this annihilation of Jews is required. Palestine is described as an “Islamic Waqf”—an endowment predicated on Muslim religious, education, or charitable principles and therefore inviolate to any other peoples or religions. Accordingly, the territory that now encompasses Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank is

consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up … This Waqf remains as long as earth and heaven remain. Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.

In sum, any compromise over this land, including the moribund two-state solution, much less coexistence among faiths and peoples, is forbidden.

Holy War

Article 12 links the exclusive Muslim right to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River with the religious obligation incumbent upon all Muslims to wage a war of religious purification. “Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy becomes the individual duty of every Moslem [sic], male or female”—a point later reiterated in Articles 14 and 15.

[Read: Hamas’s attack confounds Middle East experts]

Article 15, moreover, highlights the importance of inculcating this mindset in children. “It is important that basic changes be made in the school curriculum, to cleanse it of the traces of ideological invasion that affected it as a result of the orientalists and missionaries who infiltrated the region following the defeat of the Crusaders at the hands of Salah el-Din (Saladin).” Along these lines, Article 30 also points out that jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy: “Writers, intellectuals, media people, orators, educaters [sic]” are called upon “fulfill their duty, because of the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control, as well as the consequences that all this lead to in the greater part of the world.”

Nothing is negotiable

Article 13 rejects any kind of negotiations for, or peaceful resolution of, Jewish and Palestinian territorial claims to the land. On this point, the covenant is completely transparent: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” Nor are these words historical artifacts. Hamas “military” communiqués heralding the triumphs of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood end with the words “It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom.”

Indeed, this part of the covenant stresses that:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight.

The covenant further says of international negotiations that the “Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.”

Base Anti-Semitism

The covenant is especially noteworthy for its trafficking in odious calumnies and conspiracies about the Jewish people and the alleged superhuman influence and power that they exercise over all mankind. “In their Nazi treatment [of other peoples], the Jews made no exception for women or children,” Article 20 begins. “Their policy of striking fear in the heart is meant for all. They attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money and threatening their honor. They deal with people as if they were the worst war criminals.”

Article 22 advances this theme. Channeling the fantastical arguments of the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (which is discussed in Article 32), Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and the Ku Klux Klan, it elaborates on the depth and breadth of Jewish perfidy. The language of this article is so unhinged that it is worth quoting in full:

For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realization of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.

You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.

Article 28 continues this theme and again cites various civic organizations and fraternal orders as the malign vessels through which the Jewish people relentlessly pursue their goal of global domination. Alcoholism and drug addiction are integral tools of the Jews’ nefarious plot:

The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion. It does not refrain from resorting to all methods, using all evil and contemptible ways to achieve its end. It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions. They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion.

After Palestine, Article 32 explains, “the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.” Standing against this overwhelming force is Hamas—“the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism and a step on the road.”  

Tucked into Article 31, toward the end of the delineation of its three dozen guiding principles, Hamas claims that all faiths can “coexist in peace and quiet with each other” under its unique “wing of Islam.” But lest anyone be lulled into believing the promise of this paradise on Earth, Hamas demands as the price of entry full allegiance and unquestioning compliance with its rule: “It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror.”

A Kinder, Gentler Charter?

On May 1, 2017, Hamas issued a revised charter. Gone were the “vague religious rhetoric and outlandish utopian pronouncements” of the earlier document, according to analysis prepared for the Institute of Palestine Studies. Instead, the new charter was redolent of “straightforward and mostly pragmatic political language” that had “shifted the movement’s positions and policies further toward the spheres of pragmatism and nationalism as opposed to dogma and Islamism.” Nonetheless, the analyst was struck by “the movement’s adherence to its founding principles” alongside newly crafted, “carefully worded” language suggesting moderation and flexibility.

Israel immediately dismissed the group’s effort to promote a kinder, gentler image of its once avowedly bloodthirsty agenda. “Hamas is attempting to fool the world, but it will not succeed,” a spokesperson from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office predicted.

In fact, the new document differs little from its predecessor. Much like the original, the new document asserts Hamas’s long-standing goal of establishing a sovereign, Islamist Palestinian state that extends, according to Article 2, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and from the Lebanese border to the Israeli city of Eilat—in other words, through the entirety of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. And it is similarly unequivocal about “the right of return” of all Palestinian refugees displaced as a result of the 1948 and 1967 wars (Article 12)—which is portrayed as “a natural right, both individual and collective,” divinely ordained and “inalienable.” That right, therefore “cannot be dispensed with by any party, whether Palestinian, Arab or international,” thus again rendering negotiations or efforts to achieve any kind of political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians irrelevant, void, or both. Article 27 forcefully reinforces this point: “There is no alternative to a fully sovereign Palestinian State on the entire national Palestinian soil, with Jerusalem as its capital.”

The most striking departure from the 1988 charter is that the 2017 statement of principles and objectives now claims that Hamas is not anti-Jewish but anti-Zionist and, accordingly, sees “Zionists” and not “Jews” as the preeminent enemy and target of its opprobrium. The revised document therefore modulates the blatantly anti-Semitic rhetoric of its predecessor but once again decries Zionism as central to a dark, conspiratorial plot of global dimensions.

For centuries, Jews have been blamed for causing the anti-Semitism directed against them. The new Hamas charter perpetuates this libel, arguing, “It is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity” and who are therefore responsible for the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

The Zionist project, according to Article 14, is a “racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist project based on seizing the properties of others; it is hostile to the Palestinian people and to their aspiration for freedom, liberation, return and self-determination. The Israeli entity is the plaything of the Zionist project and its base of aggression.” Article 15 goes on to claim that Zionism is the enemy not just of the Palestinian people but of all Muslims, and that it poses “a danger to international security and peace and to mankind and its interests and stability.” The following article then attempts to thread the needle between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism: “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion.”

Although the new charter lacks the febrile denunciations of “initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences” of its predecessor, it makes Hamas’s position on Israel’s existence abundantly clear. “The establishment of ‘Israel’ is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people,” Article 18 states, “and goes against their will and the will of the Ummah.” Driving home this point, the new Article 19 proclaims, “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. Whatever has befallen the land of Palestine in terms of occupation, settlement building, judaisation [sic] or changes to its features or falsification of facts is illegitimate. Rights never lapse.”

As for the promise of peace between Israel and Palestine expressed in the 1993 Oslo Accords, Article 21 is explicit in stating Hamas’s rejection of that landmark agreement: “Hamas affirms that the Oslo Accords and their addenda contravene the governing rules of international law in that they generate commitments that violate the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. Therefore, the Movement rejects these agreements and all that flows from them.”

Hamas affirms, instead, its commitment to liberating Palestine by force. “Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws,” the document states. “At the heart of these lies armed resistance, which is regarded as the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people.”

[Read: There are no rules]

Perhaps the most astonishing statement in the entire new document—issued by a terrorist group that has forbade elections in Gaza since 2007—is the fatuous claim in Article 29 that “Hamas believes in, and adheres to, managing its Palestinian relations on the basis of pluralism, democracy, national partnership, acceptance of the other and the adoption of dialogue.”

Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est La Même Chose

In the British historian Richard J. Evan’s magisterial account of the Third Reich, he recounts the reflections of a young German woman who’d read Mein Kampf in 1933: “Like many of her upper-middle-class friends, she discounted the violence and antisemitism of the National Socialists as passing excesses which would soon disappear.” Until October 7, 2023, many in Palestine, Israel, and elsewhere may similarly have dismissed or discounted the acuity of Hamas’s aims and ambitions, its true objectives, and its as-yet-unfulfilled master plan as stated in both the 1988 and 2017 documents. Few are as ignorant or uncomprehending now.

The third attack on the crossing's Palestinian side in the last 24 hours consisted of 'four missiles', reports say.

On Sunday morning, Joe Biden got on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu. After the barbaric attack launched against Israel the day before, the Israeli prime minister was able to offer a granular account of what was already known about the unfolding catastrophe. According to two Biden-administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, he gave Biden a vivid set of details about the assault on the music festival in the south of his country. The death toll, he reported, was well over 200—part of the more than 800 Israelis already reported killed in the Hamas assault. Netanyahu’s anger and despair poured through the phone.

Biden and Netanyahu have known each other since the 1980s. Their shared history includes navigating rocket attacks, terrorist assaults, and ground wars. But the president’s aides reported that Biden instantly understood Hamas’s invasion to be different in scale and kind than anything in his political memory, and Netanyahu’s raw account of the carnage stoked Biden’s feelings of anger.  

Back in May 2021, when Israel retaliated against a Hamas fusillade by pounding Gaza, Biden quickly began privately outlining his strategy for arriving at a cease-fire. That’s not the case this time. His aides say that he is well aware that the coming Israeli offensive could take months. Biden has expressed unconditional support for Israel in his public statements, and there is no reason to think he has conveyed anything different to Netayahu in private.

[Read: A shocked and frazzled collective mind]

A string of knotty questions will surely arise: How will the administration respond to the inevitable civilian casualties in Gaza? Will Biden sanction an Israeli strike on Iran, if that’s where the intelligence ascribes responsibility? In the immediate aftermath, the administration has begun to ponder the implications of the war for American foreign policy, and the ways in which the crisis might present opportunities.

Biden arrived in office with the hope of removing the Middle East from the central place it has occupied in American foreign policy for much of the 21st century. Brett McGurk, the National Security Council official with responsibility for the region, liked to tout the slogan that guided his work: “No new projects.” His task consisted of keeping the Middle East off the president’s desk as Biden sought to end the war in Afghanistan, restore broken alliances, and focus the nation’s gaze on China.

But the administration understood that there could very well be a moment when a crisis intruded and pulled the president’s attention back into the region. This year, Biden made a Saudi-Israeli deal his signal diplomatic initiative. There were two primary reasons he staked his prestige on pursuing an agreement. The first was a worry that the Saudis might be slipping out of the American orbit, as evidenced by their reluctance to impose sanctions on Russia, while staking out friendlier relations with China.

The second was concern for Israeli democracy. Biden saw a deal as a chance to preserve the prospects of a two-state solution, which would be a Saudi condition for moving forward with an agreement. Some in the administration hoped for a bank shot here: Bibi seemed to want a deal badly enough that he would be willing to make the concessions to Palestinians that the Saudis demanded. To deliver on those promises, he would likely be forced to end his alliance with the far right, which had dragged Israel in an undemocratic direction.

Biden’s thinking defied political logic even in a time of relative quiet in the region. But within hours of the Hamas attack, that possible deal is roundly considered to be moribund. Israel will now be focused exclusively on wartime objectives. The Saudis might feel obliged to walk away once Palestinian casualties rise. At the very least, the war wrecks the administration’s timeline. Biden was hoping that he might be able to get a treaty in front of the U.S. Senate before the onset of the coming campaign season. (The Senate would have to approve a defense agreement with the Saudis, a core component of the developing deal.) Putting aside all of the other geopolitical reasons the deal might not happen now, the delay itself makes it impossible, given that the administration would never risk dooming a treaty by sending it to the Senate in the middle of an election year, when politicians of all stripes will be anxious to avoid guaranteeing the security of Saudi Arabia.

[Read: ‘We’re going to die here’]

But the administration's conversations with the Sunni states over the weekend have given officials a bit of hope that a deal of some sort might be viable on the other side of the war. When the White House and the State Department first heard from the likes of Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, their diplomats mouthed traditional justifications for Palestinian violence. Their position shifted, however, over the course of the weekend, as they consumed the news of mass civilian casualties, the kidnapping of women and children, and corpses paraded through the streets of Gaza. Privately, some of the Arab states confessed their disgust with Hamas and its brutal tactics. Even if relegated to diplomatic phone calls, professions of revulsion—and even sympathy for the Israeli public—are unprecedented. Of course, these outbursts of emotion might prove ephemeral as the battlefield shifts to Gaza and away from gunned-down teenagers in the desert, but they raised hopes within the administration that the U.S. might be able to diplomatically isolate both Hamas and their Iran backers in the short term while preserving the possibility of integrating Israel within the fabric of the region in the long term.

Zionism is one of Biden’s primary commitments. It’s not a belief that he acquired in the course of his political career, but something he says that he learned from his father at the dinner table, in the aftermath of the Holocaust. His father would tell him, “If Israel didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.” Biden first met Nancy Pelosi in the early 1970s, when he visited San Francisco to raise money for the Jewish state—Pelosi lent him her Jeep so that he could go from synagogue to synagogue.

Biden’s Zionism has shaped how his administration will frame the moment politically. Despite Israel's recent slide away from democracy —and despite the rising criticism of the Jewish state within his own party–Biden remains a true believer, who doesn’t haven’t any qualms linking its struggle for existence to a global struggle against barbarism.That’s part of the reasons that his aides have discussed rhetorically linking Israel’s war to the Ukrainian cause—and to the defense of Taiwan.

This framing, some aides believe, would help Biden break through the legislative deadlock on Capitol Hill. Military aid to Ukraine has foundered because of a small faction of Trumpist opposition, whose votes are being courted by the two men now vying to be speaker of the House. By linking Israel to Ukraine and Taiwan, the administration has a chance to put most congressional Republicans in a politically impossible position, where—the conventional wisdom goes—they will have no choice but to support an ally under attack. It might also be the administration's best chance for reviving broad bipartisan support for Ukraine.

Any president would express robust support for Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas attack. But the question is how those feelings of solidarity survive through the slog of war. Biden’s aides say that his spiritual commitment to Zionism means that he’s going to be an exceedingly generous ally in those ugly moments, although it’s not hard to foresee how those moments, especially if they entail a confrontation with Iran, will test the solidarity with Israel he so dearly professes.

Smoke billows over Gaza following Israeli strikes on the enclave, four days after a surprise assault by Palestinian militant group Hamas that left the country reeling.

The people of Gaza have given the Palestinian struggle a new impetus, a new direction.

At least six Palestinian journalists have been killed in less than a week as Israel shells Gaza.

On April 22, 1979, four Palestinian terrorists set out from southern Lebanon on a rubber dinghy and landed on the Israeli coast, near the northern town of Nahariya. They proceeded to an apartment building, breaking through the front door of the Haran family. Inside, they seized Danny Haran and his 4-year-old daughter, Einat. Meanwhile Danny’s wife, Smadar, hid in the attic with her 2-year-old daughter, Yael.

The terrorists took their two hostages to the beach, where they shot Danny and smashed Einat’s skull against a rock. Back in the attic, Smadar, attempting to quiet Yael, accidentally smothered her to death.

Of all the Palestinian terror attacks of the era, none had as great an impact on the generation that came of age around the 1973 Yom Kippur War as the destruction of the Haran family. The fate of the Harans hit so hard in part because the ultimate Israeli nightmare is helplessness. Zionism promised to empower the Jews; the Haran family’s fate belonged to Eastern Europe, not the Jewish state.  

This week, the Jewish state became Smadar Haran.

Like so many other Israelis, I have forced myself to watch the unwatchable clips, trying to understand the new reality in which we find ourselves. The dead bodies paraded through the streets of Gaza while crowds defile them and cheer; the elderly woman forced to make a V sign while holding a gun, surrounded by laughing terrorists; the boy placed in a circle of Palestinian children, who mock and abuse him; the child captives locked in chicken coops.

The dimensions of our losses are incomprehensible. The latest army prediction is that the final death toll will be about 1,000—this from a population of 9 million. The suicide bombings of the Second Intifada, in the early 2000s, killed that many, but over four years, not in a single day. And the Israel Defense Forces’ ground offensive inside Gaza hasn’t even begun.

No less horrifying to Israelis was the unbearable ease with which the murderers went from house to house, kidnapping and slaughtering. Over and over, we ask one another the questions that have no answers: Why did it take the IDF a full day to reach those communities? Where were the police? Why did the desperate calls for help go unanswered?

The massacre carried out by Hamas has been compared to 9/11, but like most analogies applied to Israel’s situation, it fails to describe the reality. No American seriously thought that the very existence of the United States was endangered by the fall of the Twin Towers. But the defeat inflicted by Israel’s least formidable enemy has profound strategic implications, emboldening other foes on its borders. In Israel, no strategic depth separates the home front from genocidal enemies.

Scarcely less frightening than the IDF’s failure to protect Israeli citizens at their most dire moment is that our leadership has effectively collapsed. Not until Monday did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deliver a real address to the nation. No Israeli cabinet minister has visited the wounded in hospitals, although that is standard procedure during times of crisis. The desperate families of the missing have pleaded with the government to meet with them, so far to no avail.

Clearly our leaders are afraid to face an outraged public. A cartoon in the newspaper Haaretz showed the members of the cabinet cowering under a table.

Israel’s most divisive government is presiding over one of the most sensitive moments in our history, when we desperately need leaders we can trust. But not only is this government the most politically extreme in our history; it is also the least qualified to decide matters of life and death. Collectively, the heads of the coalition have less military experience by far than the leaders of any previous government. Much of the country had lost faith in the government’s competence long before this week’s catastrophe. Now that judgment has been frighteningly confirmed.

Israelis aren’t waiting for our leaders to mobilize and unite and inspire us; we are mobilizing ourselves. The nation’s most horrific moment is also becoming one of its most stirring chapters. On their own initiative, civilians drove down to the besieged towns and kibbutzim and rescued relatives and friends. Residents in the south went out into the streets with pistols and fought bands of terrorists armed with RPGs.

Overnight, Hamas has transformed Israel from a society that was tearing itself apart to an unprecedented extent into a society united as it has rarely been. The heads of the protest movement—which opposes the right-wing government’s proposed judicial reforms—have called on reservists to fulfill their duty, and thousands of reservists who had previously declared that they would not serve Netanyahu’s dictatorship-in-the-making are showing up to their units. Brothers in Arms, the organization of reservists who’d refused to serve, is arranging transportation to army collection points, along with distribution of food and clothing to Israeli communities along the Gaza border—taking the place of an AWOL government. Until the massacre, there was growing fear of a mass emigration of liberal Israelis. Now flights are landing in Ben Gurion Airport filled with young Israelis returning to join their reserve units.

Militarily, the timing of the massacre was impeccable, but for Hamas, it will prove to be a disaster. Perhaps if it had waited before launching the most deadly terror attack in our history, allowing Israeli society to continue to be torn apart by the Netanyahu government, the bitterness would have penetrated too deeply for us to cohere again.

But now the old Israel is back.

What we realized about ourselves on the morning after the massacre is that we had not yet reached the point of no return. We still have it in us to pull together. What our enemies have never understood is that when they try to break us with some unimagined horror, we become more determined. This nightmarish moment may well save the Jewish state.

Israel faces two very different reckonings. The first is with our enemies. Until now, Netanyahu and his right-wing allies viewed Hamas as a kind of strategic asset: So long as it was in power in Gaza, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was impossible. For that reason, in addition to effectively bribing Hamas to refrain from attacking Israel, Netanyahu allowed massive infusions of cash from Qatar to prop up the Hamas government.

But much of the Israeli public is now demanding that Hamas be toppled. The immediate need to end its rule over Gaza has surpassed the question of what will follow. The devil we know is no longer preferable to uncertainty. Perhaps the Palestinian Authority will return to govern in Gaza; perhaps the Saudis and the Gulf States will invest in its rehabilitation. Perhaps it will become a territory ruled by rival gangs, like Somalia. Israelis are willing to take our chances.

Besides Netanyahu’s delusion that Hamas could be politically useful, successive Israeli governments had other reasons to stop short of removing Hamas. The price of such a military conflict, in the loss of both Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians, would be horrific. And now all-out war with Hamas would mean an almost certain death sentence for the 150 Israeli hostages it has seized in its attacks.

Israel itself, though, has been taken hostage; to empty out the prisons of Hamas terrorists in exchange for the return of the hostages would only compound the enormity of our defeat. Despite our anguished concern for the fate of our hostages, we have no choice. Hamas has made capitulation impossible.

Yair Golan, a former deputy commander of the IDF and one of the most vociferous critics of the settlement movement, has said that we must win this war and then seek a political solution. The 61-year-old retiree, who put on his old uniform and personally rescued some of the hostages, knows better than most what “winning” will mean in the crowded urban spaces of Gaza, where terrorists are embedded in the civilian population. For now, Hamas has succeeded in erasing the difference between Israel’s political left and right.

The Netanyahu government has so far declared its intention to destroy only the military capabilities of Hamas, apparently still reluctant to break with the old policy of leaving in place the group’s political leadership. But that leadership is, in practice, indistinguishable from the organization’s military wing. If a national-unity government emerges in the coming days in Israel, it may well signal a decision to pay the horrific price of all-out war.

Toppling Hamas could lead Israel into a multifront war, with Hezbollah firing tens of thousands of missiles and rockets at cities and towns. It could bring the most devastating conflict that Israel has experienced since its War of Independence in 1948. But that war might not be avoidable. In fact, the army has been training for years in preparation for a showdown with Hezbollah, which publicly avows its intention to invade northern Israel and seize several villages. The twist is that no one imagined that the opening phase of that war would begin in southern Israel—and with an invasion of two dozen communities.

For now, Israel is enjoying a level of global support we haven’t experienced for many years. As gratifying as it is to see the facades of parliaments and other public buildings lit with images of the Israeli flag, we know that much of that support will disappear as civilian casualties in Gaza—and perhaps in Lebanon—mount. Israelis will tell you: We don’t need the world’s sympathy only when the violated bodies of our family and friends are being displayed to cheering mobs in Gaza. We need that sympathy most when we attack those who have carried out these atrocities. If you can’t distinguish between an army that tries to avoid casualties and a terrorist group that seeks to inflict them, then spare us the condolences.

Israel’s critics cite the siege of Gaza as an explanation for Palestinian desperation. Yet in 2005, Israel dismantled all of its settlements in Gaza and withdrew to the internationally recognized border. Where might we be today if, instead of immediately launching rockets on Israeli neighborhoods across that border, the Palestinian national movement had attempted to create a different dynamic in the first territory it truly controlled?

Israel’s critics are right to link the slaughter carried out by Hamas with the occupation of the West Bank, but not in the way they suppose. The atrocities have provided Israelis with a visceral reminder of why so many dread the prospect of a full withdrawal from the West Bank, risking the creation of another Gaza minutes from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. To say that the occupation causes terrorism misses the larger point: Terrorism has all along reinforced the occupation, convincing Israelis like me who believe that a two-state solution is essential to also fear that a two-state solution is impossible.

Israel is hardly blameless. Understandably but disastrously, many Israelis have conflated security fears, which justify a military presence in the West Bank, with historical and religious longings for the biblical land we call Judea and Samaria. Those longings are the basis for the settlement enterprise, whose political goal is to preclude any solution to the Palestinian tragedy. And in recent months we have seen an outrageous rise in settler violence against innocent Palestinians. Even as we protect ourselves from Hamas, we need to oppose those among us who would emulate Hamas.

Israel’s second reckoning, which must await the end of the war, will be with Benjamin Netanyahu. Following the Yom Kippur War, a lone reservist named Motti Ashkenazi began a hunger strike outside the office of Prime Minister Golda Meir, demanding that she take responsibility for the joint Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack and resign. The Agranat Commission, a government-appointed inquiry headed by Israeli Supreme Court Chief Justice Shimon Agranat, focused on the failures of the military leadership and avoided blaming the politicians. But an enraged public rallied around Ashkenazi and, six months after the war, the prime minister resigned.

If anything, the rage many Israelis feel today toward Netanyahu is far greater. By tearing apart the country in his attempt to weaken the courts, he knowingly undermined Israeli deterrence. He was repeatedly warned by the IDF of the likely consequences of his judicial revolution, in terms of both the IDF’s readiness for war and the willingness of Israel’s enemies to test its weakness. Netanyahu ignored the warnings, even refusing at one point to meet with the IDF chief, Herzi Halevi.

Halevi will need to answer hard questions, including about the IDF’s stunning intelligence failures and its initially disastrous performance in dealing with the terrorist invasion. Perhaps the most crucial of those questions is who gave the order to transfer the division on the Gaza border to the West Bank, to protect settlers against terror attacks—a decision that the army must own but that certainly originated with the government.

Netanyahu will stay true to form and try to deflect the blame onto others, beginning with the army but also including the anti-government demonstrators who thwarted his antidemocratic revolution. This time, though, his evasive tactics won’t work. Netanyahu has presided over the most devastating day in Israeli history, the inevitable culmination of the disaster he has inflicted over the past year on his own people.  

European Union foreign ministers are due to discuss the proposed suspension of EU aid to the Palestinian territories.