The disturbing details of how Hamas terrorists held and murdered six hostages intensify the frustration with the prolonged situation in Gaza and the seemingly slow progress in the war against Hamas. Despite significant achievements, the conditions for either Hamas' defeat or its willingness to agree to a hostage deal still seem far off.

To change this situation, we must recapture the moral clarity of the war's early days, speak plainly, and act decisively: Those who deliberately starve hostages, despite the world's humanitarian aid, deserve nothing less than a total blockade, forcing them to choose: surrender unconditionally or face the consequences.

Even if internal and external factors prevent implementing such a complete blockade at the moment, it's crucial to recognize this as a necessity, not a moral dilemma. From a moral standpoint, no fate is too harsh for Gaza.

This must be the only starting point for dealing with Gaza as a nation that values life. Israel owes Gazans nothing but "blood, fire, and pillars of smoke." We must worsen their situation in every way possible until Gaza capitulates and Hamas is destroyed. We should always remain just shy of actions that would provoke unbearable international backlash.

Hamas and Gaza are one

Revenge is not a dirty word, and retribution for Oct. 7 should be of biblical proportions. When the war began, after over a thousand Israelis were brutally murdered, the Israeli consensus fully recognized this obligation. As the war dragged on, our resolve seems to have weakened, and yes, we've somewhat forgotten the horrific events that started it all. The murder of the hostages and its brutal manner reminded us of the monsters we're fighting, and reinforced that there's no choice but to crush Hamas' power.

After a decade and a half of Hamas rule, Hamas and Gaza have become inseparable. Therefore, to destroy Hamas, we must break Gaza's spirit. Without severe and resounding retribution, the message to our enemies will be that carrying out another Oct. 7 is worthwhile. If this becomes the takeaway from this war, Israel's survival is at stake.

Our leadership, which seems to have lost sight of this, should focus not on the next battalion commander or tunnel-detection strategy, though these are important. Leave that to the military, which is doing its job and achieving notable successes. But these tactical victories are insufficient, and we can't afford to wait for their slow accumulation to reach a tipping point. Leadership must focus on expediting timelines and making the war's continuation so unbearable that Hamas begs for its end.

The alternative will be hell

If Hamas persists in refusing to lay down arms and return hostages, Israel must create a situation where the danger to Gazans from Hamas' continued rule becomes so palpable, and the suffering so severe, that they conclude it's better to risk overthrowing Hamas because the alternative is hell.

We are at war, and victory comes from breaking the enemy's will – often achieved before their military strength is fully depleted. The current approach in Gaza gives Hamas no incentive to compromise because, from its perspective, it has nothing to lose. It disregards human lives and Gaza's destruction. In some ways, it even benefits it – Hamas excels at weaponizing its casualties against Israel and turning ruins into a source for reconstruction funds, which it habitually receives post-war and exploits for its purposes.

For too many months, we've been waging this war timidly, stuck in an ineffective middle ground, primarily eroding Israeli resilience while Hamas profits from aid trucks. Our reservists are exhausted, our international legitimacy is waning, and our northern region is abandoned. The cumulative national and international damage from a year-long war in low gear, still facing our initial opponent, outweighs any potential harm from decisive, focused action. This applies to the other side's suffering as well. We shouldn't have eased this pressure in November, and each day we delay resuming it is wasted.

We must stop treating the Nazi-like organization that slaughtered, raped, looted, kidnapped, and continues to abuse hostages as a negotiation partner. Hamas isn't interested in negotiation outcomes but only in the process itself to psychologically torment us and divide us internally. Public support for a genuine siege, at least on northern Gaza, is at its peak. Both the Israeli public and the international community finally seem to understand that Hamas is merely playing at negotiations, not seriously engaging in them.

There are plans to drastically increase pressure on Hamas. One is the generals' plan to evacuate northern Gaza and impose a total blockade. If the political leadership is uninterested in this specific plan, fine – let them propose an alternative that will convince Hamas of its imminent, crushing defeat. It's time to end this neither-here-nor-there approach with Gaza. Maximum pressure. Now. Until now, Hamas has tried to force Israel to accept a deal at any cost. It's time for them to pay the full price.

The post Maximum pressure on Gaza – now appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The government is certainly responsible for the deaths of the hostages, but no more, and certainly no less, than its responsibility for Oct. 7 as a whole. The bulk of its culpability lies in the failure on that day itself, and less in what transpired afterward, at least regarding the hostages.

The Israeli government, Israel Defense Forces, and all those in positions of authority failed catastrophically to foresee the attack and to be prepared for it, or indeed for any major assault, before it occurred. This led us to a situation where dozens of Israelis are held captive by a ruthless enemy.

The day when approximately 1,200 Israelis were murdered and about 200 were kidnapped is the foundation of this failure. From there, we arrived at a situation where we are largely dependent on Hamas' "goodwill" in most aspects. Anyone examining the events should have long since understood that such goodwill never existed and never will. This is the core of the colossal failure. Anything beyond that is primarily the fruit of our frustrations and our preconceived political and ideological assumptions.

Hamas has consistently rejected any deal since November. With or without a Ramadan ceasefire, with or without Philadelphi, with delays in entering Rafah or after entering Rafah – ultimately, they hold the hostages, they decide whether to keep them alive or murder them, and they are, at the immediate level, the only ones who can control their fate. If the US administration is now openly saying that Hamas is the refuser, there is no logic in not believing it.

The notion that we, as a state, sometimes have no solution when there is another party with a will no less than ours to achieve the opposite, is unbearable for the average Israeli. Hamas holds the hostages in a way that makes a military rescue almost impossible. Hamas maintains positions regarding the continuation of the war against Israel that make a deal with them, especially one that doesn't include a clear victory for the murderous organization that it is, almost impossible.

These are two frustrating and sad basic facts that must underpin any discussion. Not everything is in our hands. Not everything depends on the strength of our will. This doesn't mean nothing should be done – and Israel is acting, both in negotiations where Israel's proposals to Hamas are far-reaching, and through military means.

It's permissible to criticize, and it's permissible to argue that more should have been done. One can argue that this or that clause is not worth insisting upon, or that the military pressure is insufficient. But ultimately, if we want to remain a sane society, we must recognize the basic fact: due to the October 7 failure, the fate of the hostages, in general, is not in our hands. Hamas carried out the kidnapping of Israelis on a massive scale to psychologically break Israeli society, recognizing its sensitivity to human life, and to bring about its internal rupture, and perhaps even unconditional surrender in the ongoing war.

When Hamas sees the nature of the Israeli discussion on the subject, the polarization caused by the preoccupation with the issue, it is achieving its goal from its perspective.

Hamas has no interest in releasing the hostages, and it's doubtful whether their release can be turned into an interest for them when they believe that holding them is a guarantee of their survival. The ones who kidnapped them, who didn't release them, who murdered them when fearing they would be released, are Hamas. We must always remember this. We must ensure that the fate of hundreds of Israelis will never again be in the hands of a murderous terrorist organization. And we must ensure that an organization that committed this atrocity, as part of the day of horrors ten months ago, does not emerge with the upper hand. Otherwise, we may find ourselves having this terrible discussion once again.

The post The public doesn't really have influence on hostages' fate appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Let's start with the positive. Israel's preemptive strike carried out in the early morning hours is impressive by any measure. With high-quality intelligence and exceptional execution, Israel prevented a significant Hezbollah attack that, according to reports, was aimed at strategic facilities and central Israel. The strike was far more impressive, by any standard, than Operation Specific Weight, which destroyed Hezbollah's long-range rockets at the start of the Second Lebanon War. It's hard to believe that this is how Hezbollah envisioned their retaliation, and we must not underestimate what has been accomplished.

However, there's another side to the picture, which is far less encouraging. While Israel knew that Hezbollah was planning a broad military move, it chose an essentially defensive action – removing the threat of the specific attack aimed against it, without any significant additional objectives. Israel then returned to a waiting position for Hezbollah's response, while issuing threats that the organization would not dare to expand its attacks.

This brings us to the point – Israel has one opportunity for a surprising initiative that includes a devastating blow, attacking thousands of targets simultaneously. The Israeli Air Force has been training for this for years. The plans exist. What we saw this morning is not an opening move; it's a move designed to thwart a specific attack. The State of Israel decided to take the surprising move it was capable of executing, reduce it by two orders of magnitude from its capabilities, and focus only on tactical strikes. Extensive, impressive, including amazing intelligence, but tactical strikes nonetheless.

At this stage, it seems that Israel faces two options, both of them bad: a. Deterioration into an escalation dynamic that will lead to a full-scale war, with the possibility of a reality-changing opening blow already denied. b. A reality of a few days of combat (and as it appears now, perhaps hours) that will end in a return to the previous situation, after which Israel will somehow need to accumulate internal and external legitimacy for another major move to change the reality in the north.

This is not a semantic issue. An opening blow can decide a war. The Six-Day War is entirely a continuation of the dynamics created in Operation Focus, in which the IDF destroyed most of the Egyptian Air Force. Closer to our time, and on a smaller scale, one can recall the difference between the results of Operation Cast Lead, which opened with a broad move, compared to Operation Protective Edge, which started with a deterioration dynamic. On the other side of the equation, consider the shock caused to Israel and the IDF by Hamas' surprise attack, an organization weaker than it in several respects, from which Israel has not yet fully recovered in some ways.

It's too early to know the full picture, especially when we're not sitting in the Israeli Air Force's command center. But an attack on hundreds of targets, if one is familiar with the fire capabilities developed in the IDF in recent years (by the way, at the expense of other IDF arms), is not an opening blow and not an attempt to change reality. It's an attempt to maintain the status quo in the north, and the status quo in the north over the past 10 months is the worst of all worlds. The IDF thwarted a specific Hezbollah attack, and for that, it deserves all the credit. But along with this thwarting, this could have been combined with a much broader strike on strategic assets of Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon – not just attacking the ball and the weapon without hitting the shooter.

The State of Israel has become the world champion in partial solutions, which often lead it to the worst of all worlds – both achieving small goals by their very nature, and, in many cases, bringing about what they feared, in this case, perhaps a war in the north. We had the opportunity to use the inherent legitimacy that exists in thwarting an immediate attack to show a change of direction. A paradigm shift. Unfortunately, as it appears this morning, we decided to continue playing within the rules. Maybe in an expanded edition, with some new rules, but within the rules. Even if we decide to change them from now on, we may have wasted the best opportunity.

The post Israel squandered a golden opportunity to change reality appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.