Everyone owes some soul-searching for their part before October 7. My own reckoning is a column I wrote in 2018 dismissing the complaints about fields near Gaza being burned by incendiary kites.
I mistakenly believed the kites were a pathetic remnant of Hamas’s plans to destroy us all, and not worth getting excited about. I failed to understand that they were a warning sign: that no wall is insurmountable with a bit of creativity—and that where fields are burned, eventually command centers and homes will burn.
Since then, we have all developed an allergy to “containment” and to anything less than total victory.
With those caveats, here is a debate now unfolding at the top of Israel’s security and political establishment regarding Gaza: what is preferable—the current situation in the Strip, or renewing the war until Hamas is destroyed?