I am among those who believe that the challenge is existential, even if not in the sense of facing a coalition of Arab countries as in the past. If Israel cannot achieve the declared goals of the war – the destruction of Hamas as a semi-state military organization with a massive military infrastructure that controls Gaza – not its elimination as an ideology and as a guerrilla movement – we have no future in the Middle East.

Without removing the threat and restoring deterrence (the complexity of this concept does not mean that it does not exist), every bush-league terrorist in the Middle East could make our lives a living hell. ...

There is no way to eliminate this array without causing massive destruction. Anyone who argues that it is forbidden to cause such destruction must propose feasible alternatives that would enable the elimination of Hamas in Gaza in the sense defined above; otherwise, they are arguing that the situation in effect gives Hamas immunity. Many in the West evade the question, and presumably there are also those who implicitly support such immunity.