One of the oldest rules in American gangland was formulated by Murray “the Camel” Humphreys of the Capone mob in Chicago: “If you ever have to cock a gun in a man’s face, kill him. If you walk away without killing him after doing that, he’ll kill you the next day.” The Israelis could have, and should have, finished the Iran-adjacent Hamas terrorist organization when they had the chance, but of course they did not, and this is the result.

Now reality bites. Hamas — the indirect recipient of part of the $6 billion in Iranian fund recently unfrozen by the ghastly Biden administration as part of a prisoner-swap deal — remains as dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state (about a fifth of whose citizens are Arabs) as ever and have a rocked an always-contentious nation (a sizable proportion of the population of which doesn’t even believe it should exist and don’t serve in the nation’s armed forces) back on its heels with the latest coordinated attacks across the border. Israel must fight, of course, and thanks to its client-state relationship with the U.S. it will have the wherewithal to do it, at least for a while. Indeed, warships and planes are already on their way.

This however is no guarantee that the wider Arab world won’t see Israel’s weakness as an opportunity to finish off their bête noire while they have the chance. In that event, so much for the ballyhooed Abraham Accords, one of the few remaining achievements of the Trump administration that haven’t already been overturned by Joe Biden.