Then there’s the fact of the 180-190 hostages who will continue to be kept by the demons in Gaza as bargaining chips, and it needs to be said: This is not a time to celebrate. Nothing “good” will be happening over the next couple of days. And I suspect Israeli public opinion, which is the only thing that matters now, will not greet the release of these children and women by thinking, as so many parlous American Jewish leftists will, “Oh good, now we can make sure the ‘ceasefire’ remains and Israel will be halted in its forward movement to destroy Hamas.” Oh, no, you moral bottom-dwellers: Israel is more likely to come out of this more hardened, more determined, and less inclined toward any kind of conciliation. They will, instead, demand of their government that it win this war with dispatch, and then they will turn their attention to the domestic failings that have brought it on.

And what we in America think about it will be of no moment to them[.]

[Indeed. Hamas still wants to massacre them, and now Israel has fully awakened to that existential threat from Gaza. They won’t stop because they *can’t* stop until that threat has been destroyed and the Gazans learn what price they will pay for starting wars. — Ed]