Given the Gazan war and the tensions that are always present in the Middle East but are particularly high now, a little original thinking would be particularly useful. As I have had occasion to write in this space before, there can be no resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue until the terrorist apparatus of Hamas is completely destroyed. This is not just another episode, the latest skirmish, in the endless series of such incidents until on some far-off day by sheer attrition the parties turn their swords into plowshares. Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7 was an act of war in violation of an agreed ceasefire and was conducted with the maximum possible barbarity, with the support of the Iranians, to sabotage an impending agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and specifically targeted against the most vulnerable people — children, women and the elderly, and those who had shown their commitment to reconciliation with the Arabs by choosing to live so close to the border of Gaza. It combined the sneak attack aspect of the Japanese descent on Pearl Harbor with the repulsive notion of a massacre of the innocents as on 9/11 at the World Trade Center in New York. The loss of life was somewhat smaller in Israel, but proportionately much greater.