There is no happy ending to the war Hamas just began

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in his Jerusalem office. (AP/Baz Ratner, Pool) Baz Ratner

There is no happy ending to the war Hamas just began

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The Hamas gunmen who stormed Israeli towns, murdering, wounding, and taking hostage children and grandmothers, are rightly called terrorists, rather than “combatants” or any term that could imply they are valid military forces.

But to call this a terrorist attack risks understating the magnitude of this incursion, and the rocket attacks on many Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv. That’s why Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, “We are at war.”

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And that is why the worst horrors may be yet to come. War is hell, and it never ends well.

Israel is mighty militarily. They are striking back with force and alacrity already. They may quickly recapture the territory seized by Hamas. Taking out the plotters of this attack and their facilities may not prove difficult. But the costs of an Israeli victory look likely to be steep.

Israeli strikes within Gaza will stir anger and resentment among the residents there. Palestinian terrorist leaders are trying to rally Arabs in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to take up arms. There is also the risk that portions of the population in other Arab countries will politically pressure their governments to reverse their recent concrete steps toward peace with Israel.

This is, in all likelihood, the desired goal of the terrorists who plotted these attacks for the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Just as the plotters of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. hoped to both rally fellow believers and ignite wars that trigger blowback, so (we can assume) the Hamas plotters hope that the destruction Israel will rightly inflict on them in these days will radicalize other Arab Muslims.

Iran’s potential role in all of this creates more reason to worry.

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Israel must retaliate swiftly and forcefully. Even the most finely targeted response will inevitably result in Palestinian civilian deaths, which threatens to trigger future terrorist attacks and other bad effects.

If it sounds like there is no good option, that’s because in war there are never good choices. War is hell, as General Sherman put it. War is all destruction. There is no happy ending to this war Hamas’s terrorists have launched.

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