It is widely believed that Iran is weeks to months away from being able to produce a nuclear warhead. The only option to stop it from developing nuclear weapons is by kinetic attack. Israel’s significant achievements against Hezbollah in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East create a historic opportunity to strike Iran.

Hamas is the product of a deep and ongoing debate within the Muslim world, a debate that has raged for the last 150 years and dwarfs the magnitude of any of the discussions we find in Western academia today. This debate is not just political but a profound theological reckoning. It revolves around a critical question: Why has Islam become weak?

‘Why can’t Israel just stop fighting?” some American friends asked last week. It’s hard being whipsawed by the media’s Sanctimony Cyclone, bombarded by heartbreaking images of suffering Palestinians and Lebanese, amid the constant scolding of big bad Israel from know-it-all CNN analysts and war-weary American politicians. And it’s hard to absorb hostility against “the Jews,” assuming that if only Israel treated Hamas better, life on the Upper West Side would improve.

Benjamin Netanyahu might fancy himself a modern-day Churchill, invoking the legacy of the wartime leader who defied the Nazis with every media appearance. But the contrast with reality couldn’t be more pronounced. While Netanyahu presents himself as Israel’s indispensable protector amid the Middle Eastern chaos, his actions have consistently eroded the nation’s security rather than fortifying it.

A recent study by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) found that “a large majority of secular Israeli Jews attach importance to their Jewish identity, and most express a strong sense of Jewishness.”

While the public toils and tears, its politicians never quit politicking.

America’s Silenced Majority remains pro-Jewish and overwhelmingly pro-Israel. But dynamics on social media, and a polarized political culture that broadcasts extremists too loudly, has given the haters an outsized profile.

Israel cannot allow Hezbollah to continue firing into its territory with impunity, nor can it leave its citizens in the north living in fear, waiting for the next rocket to fall.

It’ll be over by Christmas” is an old saying from the first months of World War I. That war lasted from July 1914 to November 1918—almost four and a half years. To Israel’s leaders’ credit, they have never said such a thing about our war. When it began a year ago, with the brutal attack on October 7, neither Christmas nor any Jewish holy day was mentioned as a possible end date. The war started on a holy day, and when it ends it will be a different type of holy day—that is, if Israel ends up winning it.