Slain Gaza Hostages Were Executed by Hamas - Adir Yanko (Ynet News)
    All six hostages whose bodies were recovered from Gaza on Sunday were found with gunshot wounds to their head and other areas, autopsies showed.
    They were executed no more than 48 hours before being found and signs of neglect in captivity were found on their bodies.
    The hostages were abducted from Israel to northern Gaza and transferred over time to Rafah.

Would the Hostages Have Survived If Israel Had Not Been Restrained by America? - John Podhoretz (Commentary)
    An American - Hersh Goldberg-Polin - has been murdered in the tunnels under Rafah.
    I cannot help but ask - would Hersh and the other five hostages have survived if Israel had not found itself restrained and under assault, not told to pause, not scolded in phone calls with petulant Americans, without arms and aid held up, without being lectured about the geostrategic value of going slow or not going at all.
    Imagine an Israel that was not told by its best friend in the world that offensive action in Gaza had become self-defeating, was not told that Israel should care more about feeding people in Gaza than about eliminating the threat to its 9 million citizens and pummeling Hamas until that evil group of thugs begged for ways to negotiate to return the hostages.
    We Americans are morally liable for our role in our backseat-driving in this war, for screaming at the Israelis at the wheel, unnerving them as they were trying to keep their eye on the road ahead.

Hamas's Inhumanity Is Laid Bare Once Again - Editorial (Telegraph-UK)
    The international narrative continues to be overwhelmingly anti-Israel, even as IDF special forces extricate the bodies of innocent Israeli hostages dragged from their homes on Oct. 7.
    They were kept in tunnels for months on end, tortured and starved, only to be killed as help arrived.
    The sheer mercilessness of their captors does not appear to exercise the same people around the world so eager to join pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
    Where are the mass protests against the inhumanity of Hamas?
    Hamas is happy to sacrifice as many Palestinians as it can to turn international opinion.
    That it has partly succeeded in doing so is a blot on the people unable to make a moral distinction between those who perpetrated this violence and those responding to it.

Palestinian Hostage-Taking: The Biggest Violation of International Law and Morality This Century - Charles Moore (Telegraph-UK)
    The 250 hostages taken from Israel by Palestinians from Gaza on Oct. 7, in operations which included mass murder and rape, and involved extreme violence towards and humiliation of those kidnapped, included old people, sick people, women and children.
    Contrary to all law, they were denied any rights as prisoners. They were often held without light, sanitation, and without enough food. Those who were Jews were treated even worse than those who were not.
    Some were beaten, some molested. Some died of wounds or illness. Some were killed in captivity. Eleven months later, all this is still going on.
    It must be the biggest continuous, organized non-state violation of international law and morality this century.
    Strange how muted are the protests of Western governments and international organizations against these atrocities.

The IDF's Operation Against the Iranian Terrorist Army in the West Bank - Yoni Ben Menachem (Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs)
    The IDF's current operation in northern Samaria is a pre-emptive strike against a terrorist army established by Iran, aimed at taking control of Judea and Samaria and renewing suicide attacks within Israel.
    Over the past three years, terrorist groups established by Iran, with support from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have taken control in areas like Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus, pushing out the PA security forces.
    According to Israeli security sources, 800-1,000 armed terrorists, equipped with weapons and explosives smuggled from Iran via the Jordanian border, are operating in these regions.
    They are referred to as "Iran's terrorist army," established by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, in collaboration with Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
    Recently, these groups have escalated their use of explosive devices, setting up laboratories to produce large explosive bombs, car bombs, and suicide belts.
    The writer, a veteran Arab affairs and diplomatic commentator for Israel Radio and Television, is a senior Middle East analyst for the Jerusalem Center.

Islamism's Assault on Israel Is a Crime Against All of Humanity - Dr. Qanta A. Ahmed (Times of Israel)
    As a Muslim committed to Islam, and thus starkly opposed to the mendacious, totalitarian imposter of Islam that is Islamism, the underpinning of all Hamas's words, deeds, and diabolical aspirations, I and countless other Muslims around the world who saw a humble Muslim Israeli (Farhan al-Qadi) rescued by the IDF, only to witness the appalling execution of 6 Israeli hostages at the last moment of rescue, are reaffirmed in our mission to expose, disavow, reject and dismantle Islamism by all means possible.
    Far from a moral stance, tolerating Hamas or even going so far as to celebrate it as in some way "defenders" of the Palestinians against Israel is, in fact, an immoral fallacy.
    Hamas murders Jew after Jew while expending Palestinian lives to do so, its appetite for death boundless.
    The vile murder of 6 Israeli hostages tells us who Hamas is; the heroic rescue of Bedouin captive Farhan al-Qadi tells us who Israel is.
    The writer, a British-American Muslim, is Associate Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York and an Honorary Fellow at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Dreams of a "Two-State Solution" Verge on the Delusional - Gadi Taub (JNS)
    There's no Israeli constituency to speak of for the so-called "two-state solution."
    The two-state solution died with the collapse of the Oslo framework in the Second Intifada, which began in 2000.
    Nor is a government ready to return to the two-state track likely to come to power anytime soon.
    Dreams about it are no more than airy nostalgia and optimism verging on the delusional.
    The future, alas, belongs to the pessimists, who know that for years to come, we will not be able to let down our guard.
    Most Israelis feel this in their bones, and are ready for the struggles ahead.
    In the IDF is a younger cadre of officers who already call themselves the Victory Generation. They are determined to win this war. As are most of us.
    The writer is a senior lecturer at Hebrew University's Federmann School of Public Policy.

Correcting the "Escalation" Nonsense - Seth Mandel (Commentary)
    Israel, you may have read, has escalated tensions with the Palestinians, escalated conflict with Hizbullah, initiated a major escalation with Iran, and even risked escalation with the Houthis in Yemen.
    You probably noticed a pattern: Wherever Israel defends itself, it is accused of escalation.
    Iran has been escalating the conflict for months on various fronts, and Israel's response to this escalation was an attempt to prevent Iran's escalation from coming to full fruition.

Why Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitic - Rebecca Cypess (Wall Street Journal)
    Anti-Zionism undermines the millennia-old ties between Judaism and the Land of Israel.
    While preparing to leave my position as a tenured full professor and academic administrator at Rutgers University in May, I was called out for contending that calls for Israel's destruction, including the view that Israel has no right to defend itself or its citizens, are antisemitic.
    Anti-Zionism - opposition to the Jewish right of self-determination in the Jewish people's historic homeland - is antisemitic because it attacks a core belief of Judaism.
    Three times a day, traditional Jews pray for the rebuilding of Jerusalem as part of the Jewish homeland. Academics would be outraged if anyone tried to dictate to any other religion what its beliefs should be.
    The writer is dean of the Undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yeshiva University.