Israel’s Dilemma

Israel’s Dilemma isn’t so much that Hamas is holding a few hundred Israelis as hostages. It’s that Hamas is holding two million Palestinians as hostages and that Hamas fighters, weapons, and ammunition are embedded in the civilian population, so it’s not possible for Israel to destroy Hamas without destroying so many Palestinians that not only Arab populations but world opinion views Israel as the guilty party rather than Hamas, even though Hamas ignited the war by launching a vicious surprise attack on Israel. Israel would have done better to have spoken not just of Israeli hostages, but also of the two million Palestinian hostages, and tried to turn Palestinian sentiment against Hamas.