In the battle of proxies, Israel did better than Hamas—but at a huge cost.

You know the experience. Your kid has a friend over. The friend is a wild Tasmanian Devil and is laying waste to your home. But out of a need for good relations with the kid’s parents, you never berate or punish him. Your child gets the screams, and any threats of punishments are directed at your hapless child. Thus, we find the story transposed to Gaza. Hamas once again found its uniforms under the rubble and came out in force to police the areas of the strip vacated by the IDF. They beat and killed Palestinians who dared to question their rule. They got into firefights with other families that wish to challenge its rules. It no doubt will go back to stealing aid and charging the locals for food—which the U.S. program does not. In short, Israel was blamed for murder, starvation, humiliation and destruction. Now that Hamas is doing the real killing, starving, and humiliating, there is an eerie silence on the left. I have not heard any protests over Hamas killing people in the streets for taking food or questioning the group’s rule. Only Israel gets the garbage treatment, while Hamas is coated in Teflon.

It’s hard to declare winners in wars that do not end in clear outcomes. The Allies won World War II. Korea was pretty much a draw and Vietnam a loss—though I have heard one theory that the willingness of the U.S. to fight so far from home convinced the commies to limit their future foreign interventions. Israel absorbed a blow that had not been recorded since the Holocaust. The intrepid New York Times has told us that they have the official instructions from Yahya Sinwar that his invaders should murder, destroy, rape, and plunder—and record the gore in detail. Wow, I thought that they were just making it up as they went from house to house. Israel came back and destroyed most of the built Gaza, killed apparently 58,000 Hamas operatives and another 9,000 civilians. In addition, Israel........

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