One month ago, Hamas terrorists slaughtered roughly 1,400 Israelis, the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians, in the worst terror attack in the Jewish state's 75-year existence.
Israeli officials, who were caught off guard on Oct. 7, have declared war on Hamas, which has been the de facto government of Gaza for roughly 15 years. They have said their goal is to ensure Hamas is removed from power and no longer has the ability to launch attacks against Israel. "We might just — before we arrogantly assume that we know better than what they're saying or that we know enough to say that we can dismiss that — we might just want to pause for a moment and consider if they actually mean it, that they actually mean what they say," he added."There still are, as we've seen in Russia, authoritarian bullies that want to seize territory with military force, and there still are terrorists who want to kill us.
"We’ve learned that Hamas has capabilities beyond what either U.S. or Israeli intelligence were able to foresee, and we’ve also learned that Israeli intelligence and security saw major failures on Oct. 7, something the Israeli public will have to reckon with in the coming months," Tuqa Nusairat, an expert on U.S. policy in the Middle East for the Atlantic Council, told the Washington Examiner."Israel’s response so far appears to be more vengeful and without much strategy.
The Department of Defense has surged both troops to the region, as well as military resources to Israeli forces. They are there in part to deter any other adversary of Israel from getting involved in the war and expanding it to a regional conflict — or larger. Despite their presence, U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq have been attacked nearly 40 times since the war broke out by Iranian proxies in the region, while about 45 troops have reported injuries in those incidents.