Hamas attacked several IDF positions in Gaza in the last few days, including with anti-tank missiles, killing (as of the time of writing this) at least two Israeli soldiers and wounding one. Israel responded with strikes on Hamas positions throughout Gaza.

As I described in a prior post, the Gaza “peace agreement” was never truly “peace” but it’s still significant. Here’s how it’s playing out.

• Hamas “denied” attacking IDF positions, but the terror group also claims it had “lost contact” with its operatives in the area. So in effect, Hamas actually admits to the attacks, but essentially claims the Hamas terrorists who carried them out don’t count as the “real” Hamas — whatever that means.
• The IDF responded with strikes on Hamas positions throughout Gaza, without attempting to figure out who is the “real” Hamas and who isn’t. Israel referred to its strikes as “punishment” for violating the ceasefire, but not an actual return to combat.
• As I mentioned, President Trump seemed to accept the Hamas explanation.

So everyone is essentially conveying the same message: that some version of Hamas attacked Israel, but we’re still in a ceasefire: one that includes, well … firing.

Clever phrasing aside, there is actually a meaningful difference between the current limited strikes versus the IDF’s major combat efforts of just a few weeks ago. That difference seems to be leading the parties toward the “Lebanon Model.”

What is the Lebanon Model?

After a series of operations in which the IDF devastated the Hezbollah terror organization late last year, Israel and Lebanon entered a “ceasefire” agreement in November 2024. Under the terms of this “ceasefire” Israel retained the right to continue firing against Hezbollah as necessary.

Why?

Any agreement requires enforcement. After the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006, Israel trusted a UN peacekeeping force called “UNIFIL” to enforce that particular ceasefire.

The result? Under UNIFIL’s watchful “supervision”:

• Hezbollah positioned some 250,000 Iranian controlled rockets and missiles, aimed at Israeli communities;
• Hezbollah developed its “Radwan” force, a special commando unit designed and trained to carry out an October 7 style attack – but on a vastly larger scale; and
• Just since October 7, 2023, Hezbollah fired thousands rockets and missiles on Israelis, displacing some 60,000 residents from their homes, and killing 45 civilians, among them 12 Druze-Israeli children on a soccer field.

This is what UN “peacekeeping” looks like.

Not surprisingly, Israel finally concluded that it may not “out-contract” its security.

Indeed, since the November 2024 ceasefire, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes against Hezbollah, which are in complete compliance with the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

What is the Gaza model?

This month’s “peace” agreement in Gaza was meant to occur in essentially two phases: first, the return of all Israeli hostages (living and deceased), an Israeli pullback to certain positions (called the “yellow line”), and the release of a massive number of convicted terrorists from Israeli prisons.

The subsequent phases were described in a vague outline, with the details to be negotiated later, including: Hamas disarming, additional Israeli pullback, reconstruction in Gaza, and some kind of international force.

The relevant parties agreed to Phase 1 and on October 13, all 20 living Israeli hostages returned home. Israel fulfilled its part by ceasing combat operations, moving back to the “yellow line” and releasing convicted terrorists from Israeli prisons. Hamas, however, breached the agreement by failing to return the bodies of most deceased hostages, or even to halt its attacks on both IDF soldiers and Gaza’s civilians, as we’ve seen in the last two days.

In effect we remain in a “ceasefire,” but Israel retains the right to continue firing as Hamas continues to breach the deal.

From here there are two major possibilities:

1. Gaza stabilizes, non-Hamas powers begin to take control, and Israel continues limited strikes as necessary, in other words: the Lebanon Model; or
2. The parties return to full combat.

If option #2 comes to pass, there will be one major difference from before: there are no live Israeli hostages in Gaza. Israel now has the capacity to strike Hamas positions without concern for endangering the hostages’ lives, or the need to strike a deal before the hostages die from starvation and abuse.

In other words, this would be a “reboot” of Israel’s previous “Gideon’s Chariot” operation which was meant to take Gaza City and destroy Hamas, except without hostages.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated last month from the White House, “This can be done the easy way or it can be done the hard way, but it will be done,” a sentiment President Trump later echoed more bluntly, saying “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.”

Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.

What comes the day after in Gaza has always been a question hanging over this war. Now, however, that question seemingly has been given an answer with Donald Trump’s peace plan, with reservations that Hamas seems to be dragging its feet with the deceased hostages and other issues. But there still is another question: what happens the day after in the West?

Those who care about Israel — and about the security of the Jewish people — must not be lulled into complacency by the coming quiet. The lull will be deceptive. There will be an illusion of normalcy, a temptation to believe that life can simply return to how it was before October 7th. That would be a grave mistake.

For two years, the streets of Western cities echoed with chants of “Ceasefire now!” as protesters filled avenues from London to Los Angeles, and Paris to New York, demanding an end to Israel’s military campaign. But now, as a ceasefire appears to be taking hold and the war’s end seems within reach, something interesting has happened. The once-deafening noise of outrage has turned into an eerie quiet.

Where did they go? Why, after months of daily demonstrations, is there no visible joy at the possibility of peace? Shouldn’t those who claimed to march for “justice” and “Ceasefire NOW” be celebrating the end of suffering and the promise of rebuilding? They finally got the ceasefire they have been fighting for.

The reason for the silence is that many leaders and organizers behind the “anti-Gaza war” movement were never truly advocating for peace. Their goal was not coexistence. Their aim — consciously or otherwise — was to delegitimize Israel and put Jewish people “back in their place.” Their silence represents a defeat on that front (at least for now). Their goal was to fight not with rockets or rifles, but through public opinion, social media narratives, and political pressure.

That is why the “day after” cannot be limited to Gaza alone. There must be an equally urgent conversation about the day after in the West.

What we are witnessing is not peace — it is a pause. And pauses are not surrender.

The activists, influencers, and ideological networks that mobilized millions against Israel are not gone. They are merely regrouping — retrenching, and preparing for the next phase of their campaign. And this next phase, just as in the current phase, will not be fought in Gaza, it will be fought in New York, Paris, London, and on every major social media platform where ideas are shaped.

The campaign against Israel in Western societies will not stop because the war in Gaza stops. It will only evolve. The same networks that have spent the past two years vilifying Israel will pivot toward shaping the next generation’s perception of Zionism, morality, and even the Jewish people’s self-identity. Their battleground is for the hearts and minds of people on the ground and in the digital world.

And that is where those who defend Israel and the Jewish people must now focus. The coming decade will be decisive. It will require reimagining current institutions, building coalitions, and using platforms capable of countering disinformation and reclaiming the moral narrative.

If those who stand with Israel fail to understand this — if they mistake quiet for peace — they will find themselves outmaneuvered once again by a movement that never truly rests.

The war may be ending in Gaza, but this is only the beginning of the fight for our future.

Daniel Rosen is the co-founder of a non-profit technology company called Emissary4all, which is an app to organize people to impact the narrative and move the needle on social media and beyond. He is the co-host of the podcast Recalibration. You can reach him at drosen@emissary4all.org

On the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Britain’s Jewish community was once again terrorized at what should have been the safest of spaces: a synagogue.

The Yom Kippur terror attack targeting worshippers at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester was met with the usual chorus of hollow condemnation from politicians across the spectrum, accompanied by the same weary assurances that “the Jewish community will be protected.”

But this did not happen in a vacuum.

Just hours after the attack, British police confirmed that they were treating the incident as terrorism. The suspect was identified as Jihad al-Shamie, a Syrian asylum seeker who had been granted British citizenship. Yet even as the facts became clear, parts of the media and political establishment responded with familiar hand-wringing over how such an atrocity could have occurred — as though the answer wasn’t staring them in the face.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews put it bluntly, describing the attack as “sadly something we feared was coming.”

And indeed, it was.

For more than two years, the UK’s media and political class have helped fuel a hostile atmosphere, in which antisemitism has surged to levels unseen in decades. Since Hamas’ October 7 massacre, much of the British press has amplified narratives that demonize Israel while excusing or downplaying Palestinian terrorism — creating a climate where violence against Jews does feel almost inevitable.

A Rare Moment of Accountability

That climate was laid bare on live television.

During a Sky News segment following the Manchester attack, Lord John Woodcock — the government’s former independent adviser on political violence — directly confronted the network for its role in shaping public hostility toward Jews.

Woodcock, whose title in the UK’s House of Lords is Baron Walney, described the terror attack as “a product of the way in which Israel’s actions are seen and portrayed — I’m afraid to say it, by Sky News as well as other media outlets — as uniquely evil and worthy of a level of focus simply not afforded to other dire situations across the world.”

It was an extraordinary on-air moment of accountability — one that exposed a truth the media refuses to acknowledge.

MUST WATCH: @SkyNews won’t post this on their own social media because former UK govt advisor on political violence, @LordWalney, calls them & UK media out for portraying Israeli actions as “almost uniquely evil & worthy of a level of focus which is simply not afforded to other… pic.twitter.com/WrPgTat6Lk

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 2, 2025

Even as Woodcock pointed to the double standards and moral obsession that define coverage of Israel, the Sky News presenter attempted to push back, defending the network’s record. It was a revealing exchange: faced with criticism that was both factual and unanswerable, Sky News’s instinct was to deny, deflect, and preserve its self-image as neutral.

That, right there, is the problem.

When even undeniable evidence of bias is raised — when a former government adviser points out the disproportionate scrutiny applied to Israel — the British media refuses to reflect. It cannot see that its relentless framing of Israel as a moral pariah has consequences.

The Media’s Habit of “Both-Sidesing”

Almost as predictable as the politicians’ “shock” was the media’s reflexive attempt to “both sides” the story.

Reporting live from outside the synagogue, Sky News anchor Sarah-Jane Mee invited Akeela Ahmed, CEO of the British Muslim Trust, to comment on the attack. Incredibly, Mee suggested that the day’s events had “highlighted the vulnerabilities of different faith groups.”

“While Jews were targeted today,” she added, “we know Muslims could be targeted in these kinds of incidents.”

The remark was jaw-dropping. Muslims, she implied, might become victims in antisemitic Islamist terror attacks.

This is what moral relativism looks like.

“My heart goes out to everybody who was impacted”

Chief executive at British Muslim Trust Akeela Ahmed tells @skysarahjane she believes the increase in religiously motivated hate crimes comes from “misunderstanding and prejudice of people of faith”

 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/ZTwyC6d343

— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 2, 2025

Instead of confronting the uncomfortable fact that Jews were targeted outside their own house of worship by a man radicalized by antisemitic ideology, the media rushed to dilute the specificity of the crime.

Reuters reported that the incident had “raised fears of more violence and division across faiths.” The BBC insisted for nearly 24 hours after the attack that the “motive” was unclear. Each time, the framing softened the reality: this was not an attack on “faith communities.” It was an attack on Jews.

Not on Muslims. Not on “believers.” On Jews.

Back to the Media

The press will condemn antisemitism in the abstract but refuses to recognize how its own reporting perpetuates it in practice. For years, journalists have blurred the line between criticism of Israel and vilification of Jews, normalizing the idea that Jewish collectivity — whether expressed through nationhood or worship — is suspect.

When headlines equate terrorists with their victims, when outlets question Israel’s right to defend itself but ignore Hamas’ atrocities, when Jewish suffering is minimized or reframed as a “clash of communities,” the result is not moral balance, but complicity.

The Manchester attack was not inevitable, actually, but it was predictable. And until Britain’s media acknowledges the role it has played in feeding the flames, the words “never again” will remain just that: words.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.