A woman holds a cut-out picture of hostages Shiri Bibas, 32, with Kfir Bibas, 9 months old, who were kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and then killed in Gaza, on the day of their funeral procession, at a public square dedicated to hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem

Since October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas militants and Gazan civilians invaded Israeli communities — murdering entire families (and intentionally burning them alive), raping women, and abducting hostages — the global media and major NGOs have de facto erased Hamas’ central role in everything that followed.

The conflict’s root cause — and Hamas’ underlying responsibility for everything that has happened since — is routinely ignored. This is not an oversight. It’s a willful distortion.

Hamas’ Ideology of Rejection — From 1920 to Today

Hamas emerged from a tradition of Islamist Arab leadership in British Mandatory Palestine that has consistently rejected any compromise with Jewish sovereignty in any part of historic Israel.

From the 1920 and 1929 Arab pogroms and massacres of Jewish communities throughout British Mandatory Palestine, through the rejection of the 1937 Peel Commission and the 1947 UN partition plan, Palestinian Arab leaders have refused to share any land in historical Israel with a Jewish state.

Hamas’ founding charter in 1988 formalized its commitment to this rejectionism: declaring jihad as the only solution, rejecting Israel’s legitimacy, and committing to the “full and complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.”

This ideology isn’t fringe. It defines the group’s  worldview. Hamas has rejected every peace offer — Madrid, Oslo, the Camp David frameworks, the 2000 and 2008 peace offers — intentionally undermining efforts at diplomacy, while reinforcing violence as the only acceptable strategy.

The UK Ultimatum: Morality Twisted into Complicity

Likely in response to the morally bankrupt “news” coverage of Gaza over the past 21 months and the realities of its own electorate, Britain’s Labour government has issued a one-sided ultimatum: Israel must meet demands — halt all hostilities in Gaza, abandon Jewish sovereignty in Judea & Samaria — or the UK will prematurely recognize a Palestinian state (with borders, governance, currency, etc. of this supposed new state all undefined).

There is no reciprocal demand on Hamas. The genocidal terror group is under zero pressure to disarm, release hostages, or relinquish power. This UK policy explicitly externalizes all responsibility onto Israel, absolving Hamas. It’s like refusing to blame the Nazis for the deaths that occurred in World War II, which was launched by Adolph Hitler’s aggression and invasion.

At a bare minimum here, morality demands reciprocity: any peace pathway must begin with the removal of Hamas and the rejectionist and deeply antisemitic ideology it exemplifies. Yet the UK’s policy ignores this completely. The consequence is moral inversion: terrorists rewarded, and their target for elimination is loaded with demands and obligations.

Media Starvation Campaign: Propaganda Dressed as Humanity

No doubt, given the timing of the UK’s one-sided ultimatum, the Hamas-started and Western media fueled narrative, which blames only Israel and largely ignores Hamas’s own role in Gaza’s food crisis — helped to incentivize UK Prime Minister Starmer’s announcement. The reality is that Hamas not only started this war, and thereby caused the suffering caused by it — but the terror group has also diverted or hoarded food-aid, hijacked its distribution, used the aid it confiscated to stay in power and fund its war efforts, and used Gazan civilians as bargaining chips.

Yet most of the “reporting” often falsely depicts Gazans as starving only because of Israel.

Setting aside how this mendacious media campaign and hyperfocus on Israel leads to Western ignorance or indifference to far worse situations and starvation occurring in places like Yemen and the Sudan (where at least 500,000 people have died from starvation in the last two years alone), when the media and NGOs shield Hamas from scrutiny and spotlight only Israel’s military actions, they distort moral agency.

When governments like the UK demand change only from Israel, they validate Hamas’s strategy: no disarmament, no surrender, no recognition of Israel — and indefinite war. Hamas is incentivized to keep fighting because the world is telling Hamas that its survival and mandate for perpetual war until Israel is destroyed are acceptable.

If Western democracies truly care about Palestinian lives, they must stop de facto sanctioning the ideology and the groups responsible for their suffering. Hamas’ rejectionist, genocidal platform — antisemitic, misogynist, homophobic — stands at the root of every death in this war. Its refusal to compromise is tangled with a history of more than a century of Palestinian Arab leadership rejection of Jewish peoplehood and right to self-determination that must dramatically change for peace to have a chance.

There is no path to peace without clarity: Hamas’ ideology and actions are the cause of the October 7th war and the suffering that has occurred in this war. Any attempt to “recognize Palestine” or negotiate peace without removing Hamas and ending the ideology behind it is simply handing power and legitimacy to both the rejectionist ideologies and the entities that have repeatedly ignited and perpetuated the violence in this region for over a century.

The moral path demands naming and addressing that reality — not trying to ignore or erase it.

Micha Danzig is a current attorney, former IDF soldier & NYPD police officer. He currently writes for numerous publications on matters related to Israel, antisemitism & Jewish identity & is the immediate past President of StandWithUs in San Diego and a national board member of Herut.

Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled

According to a source, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly announced a decision to fully occupy all of Gaza, including areas where the hostages are located, while reportedly informing the IDF chief of staff that if the decision does not suit him, then he should resign.

Israel has long avoided entering areas where the hostages were located for fear Hamas might kill them, and has also avoided moves that could be interpreted as even a partial occupation of Gaza, for fear of the responsibilities that would entail. (Until now, Israel maintained a legal blockade, but not an occupation, thus leaving Hamas in local control.)

Here’s how the dramatic change came about, the other options Israel had considered, and the dramatic potential and terrifying risks of this new direction.

Last week, hostage negotiations reached an impasse, with apparently no chance of forward progress. Afterwards, Hamas published videos showing Israeli hostages Evyatar David and Rom Broslovski in a state of starvation that resembles victims of the Nazi concentration camps, and tears at the Israeli soul. Meanwhile a massive, global propaganda campaign propagated the false myth that Gaza is experiencing an unprecedented famine, resulting in international pressure on Israel to take actions that would leave Hamas in power, and potentially even create a Palestinian state as an outgrowth of the October 7 massacre.

Here are the options Israel was forced to consider in recent days:

Option 1: End the war and bring home all the hostages, even if it means leaving Hamas in power.

Recent polls show that 74% of Israelis support this option, as echoed in passionate protests every Saturday evening. Yet this polling question refers to an imaginary deal that is not actually “on the table.”

A careful review of news articles and interviews since October 2023, shows that at no time has Hamas offered or agreed to any deal that would release all the hostages. Qatar and Egypt have suggested frameworks to that effect, however Hamas itself (which is the only party that matters) has never proposed, nor agreed to, any such framework.

This “option” is not actually an option at all.

What if such a deal were on the table?

This is a fantasy, but theoretically speaking, if a deal to return all the hostages were on the table, then Israel should take it … if, and only if, the consensus of Israelis are willing to recognize and pay the true price.

What is the true price? History tells us:

In 2011, Israel negotiated the return of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity. At the time, Israelis thought the price was the release of over 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners, including terrorists such as future Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind, Yahya Sinwar.

But that was not the real price.

Once Hamas understood how desperately Israel would negotiate for the return of hostages, the terror organization began planning to take more. The price Israel actually paid for the release of one soldier was, in retrospect, 251 additional hostages, 1,200 murders, mass rape, mass torture, mass beheadings, and the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

If Israel makes the wrong decisions today, it will invite further such massacres for years to come, not only by Hamas, which is currently weakened, but by the entire Arab world, which is watching events closely. If, and only if, Israelis are willing to risk paying that price, then Israel should make that deal.

This is not an easy (theoretical) choice, but again, such a deal is actually not on the table, so the “dilemma” is a fictional one.

Option 2: Declare sovereignty over parts of Gaza.

Israeli officials have been leaking plans to take parts of Gaza as Israeli territory. The logic is that Hamas’ raison dêtre, its very purpose for existence, relates to conquering and controlling territory.

Hamas is not deterred by loss of infrastructure or lives: to the contrary, the terror group has been planning for years to make that sacrifice: both to slow down IDF operations by manipulating Israeli values and ethics, and also by weaponizing international pressure against Israel. There’s a saying from the world of hi-tech, “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” This is true of Hamas’ intentional destruction of its own people and infrastructure.

By contrast, after a ceasefire deal last January that allowed locals to return to their homes in northern Gaza, Palestinians celebrated this return to “their land.” Hamas promised this would be only the first step on the way to conquering their “original homes” throughout Israel. In short: the Palestinian national identity is largely based on conquest and control of territory. Thus, the threat of losing territory should (in theory) motivate Hamas to negotiate.

On the other hand, Israel’s annexation threat has been circulating for about a week now, and if anything, Hamas seems to have become even less flexible, most recently saying it will lay down its arms only upon the establishment of a Palestinian state with full sovereignty and Jerusalem as its capital: this would effectively make October 7 into “Palestine Independence Day.”

Furthermore, regional powers have a history of not wanting sovereignty over Gaza. For example, as part of the peace accords of 1978, Egypt insisted on taking back the Sinai but not Gaza, as the territory’s Palestinian population had become too problematic. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 was highly controversial, including haunting images of IDF soldiers forcibly removing Israelis from their homes. In retrospect, the disengagement laid the initial groundwork for five wars against Hamas and, eventually, the October 7 massacre. Yet there was a reason for the disengagement: protecting Israeli settlements in Gaza was taking up a disproportionate amount of the IDF’s resources, and killing a tragic number of IDF soldiers, something the majority of Israelis were no longer willing to tolerate at that time.

Whether sovereignty in Gaza is right or wrong at this time, there is no question that it will come at a cost: in both IDF resources and Israeli lives. Perhaps that cost is worth it, but Israelis will still have to pay.

Option 3: The Palestinian Authority takes control of Gaza

Last week, in a historic first, the Arab League condemned Hamas and the October 7 massacre (while also condemning Israel on a number of points), and called for an independent Palestinian state, to be governed by the Palestinian Authority.

This is a non-starter for Israelis: the Palestinian Authority participated in and frequently praises the October 7 massacre, has provided millions of dollars in payments to its perpetrators, and in the past two years, there has been a significant increase in terror attacks originating from areas under Palestinian Authority control.

Even more disturbing than the attacks that occurred is the attacks that haven’t: since October 7, 2023, Israel’s Shin Bet security service has prevented over 1,000 attempted large scale terror attacks out of the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, including attempted infiltrations in the style of the October 7 massacre.

In short, a Palestinian Authority government in any region next to Israel is a clear and present danger to Israelis.

Option 4: Military occupation

After nearly two years of fighting, one could be forgiven for assuming that all military options have been exhausted. They have not.

First some historical perspective: dismantling a terror organization takes time. America’s fight against Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden took roughly 10 years, and the war against ISIS took roughly the same. France’s Operation Barkhane against terror groups in the Sahel region of Africa took over eight years, while America’s war against the Taliban took over 25 (and without success). If Israel manages to fulfill its goals in Gaza in roughly two years, that will be, historically speaking, incredibly fast — even though it feels interminable to Israelis.

Yet Israel has a major military weakness in Gaza that is about to change: avoiding the hostages. Israel reportedly knows the location of the hostages, and fearing that Hamas might kill them, has entirely avoided those areas. The unfortunate result has been to create a safe haven for Hamas fighters, and also to preclude any possibility of a rescue operation. Such military action is risky: it will endanger the hostages should Hamas attempt to kill them outright, yet it may also result in their rescue. On the other hand, any delay endangers the lives of the hostages as well: with negotiations at an impasse and recent Hamas videos showing hostages in a dramatically deathly state.

Another danger is that occupation of Gaza requires an investment of IDF resources and risks Israeli lives, just as protecting the Israeli settlements in Gaza prior to 2005.

However, if successful, this operation will reshape the Middle East, provide Israel with much needed security, and turn October 7, 2023, from “Palestine Independence Day” into a cautionary tale for any power that might consider attacking Israel in the future.

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

Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” on April 8, 2024. Photo: Screenshot

Influential talk show host Jon Stewart calls himself a “bad Jew.” But in a recent interview with controversial author Peter Beinart, he had far worse things to say about the Jewish State.

Over the course of 18 minutes, the two men took turns vilifying Israel as their audience cheered along.

Stewart repeatedly professed ignorance between jabs — as if shrugging through inflammatory claims about an active war absolves him of responsibility. It doesn’t. Especially not when he echoes fringe voices like Beinart’s, who argued that harshly criticizing Israel is a moral obligation — one that is for Israel’s own good.

Stewart accused Israel of “purposeful starvation” in Gaza, conveniently ignoring that Israel has facilitated an unprecedented volume of aid to an enemy population during wartime.

He and Beinart painted Israeli Jews as oppressors, carefully omitting who started the violence. Hamas was erased from the frame. The October 7 massacre? Never mentioned. Instead, Israel was blamed for its own trauma.

At one point, Stewart baited Beinart with the tired trope that “David became Goliath.” Beinart took it even further — invoking the Holocaust and drawing a grotesque moral parallel:

If we want to remember our histories, if we want to honor those in our families who were slaughtered, genocided and starved, our obligation is to care.

Who was Beinart citing as his moral compass? B’Tselem, an anti-Israel NGO that has falsely accused Israel of apartheid and supports the annihilationist BDS movement.

The entire thrust of the interview was clear: Israel brought this on itself.

“They’re the ones risking the Jewish state,” Stewart said. Not Hamas. Not Hezbollah. Not Iran. Israel.

In one of the most cringeworthy moments, Beinart declared: “How you treat people affects how they treat you.”

As if Hamas is just misunderstood. As if they’d stop murdering Jews if Israel were just nicer.

Is he really that naive? Has he learned nothing from 35 years of suicide bombings, kidnappings, and rocket fire?

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Two self-styled “truth-tellers” living in safety spent 18 minutes on @TheDailyShow calling Israeli Jews the oppressors – while ignoring who initiated the violence.@jonstewart and @peterbeinart erased Hamas from the frame and blamed Israel for its own trauma. pic.twitter.com/jH9tqhAeGp

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 29, 2025

Beinart then trotted out the false claim that Palestinians acted like Gandhi in 2018, and Israel responded with snipers. What he left out: those “marches” were Hamas-led operations involving grenades, fence breaches, firebombs, and arson kites.

That isn’t nuance. That’s Hamas PR.

And then, in a moment of moral surrender disguised as insight, Stewart said: “If Jews need a Jewish state to feel safe, then humanity has failed.”

No, Jon. Jews don’t want to need a state. But history — and reality — have made it necessary.

This wasn’t journalism. It wasn’t moral clarity. It wasn’t even debate.

It was 18 minutes of finger-pointing. No Israeli voices. No accountability for Hamas. Just two self-righteous men tokenizing themselves on national TV.

Not journalism. Not justice. Just marketing for moral collapse.

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