The morning’s light broke over Israel with the unmistakable roar of fighter jets, the latest chapter in a war that has never truly ended. The airstrikes over Gaza signaled not just another military manoeuvre but a profound shift in the tide of history—a reckoning long deferred but now, at last, impossible to ignore.

For 16 months, Israel has fought to bring home its stolen sons and daughters, to break the iron grip of Hamas, and to restore security to a nation scarred by terror. But the question persists: why now? Why should this offensive succeed where previous attempts faltered? What, if anything, has changed?

Everything.

For the first time in years, Israel fights without the weight of an American administration pulling at the reins, demanding restraint while expecting the impossible. No longer does it fear diplomatic abandonment at the United Nations or the withholding of crucial arms shipments. The previous administration’s ambivalence, its cold calculation that Israel must suffer in measured doses to appease the so-called international community, has been replaced by something far simpler: the unvarnished recognition that Hamas must be destroyed, not managed.

And so, freed from these constraints, Israel acts.

The enemy Israel now faces is not the same Hamas that launched its barbaric massacre on October 7, 2023. That force, with its well-trained operatives and stockpiles of Iranian munitions, has been ground down by months of relentless attrition. Its supply lines are disrupted, its once-unchecked flow of weapons diminished, its leadership hunted day and night.

Yet, Hamas is not dead, not yet. It has exploited ceasefires to regroup, to recruit new terrorists, indoctrinating a fresh wave of killers. But these recruits are no match for the trained fighters lost in battle. Their arsenal, once vast, is now a shadow of its former self. Last week’s offensive made that abundantly clear: in the first critical hours, Hamas did not fire a single rocket—not out of mercy, but because it lacked the means to do so.

At the heart of this war lies the most fundamental of all Israeli imperatives: the return of the hostages. It is not just military necessity but a national duty, a moral obligation. These men, women, and children were not just taken; they were brutalised, humiliated, and used as bargaining chips in the most cynical of games. The world may forget their names, the media may turn away in pursuit of the next outrage du jour, but Israel will not.

Yet, absurdly, some demand that Israel do nothing—that it accept Hamas’s terms, negotiate from a position of weakness, and pray that mercy might yet emerge from a regime built on cruelty. These are the same voices who cry “humanitarian crisis” while ignoring that Hamas diverts aid to its fighters. The same people  who call for ceasefires that allow terrorists to rearm. The same who, time and again, ignore the suffering of Israeli families whose loved ones remain in the hands of sadists.

There is an obscenity in the way the world speaks of this war, a grotesque inversion of morality. No nation would be expected to endure what Israel has suffered. No country in Europe, no Western democracy, no so-called enlightened state would allow its cities to burn, its citizens to be butchered, its children to be stolen without unleashing the full might of its forces.

And yet, for Israel, the rules are different.

It is told to show restraint while its people die. To negotiate with those who murdered entire families in their homes. To stand down while its enemies prepare for the next war. This, we are told, is the price of membership in the community of nations.

Israel rejects that price.

This war, then, is not just another round of violence in an endless cycle. It is a test—a test of resolve, moral clarity, and the simple, undeniable truth that a nation cannot survive if it is unwilling to fight for its existence.

There will be voices—there always are—demanding Israel stop before the job is done. They will speak of proportionality, of negotiations, of peace. But peace is not the absence of war. It is the defeat of those who would wage war against the innocent.

Hamas must fall. The hostages must come home. And Israel must emerge not just intact but stronger. Anything less is an invitation to the next massacre, the next atrocity, the next October 7.

Israel will not let that happen. And neither should the world.