Historians will look at October 7, 2023, as the day reality began to dissolve the elite fantasy about diplomatic negotiations with terrorists.

Before Hamas’s terror attack on Israel, even Prime Minister Netanyahu (a tough realist) had to operate within the global establishment’s fantasy vision that bloodthirsty extremists could be talked into compromise and peace. 

However, Hamas’s barbarism decisively broke Israeli willingness to play along with the establishment belief in negotiated peace. Faced with the horrors of that day, Israelis overwhelmingly concluded that destroying their mortal enemies was the only path to security.

It may have been providential that Mr. Netanyahu was prime minister when the crisis erupted. He had spent his entire life trying to convince the world that Israel’s enemies were real and had to be stopped. His brother had been the only Israeli soldier killed in the rescue operation at Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976. 

His father had immigrated from Poland, and Mr. Netanyahu has always been vividly aware that a second holocaust is possible. He knows that if Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran wins, a second genocidal massacre will occur (two Iranian nuclear weapons could kill as many Jews as Adolf Hitler’s Nazis).

Mr. Netanyahu knows war firsthand. He served in the Sayaret Metkal, Israeli Special Forces, in operations along the Suez Canal against Egypt and deep into Syria during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He was wounded several times. He knows personally the risks young Israelis take on behalf of their country’s survival.

After October 7. 2023, Israel was at an historic crossroads. Hamas terrorists killed 1,139 Israelis and visitors that day. The Hamas Covenant, which pledges that not a single Jew will remain in Israel, is the bedrock of its belief system. Hamas remains determined to attack Israel until the Jewish population leaves for survival’s sake.

Americans must understand that Israel’s population is roughly 9.5 million. America’s population is 333.3 million. A comparable attack on America would involve more than 42,000 deaths. Consider our response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, which killed 2,977 Americans. We sent troops as far away as Afghanistan and initiated a war which lasted nearly 23 years. A planned attack that killed 42,000 Americans would doubtlessly lead to an extraordinarily violent counterattack against whoever we thought was responsible.

Mr. Netanyahu and the Israelis had no difficulty figuring out who was responsible. Hamas leaders said on television that there would be more savage attacks aimed at civilians until Israel was destroyed.

Despite this, the global elites have consistently tried to restrain Israel and establish limits on how it could defeat its enemies.

While Western leaders, led by the Biden-Harris administration, urged caution and moderation, Hezbollah fired rockets from Lebanon and ultimately drove 60,000 Israelis out of their homes. Hezbollah terrorists dominated a significant part of Northern Israel with missiles and other weapons (again killing children and innocent civilians). The Israelis showed enormous patience in minimizing the effect of Hezbollah’s attacks and focusing first on destroying Hamas.

As a further sign of strategic discipline, Israel ignored an April assault from Iran, which involved more than 300 missiles and drones. In collaboration with America and Great Britain — and with cooperation from Saudi Arabia and Jordan — the Iranian missile barrage was defeated with minimum casualties and damage. Instead of spending resources in a major attack on Iran, Israel remained committed to focusing on the destruction of Hamas and preparing for the destruction of Hezbollah.

The world did not realize that Israeli strategic planning had presumed a total war throughout the region between the forces of terror and Israel was a real possibility.

While we were being told Israel was focused overwhelmingly on Gaza and the destruction of Hamas, Mossad and other Israeli intelligence and special forces assets were penetrating Iran. Israelis planted a bomb inside an Iranian Revolutionary Guard safe house to kill a key Hamas leader. They also penetrated the procurement system of Hezbollah to ensure that terrorists’ pagers and radios could be turned into explosives. These were multi-month (and in some cases multi-year) investments in preparing the battlefield.

Even more amazingly, the Israelis developed a chess-like sequencing so the exploding pagers and radios would force Hezbollah leadership into face-to-face meetings where they could be targeted and eliminated. None of Hezbollah’s major commanders survived. New ones will be appointed but Hezbollah’s fighting capabilities are seriously degraded.

And this week, Iran attacked Israel with another missile barrage. Mr. Netanyahu could never have gotten away with an unprovoked assault against Iran. However, Israel destroyed Iran’s major puppets and goaded the Iranians into attacking Israel. Now, Mr. Netanyahu can retaliate with general acceptance, if not approval, from the rest of the world.

This campaign is a well thought out, focused Israeli effort to break the back of the terrorist alliance which threatens Israel’s survival — and peace in the region.

When Israel wins — and it will — the global elites’ appeasing delusions will be shattered. A new consensus will emerge that Mr. Netanyahu’s realism is a better path to safety than the Biden-Harris fantasy.