It was 93 degrees in Gaza on Wednesday, and the best that most survivors of Israel's war there could manage was to find shade under a tent. The Israeli air force, unchallenged by anti-aircraft defenses, has damaged or destroyed 92 percent of the territory's homes and apartment buildings, leaving the Palestinian survivors of the war lucky, but surely not grateful, to have a tent over their heads.

The Israeli bombing of Gaza has now gone on for more than thirty months. It began immediately after Hamas's attack on Israel of October 7, 2023. Hamas's goal was to snatch vulnerable Israeli soldiers as hostages. The gates separating Israel from south Gaza were down and hundreds of frustrated Gazans, who had been suffering in a subjugated society for decades, poured into Israel seeking revenge. Both US and Israeli intelligence services had warned for months that Hamas was planning a major assault inside Israel, but those reports, which included translated US intercepts of communications from Hamas training sites and reached senior levels of the Israeli government, were ignored or not believed.

More than 1,200 Israelis, including young attendees of an all-night rave near the border with Gaza, were murdered on October 7, and 250 men and women, many of them serving in the Israeli military, were taken hostage. Unanswered questions remain today about the ignored intelligence warnings and the slow response of the Israel Defense Forces.

There were a few Americans with military and intelligence ties to Israel who tried and failed in those early days to stop Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu from his all-out bombing response. One American thought was to convince Hamas, whose senior officers planned the attack, to turn over the leaders to stand trial. It was a nonstarter for both parties. Netanyahu had moved closer to the extreme right out of political necessity and took up a policy of all-out retaliation. He was then on trial on corruption charges that, as it was reported at the time, were more than convincing. But under Israeli law as long as he was prime minister he could stay in office if convicted and delay going to prison by appealing the verdict. It has been no secret in Israel that avoiding prison was one of his motives in turning to collective punishment from the air in Gaza. The war delayed the trial and kept him in office. Two US presidents, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, have done nothing to restrain the Israeli prime minister, and supported and supplied him in the war.