It was a reference not to Trump’s electoral hopes but to Israel’s war aims following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack.
asserted
It → follow → attack
Israel demanded the return of all the kidnapped hostages.
asserted
Israel → demand → hostages
It also sought the elimination of the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza.
asserted
It → seek → Gaza
And it wanted to extinguish the capability of Hamas, or of any other terrorist organization, to launch another Oct. 7-style surprise attack on Israel.
asserted
it → want → Israel
Even readers who have followed the war closely may find themselves cheered to recall that during a few days in December 2024, after Bashar Assad’s Iran-allied regime in Syria was toppled, “Israel destroyed the major assets of the Syrian military: Chemical weapons, air-defense batteries, combat aircraft, helicopters, drones, the naval fleet, weapons stockpiles, production facilities, and even tanks.”
uncertain
Israel → follow → military
In only two days, “Israel carried out 480 strikes, wiping out an estimated 70 percent of Syria’s strategic capabilities.
asserted
Israel → carry → capabilities
A Syrian rebel commander told the Syria Direct news outlet that it would take decades to rebuild the Syrian army.
asserted
it → tell → army
In Gaza, Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
asserted
Israel → kill → Sinwar
It killed Yahya Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed Sinwar, who took over Hamas in Gaza after his brother died.
asserted
brother → kill → Gaza
It killed Hamas’s military chief, Mohammed Deif.
asserted
It → kill → chief
It killed the Hamas political bureau chief, Ismail Haniyeh, while Haniyeh was staying in a Tehran guesthouse that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps used for visiting dignitaries.
asserted
Corps → kill → dignitaries
In Lebanon, Israel killed the military chief of the Hezbollah terrorist group, Fuad Shukr.
asserted
Israel → kill → group
It killed the overall leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut “alongside around twenty Hezbollah military commanders.”
asserted
It → kill → commanders
Israel killed “3,851 Hezbollah terrorists and wounded around 9,000 more,” the book reports, citing the Israel Defense Force and recounting the story of the exploding pagers.
asserted
book → kill → pagers
On the Iranian front, the US and Israel jointly significantly set back the nuclear program and killed the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “and nearly all of his top IRGC and military commanders.”
asserted
US → set → IRGC
Israel killed Iran’s top two military commanders, Hossein Salami and Mohammad Bagheri.
asserted
Israel → kill → commanders
Israel killed IRGC Air Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
asserted
Israel → kill → Hajizadeh
Israel killed the IRGC intelligence chief, Mohammad Kazemi, and his deputy.
asserted
Israel → kill → chief
And Israel brought back from Gaza 168 live hostages and 87 bodies of dead hostages, accounting for all those known to have been kidnapped.
asserted
Israel → bring → those
Alongside the highlight reel of Israeli and American accomplishments, this book provides a kind of supercut of retrospectively ridiculous things that Israeli and American politicians have said along the way.
asserted
politicians → provide → way
The compilation, in one volume, of all these gems is another public service provided by Bob, who is The Jerusalem Post’s senior military analyst, and by Kaufman, who is an editorial board member of The Wall Street Journal.
asserted
who → provide → Journal
Israeli politician Benny Gantz bragged to an interviewer in 2018 that as Israel Defense Force chief of staff he had “prioritized cyber and intelligence over infantry and armor,” because “unlike the threat of ground invasion, the threat of cyber is realistic.”
asserted
threat → brag → cyber
John Kerry, as President Obama’s secretary of state, cited the Afghan army to the Israelis as a model for Palestinian security forces and “an example of how local forces could be trained successfully.”
uncertain
forces → cite → forces
Kamala Harris, before Israel’s invasion of the southern Gazan city of Rafah: “I have studied the maps,” she said, incorrectly claiming there was nowhere for civilians to evacuate to.
asserted
civilians → study → maps
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, who has since landed at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he is Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order, had written a Foreign Affairs essay “that went to print just before the October 7 attack and arrived in subscribers’ mailboxes later in the month,” boasting that Biden’s policies made the Middle East “quieter than it has been for decades.”
asserted
it → land → decades
He claimed credit for having “de-escalated crises in Gaza” and having “enhanced deterrence” to discourage Iranian aggression.
asserted
He → claim → aggression
The book details differences among Netanyahu, his war cabinet members Gantz and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Israel Defense Force chief of staff Herzi Halevi.
asserted
book → detail → staff
Those internal discussions — and the parallel dialogues with the Biden and Trump administrations — shaped the outcomes in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
asserted
discussions → shape → Gaza
The personalities also reflected the span of public opinion in Israel’s diverse democracy.
asserted
personalities → reflect → democracy
The authors are less sure-footed when analyzing US and global sentiment.
asserted
authors → analyze → sentiment
“Widespread destruction became a key driver of Israel’s diminished global standing,” the authors contend.
asserted
authors → become → standing
“Videos of Gazan neighborhoods turned to rubble, with nothing left intact for as far as the eye could see, told a story of their own.”
uncertain
eye → turn → own
And, “a young generation’s first impression of the Jewish state has been formed by the destruction of Gaza.
asserted
impression → form → Gaza
Somehow the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of Dresden, didn’t diminish America’s global standing for the young generation during or after World War II.
asserted
bombing → diminish → II
Any erosion can be blamed not on the destruction of Gaza but on a sophisticated social-media and on-the-ground campaign by foreign actors to demonize Israel, coupled with social trends in America such as declining church attendance, a flood of Muslim immigration and biblical illiteracy.
asserted
erosion → blame → immigration
Here, Bob claims Netanyahu “harmed Israel’s name with US Democrats and other parts of the fair-minded West (Germany is another notable example) by continuing the war for too long.”
uncertain
Germany → claim → long
He goes on: “Whether the war should have ended in late summer 2024, early 2025 or summer 2025 is hotly debated within the Israeli defense establishment.
asserted
ended → go → establishment
But close to zero of the Israeli defense establishment supported continuing the war beyond that point, and beyond that point is where Israel’s standing took the largest global walloping.”
asserted
standing → support → walloping
This timeline does not cohere.
asserted
timeline → cohere → ?
It was only in October of 2025 that Hamas agreed to disarm and to return all the Israeli hostages, dead and alive.
asserted
Hamas → agree → hostages
…and 4 more, not listed.
The Aporia
