According to a recent poll conducted by a respected Palestinian research group, 65 percent of Palestinians supported the April bombing of a bus in Jerusalem in which more than twenty Israelis were injured. This poll and other data, writes Daniel Polisar, suggest that last week’s shooting in Tel Aviv was equally popular:

Since August 2014, [pollsters] have on eight occasions asked Palestinians about their attitudes regarding “attacks against Israeli civilians within Israel,” and each time the majority expressed support. In the March 2016 poll, the last time this question was asked, 60 percent of Palestinians backed such attacks. . . .

[In addition, one] pattern has been consistent during the past decade and a half, with only a brief exception: high percentages of Palestinians have supported terror attacks on Israeli civilians in general, while even higher percentages have backed specific bombings and shootings that killed and wounded Israelis. . . .

[Therefore], would-be terrorists contemplating an attack can be reasonably confident that if they succeed in killing or injuring Israeli civilians, their actions will earn support and praise in their society—for themselves, their families, and the militant group to which they belong, whether or not they live to enjoy it personally. Indeed, they will be seen as heroes, not only in the communiques of Hamas but in the minds of rank-and-file Palestinians. As I have written previously, this may result from the society-wide veneration of martyrs during the weeks after they attain martyrdom (especially those who die while taking the battle to the Zionist enemy), or from the enthusiasm for striking Israelis in places of special significance—like Tel Aviv, the symbol of Jewish economic and military power, or Jerusalem, the epicenter of political rule and religious contention. . . .

Only if there is a sharp and durable decline in this deep-rooted support for such wanton violence and for those who perpetrate it can there be real hope that this kind of terrorism will become, as it ought to be, a relic of the past.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”