With passions in Israel running high over the arrest of soldiers accused of abusing imprisoned terrorists, and over the riots that ensued, Nadav Shragai provides an admirably measured analysis:

We would all rejoice to see the October 7 terrorists hanging from power poles in the Gaza Strip. However, having captured them, we are obligated to bring them to trial. That said, there were more respectful ways to summon soldiers for questioning. . . . This is not how you treat soldiers entrusted with guarding the worst of our murderers during wartime.

If the allegations of sexual abuse prove to be true, they cannot be ignored. Not out of concern for the suffering of any particular terrorist, but because after we’ve captured and imprisoned these inhuman creatures instead of eliminating them on the battlefield, we must try them according to Israeli law. We must ensure their conviction and, in the process, present their crimes and atrocities to the world, just as was done with the Nazis at Nuremberg, or with [Adolf] Eichmann in Jerusalem in the 1960s.

The state of Israel, and only the state of Israel, can eliminate terrorists and mass murderers without trial, during and between wars.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.