While Israeli, Egyptian, Qatari, and American diplomats gathered in Doha last week, the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was in Ankara, addressing the Turkish parliament. His speech began with the usual condemnations of Israel and continued with calling the U.S. a “plague.” As Elliott Abrams notes, America has given the Palestinians over $674 million in the past year, more than has any other country.

One wonders if the State Department—so sensitive these days to the speeches of Israeli politicians—has condemned Abbas’s statement. One wonders what the average American would say if confronted with those words from Abbas, and then asked if American tax dollars should continue to flow to that man. Well, actually, one does not wonder; it’s crystal clear.

The United States will be treated this way by Abbas, and others, as long as they think they can get away with it.

Abbas should not get away with this. A retraction and apology should be demanded, and until it is received not one more dime should move. No self-respecting country should permit itself to be treated this way. We are happily past the ages when such comments led to duels among men or wars among nations. But paying for such insults ought to be out of the question.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.