On July 8, notices circulated in Israeli ḥaredi communities warning that it was both dangerous and forbidden by halakhah to drink water between the hours of 2:00 and 3:00 PM. Natan Slifkin explains:

[The announcements] caught a lot of people by surprise. The reason given was even more surprising: that this hour is the transition point of the summer solstice, which, together with the winter solstice and the equinoxes, divides the year into four quarters. As such, it is a time when the angels change shifts, and while there is nobody on duty [between the end of one shift and the beginning of the next], the Angel of Death can poison the water.

Before you rush to dismiss this out of hand, you should also be aware that while this is not mentioned in the Talmud, it is mentioned by no less an authority than Rabbi Moses Isserles [a 16th-century Polish rabbi whose rulings are traditionally regarded as authoritative for Ashkenazi Jews], who notes that this is a “basic” custom that is a tradition from many great authorities. . . .

[But] this is a practice that pretty much nobody has cared about, or known about, for hundreds of years, [even within ultra-Orthodox communities]. . . . People who are resurrecting the prohibition against drinking water during the solstice are not actually afraid that it is dangerous. . . . These people just want to do what they think makes them [pious].

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.