The great Hebrew essayist Ahad Ha’am, who understood probably better than any other early Zionist thinker the tensions between the movement’s aspirations and the Jewish tradition, wrote that the medieval theologian Moses Maimonides “did not recognize any value to the principle of nationhood.” Examining Maimonides’ speculations about the messianic era in his legal magnum opus, known as the Mishneh Torah, James A. Diamond concludes that Ahad Ha’am was “flatly wrong.”

Maimonides’ messianic vision [should] resonate deeply across the spectrum of Zionist ideologies. [It] is purely political: “There will be no distinction between the messianic period and the present except for a relief from foreign subjugation.” History will not end, and it will not be fundamentally transformed. Neither will nature. . . . Maimonidean messianism did not depend on supernatural intervention any more than secular Zionism did. Indeed, Maimonides had already rejected what would become the main traditionalist argument against modern Zionism: it was a blasphemous affront against God for not relying on Him alone to effect a return to Zion.

And what of Maimonides’ call for a monarchy that appears closer in form to the one he served under Sultan Saladin than to a modern liberal democracy? Even here, a careful reading of Maimonides’ construct of the messianic king really amounts to an ideal non-king. According to Maimonides, what motivates rabbinic messianic longing is the unfettered freedom “to pursue Torah and its wisdom.” It is decidedly not driven by a desire “to rule the entire world, and not so that they would subjugate the nations, and not so that the nations would exalt them.”

[Moreover], the kind of God that Maimonides’ messianism contemplates as eventually consuming the thinking of all human beings is precisely the God who is revealed, incrementally, and daily, in modern Israel. Israel’s profound advances in all the disciplines required for understanding the creation across the spectrum of both the sciences and the humanities is Zionism’s realization of Maimonides’ messianic dream. Only the practical end of exilic existence enabled the astonishing scope of this intellectual explosion, for, as Maimonides asserted in his Guide of the Perplexed, the misery of living under the domination of foreign powers squelches Jewish potential.

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.