Gazans are celebrating. For the past few days, large crowds of healthy, energetic men, women, and children have been cheering, dancing in the streets, and chanting "Allahu Akbar!" – all recorded on their fully charged cell phones.
These scenes make clear that there's no Israeli-engineered famine in Gaza, much less a genocide.
Of course, the propagandists behind these hoaxes will continue to slander Israelis. They'll say: "Who are you going to believe – us or your lying eyes?"
Their defamation campaign is intended to justify and, indeed, incite a Holocaust in the Middle East on par with the Holocaust carried out in Europe less than a century ago.
A CNN headline last week: "It's been two years since Israel launched its war in Gaza and life in the enclave has never been harder."
Correction: Life has been increasingly hard for Gazans since Hamas terrorists, on Oct. 7, 2023, invaded Israel and slaughtered some 1,200 men, women, and children, dragging about 250 others back into the dungeons of Gaza.
A central pillar of Hamas's war strategy has been to cause Gazans maximum hardship, confident that useful idiots in the West – on the left and the right – would blame Israelis.
Even prior to Oct. 7, the news from Gaza was fake. Journalists who either sided with or were intimidated by Hamas characterized Gaza as a "hellhole" and an "open-air prison."
After Oct. 7, however, videos of pre-war Gaza were suddenly plentiful online as Gazans lamented the destruction of their communities in a war Hamas could have ended at any moment by freeing the hostages.
On Dec. 24, 2023, Gaza City Mayor Yahya R. Sarraj lamented in The New York Times that his city had boasted "cultural riches and municipal institutions," a "beautiful seafront," a theater, schools, libraries, mosques, parks, a "Children's Happiness Center," and even a zoo with "many of its animals killed or starved to death, including wolves, hyenas, birds and rare foxes."
Gaza also had 36 hospitals, elegant restaurants, shopping malls, and luxury auto dealerships.
Such wonders were produced thanks to the river of foreign aid that flowed into Gaza following Hamas's violent ascension to power in 2007, two years after Israel's complete withdrawal from the territory in the hope that good fences would make good neighbors.
U.N. agencies and NGOs provided social services and kept silent about the war preparations taking place under their hospitals and schools.
That left Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar free to devote his energies to war planning – importing munitions via Egypt, building weapons factories, and constructing a subterranean fortress.
Mr. Sinwar instructed his terrorist troops to commit multiple atrocities, film them, and then broadcast them. According to a memo that was acquired by The New York Times, he believed that Muslims around the world would "respond positively to calls for them to join the revolution."
The day after Hamas's invasion of southern Israel, Hezbollah began launching rockets and artillery from Lebanon into northern Israel, causing tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes.
Just under two weeks later, on Oct. 19, the Houthis in Yemen began firing cruise missiles and launching drones toward Israel.
On April 13, 2024, Tehran targeted Israel with an enormous missile and drone assault. A second major attack followed in October.
Mr. Sinwar was eliminated on Oct 16, 2024.
And in the end, of course, Israel crippled Hezbollah. That led to the downfall of the Assad regime, Tehran's proxy in Syria, on Dec. 8, 2024.
Most importantly, with significant help from President Trump, Israel smashed the nuclear weapons facilities Iran's rulers had buried under mountains.
When the Twelve-Day War against Tehran ended on June 25 of this year, the Israel Defense Forces might have been pulled back into buffer zones within Gaza. It was not apparent that the benefits of continuing to wage urban warfare against terrorists in tunnels shielded by civilians on the streets above were worth the costs.
But there were still hostages held deep inside Gaza and Israelis could not abandon them.
Why not? Because of the Israeli conception of communal responsibility, the ancient Jewish directive to "redeem captives," the conviction that "All of Israel are responsible for one other."
President Trump's 20-point plan, announced September 29, took that into consideration.
That's why phase one featured the release of the 20 hostages who had survived (all now back in Israel) and the bodies of 28 who were murdered (only four returned so far).
Hamas troops have now emerged from their tunnels. No longer disguised as civilians, they are instead proudly wearing their uniforms and reasserting control by summarily executing opponents, rivals, and dissidents.
Hamas leaders, it's important to understand, regard the current ceasefire with Israel not as "peace" but only a "hudna" – Arabic for a truce during which they can prepare for the next battle in the centuries-long jihad.
Are most Gazans good with that? The answer may be irrelevant because Gazans haven't been allowed to vote since 2006. Still, I'd be curious to know.
Surely, some must be thinking: "What did Hamas achieve with this war? Our cities are rubble. We've lost loved ones. We're poorer than ever. Hamas was supposed to protect us. Will Hamas rule us forever?"
And among the more religious, there may be some who reason: "It is Allah who determines the outcome of battles. So, if Hamas did not achieve victory, Hamas does not deserve loyalty – much less the martyrdom of my children."
I'm reminded of something said by my late, great colleague, the scholar Michael Ledeen, more than 15 years ago: "Nothing is more devastating to a messianic movement than defeat."
We'll soon know whether that maxim applies to Gaza, and perhaps the broader Middle East.