ISRAEL GOES EYELESS INTO GAZA AS HAMAS WRECKS BALANCE

WHERE was Israel's much-vaunted Iron Dome when Hamas went rogue on October 7? Who silenced the air raid sirens that had earlier unfailingly warned residents of the kibbutzim abutting the Gaza Strip and the highrises of Tel Aviv that they must head for underground shelters? Where were the mines that the Israeli forces had planted on the border to keep Palestinian militants from using the land route into Israel? Did Hamas unblock the underground tunnels that Israel claimed to have mapped down to the last bolt-hole?

- NEENA GOPAL

The battering that Hamas handed to the hitherto-impregnable state of Israel on Saturday even attacking the military's southern command headquarters-beggars belief.

Hamas militants tore through the socalled indefensible barrier between the Gaza Strip and Jewish settlements at eight points. They went in under the cover of 2,000 rockets, penetrated deeper on foot and, some say, on drones too. They fired from close range at young Israelis at a rave party in the desert over the holiday weekend, killing over 500 and taking another 100 hostage. The world is understandably awash with a wave of sympathy for the Jewish state. 

The sheer brutality of the Hamas cadres dragging away hundreds of hapless residents, young and old, at gunpoint from their homes in Sderot and other kibbutzim is nothing short of reprehensible.

Israel has unleashed its wrath with a siege of Gaza and is preparing a full-on ground assault. Hamas, who had been given an inexplicable free run in Gaza at the expense of the moderate Fatah faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas, are now threatening to kill off one prisoner of war after another.

World leaders are standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel. Turkey and Qatar are offering to mediate. China is neutral for now and India is looking at the end of the India-Middle East-Europe trade corridor.