Nakba is what Arabs call the flight of residents of Mandatory Palestine after their leaders and all Arab nations rejected the “two-state solution” approved in 1947 by the United Nations. Five armies invaded the Jewish State to destroy it and local Arabs sought to attack it from within.

They failed. After the War of Independence, which cost the lives of 1% of the Jewish population, the state of Israel emerged intact, bloodied but unbowed, with expanded borders. But half of Jerusalem was lost to Israel. That changed in the Six-Day War, when Israel’s preemptive attack ignited a lightning victory.

In both wars, tens of thousands of local Arabs were displaced to neighboring areas. That’s what happens when you’re on the losing side, or you have weak leaders. Then they weren’t called Palestinians because that nationality was invented in the Sixties. The Jews were the only Palestinians.

Fast forward to October 7, 2023. The onslaught killed more than 1100 civilians in a single day, and more than 230 soldiers. The slaughter, moreover, created an existential threat to the Jewish State. The initial failure of the IDF and intelligence, the mass killing of citizens, shattered Israel’s aura of invulnerability. It created an imperative.

Israelis are united and resolved to punish the perpetrators and their supporters, re-establishing deterrence and destroying the enemy. There is overwhelming support in Israel for this war goal.

Nobody should have been surprised that Israel imposed a siege on the Strip, cutting off Gaza’s electricity, food, and water supplies. After what Israel’s enemies did, and as they hold Israeli and foreign hostages, there will be no excessive fretting about human rights. If they release the hostages, they can end it.

Massive bombing was just a first step, not without cost. Now Israel is warning more than 1 million residents of Gaza to evacuate their homes and head south. Hamas aims to prevent them from doing so. Hamas is using them as human shields.

With 200 hostages at immediate risk, knowing the military dangers, Israel is aware of the cost of any military action. But the risks of weak action, or a non-decisive outcome, are perceived as costlier.

Israel is committed to inflicting maximal punishment on Hamas. It will be disproportionate. Yes, the bombardment of northern Gaza, and the leveling of its buildings, will result in death, destruction, and exile. That’s only the downpayment for what Hamas did on October 7.

Israel gets no pleasure from the suffering or displacement of civilians, including those who backed Hamas and celebrated its onslaught. Israelis, however, are busy burying their dead and identifying their missing, united around a new NEVER AGAIN.

This is a teachable moment. Nakba II, produced by the Hamas pogrom, is a lesson to the world, not just to the Arabs or the Muslims, that Israel isn’t easily intimidated or demoralized. Or massacred cheaply.

Israel is determined to make the price of genocidal attacks on the Jewish state so high that our enemies, and their populations, will think twice the next time they call for, or participate in, Jihad. If the attacks continue from Gaza, the displaced population will be forced further south. If it does not stop, and hostages are not freed, Gazans will end up in the Sinai desert, for their own protection, with or without Egypt’s acquiescence. That’s the choice of the Hamas leadership and terror supporters.

And that’s not all. Should there be hostile activity from Hezbollah in Lebanon, or Islamic forces in Syria, or the residents of Judea and Samaria, or Israel’s Arab citizens, Nakba II will spread. When the dust settles, we can only hope and pray, Israel will be a safer place, deterrence and dignity restored, its citizens more secure, a clear and unmistakable message sent to a usually indifferent world.

Israel is keenly aware of the possibility, even the probability, of escalation. An attack on Israel from the north could set the scene for nothing less than Armageddon. Megiddo is where the name came from, and Israeli prophets predicted that evil would come from the north.

But back south and to another Biblical story, that of Samson. Shorn of his hair by deception, he was weakened, captured and humiliated, tied to the columns of a Philistine temple, mocked for his weakness by his enemies. But it didn’t take long for his hair to grow back. He couldn’t win. But at least he had the strength to fight, bringing down the temple on himself and his tormentors.

The people of Israel fear destruction and exile, the undoing of the Jewish State. Israel’s enemies have now had a tempting glimpse of what it’s like to massacre Israelis en masse, shooting Jewish babies, raping Jewish girls, hunting teenagers at a festival. Israel’s only hope now is to reassert a devastating blow that will make the cost of destroying and exiling us trigger the world’s sense of self-preservation.

Israel is said to hold a couple hundred nuclear weapons in reserve for existential threats. On October 7, that danger became clear and present. Only by showing the cost of trying to massacre a thousand Jews, and obliterating the organization dedicated to destroying Israel, can we prevent its repetition and stave off an Arab world bent on our disappearance. That, or bring the temple down.

If I were a betting man, I wouldn’t test the Israelis.

This appears to be no bluff. Israel will in weeks or months free Palestine, from Hamas. That movie will be over, but not necessarily with a happy ending. After the Hamas-provoked Nakba II, perhaps we can hope that rational Palestinians and their supporters will at last wake up to the need for a way other than educating kids and brainwashing citizens to hate and kill Jews.

If not, we won’t have long to wait for the sequel.