The attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach ignites a question being asked far beyond Australia: how did we get here? Acts of violence that once seemed isolated now feel increasingly connected, part of a broader pattern of radicalization and normalized brutality. The danger is not only the frequency of these events, but the reality that they are no longer confined by geography, and that Jewish communities are confronting a growing existential threat worldwide.

October 7 was such a moment. It was a calculated operation shaped by years of observation and a clear understanding of how Israel and the wider world respond to mass civilian trauma. The strategy helps explain how the world has shifted over the past two years, and why events unfolding now are so deeply troubling.

Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, did not need to defeat Israel militarily. He needed to entangle it morally, politically, and psychologically. Achieving that required a deep understanding of Israeli society and its core values.

Sinwar acquired that understanding during years in Israeli prison. He learned Hebrew fluently. He followed Israeli media closely. He observed political debates, social divisions, and the moral language Israelis use to speak about responsibility, solidarity, and obligation. He watched how Israeli society reacts to trauma and how quickly it mobilizes around shared principles.

One principle stood out above the rest. Israel does not abandon its people. Hostages are not abstract bargaining chips. They are individuals whose fate becomes a national concern, cutting across ideology and politics.

By the time he was released in a prisoner exchange, the 2011 deal in which Israel freed 1,027 prisoners in exchange for a single Israeli captive, Gilad Shalit, Sinwar had spent more than two decades in Israeli prison, serving four life sentences for terrorism-related crimes, including the abduction and killing of fellow Palestinians. When he returned to Gaza, he carried all that he had learned back with him. It became the basis of his strategy.

The mass abduction of civilians was the core of the October 7 operation. Sinwar understood that Israel would be compelled to act, and that any serious effort to recover hostages and dismantle Hamas would be prolonged, destructive, and visible to the world. Every available Israeli option carried severe costs.

This trap was years in the making. Gaza was engineered as more than a surface battlefield. Beneath it lay an extensive tunnel network, widely described as stretching hundreds of miles, designed to function as a protected military ecosystem. The tunnels allowed fighters to move, communicate, store weapons and ammunition, and stockpile months of supplies, enabling Hamas’s leadership to remain underground for extended periods.

Civilians were afforded no........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)