8 October—It looks like Hamas caught Israel with its gatkes down. Distressing and surprising. Make that unbelievable. The notoriously treacherous and barbaric but famously uncoordinated Muslim terrorist group actually staged a well-coordinated—and of course unprovoked—multi-front mega-blitz of the Jewish homeland by land, air, and sea.

Israel, a Jewish enclave about the size of New Jersey on the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by militant Muslim neighbors on three sides, has never known peace in its 75 years. (Ultra-orthodox, holier-than-thou, uncompromising Jewish Taliban sects are an internal problem.) Obviously the Mossad, Aman, and Shin Bet—Israel’s three legendary intelligence agencies that are normally on top of everything—were taking the sabbath off.

Hamas rubbed non-kosher salt in the embarrassing and painful wound by staging the blitz on Simchas Torah (Simchat Torah in more fashionable Sephardic Hebrew), the holiday that celebrates the end of the old cycle and start of the new cycle of annual Torah readings. It’s supposed to be a time of happiness for people who take it seriously.

Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (“Islamic Resistance Movement”). It’s the larger of two major militant political organizations in Palestine, governing over two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Its smaller rival party, Fatah, has renounced violence, for all that’s worth.

Hamas has employed violent measures like suicide bombing, long-range rockets, improvised explosive devices, kidnapping, and rocket-propelled grenades, in addition to cyber espionage and computer exploitation to achieve its stated purpose of destroying the Jewish state of Israel and replacing it with the Islamic state of Palestine.

Hezbollah, an equally violent and contemptible horde of crazy Muslim militant morons, joined the fray by firing off guided rockets and artillery from its positions in Lebanon. Lebanon, about two-thirds the size of Connecticut, is Israel’s northern bad-neighbor on the Mediterranean.

The United States is among the many nations that consider both Hamas and Hezbollah to be foreign terrorist organizations.

Of course, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared war and Israeli forces, having swiftly recovered from the shock of the blitz, have already shown Hamas and Hezbollah what for. And more death and destruction will surely go on for some time.

Of course, too, Joe Biden has pledged full support for Israel. Well, not quite. He offered Israel “all appropriate means of support,” whatever that means. And if that’s anything like all appropriate means of support for Ukraine, we shouldn’t expect Israel to count on all that much. Biden’s excuse for whatever America doesn’t do to help Israel is sure to be the Republicans. And in large part he won’t be wrong . . .