The reaction to the rescue of four Israeli hostages from Gaza is a microcosm of the past 70 years of this conflict. Every time Palestinians pay the price for acting out in some horrific, irrational, self-destructive, violent way, their defenders want to rewind history to a more convenient moment — this time to Oct. 6, 2023.
Sorry, that’s not how life works. Hamas, the chosen political entity of Gaza — the overwhelming choice of Palestinian civilians, in fact — launched this round of the conflict by massacring, sexually torturing and kidnapping Israelis whose only sin was attending a music festival.
Palestinians took hundreds of these hostages back to the Gaza Strip — a place Arabs have political autonomy over for nearly 20 years — and held them in the middle of densely populated areas hoping to dissuade Israel from liberating them, or, if it did, to create as…
