Could Israel already be prepared for a ground invasion of Gaza, just days after declaring war after the depraved and monstrous invasion by Hamas? Their mobilization of 360,000 reservists only started four days ago, barely enough time to process the troops, let alone equip and prepare them for battle. Threats of diversions or worse from the north will likely pop into reality soon.

And yet, Israel has just given a million Gazans 24 hours to get out of Gaza City and the north end of the territory:

Israel’s military asked civilians in Gaza to move to the southern part of the enclave, signaling a widening offensive and prompting the United Nations to warn of devastating humanitarian consequences.

Israel’s military, just before midnight local time, told the U.N. that its staff and approximately 1.1 million civilians should leave the northern part of the Gaza Strip in the next 24 hours, according to spokesmen for the U.N. and Israel’s military. …

“Evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields,” the Israeli military told civilians in Gaza, according to a spokesman.

Why so fast? Israel controls the tempo now and could wait for airstrikes to do more damage to Hamas in Gaza before putting ground troops into urban combat. Two issues are likely accelerating the advance.

First, Hamas still has as many as 150 hostages somewhere, likely in Gaza City or its environs. Assuming any of them are still alive, speed is of the essence to liberate them if it is at all possible, or to force Hamas or the people holding the hostages for Hamas to bargain them for safe conduct. That can’t wait, unfortunately, which makes Hamas’ decision to kidnap civilians as bargaining chips rather ironic. If it hadn’t been for that, they may have gotten Israel to slow down and perhaps give other countries a chance to convince the now-unity government under Netanyahu to rethink their plans — and maybe split on the next gruesome steps.

And that’s the second reason for speed. Better to rip this Band-Aid off fast before efforts like this can gather momentum:

The United Nations and humanitarian groups asked Israel to reconsider its request for more than one million civilians to leave northern Gaza to avoid getting caught up in its offensive against militant group Hamas, warning that such an evacuation would have devastating consequences. …

A U.N. spokesman in New York estimated that there are 1.1 million people in northern Gaza—about half of the strip’s total population—and urged Israel to rescind its announcement to avoid “a calamitous situation.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council, a humanitarian group, said that demanding the relocation of what it estimated to be 1.2 million civilians without guaranteeing their safety or ability to return amounted to a war crime.

“My colleagues inside Gaza confirm that there are countless people in the northern parts who have no means to safely relocate under the constant barrage of fire,” said Jan Egeland, the group’s secretary-general.

Then perhaps they shouldn’t have started a war! This hand-wringing over an entity that launched a genocidal war seven days ago and cheered its initial results speaks volumes about the inversion of elites in this age. Gaza under its government of Hamas started this war by attacking Israeli civilians, raping women of all ages and butchering children and babies in their beds, literally. Now that they started the war, the Gazans want the UN and other countries to rescue them from the consequences of the hell they unleashed on the Israelis.

Unfortunately, the elites are getting sucked into that nonsense and want to put the moral freight on the victims of the invasion for fighting the war the invaders wanted. The UN and the ‘Norwegian Refugee Council’ (who?) should be talking to the Gazans about their stupidity and their crimes, not the Israelis. They should advise Gazans to surrender if they want to avoid the consequences of the war they started, and to surrender all Hamas terrorists and affiliates in Gaza as a condition to end the war. Why are we not hearing those demands on the people who started the war?

I think we all know why. Jews are not allowed to defend themselves according to these elites, and when people declare war on them, Jews are not allowed to fight to win. That’s the history of Israel, from the founding in 1948 until today. The armies of the Arabs and the Nazi-esque terror groups attack, and when Israel fights them and takes their territory as a result, they’re supposed to give it back and return to the same precarious security situation that prompted the wars of 1948 and since, so that everyone gets another chance to slaughter Jews again.

Well, nuts to that. The way to end wars is to fight them to the finish, and make the costs of starting wars so onerous that wiser heads prevail. That is the only way to save lives in the long run, on all sides. Germany and Japan only internalized that lesson through utter defeat and absolute destruction, but that lesson has stuck for almost 80 years. The Gazans are going to discover the true cost of starting wars, and the best intervention outsiders can provide is to urge them to surrender quickly and submit to the Israelis.