the essence of what happened

Here’s what Thomas Friedman thinks about it:

I certainly hope there’ll be a reckoning for [Hamas]. I wrote a while back when Yahya Sinwar — who was the leader of Hamas, who planned and launched this war — was still alive, that if there was a cease-fire and he held a press conference, I wanted to be in the first row. I wanted to be able to ask the first question: Mr. Sinwar, you just achieved what you called a great victory. An Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a restoration of the cease-fire. What did you have on Oct. 6, 2023? You had Israel out of Gaza and a cease-fire. You launched this war to get yourself exactly where you were the day before. Shame on you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/opinion/hamas-israel-ceasefire-trump-peace-gaza.html

In keeping with his bias, Thomas Friedman got it entirely wrong.

Juan Cole got it right, re: the Palestinians had been stuck in a seemingly never-ending, hardly acknowledged, insufferable malaise:

https://www.juancole.com/2024/10/things-israel-october.html

Late in 2022, the most extreme right wing government in Israel’s history came to power, which began openly speaking of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. Netanyahu made a speech at the time explicitly saying something along the lines of: “The situation with the Palestinians is at a standstill and the truth is that other area-related issues are more of a priority for Israel at this time. We’re now just back-burnering attention to the Palestinians and their issues.”

So the Palestinians were motivated to lash out in a dramatic, attention-getting way. Now a dozen more countries have called for the establishment of a state for them.

What Hamas did constituted war crimes. Punishment for war crimes is warranted, but levels of frustration need to be appreciated. For the sake of resolution … efforts need to be made to address the sources of the frustrations.