Charles Lane, deputy opinion editor and columnist at the Washington Post beat me to the punch, publishing a piece Wednesday morning titled “If Hamas really cared about Palestinian lives, it would surrender.” It’s fine, he probably has a couple more readers than I do, and in any case I’ll take the thought a step further: the absolute best thing that could happen for the civilian population in Gaza is a complete and swift Israeli victory and occupation.

That ought to rankle the antisemitic left enough that their “from the river to the sea” chants calling for the extermination of the Jewish state get hung up in a fit of apoplectic rage, as it did when Netanyahu signaled just that. After all, they already, somehow, consider the entirety of Israel to be “occupied” by the Zionists. Enough has been written about the historical sophistry needed to support that claim, but suffice to say any suggestion that Israeli control of Gaza would be a benefit to the Gazans will be taken as warmly by some as Pol Pot would have taken to any suggestion that the best thing for the Cambodian people would be for Pol Pot to quit killing them.

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The argument stands well on its own though, and Lane made some good points in favor of just that in his column. His argument was a little more pragmatic in the sense of Hamas’ war ledger balance; things clearly are not going well for the poor little terrorist organization that barely even masquerades as any kind of governing authority. Israel’s military – angry, motivated and superior in every way – is kicking their butt. So on purely practical grounds, Lane writes, Hamas’s tactical position is hopeless and futile, and it ought to just give it up now and spare the inhabitants of Gaza any further pain.

Lane, of course, knows that is never going to happen, and says as much in his well-considered column. But the wider point – that all of the suffering and misery in Gaza is directly Hamas’s responsibility and could end any time Hamas wants it to – is valid.

Western stomach for the war, as predicted, is waning. President Joe Biden, whose words were so appropriate at the beginning of the conflict, is starting to cave to pressure from his left. Western media, apparently not inclined to learn from their reporting mistakes earlier, are doubling down on tendentious reporting, eager to paint the Israelis as war criminals in spite of all evidence to the contrary. The situation at the Al Shifa hospital is a case in point, and in many ways defines the conflict in a microcosm. BBC was forced to issue an apology after shamefully reporting Israeli troops were, get this, “targeting people, including medical teams, as well as Arab speakers.” Actually, my dear chap, the Reuters report (that was apparently being misquoted) said the Israeli Defense Forces were embedding medical teams and Arabic speakers with the teams tasked with the dangerous job of clearing the hospital of terrorists. This was so they (the Israelis) could provide medical assistance to the patients that Hamas was hiding behind. It was also so they (the Israelis) could communicate with anyone they ran across that was not trying to exterminate Jews. So, the exact opposite of what was reported.

The contrast between Hamas and the IDF could not be any clearer, and the calls for a “ceasefire” no more insidious. Yes, civilians are dying in Gaza, and conditions are horrid. But the IDF is not – and this is the critical point – targeting civilians. They are targeting Hamas military infrastructure, command-and-control centers, communications, weapons caches, and so forth. These are all legitimate targets, even if they are hidden in schools and hospitals.

Hamas, on the other hand, deliberately targeted civilians. They sought out the innocent for cruelty and slaughter. Israel issues warnings to civilians ahead of attacks, pleading them to seek whatever safety they can. Hamas fires rockets indiscriminately, with no warning. Israel exceeds the demands of the laws of warfare – a targeted airstrike on the command-and-control apparatus underneath the Al-Shifa hospital would be perfectly legal, and yet the Israelis opt for the more dangerous route of using infantry. The Israelis deliver fuel and supplies to civilians in Gaza. Hamas refuses to let it be delivered, or steals it.

The human toll in Gaza compels one to compassion. But a ceasefire would do nothing but allow Hamas the time to regroup, rearm and prolong the misery. The most compassionate thing anyone could do for the people in Gaza at this point, is to hope and pray for a rapid IDF victory – for the Israelis to liberate the Palestinians from the clutches of Hamas, and provide the order, good governance, economic development and basic decency of which they have been so long deprived.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.