Em, it's called taking a step back from "oops, Oct. 7th just manifested itself out of thin air."

Believing a false narrative doesn't actually make it true.

IOW, to understand how Israel got to this avaricious place requires an incredible leap of faith that one's cognitive abilities will push aside the obfuscating mythology.

Sun Tzu perhaps said it best: all war is deception.

Can this latest most deadly chapter be anything but deception, with the hardest epilogue to this sorry story involving confronting the lies one has been told to justify slaughter, with the ones used in order to sleep at night.

Or are they one and the same?

The hostages are pawns.