PHILADELPHIA: Hours after Israel assassinated two leading figures of designated terrorist organizations, Middle East Forum (MEF) experts took to major media outlets to explain what the killings mean for Israel and the region.

Israeli forces killed Hezbollah leader Fouad Shukur in Beirut on Tuesday, while Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh died Wednesday from an Israeli strike in Tehran. Both men caused the deaths of innocent civilians as well as Israeli and American soldiers.

Writing today for the Wall Street Journal, MEF president Daniel Pipes argued that since Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks, Israel has unfortunately followed "two opposite policies" simultaneously: "destroy the organization and make a deal with it." Pipes's main points:

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has on the one hand made victory a central goal of his campaign against Hamas, mentioning the word 182 times since Oct. 7. Yet to assuage both foreign and domestic critics, he negotiated with Hamas to permit its survival and win the release of Israeli hostages.

This indecision failed to free the hostages, exacerbated dissension in Israel, and damaged Israelis' security.

The "drama and chutzpah of killing Haniyeh on a ceremonial visit to Iran appears to end the indecision" and shows that "Israel intends to crush Hamas and win."

Appearing on Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends" this morning, MEF chief editor Jim Hanson – channeling his U.S. Army Ranger background – said that Iran has to retaliate. "What kind of terrorist puppet masters are you if, in a twelve-hour period, one of your top Hezbollah guys gets returned to his component molecules, and then you invite the Hamas leader to a party in your own capital city and those pesky Zionists return him to ambient temperature." Hanson added that:

Israel's actions show they "are not going to take the path of appeasement that so many are trying to force upon" them. Instead, they will defeat Hamas and Hezbollah while making the point that "both of them are terror proxies of the tyrannical theocracy in Tehran."

U.S. forces in the region must now go to "the highest threat level" because "we have to assume" that Iran's other proxies, the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria that have attacked American forces since Oct. 7, will do so again.

Israel is "fundamentally ready" to deal with Iran's proxies throughout the region.