Israel's War Against Hamas - Updates

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For Arab nations, shutting doors on Gaza refugees is "human rights" (infographic)​

It is amazing how no matter how badly Arab nations treat Palestinians, they always justify it as somehow being for their own good and a manifestation of upholding their human rights.

Even more amazing is how the Western world happily goes along with this fiction.

For Arab nations, shutting doors on Gaza refugees is "human rights" (infographic)

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Israeli Defense Forces announced Thursday that it discovered hundreds of weapons in a West Bank kindergarten run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This was only the latest bit of bad news for the UN agency, which is has taken a lot of heat—deservedly—for serving as a willing partner to Hamas in Gaza since the terrorist group conquered the territory in 2007.

The latest UNRWA revelation, coupled with the organization’s horrible record, is important in the context of the “day after debates.” Gazans will need help after this war. Assistance must be provided. But UNRWA simply cannot provide that assistance. Another agency—any other agency—should do it.

UNRWA was established after Israel’s War of Independence. As a result of the war launched by the surrounding Arab states, some 800,000 Palestinians left their homes. In 1949, the UN established UNRWA to address the problem. In retrospect, it was bizarre that a separate agency was established solely to deal with Palestinian refugees, especially as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is now responsible for literally every other refugee population on the planet.


Over the years, it became clear why UNRWA was not operating within the construct of UNHCR. Rather than re-settling the refugees, UNRWA deliberately created more than 5.9 million of them. UNRWA’s numbers are mathematically impossible, of course. The original refugees numbered, at most, 800,000 in 1948. The widening numbers problem derived from UNRWA’s recognition of the descendants of the original male refugees—most of whom have passed away.

As UNRWA began cynically to multiply its clients, the agency played an important role in the anti-Israeli narrative. Textbooks used by UNRWA promote hatred and incitement against Israel and Jews. Palestinians living on UNRWA’s payroll became living symbols of the Palestinian refusal to acknowledge the reality of Israel. The agency tacitly endorsed what the Palestinians call the “right of return” of all refugees—and their descendants—to their homes from 75 years ago in modern day Israel.


As the UN’s largest donor, the U.S. became UNRWA’s leading patron. Between 1950 and 2018, U.S. taxpayers contributed about $6 billion to UNRWA. Strangely, Washington never used its financial leverage to demand reform—not before Hamas took over Gaza, and not after.

It is by now undeniable that some Hamas members were on the UNRWA payroll, including one UNRWA teacher who reportedly held Israeli hostages. The Israelis have ascertained this during the waves of arrests in Gaza over the last three months. But you don’t need to interrogate anyone to know that. Hamas over the years has used UNRWA schools as human shields, building military tunnels under them, storing rockets within them, and firing rockets from their compounds. And all of this was before Congress began to hear about escalating waste, fraud, corruption, and poor management.



On January 14, 2021, outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted, “UNRWA is not a refugee agency; it’s [sic] estimated <200,000 Arabs displaced in 1948 are still alive and most others are not refugees by any rational criteria.” He continued, “Taxpayers deserve basic truths: most Palestinians under UNRWA’s jurisdiction aren’t refugees, and UNRWA is a hurdle to peace. America supports peace and Palestinian human rights; UNRWA supports neither. It’s time to end UNRWA’s mandate.”

Three months later, in April 2021, the Biden administration renewed funding for the agency without addressing Pompeo’s concerns. A true debate about the agency has never been aired. The current war, not to mention the heated discussions about the “day after,” has made that debate crucial and urgent.


The three most important stakeholders here are the United States, Germany, and Israel. America is the top funder of UNRWA, and the White House is invested heavily in a “day after” that affords Gazans a political horizon. Germany is the second largest funder. Recent internal debates have surfaced about Berlin’s unwillingness to continue to fund the group. Finally, Israel must agree to any agency that operates inside Gaza once Hamas is removed. Israel’s Arab peace partners have a role to play, too, if they choose to take part.



(full article online)

The Terrorist-Aid Agency

The Israeli Defense Forces announced Thursday that it discovered hundreds of weapons in a West Bank kindergarten run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This was only

www.commentary.org

 

[surada]

Kibbutz Nir Oz announces death of Tamir Adar, 38, presumed kidnapped on October 7

Grandson of Yaffa Adar, who was seen in video being abducted on her golf cart, left family in safe room and was killed fighting terrorists

www.timesofisrael.com

Another failure. These poor people are dying for nothing.

 

[surada]

For Arab nations, shutting doors on Gaza refugees is "human rights" (infographic)​

It is amazing how no matter how badly Arab nations treat Palestinians, they always justify it as somehow being for their own good and a manifestation of upholding their human rights.

Even more amazing is how the Western world happily goes along with this fiction.

For Arab nations, shutting doors on Gaza refugees is "human rights" (infographic)

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

Refugee populations are a problem. Remember the Jews were turned away everywhere.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Understanding Israel and Zionism requires a keen grasp of the history of the region and the Jewish people. It also requires reading past news articles and confronting eyewitness testimony of events in the land of Israel. In the paragraphs below, three eyewitness accounts are included. They are painful accounts of murder, torture, and rape. The reader shouldn’t turn away, the victims deserve to be heard.

Shuddering accounts​

THE FIRST: “The next morning, the Jewish Sabbath, saw atrocities unlike [the land] had ever known. A disabled pharmacist and his wife were murdered, their 13-year-old daughter gang-raped and also killed. Another couple survived by rolling in the blood of the others and lying still. Limbs, testicles, and eyes were cut from living people, some of them old men and children. Only one person died by bullet; the rest experienced blunter methods of execution. In a single day, 67 people were killed and more than 50 wounded.”

The second: “Three groups of armed men walked South toward the city along the waterside road. A whistle gave the signal: Two groups crossed into the city and the third to the nearby kibbutz. Three hundred fully armed fighters blocked all roads into the city, cut communication lines, and entered from three directions. They saluted the Arab flag, the black, green, and red flown in the Great Revolt. There followed a battle, as the warriors’ bullets “pierced the windows of the Jewish homes. Having cleared the inhabitants, [the fighters] set the magistrate’s court and government building aflame, and also the Jewish stores and Zionist trading houses.” Some 70 Jews were killed. Their deaths were more intimate and crueler. Rachel Mizrahi and her five children were stabbed repeatedly, their house set on fire. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh and his wife and two sons were killed in the same way as were the three Leimer daughters staying at their home at the time. So too were Menachem “Max” Kotin of New York – the first American victim— and his wife Masha. The synagogue was set alight with the beadle still inside. Only four of the 17 Jews killed in their homes were shot; the rest were burned or stabbed to death. Ten were children. The assault lasted some 40 minutes. Some witnesses said the assailants broke into a restaurant and fed themselves a meal; others said they danced an impromptu dabke (joyous dance) on the street. What was beyond dispute was the systematic planning and execution of their operation and the almost complete absence of any Jewish resistance.”

The third: “A paramedic from a commando unit told the newspaper he had found the bodies of two teenage girls, sisters aged 13 and 16, in a room in Kibbutz Be’eri with their clothes ripped. One was lying on her side with “bruises by her groin,” and the other “was sprawled on the floor face down,” the paramedic said, “pajama pants pulled to her knees, bottom exposed, semen smeared on her back.”

THE THREE passages are not all from the October 7 attacks. The first two come from Oren Kessler’s new book, Palestine 1936. The first account records the 1929 brutal Hebron riots, the second account is from the 1938 riots in Tiberias, and the third is from the 2023 Hamas attacks.

All three attacks included savage murder and rape perpetrated on Jewish civilians by Palestinian attackers. Zionists aware of their history recognized the Simchat Torah massacre. While most of the world was shocked by the viciousness shown by Palestinians against innocent Jews, Zionists found it all too familiar. Recent polling among Palestinians found overwhelming support – close to 80% - for the Hamas attacks on Simchat Torah. The number seems impossible. How could so many people openly support murder, rape, and kidnapping?

The purpose of Zionism​

Zionism was a movement made to ensure the security of the Jewish people from its enemies. It is easy to teach Zionist lessons on Israel’s success and the moral light it shines onto the nations. An equally important Zionist lesson is the reminder that the State of Israel was founded to protect the Jewish people from barbaric enemies looking to wipe them out in the cruelest of ways. History repeats itself, and this is especially true when it comes to Jews, Zionists, and the land of Israel.

This is a lesson Zionists cannot forget.

(full article online)

Zionism is reminding that Israel was founded to protect Jews from barbaric enemies - opinion

The reader shouldn’t turn away, the victims deserve to be heard.

www.jpost.com

 

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Danielle Aloni, who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 along with her 6-year-old daughter Emilia, told her while they were in captivity, “‘I’m sorry, we’re going to die here’” after I covered her with a blanket and held her tight.

A month after her release from captivity in Gaza, Aloni gave an extensive interview on Channel midnight on Saturday. As she was kidnapped, she said she experienced “a feeling of terror that cannot be explained in words. There aren’t words in Hebrew that can describe this kind of terror. They’ll have to invent new words to explain what happened that day.”

“They just took my little girl, Emma. They took a girl from her mother’s hands. I started yelling [in Arabic] La, la! Binti, Binti! La!” (No, no! My daughter, my daughter! No!)

Aloni showed the interviewer how her captor shook his head and wagged his finger at her, then mimicked shooting her daughter, making a gun with his hand and gesturing toward her.

During her time in Gaza, she was exposed to Hamas’s network of tunnels, encountering the other hostages taken that day, whose wounds remained open and untreated. “When we entered the next tunnel,” she said, “I saw the injuries,” she said, “people that were so wounded, with open wounds, with injured, beaten faces.”

Aloni recalled her daughter calming her down as she suffered through a panic attack. “I screamed, ‘I’m going to die here! I’m going to die here! I’m going to die here!’ Those were the only words that came out. I felt that I was going to die there. My daughter patted my face, ‘Mom, don’t cry, I’m okay, I’m okay.’ Because each time I saw she was in distress, I started to cry, so she comforted me.”

Hamas hostage Danielle Aloni: I told my daughter 'we'll die here'

Describing her reaction as she was kidnapped, Aloni spoke of "a feeling of terror that cannot be explained in words."

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

Palestinians captured by the IDF in the Gaza Strip are angry about the way Hamas used civilians to protect themselves and would prefer Israeli rule as the soldiers have treated them better, according to recordings of interrogations released by the IDF.

“I felt that we are human shields,” said Muhammad Darwish Amara, a terrorist from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization. “Why would we protect them? We also want to be saved.”

The man, who looked to be in his twenties, said that Hamas forces had forced him and others to go with them instead of fleeing safely to the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

“There was a safe passage…the IDF told us to go south and that there would be food and drink…they sketched for us a map,” he explained. While walking, however, “We encountered some guys and those guys put us” in Al-Shifa hospital, where Hamas had a huge network of tunnels and was a major command center which the IDF raided in November.

(full article online)

'Better to be ruled by Israel than Hamas,' admit Gaza terrorists | World Israel News

The IDF treats Gazans better, and he would prefer living under Israel rule, because then the people could 'live life,' one said.

worldisraelnews.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

2,600 terrorists arrested in Judea, Samaria since beginning of Gaza war | World Israel News

Equipment, weapons, and funds were confiscated in the raid.

worldisraelnews.com

 

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[expat500]

 

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WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL:

The terrorists who started a war on Oct. 7, according to Palestinian Authority law, will be compensated financially for a massacre well done. The same PA that President Biden wants to run postwar Gaza will reward the murderers’ families with grants followed by monthly stipends for life. That means taxpayers from the U.S. and Europe will help pick up the tab.

The Palestinian postal service said at the end of the year that “martyrs, wounded and prisoners”—Palestinian terrorists or their families, in other words—will receive their November stipends starting this past Saturday via the Palestine Post Bank. The PA is in a fiscal crunch, so this time payments will be at a reduced rate of 65%, plus 14% of the money that the martyrs & co. are owed from past deductions.

The money is paid out in the PA-run West Bank as well as Hamas-run Gaza, often with a lag. Before the Oct. 7 terrorists can be rewarded, their families must submit paperwork for proof of martyrdom and power of attorney to open a bank account. But unless something changes, a salary will be sent to reward the family of the terrorist who was recorded calling home on Oct. 7 to tell his mother, “I killed 10 Jews with my own hands!”

So we have that to look forward to. For now, the PA keeps paying the established terrorists, unmoved by Mr. Biden’s combination of U.S. pressure and endorsement. According to Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch, “martyr families” typically receive 1,400 shekels (almost $400) a month for life. Salaries for terrorist prisoners rise over time from 1,400 shekels to 12,000 shekels ($3,300) a month.

This “pay-for-slay” program costs more than $300 million a year, about 8% of the PA budget. Mr. Marcus also shows that 65% is the same rate at which the PA is paying civil servants. Apparently, compensating terrorists is no less a priority than staffing the government. The PA may judge both essential in keeping the streets at bay as President Mahmoud Abbas begins the 20th year of his four-year term in office.

Treated by the West as the “moderate” Palestinians, the PA is showered with aid, including much of the more than $700 million a year the European Union sends to the Palestinians. President Trump stripped more than $200 million in aid in 2018, but Mr. Biden restored it in 2021 and has since sent more. Aid dollars free up the PA’s own money to pay terrorists.

The West forgets that moderation is relative. Leaders of the PA’s dominant Fatah faction have praised the Oct. 7 massacre, while its military wing claims to have taken part.

Israel, which collects tax revenue for the PA, is currently withholding the 30% of it that the PA sends to Hamas-run Gaza. Mr. Abbas has refused to accept the remainder, and Mr. Biden is unhappy about the impasse. Axios reported last week that the disagreement led to “one of the most difficult and ‘frustrating’ conversations Biden has had with Netanyahu.”

Mr. Biden insists that Israel hand over Gaza after the war to the PA, which he promises will be “revitalized.” But the money the U.S. funnels still ends up subsidizing terrorism. Perhaps the President should redirect his frustration to the Palestinian Authority.

PMW in Wall St. Journal: Your US Aid Dollars for Palestinian Terrorists | PMW Analysis

US Aid Dollars for Palestinian Terrorists

palwatch.org