Israel's War Against Hamas - Updates

Here is the text of the briefing by IDF Spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari about the deadly explosion at the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital yesterday:

The IDF has concluded an After Action Review and can confirm that the Islamic Jihad was responsible for the strike on the hospital in Gaza City.

We did an immediate review with all relevant branches of the IDF. This is what took place on Tuesday October 17th:

At 6:15PM, a barrage of rockets was fired by Hamas at Israel.

At 6:59PM a barrage of around 10 rockets was fired by Islamic Jihad from a nearby cemetery.
It was at the time, 6:59PM — when there were reports of an explosion at the hospital in Gaza City.

According to our intelligence, Hamas checked the reports, understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that had misfired — and decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened. They went as far as inflating the number of casualties.

They understood, with absolute certainty, that it was a rocket misfired by Islamic Jihad — that damaged the hospital.

Analysis of our aerial footage confirms that there was no direct hit of the hospital itself. The only location damaged is outside the hospital in the parking lot where we can see signs of burning,
no cratering and no structural damage to nearby buildings, as opposed to the damage caused by any aerial munition which would have been of a different nature: We would have seen craters and structural damage to buildings, both of which haven’t been identified in this incident.

The size of the damage we see here is due to the warhead of the Islamic Jihad rocket, but most of the rockets propellent is still evident due to the short flight of the rocket (because the launch failed).

The following visual evidence shows infra-red imagery of the parking lot. You can see central locations of fires and some debree on the rooftops. No craters can be identified. And all walls of the surrounding buildings are intact.








We also have examples of what air-to-ground munition craters look like. As you can see, they do not exist in this instance.




Many media outlets immediately reported the unverified claims by Hamas. Those were lies spread by Hamas.

I want to make something clear: It is impossible to know what happened as quickly as Hamas claimed they knew. That should have been an initial warning sign for many.

Unlike Hamas, the IDF launched an immediate examination, which was overseen at the very highest levels of command. This professional review was based on intelligence, operational systems, and aerial footage, all of which we cross-checked.

The evidence — which we are sharing with you all — confirms that the explosion at the hospital in Gaza was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired.

Here are the four main parts of our examination process:

1) First, we confirmed that there was no IDF fire – by land, sea or air – that hit the hospital.

2) Second, our radar systems tracked rockets fired by terrorists from within Gaza at the time of the explosion. The trajectory analysis from the barrage of rockets, confirms that the rockets were fired in close proximity to the hospital.

In addition, there are two independent videos which show the failure of the rocket launch and the continuation of the rocket flight towards the ground, within the Gaza strip — falling in the hospital compound.

3) Third, we have intelligence — some that will be shared here — of ccommunication between terrorists talking about the rocket misfiring. The terrorists realized that a rocket had misfired and made specific reference to the hospital.

----------------


We are also sharing this information with our partners, first and foremost the United States. We want maximum transparency, because we take any incident involving civilians very seriously. Unfortunately, many in the media immediately reported the statements coming out of Hamas- controlled Gaza, which blamed Israel.

Instead of waiting for the examination of credible information from the IDF, some media outlets ran with Hamas’ lies. Some of those headlines are still up and have not been corrected.

I understand the desire to break news, but I hope you will all agree that accuracy and credible information comes before speed.

The IDF acts in accordance with international law.

In conclusion, this incident shows how allegations — in this case, false and baseless allegations made by terrorists — against Israel can spread and inflame tensions in the region.



(full article online)



 
Here is the text of the briefing by IDF Spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari about the deadly explosion at the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital yesterday:

The IDF has concluded an After Action Review and can confirm that the Islamic Jihad was responsible for the strike on the hospital in Gaza City.

We did an immediate review with all relevant branches of the IDF. This is what took place on Tuesday October 17th:

At 6:15PM, a barrage of rockets was fired by Hamas at Israel.

At 6:59PM a barrage of around 10 rockets was fired by Islamic Jihad from a nearby cemetery.
It was at the time, 6:59PM — when there were reports of an explosion at the hospital in Gaza City.

According to our intelligence, Hamas checked the reports, understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that had misfired — and decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened. They went as far as inflating the number of casualties.

They understood, with absolute certainty, that it was a rocket misfired by Islamic Jihad — that damaged the hospital.

Analysis of our aerial footage confirms that there was no direct hit of the hospital itself. The only location damaged is outside the hospital in the parking lot where we can see signs of burning,
no cratering and no structural damage to nearby buildings, as opposed to the damage caused by any aerial munition which would have been of a different nature: We would have seen craters and structural damage to buildings, both of which haven’t been identified in this incident.

The size of the damage we see here is due to the warhead of the Islamic Jihad rocket, but most of the rockets propellent is still evident due to the short flight of the rocket (because the launch failed).

The following visual evidence shows infra-red imagery of the parking lot. You can see central locations of fires and some debree on the rooftops. No craters can be identified. And all walls of the surrounding buildings are intact.








We also have examples of what air-to-ground munition craters look like. As you can see, they do not exist in this instance.




Many media outlets immediately reported the unverified claims by Hamas. Those were lies spread by Hamas.

I want to make something clear: It is impossible to know what happened as quickly as Hamas claimed they knew. That should have been an initial warning sign for many.

Unlike Hamas, the IDF launched an immediate examination, which was overseen at the very highest levels of command. This professional review was based on intelligence, operational systems, and aerial footage, all of which we cross-checked.

The evidence — which we are sharing with you all — confirms that the explosion at the hospital in Gaza was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired.

Here are the four main parts of our examination process:

1) First, we confirmed that there was no IDF fire – by land, sea or air – that hit the hospital.

2) Second, our radar systems tracked rockets fired by terrorists from within Gaza at the time of the explosion. The trajectory analysis from the barrage of rockets, confirms that the rockets were fired in close proximity to the hospital.

In addition, there are two independent videos which show the failure of the rocket launch and the continuation of the rocket flight towards the ground, within the Gaza strip — falling in the hospital compound.

3) Third, we have intelligence — some that will be shared here — of ccommunication between terrorists talking about the rocket misfiring. The terrorists realized that a rocket had misfired and made specific reference to the hospital.

----------------


We are also sharing this information with our partners, first and foremost the United States. We want maximum transparency, because we take any incident involving civilians very seriously. Unfortunately, many in the media immediately reported the statements coming out of Hamas- controlled Gaza, which blamed Israel.

Instead of waiting for the examination of credible information from the IDF, some media outlets ran with Hamas’ lies. Some of those headlines are still up and have not been corrected.

I understand the desire to break news, but I hope you will all agree that accuracy and credible information comes before speed.

The IDF acts in accordance with international law.

In conclusion, this incident shows how allegations — in this case, false and baseless allegations made by terrorists — against Israel can spread and inflame tensions in the region.



(full article online)



More people would believe Israel if they were not serial liars.
 

On Hamas lies and media complicity


This line from Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" keeps popping up in my head:

"Still a man hears what he wants to hear/And disregards the rest"

The coverage by the media and statements by world leaders and pundits to the Gaza war is a Rorschach test. Most of them assume Israel's guilt, and trust Hamas' lies, ab initio - giving more weight to a terror group whose founding document instructs them to literally engage in genocide over the words of a mature democracy with multiple layers of checks and balances and a vigorous internal opposition that is free to object.

Yesterday's hospital incident was literally made up by Hamas. The hospital itself wasn't hit, they knew it was one of their own side's rockets immediately, and within minutes they made up the accusation against Israel and pulled out the "500 deaths" statistic out of thin air without pointing to a single shred of evidence. Scenes of horrors on the ground were all they needed, and they relied on the world's nascent antisemitism to fill in the rest of the picture, and reflexively blame Israel.

Now, Israel is partially at fault. It has not emphasized enough to the media the huge number of people - lawyers, senior military leaders, people who decide on the size of the munitions, the latitude given to pilots to abort a mission if they see unexpected civilians, and more - involved in every real airstrike.

But the information is out there, and the media shows little interest in mentioning it. At best, they play a game of "he says, she says" and give equal weight between the stories of the people who plan to massacre civilians and the ones who do everything humanly possible to avoid hurting them.

That is not objectivity. That is laziness and subconscious antisemitism.

Check out the New York Times current headline (after hours of only headlining Hamas claims) on the rocket incident:


This was written after the smoke has cleared. Israel provided large amounts of evidence as to what happened. Hamas has not provided a crumb, and in fact has proven it lies by claiming the hospital itself was struck when it wasn't and 500 casualties which it plucked out of thin air.

But the New York Times gives them exactly equal weight.

Being even-handed is not journalism. In this case, it is saying that Jews are just as reliable as proud rapists and mass murderers.

Even worse, MSNBC afternoon show host Ayman Mohyeldin tweeted uncritically the original claim by Hamas, and then cautioned his followers not to believe the IDF version of the story:



The IDF track record of telling the truth and of transparency is orders of magnitude better than that of the "Gaza Health Ministry" controlled by a group that eagerly films and brags about its atrocities. Pretending that the two sides are equally credible is not journalism - it is stupidity. Pretending that the Hamas side is credible and the Israeli side is suspect is nothing less than antisemitism.

Yet that stupidity and bigotry is the raw material cited as "proof" that is then spread by modern slander artists - politicians, NGOs, social media influencers - who have even less regard for the facts than the journalists.

That reflects their own bias. And that bias - the eagerness to blame Israel - is certainly based on Jew-hatred, which is obvious when you see them using words like "genocide" against the people were the first victims for whom the term was invented.

When finally confronted with incontrovertible facts, these same antisemites then zoom out and say "well, we need to look at the bigger picture" and find a way to blame Israel no matter what it, or what the real genocidal murderers, do or say.

The Al Ahli Hospital incident tells us a lot about how little the terrorists and their corrupt government care about the people of Gaza and about the truth. It is just one of many lies that the Hamas Health Ministry issue every day.

But the incident tells us far more about everyone who jumped on the bandwagon, enthusiastically using it to spread lies - and to ultimately incite hate against Jews. Lies like "Israel attacked the Al Ahli hospital" directly leads to antisemitic attacks worldwide.

And the media automatically assuming Israel's guilt based on statements from proven liars makes them complicit.



 
In a since-deleted thread on the messaging platform X, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which services Palestinians in Gaza claimed that men acting under Hamas authorities seized fuel, medical supplies, and other types of material that were supposed to be used for strictly humanitarian purposes. UNRWA later deleted the post and withdrew the claims, but Axios journalist Barak Ravid confirmed it happened.

To those of us on the front lines, this does not come as a surprise: UNRWA has a troubling record of supporting Hamas. UNWRA employs known Hamas terrorists and turns a blind eye when its own ambulances and UNWRA vehicles are used to transport weapons and explosives. It also circulates textbooks in the Gaza Strip that spread vile antisemitic messaging—with the horrific results we saw on October 7.

UNRWA doesn't even hide their outward support for Hamas; they provide direct financial support to its terror activities. And while it covers for Hamas, the agency is quick to criticize Israel for warning the Palestinians in the northern part of the Strip to relocate for their own safety ahead of Israel's expected ground offensive. Their willingness to carry water for Hamas knows no bounds.

But the truly heartbreaking takeaway here is the lengths Hamas will go to hurt its own people in the name of destroying Israel. And this is why it is Hamas that is responsible for all the blood that has and will be shed—Israeli and Palestinian alike—during this completely avoidable war.

After Israel gave civilians in Gaza numerous warnings and time to flee, Hamas did its best to force them to stay. Most Gazans know the high stakes of violating a direct Hamas order. They've also made it impossible for Gazans to flee to Egypt via the Rafah crossing, and they've set up roadblocks within Gaza, preventing residents from exiting the northern part of the Strip.

This is all to strategically maximize the use of their own people as human shields.

Here we see the same kind of manipulation of territory to intimidate and control a population that Hamas used at the music festival massacre, when it blockaded three different roads, turning the street into a "highway of death" and forcing young, innocent civilians to run across an open field, where they were shot at like "ducks on a range."

Hamas fans the flames that Israel has denied their people clean water, yet they are the ones digging up water pipes from the public infrastructure and turning them into rockets. And Hamas claims that 70 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike while trying to leave Gaza City—Israel denies that airstrike was theirs—but it was only due to Hamas roadblocks that the civilians were stuck in Gaza at all.

----
Now, Hamas uses my brothers and sisters in Gaza as human shields, hiding their weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques, and embedding their terror fighters among women, children, the elderly and families. This is all by design. They don't want peace; they want Gazans to die in a propaganda victory over Israel.

Hamas showed us that it truly knows no bounds when it murdered over 1,400 Israelis—rape and torture have been detected in 80 percent of the bodies, including children. It injured another 4,000, and took 200 captives to Gaza last week. These unprovoked attacks all took place in peaceful communities that are part of Israel proper, not areas in question for my people like settlements.

Hamas's attack set my people and those of us pushing for peace back decades. And now Hamas is putting its own people at grave risk.

Hamas can best be understood as the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS combined. It is like the Taliban in that it runs a piece of territory as a brutal Islamic dictatorship, where LGBTQ+ people and those who do not live a strict Islamic lifestyle are executed. It is like al Qaeda in that it frequently engages in suicide bombings and just perpetrated Israel's 9/11. And it's like ISIS, which butchered the non-Muslim Yezidi ethnic group and took their women as sex slaves or "concubines."

The Palestinian people of Gaza deserve liberation from Hamas. If Israel ends the unjust rule of the terror gang, it will be doing my brothers and sisters in Gaza a life-changing favor.

The facts are simple: Hamas is responsible for all the blood that has been shed and will continue to be shed during this war, full stop. Palestinians like me and my neighbors want peace; Hamas does not.



 
Among the litter of guns, korans, and maps discarded by the Hamas terrorists whose bodies lie alongside bullet-riddled vehicles and dusty roads are green Gaza IDs with work permits. Normally residents of the Hamas territory can’t enter Israel, but work permits allowed over 20,000 Gazans to enter Israel. When some returned, it was as Hamas rapists and killers.

The Hamas invasion succeeded so well because the terrorists had an intimate knowledge of the communities they were targeting because they had worked there or had intelligence from those who had worked there. The attackers had detailed maps and building layouts. One woman whose husband and son were murdered said that the Hamas terrorists knew the namesof the people, how many children they had and even which of them owned dogs.

Last year, Secretary of State Blinken addressed a J Street even and told the anti-Israel lobby that the Biden administration had pushed Israel to “improve the lives of Palestinians” by, among other things, “issuing thousands of work permits for Palestinians in Gaza”.

The number of exits from Gaza into Israel rose sharply under the Biden administration and the left-wing Bennett-Lapid government which handed out an unprecedented number of work permits.

In 2021, there had been a total of only 7,500 exits a month from Gaza, but by July 2022, there had been 35,370 exits.

The massive increase was due to the work permits that the Biden administration had sought and that Bennett, Lapid and Gantz had willingly provided. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made the decision to increase the number of work permits from 5,000 to 15,000. Defense Minister Benny Gantz assessed the security situation and approved the move which embedded Hamas terrorists into Israel. By late 2022, the number had expanded to17,000.

“We need to make the civilian population in Gaza realize that they can live a different life. To pressure Hamas to stop shooting at Israel. To that end, we have increased the number of permits for working in Israel that are issued to the residents of Gaza,” Prime Minister Lapid said.

The leftist government viewed the work permits as leverage over Hamas to maintain quiet.

“And we are telling our Palestinian neighbors, ‘When it is quiet you will enjoy the economic flourishing.’ That’s the case in Gaza. They have 12,500 people coming to work in Israel. If it stays quiet, I will increase it,” Defense Minister Gantz promised.

When the conservative Netanyahu government took office, it failed to shut down the program because the establishment believed that it was working. Experts and diplomats claimed that Hamas had avoided joining in Islamic Jihad rocket attacks to avoid disrupting the status quo.

In July 2023, a record 67,769 exits had occurred on 22,000 work permits. In August, the Netanyahu government finally stopped handing out new work permits (without revoking the existing ones) after Hamas was caught smuggling in explosives.

In September 2023, Hamas touched off riots at the Gaza border. Explosives and incendiary balloons were launched into Israel. Snipers fired on Israeli soldiers and IEDs were planted on the border wall. Israeli soldiers returned fire and shelled Hamas positions.

Hamas began conducting exercises on kidnapping Israelis and “storming settlements”. The Islamic terrorist group has done this before and it was dismissed as posturing to extract economic concessions. Meanwhile its spokesman told members of the media what they wanted to hear. “Hamas is trying to avoid an escalation. A lot of our sons and daughters would be killed,” Basem Naim, the head of Hamas’s Political Department, toldThe Washington Post.

Rather than escalate further, Israel negotiated with Hamas through Egypt, and its allies in Turkey and Qatar, and came to an agreement to end the fighting.

In late September, mere weeks before Hamas launched an invasion of Israel and massacred over a thousand people, Israel opened the main border crossing with Hamas and allowed Arab Muslims from Gaza to once again enter the country. This was part of a deal with Hamas that increased the number of work permits and allowed more imports and exports, in exchange for peace. The violence stopped and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Trading work permits for an end to the rockets and riots seemed like it was working.

In reality, Hamas was approaching the end of its two-year plan for invading Israel. The work permits were not forms of leverage that had ended the violence and ushered in stability, they were a vulnerability allowing Hamas to gain detailed intelligence on Israeli positions and targets.

By 2022, in response to Biden administration pressure, there had been more exits from Gaza than at any time since 2005. After the Hamas takeover of Gaza, those numbers fell to the low thousands and mostly involved visits to Israeli hospitals. And that’s how it should have stayed.

But in 2019, work permits shot up from under 10,000 to 16,000 as part of a truce negotiated with Hamas that began after two Israeli soldiers were shot. The agreement negotiated through Egypt, allowed Qatar to deliver millions in cash to Hamas (this has been misrepresented on social media as Netanyahu funding Hamas) and to expand the number of work permits.

The work permits and the money were a trade for an end to the rockets and the riots, but they allowed Hamas to work on its two-year plan of invading Israel while profiting from the truce.

Israel had a secure border, but it was persuaded to open it up in order to appease Hamas. Experts on Islamic terrorism, like myself, had repeatedly warned that a truce in Islam is only a means of maneuvering for advantage. While American and Israeli politicians and generals came to believe that they had gotten a handle on Hamas, bribing it to stop the violence, the Islamic terrorist group was exploiting a political breach in the border in preparation for a full invasion.

After the war there will be a political reckoning. And that reckoning needs to include not only the immediate failure to maintain border security and force strengths in sufficient numbers to respond to a massive attack, but everything that led up to it including the false notion that Hamas could be negotiated with and that a modus vivendi could be achieved with the terrorists.

The work permits that allowed Hamas terrorists to infiltrate and scout targets in Israel with precision and depth was part of a larger strategy toward the Islamic terrorist group. After Hamas took over Gaza, the Bush and Obama administrations tried to maneuver it into a unity government, and when that failed, they relied on backchannel negotiations to reach an understanding without a formal peace deal: all of which led up to one horrifying day.

Israeli communities foolishly allowed workers from Gaza into their homes, grew fond of them and believed all their talk about peace. Then they watched their children be murdered by them.

The myth that Hamas violence was a reflection of conditions in Gaza, and that ameliorating them would reduce the violence filtered down from the U.S. and the EU to some Israelis and led to the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. There’s a lesson here.

Borders only work if you keep them closed. Walls don’t work if you open doors inside them.

The Biden administration wanted Israel to provide work permits to the West Bank and Gaza where 70% of the population supports terrorism. Even though the Oslo Accords had failed to seduce Arafat and the PLO away from terrorism, the same experts believed that they could seduce Hamas away from terrorism with economic benefits. The same strategy that failed with Iran, with North Korea and with the Taliban was used to lull Israel into a false sense of security.

There’s no win-win scenario with Islamic terrorists: there is only a win-lose scenario. Anyone who thinks that they’re in a win-win scenario with those who want to kill them has already lost.

The work permits that cost over a thousand lives were an attempt at a win-win scenario. After the slaughter, it is clearer than ever that either Israel kills the terrorists or the terrorists kill it.

No matter what the White House and the rest of the international community says, it is not Israel’s responsibility to make life better for those in Gaza, but to protect its own citizens. And these competing obligations are incompatible. Trying to negotiate with Hamas and make life better for Gazans cost Israel over 1,300 lives. May these be the last lives lost to appeasement.


(full article online)


 
Rockets fired at Israel by Gaza-based terrorist organizations are increasingly falling short inside the Strip, according to Israel Defense Forces data released on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, some 12.7% of all projectiles launched by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad struck in the Gaza Strip, compared to just over 6% the previous day.

Since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 7.52% of rockets failed to reach Israeli territory, the IDF said on Wednesday, adding that it detected 450 misfires that led to “death and destruction in Gaza.”

“Rockets have been causing harm to Gazan civilians, in addition to Israeli civilians,” the military said. “Hamas is continuing to use the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields and does not hesitate to risk the lives of Gazan civilians for the purpose of attacking Israelis.”


On Tuesday evening, an explosion rocked the courtyard of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. Hamas sources claimed it killed 471 Palestinians. Hamas and much of the Arab world immediately blamed Israel, accusing the IDF of deliberately striking the hospital.

However, no Israeli air force, ground or naval attacks were being carried out in the area at the time of the blast, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden confirmed that based on the evidence he’d seen, the explosion was caused by an errant rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

“I’m deeply saddened and outraged by the hospital blast, which appears to be done by the other team—not you,” Biden, who arrived in Israel to show support for Jerusalem’s war effort against Hamas, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hamas terrorists killed at least 1,400 Israelis and wounded more than 4,400 in a massive offensive launched from Gaza on Oct. 7, which included the firing of thousands of rockets at Israel and the infiltration of the Jewish state by terrorist forces.

Terrorists took at least 199 hostages from Israel to the Gaza Strip during the invasion, the IDF confirmed earlier this week.

Of the 4,475 people who have been wounded by Palestinian terrorists, 332 are currently hospitalized, per Israeli Health Ministry data. As of Wednesday, 61 of them are in critical condition while 167 remain in moderate condition.

Hamas’s murder rampage has seen Israel unleash unprecedented air power against terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip as troops prepare for an expected ground operation.

“Since the beginning of the war, we have attacked thousands of targets,” Hagari said on Tuesday. On Monday alone, the IDF attacked more than 200 terrorist targets, the spokesman said.

In addition, Israeli security forces have arrested more than 440 suspected terrorists throughout Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley. Over 220 of them are Hamas operatives, the IDF said.






 
Palestinian Media Watch reported earlier that Hamas’ Ministry of Interior called on Gazans “not to cooperate” and “not to leave their homes,” despite Israel’s warnings.

Now PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh has joined Hamas and “warned” Gazan civilians against the Israeli notifications, telling Gazans “not to leave the land” no matter “how great the sacrifices may be.” In other words, even if it means the civilians will die in their homes acting as human shields for Hamas, they should stay:

Muhammad-Shtayeh-161023-2.JPG
Muhammad-Shtayeh-161023-3.JPG
Muhammad-Shtayeh-161023-4.JPG


PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh: “The [PA] government warns against the [Israeli] military order (i.e., warnings) that seeks to expel our people in the Gaza Strip and the creation of a new Nakba (i.e., “the catastrophe,” the establishment of the State of Israel), and we emphasize that our people will not leave its land and will not be expelled from it, regardless of how great the sacrifices may be.”
[Official PA TV, Oct. 16, 2023]​
Moreover, the Israeli army posted an audio recording of a phone call held in Arabic between an Israeli intelligence officer and a Palestinian resident of Jabaliya in the Gaza Strip during Hamas’ terror war against Israel. The Gazan explains that Hamas are taking people's car keys to prevent them from evacuating south:

Headline: “Phone Call Between an IDF Intelligence Officer from Unit 504 and a Jabalya Resident in Northern Gaza”
Gazan: They are preventing people from leaving.
IDF Officer: “Tell me where exactly it is that they stopped you.”
Gazan: “Those who are here near the agency. They are taking the ID card and the car keys.
IDF Officer: “You mean the Movement? Hamas? Who is stopping you? Hamas?”
Gazan: “Yes, yes.”
[Israeli army website, Oct. 15, 2023]​
Hamas war on Israel October 2023 - At least 1,300 Israelis were murdered and over 3,300 wounded, in addition to at least 199 Israelis who were abducted into the Gaza Strip, in a Hamas terror war that began when approximately 2,500 Hamas terrorists broke through Israel's security fence at the Gaza Strip border and launched a surprise attack, taking control of several Israeli towns and attacking a music festival on the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret (Simchat Torah), which fell on the Sabbath, Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas terrorists also fired at least 5,000 rockets at Israeli population centers. In response, Israel launched Operation Iron Swords to counter the Hamas terror threat. Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon joined Hamas' terror war starting from the following day, attacking Israel from the north.

The following is a longer excerpt of PA PM Shtayyeh’s warning to Gazans:

PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh: “The [PA] government warns against the [Israeli] military order that seeks to expel our people in the Gaza Strip from their homes and the creation of a new Nakba (i.e., “the catastrophe,” the Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel), and we emphasize that our people will not leave its land and will not be expelled from it, regardless of how great the sacrifices may be, and it is capable of dealing with them and thwarting them, just as it has thwarted many projects of elimination and resettling during the previous periods of struggle (refers to Israeli evacuation warnings to Gazans prior to a ground campaign during Hamas’ terror war on Israel; see note below -Ed.). The international community, and foremost among it the American government, must quickly intervene to stop the aggression.”
[Official PA TV, Oct. 16, 2023​


 
Many years ago, when I was still a Member of Knesset on behalf of the Labor party, I was sent on a mission to the European Parliament to meet with our “fellow” socialist members (that’s when I still naively thought that the socialist left was the ally of Israeli Labor).

After leaving one meeting with a senior member from Germany who spent the entire meeting lamenting Israeli evil, I turned to the Israeli EU Embassy staff member and said: “I get it, it’s clear, they still can’t handle what they did to the Jewish people, and so they need to find a way to cleanse their sins by retroactively projecting onto Israel all of their sins. So let’s just be done with it, we’ll tell them we forgive them in return of them just leaving us alone.”

The wise staff person responded, “But you know what will happen: they’ll pocket our forgiveness and keep projecting their sins on us. They need this too much to let go.”

This is the context for the complete submission of so many on the left in media and politics to the Hamas lie that it was Israeli attacks (no, it was another Gaza terrorist group – Islamic Jihad) that destroyed a hospital in Gaza (it didn’t, not even close– it was the parking lot) and led to hundreds of innocent dead (the figure is not grounded in anything). For eleven days now, pillars of the global left from the “Squad” to Corbyn to many in the media had to deal with the collapse of their entire theology, which placed unique Israeli-Zionist evil at the core of their worldview. Without this one certainty of their political lives they do not know how to be in this world. It is the one idea that gives sense and order to who they are.

But the glee with which Hamas terrorists and “ordinary Palestinians” (remember Daniel Goldhagen’s “Ordinary Germans” also known as “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”?) proceeded to engage in the greatest possible atrocities against families and people of all ages, from babies to grandparents, was to them first and foremost a massacre of their entire theology. They did not know who they were anymore without “Evil Israel.” They especially could not handle the terrifying possibility that evil lies on the Palestinian side — the people whom they have elevated to Jesus-like sacrificial and saintly status.

And so the lie handed to them by Hamas that included all the elements they needed – Israeli evil, innocent Palestinian victims – allowed them to restore their theology. All was right with the world again. Israel/Zionism/Jews were thereby restored to their proper place in their theology as the epitome of unique evil.

This is the reason why the intense energy released was not simply of tribal loyalty or “anti-Israel bias.” Rather, it was the collective relief of people whose entire worldview was endangered for eleven long days, and which they – thanks to the failure of Islamic Jihad and the lies of Hamas – could finally restore.


 
Meanwhile ... America still has a demented, Marxist crime boss running things in our war-torn nation. The southern border is till porous, as millions of invaders slither over the border. Home prices and autos are still priced beyond reach for an ever-growing portion of the citizenry who are headed towards poverty. Fags dressed as women are still allowed to play predator to unsuspecting little girls and women in areas designated for women only (i.e., bathrooms).

But Americans just LOVE to be distracted by psyops occurring halfway around the world. I'm beginning to think that its an addiction used to keep them from having to face the fall of their own nation. I'm not sure why Americans continue believing the Fake Media, but they slurp up whatever slop CNN or MSNBC or FOX offers on a daily basis. Sad!!!
 
Meanwhile ... America still has a demented, Marxist crime boss running things in our war-torn nation. The southern border is till porous, as millions of invaders slither over the border. Home prices and autos are still priced beyond reach for an ever-growing portion of the citizenry who are headed towards poverty. Fags dressed as women are still allowed to play predator to unsuspecting little girls and women in areas designated for women only (i.e., bathrooms).

But Americans just LOVE to be distracted by psyops occurring halfway around the world. I'm beginning to think that its an addiction used to keep them from having to face the fall of their own nation. I'm not sure why Americans continue believing the Fake Media, but they slurp up whatever slop CNN or MSNBC or FOX offers on a daily basis. Sad!!!

If you don't like things in America, please feel free to move to Gaza.
 

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