Israel's War Against Hamas - Updates

[Rocko]

 

[Sixties Fan]

A collection of Arab and Muslim celebrations at the massacre

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Israeli fighter jets continued to pound the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Wednesday, targeting Hamas command centers and other assets and killing a senior commander in the Palestinian terror group, while the Israel Defense Forces panned Iran for allegedly taking an active part in preparing Hamas for the current war.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a press conference Wednesday that Iran had directly aided Hamas ahead of the October 7 onslaught, which saw thousands of terrorists infiltrate into southern Israel. The gunmen burst into border communities as well as the site of an outdoor music festival and butchered over 1,000 civilians, including women, children and the elderly, killed over 300 members of security forces and kidnapped at least 224 people into Gaza, in the worst terror attack in Israel’s history.

“Iran directly aided Hamas before the war, with training, supplying weapons, money and technological know-how,” Hagari charged. “Even now, Iranian aid to Hamas continues in the form of intelligence and online incitement against the State of Israel.”


(full article online)

IDF kills top Hamas general as Gaza strikes continue, says Iran aiding terror group

Military says it hit many terror assets in Strip as Hamas claims 80 killed overnight; rockets target Ashkelon, Gaza border towns; IDF strikes terror cell in West Bank's Jenin

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ Decades of slowly working their way into institutions with anti Israel ideas, BDS, anti Israel professors, leaders.......and the result is, of course, anti Israel demonstrations everywhere. Holocaust denial, Israel's right to exist denial, the UN taken over by anti Israel governments.......what else can we expect but the demonstrations and show of support for those who want to destroy Israel ? What else?
They wish to decolonize, they should start with the UK, Tibet, North Cyprus and others. ]

A large group of Israeli and allied academics, primarily sociologists, has struck back with a blistering rebuke after about 1,700 of their peers in the field of sociology signed an open letter accusing Israel of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” while appearing to rationalize Hamas’ invasion of the Jewish state earlier this month.

“We are deeply troubled by the blatant lack of any recognition of the heinous massacre carried out by Hamas in the south of Israel on October 7th,” said the response from “the Israeli sociological community along with concerned sociologists” and other academics from across the world. “The letter is shocking for its moral blindness and lack of concern for empirical facts, contexts, and sociological perspective.”

The response, which said that “we too support Palestinian liberation,” continued: “While the October 7th events do not justify hurting uninvolved civilians in Gaza, the omission of any substantive acknowledgement and condemnation of Hamas’ acts dehumanizes the victims and adds to the deep sadness, trauma, and despair we are experiencing.”

On Oct. 7, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, invaded neighboring Israel and massacred over 1,400 people, mostly civilians, injured thousands more, and kidnapped over 200 hostages. The brutality of Hamas’ violence has shocked the world as new details have emerged of rape, torture, beheading, and the mutilation of bodies.

The statement from Israeli sociologists came out this week and has been signed by about 200 people. It aimed at adding nuance to and refuting ideas espoused in another open letter, titled “Sociologists in Solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian People,” which was issued last week but went viral on social media on Monday. Signed by students and professors from some of the world’s most prestigious universities, it referred to the state of Israel as “the Israeli regime” and said its response to Hamas’ terrorist attack was tantamount to genocide.

“We cannot sit back and witness the continuation of this genocidal war,” the letter stated. “We demand that our governments push for an immediate ceasefire. This stance follows in the tradition of the civil rights movement, anti-war, and anti-apartheid protests of decades past. Aligning ourselves with these freedom struggles, we call on all of our colleagues to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and against settler colonialism, imperialism, and genocide.”

The letter repeatedly accused Israel of genocide and seemingly sought to rationalize Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault as a response to Israeli actions: “As educators, it is our duty to stand by the principles of critical inquiry and learning, to hold the university as a space for conversation that foregrounds historical truths, and that contextualizes this past week’s violence in the context of 75 years of settler colonial occupation and European empire.”

The Israeli-led response letter faulted some of Israel’s policies but argued brutal violence against innocents should be condemned. “We urge you to join us in digging deeper into our sociological toolkit to engage in studies that offer a more nuanced understanding of the conflict in the Middle East,” the statement added.

Sociologists aren’t the only academics to express apparent support for Hamas and attack Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre.

Cornell University history professor Russell Rickford, for example, said last week that he was “exhilarated” by the violence and later defended his comments by arguing “the fundamentalism of Hamas mirrors that of Israeli leadership.” He eventually apologized amid widespread backlash and is now taking a leave of absence for the semester.

Another professor, self-described “radically optimistic transsexual climate scientist” Mika Tosca of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, said on social media: “Israelis are pigs … may they all rot in hell.” Tosca apologized one day later. “I wrote some things on my Instagram story that I unequivocally reject and do not stand behind,” she said. “To the many Israeli and Jewish people [whom] I hurt with my words: I am truly sorry.”

Columbia University professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history Joseph Massad said in an op-ed published in Electronic Intifada that Hamas’ invasion was “awesome” and went on to describe the terrorists who para-glided into a music festival in Israel to murder and rape the young people there as “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.”

Many student groups have declared “solidarity with Gaza” as well, defending Hamas and faulting Israel following the terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion. At Harvard University, for example, 31 student groups issued a statement blaming Israel for the attack and accusing the Jewish state of operating an “open air prison” in Gaza, despite that military having withdrawn from the territory in 2005.

Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner that the statements issued by anti-Zionist college students are “morally obscene.”

“Cheering mass murder in the name of de-colonialism should be the final red line exemplified by the latest student groups who ‘hold the Israeli regime responsible for all unfolding violence,'” said Romirowsky. “Endorsing horrific mass murder is reprehensible on every level, and if we do not isolate these actions and comments, Islamic antisemitic terrorism in the academy will proliferate and rot our institutions of higher education.”

‘Moral Blindness’: Israeli, Allied Academics Respond After Sociologists Express ‘Solidarity With Gaza’ - Algemeiner.com

A large group of Israeli and allied academics, primarily sociologists, has struck back with a blistering rebuke after about 1,700 of their peers in the field of sociology signed an open letter accusing Israel of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" while appearing to rationalize Hamas' invasion of...

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Bring Them Home: Israel Opera’s Moving Tribute to Kidnapped Israelis in Gaza | United with Israel

The Israel Opera's rendition of 'Bring Him Home' from Les Misérables is a powerful and beautiful tribute to the 220+ innocent Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.

unitedwithisrael.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

But a more accurate version of the massacre is beginning to emerge on social networks, suggesting Arab women and children were among the attackers and partook in murdering Israeli civilians.

Ynet reporter Ofir Hauzman started posting on this phenomenon on Monday: “I talk to mothers from the Gaza envelope who survived the inferno and they tell me that among the terrorists who broke into their homes, there were also children and women,” she tweeted. “One says that the terrorist who was in her house managed to unfold a table, and they all sat down to eat while she (the survivor – DI) put her hand over her little daughter’s mouth so she wouldn’t make any sound. Yes, like in the Holocaust. Another says that they stole all her underwear and clothes, and another says that they defecated on her in the living room (“There was also someone who went into the bathroom, and I remember thinking to myself: ‘Wow, what a polite terrorist.'”). They shot someone else’s dogs, tied some of them with a rope to a motorcycle, and dragged them while driving toward the Strip. Not humans. It’s scary, very scary!”

The problem with making the above report and others like it stick is the absence of video evidence so far. This reporter has been told that the notorious 43-minute video presented to select members of the media includes shots of women rioters taken from security cameras. I expect these will eventually come out.

Hauzman commented on this point: “And those who write: put up videos, otherwise we don’t believe you – [expletive] yourselves. I don’t intend to waste energy on you, not now and not ever!”

Understandable, but the problem in the absence of this direct evidence is obvious.

There is one piece of evidence that emerged on Tuesday: a phone conversation between an Arab teenager and his parents back in Gaza on 10/7, in which the lad boasts of killing 10 Jews and mommy and daddy lavish their praise on him. Not for the faint of heart:



User Rod Lior tweeted that women and children from Gaza who participated in the pogrom were documented in Nir Oz, and cited an acquaintance who saw the IDF video: “You know what I saw? At some point, Palestinian women with small children arrive in Nir Oz. And they walk around the kibbutz with red hands [from blood] and point for the terrorists where people are hiding inside homes, so they can kill them. So help me, I saw one of them running up to a terrorist, points, and he starts running. You know, one Palestinian woman entered the home of a kibbutz member and switched her Netflix to Arabic. The kibbutz member was hiding in her fortified space and realized this was a Palestinian woman because she heard her singing in her living room. And then she picked clothes from her wardrobe.”

Another user tweeted that young Arab children were encouraged to shoot Israelis who had been captured at the music concert. The children closed their eyes and fired.

Evidence Emerging on Gazan Women, Children Who Participated in 10/7 Massacre

Young Arab children were encouraged to shoot Israelis who had been captured at the music concert.

www.jewishpress.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Nasrallah Shares Bunker with Representatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad

Nasrallah's photo was published after Hezbollah had been riddled with inquiries about the leader’s whereabouts.

www.jewishpress.com

 

[rylah]

Egypt has begun to establish a field hospital in Sheikh Zweid, North Sinai,
in preparation for receiving wounded Gazans for treatment there.

The responses in Arabic to the report: "They left and won't come back"

 

[LuckyDuck]

Pig fat is a good idea, but removing the heads of all Hamas terrorists and dumping them in the sea is another way. In both cases, if they are true believers in the Quran, they will realize that if their heads are removed, they can't enter heaven.

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Washington Post headline reads, "Why news outlets and the U.N. rely on Gaza’s Health Ministry for death tolls."

A key defense of Hamas statistics comes from Human Rights Watch:

Many experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements.

“Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “In the times in which we have done our own verification of numbers for particular strikes, I’m not aware of any time which there’s been some major discrepancy.”

Shakir said Human Rights Watch would not use figures provided by parties with “a propensity to misrepresent information.”

“We know that a health ministry is going to base [death tolls] on assessments coming from hospitals, morgues, etc.,” he said. “They have an ability to collect that in a way that other sources not there can’t do.”

HRW's Shakir is somewhat correct - about the past. The Gaza Health Ministry numbers were generally within perhaps 10-15% of the estimates given by others in previous Gaza conflicts.

This war is not at all like the other wars.

In all the previous Gaza wars, there were independent organizations on the round that could do their own reporting. In all the previous Gaza wars, the Gaza Health Ministry issued lists of the names of the dead where the lists could be checked against the names listed by NGOs like Al Mezan and PCHR and the UN-OCHA.

In other words, in previous wars, there were mechanisms to keep Gaza's Health Ministry honest. As someone who has spent hours checking the names myself, I can say that this time Hamas has kept a tight lid on information on casualties. (And Hams is also ensuring that it doesn't publish the names of of its own "martyrs," similar to previous wars, to make it appear that a higher percentage of the dead were civilian. Hamas has instructed Gazans for years to only refer to all the dead as "innocent civilians." )

This time, there are no lists of "martyrs." PCHR stopped its own reporting of the names of those killed after the second day of the war. And even then, it was careful to not report the names of those it knew were terrorists:

At 11:00 (October 7): Ameer ‘Abdullah Mohammed al-Khour (19) was killed when he was coincidingly passing by an area, where IOF’s warplanes were targeting Palestinian armed groups in southern Gaza City.

The names of the members of "armed groups" killed are carefully not reported - because Hamas doesn't want them to be.

This time, Hamas has ensured that it controls all the information coming out of Gaza. And once it has that control, it can exaggerate the casualty count at will, knowing that no one in Gaza would dare contradict it.

The most obvious example is the Al Ahli hospital bombing, where absolutely no analyst agrees that 471 people were killed. It is clear proof that the Ministry of Health has no compunction about lying to the world.

The hospital incident proves beyond any doubt that the health ministry lies and makes up casualty numbers out of thin air. And yet the Washington Post and HRW defend it.

The incident of the explosion at the convoy of cars heading south on Salah al-Deen Street on October 13 is similar. Israel is blamed for an airstrike even though it confirmed that it did not operate in the area at that time, and the explosion appears to be from an IED beneath the truck - meaning that Hamas evidently mined the road specifically to keep Gazans from fleeing. But beyond that extraordinary example of Hamas willingness to murder its own people that has been ignored in the media, the Hamas health ministry claimed 70 people were killed when video taken immediately afterwards showed no more than 12 bodies.

In a way, the Salah al Deen incident was a dress rehearsal for the Al Ahli hospital incident. Hamas saw that it could make up numbers with impunity and that the media will report them uncritically.

The ministry, of course, counts their inflated casualty figures at l Ahli and Salah al Deen in their authoritative sounding press releases.

In previous wars, never has the health ministry been so brazen in lying about incidents and in issuing obviously faked casualty statistics. That is quite enough for any real reporter to call out their track record of lies every time they mention them.

Beyond that, has any reporter actually read the ministry's Facebook page? There is nothing objective about it. Its language is the language of propaganda, not sober reporting. It even publishes obviously staged photos, complete with makeup:



In short, there is no reason to trust the health ministry, and every reason to assume that their statistics are lies.

There is another factor here: Hamas' unprecedented sadism and cruelty on October 7 should prompt every single reporter to question everything they have ever assumed about Gaza. Why would someone assume good faith from a group that wantonly murders children and rapes women? Would they trust ISIS press releases?

Which brings up the real question: how can the Washington Post write an article defending a ministry that has been proven to lie, that is part of the most vicious terror group on the planet today?

The @WashingtonPost and human rights NGOs defend believing the casualty numbers of people who murder children. Despite all evidence, they simply cannot believe that they are being lied to by Hamas.

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

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[ Islamic education about Jews in Gaza ]

 

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