Unparalleled Universes : Murderous, Paranoid and Delusional

"This is a massacre."
"All our options are open. We will take all considerations into account, but we will not allow the enemy to set the rules of engagement."
Senior Islamic Jihad leader Khaled al-Batash

"The Zionist terror government must realize that we will not hesitate to protect our people and our land."
"[Islamic Jihad] is considering all of its options, [including the] option of responding to this aggression."
Islamic Jihad spokesman Dawood Shehab

Israeli soldiers sit on a tank close to the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip on October 30, 2017, near Kibbutz Kissufim in southern Israel. (AFP PHOTO/MENAHEM KAHANA)

"Any response or violation of Israeli sovereignty will be answered with determination and in a forceful and clear way, as we did yesterday."
"[Following the demolition the IDF is] maintaining its preparedness, closely monitoring what is happening among terror officials in the Gaza Strip."
"The IDF’s activities removed a threat against Israeli citizens, and that was the mission."
"This was an impressive operational achievement and it deserves all praise from the Southern Command."
"The operation joins a host of operations, overt and covert, that IDF troops are undertaking and will continue to do against any threat, at any time and in any situation."
IDF chief Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot

From left, Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, Gaza Division commander Brig. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs and Coordinator of the Government's Activities in the Territories Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai hold a situational assessment meeting near the Gaza border on October 31, 2017. (Israel Defense Forces)

Two terrorist groups, one subservient to the other, but both owing their existence to a fixation on destroying the State of Israel, see their mission as an imperative. To that end they stockpile weapons, gain the understanding sympathy of terrorist-sponsoring Islamic countries like Iran, Turkey and Qatar where encouragement, funding and training, alongside more arms to stockpile, derive. Their intention is clear, oft-repeated and reinforced by forwarding suicide missions, lobbing rockets across the border to Israel, and constructing sophisticated tunnels from within Gaza into Israel to enable terrorists to breach the border and plan attacks against Israeli military and Israeli towns and villages.

It is the related duty of the Israel Defence Forces to remain aware of all threats emanating from Gaza, from the major terrorist groups stationed there; Hamas which controls Gaza and Islamic Jihad which shares its mission of annihilation of the Jewish State. Hamas calls upon the international community, despite its terrorist designation in many foreign countries, to condemn the IDF and Israel as genocidal, planning to destroy the lives of Palestinian Arabs, particularly children, used as protective shields by Hamas while provoking Israel to respond to rocket attacks.

The sophisticated tunnels crawling underground from Gaza to Israel are costly to build, requiring massive amounts of cement side-lined for that use instead of building homes for Gaza's Palestinians. They are funded through the generous charity of the European Union in large part, meant to relieve the plight of Palestinians but co-opted by Hamas. The tunnels are equipped with electricity, some have tracks that motorized vehicles run on, and motorcycles are often used to traverse them. They are also used as storage facilities for weapons and as secret hideaways for Hamas officials during times of Israeli defensive operations responding to Hamas offensive forays.

The purpose of the tunnels focuses on Israel and giving Hamas the capability of covertly entering Israel to carry out attacks. During the 2014 conflict between the IDF and Hamas many tunnels were discovered and destroyed by the IDF. Occasionally others are discovered and destroyed. Last week was one of those instances, when a tunnel was discovered and explosive charges set to destroy it, where it emerged from Gaza into Israel. In the collapse of the tunnel several Hamas senior operatives died, along with a handful of others.

This 'massacre' has outraged Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as a perfidious act of war. What a strange world we live in when violent psychopaths dedicated to destruction and slaughter of those they term their enemy, shrink in horror when their own are killed while engaging in activities meant to bring about the destruction of that enemy, who demonstrates an inconceivable determination to defend itself. And so psychologically battered have commanders of the IDF become by constant criticism from the international community, condemning 'disproportionate' force of defence, that they must defend their actions, explaining the intention to destroy a tunnel, not those within it.

According to IDF authorities, this tunnel was discovered inside Israeli territory close to the Gaza Strip, believed to have been constructed after 2014. The tunnel was the work of Islamic Jihad, and ran from the Gazan city of Khan Younis, to cross under the border for dozens of meters, and finally approached Kibbutz Kissufim. Ronen Manelis. A spokesperson for the IDF described the
operation in Israeli territory to destroy the tunnel, that the fatalities were mostly occasioned by smoke inhalation and secondary blast impacts.

Seven Palestinians in total died, of whom two were senior commanders, with another dozen injured, according to the Hamas-governing Gaza Health Ministry. It is well enough known that these tunnels occasionally collapse, taking the lives of Hamas members who happen to be working in them at the time. This instance was merely a trifle more dramatic; a collapse brought about by deliberate human intervention, catching a number of terrorist operatives unaware. They will no longer pose a threat to Israel, though a host of others are ready to take their place.

The body of Marwan Alagha, 22, is carried by mourners after he was killed when Israel blew up a tunnel built by the Islamic Jihad terror group stretching from the Gaza Strip into its territory, at Naser hospital in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 30, 2017. (SAID KHATIB / AFP)

According to reports out of Palestinian media, Islamic Jihad had demanded an immediate, coordinated military response.  Hamas, on the other hand, urged a more cautious approach before responding, along with possible coordination with Egypt so that the nascent Palestinian unity agreement would not be jeopardized. Egypt has its own problems with these tunnels and with violent attacks by Islamist jihadis from Islamic State to Salafist Bedouin in the Sinai, as well as Hamas, targeting its military and its police.

Members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group attend the funeral of fellow terrorists killed in an Israeli operation to blow up a tunnel stretching from the Gaza Strip into Israel, during their funeral in the Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza, on October 31, 2017. (AFP PHOTO / THOMAS COEX)

"The response to this massacre is to move forward toward the restoration of national unity because the enemy knows that our strength is in our unity and no people under occupation can win if they are not united."
"I assure the leadership of [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad: blood for blood, destruction for destruction."
Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh

Both Hamas and Fatah, traditionally at violent loggerheads against one another, agree on this issue, that Israel is promoting chaos in Gaza, and the tunnel demolition was one of those issues, planned to disrupt the ongoing talks for reconciliation between the two sworn enemies, Fatah and Hamas. Fatah spokesperson, Fayez Abu Eita, vice chairman of the party’s revolutionary council, charged that the  tunnel detonation was aimed at disrupting the unity talks. "This crime comes in the context of [sowing confusion] and creating tension in order to thwart Palestinian national reconciliation."

"The explosion took place inside Israeli territory. The majority of the dead were operatives who entered the tunnel after it was blown up and died in the Gaza Strip, and not as a [direct] result of the explosion."
"We are not interested in an escalation, but we are ready for all scenarios."
IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee

As though any explanation were needed to begin with. Any nation on this globe has the right and the obligation to defend itself from the menace of malevolent threats and violence aimed at its complete and utter destabilization, not to mention the ongoing threats of lethal violence committed against its people, both military and civilian.