Israel, Unprepared and Vulnerable

"This war will take time. It will be difficult."

"All the places that Hamas hides in, operates from, we will turn them into ruins."

"Get out of there now."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

"[The U.S.] stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop."

"There's never a justification for terrorist attacks and my administration's support for Israel's security is rock solid and unwavering."

"This is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks to seek advantage. The world is watching."

U.S. President Joe Biden

Israeli police officers evacuate a family from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

 

Hamas terrorists stormed out of Gaza into nearby Israel towns, just over the border, backed by a surprise barrage of rockets. They wantonly killed hundreds of people, abducting many others. This is the second time in Israel's history that an enemy bent on its destruction used the occasion of a major Jewish holiday to launch a deadly attack. Israeli intelligence is aware that the country is always on the brink of an attack, a generalized perception born of experience. Yet it had no advance warning, not a scintilla of a suspicion that a well-coordinated, long-planned attack was immediately imminent.

And the result was butchery on a grand scale, as residents of border towns and soldiers at military posts were surprised and overwhelmed by hordes of terrorists brandishing automatic rifles and shooting to kill. Killing people in the streets, in their homes, in their cars, and ushering others to waiting vehicles to drive them to Gaza as hostages. The elderly were murdered and so were their grandchildren. Women and girls were raped and tortured and many taken hostage as sex slaves.

Children still in their infancy were separated from their parents and in Gaza were harassed and bullied by older Palestinian children. The confused and frightened babies were placed in stacked animal cages. Hamas's media groups videoed all manner of scenes of gross abuse of Israelis, young and old. Filming streets piled with  the dead. Filming girls and women who had been raped shoved into waiting cars. Filming elderly Jews being directed to hold weapons as they were forced to pose. Filming the bloody battering of people to death in ghastly footage.

And filming the beheading of Israeli soldiers. Since an estimated 100 people, both military and civilian were abducted to be used as prisoner-exchange collateral, it seems that some among them were expendable for entertainment purposes to be tortured and mutilated and slaughtered. Women gang-raped and butchered, their bodies mutilated. Reminiscent of the publicity exploits of Islamic State when that Islamo-terrorist group terrified the world in cruel barbarism.

 

Palestinians transport a captured Israeli civilian, center, from Kibbutz Kfar Azza into the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

 

Some 22 locations just outside the Gaza Strip across the border in Israel; towns and other communities were assaulted by Hamas terrorists up to 24 kilometers from the border. The while, Israel's military desperately scrambled to respond. Well after nightfall on Saturday the gun battles between the IDF and Hamas continued. In two towns the terrorists held hostages in standoffs with the military. In another town a police station was occupied, taking until Sunday morning for the building to be reclaimed.

Palestinians transport a captured Israeli civilian from Kibbutz Kfar Azza into the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

 

Thousands of Israelis were wounded, and the last count of the dead stood at 700 and rising. Despite return bombing by the IDF in Gaza, fewer Palestinians died in the heat of the conflict. In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes intensified after nightfall with giant explosions taking down buildings including Hamas offices in central Gaza City. As is the IDF's habit, warnings to evacuate buildings went out before their destruction. 

 

A ball of fire and smoke rise from an explosion on a Palestinian apartment tower following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented, multi-front attack on Israel at daybreak Saturday, firing thousands of rockets as dozens of Hamas terrorists infiltrated the heavily fortified border in several locations by air, land, and sea and catching the country off-guard on a major holiday. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

 

A rocket barrage into Israel hit four cities, including Tel Aviv and a suburb nearby. Hamas fired over 5,000 rockets. Terrorists made use of explosives to break through the border fence separating Gaza from Israel, enabling the terrorists to cross into Israel with motorcycles, pickup trucks, paragliders and coastal speed boats. In some Israeli towns, bodies lay wherever people had encountered the swiftly advancing terrorists. Clusters of dead lay at bus shelters.

A video was released showing hundreds of terrified young men and women fleeing for their lives from a rave where they were listening to music and dancing until Hamas terrorists entered the area and began firing. Dozens of young Israelis were instantly killed. Photos by Associated Press show an elderly woman brought into Gaze on a golf cart by Hamas terrorists; another woman squeezed between two others on a motorcycle. AP journalists watched as four people were abducted from a kibbutz, including two women.

In Gaza, a jeep rear door opened and a young Israeli woman stumbled out bleeding from her head, her hands tied behind her back while a terrorist waving a gun grabbed her by the hair and shoved her into the back seat. Workers from Thailand and the Philippines were among the captives taken by the terrorists. The expectation is that a ground assault will be launched into Gaza. An eventuality that the Hamas terror is anticipating. 

The greater the civilian casualties in Gaza among the civilian population, the more publicity for Hamas claiming brutality and intention to murder innocent Palestinians on the part of Israel. Claims that have never yet failed them in arousing indignation among sympathizers to the Palestinian 'cause' who believe the PA and Hamas's messages of Israeli brutality against simple Palestinians who want nothing better than to live their lives in peace and harmony with their neighbours.

An aerial view shows vehicles on fire as rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon. Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters