Palestinian Terrorist Groups Excelling in Committing Atrocities

More than 360 civilians were killed at the Supernova music festival on 7 October  EPA

"[The terrorists committed a crime against humanity because they launched a] widespread attack directed against a civilian population."

"The killing of civilians and taking of hostages were all central aims of the planned attack, and not actions that occurred as an afterthought or as a plan gone awry or as isolated acts, for example, perpetrated by unaffiliated Palestinians from Gaza." 

"That [the claim that random Palestinian civilians took part in the attack] was a claim that was made very early on, it was made by Hamas in order to distance its own fighters from the abuses, and it was made by Israel to justify attacks on civilians in Gaza."

"The intentional killing and  hostage-taking of civilians was planned and highly co-ordinated."

Belkis Wille, associate director, Human Rights Watch

Palestinian militants move towards the border fence with Israel from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7.   Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images

 

It has taken almost a year, but finally Human Rights Watch -- never a friend of Israel -- issued a report affirming the sadistic savagery visited upon Israeli civilians on October 7 of 2023 was a deliberately planned mass slaughter of devastating proportions. Palestinian terrorists killed some 1,200 people, kidnapping over 250 people of all ages, taking them to Gaza as human pawns, some 120 of whom remain in Hamas' hands.

Human Rights Watch has declared that the attack met the international legal definition for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Still in Gaza are 115 of the 251 abducted during the fateful early October day of dread infamy. Still being held for 'trade' agreements are 42 dead Israelis, among them soldiers captured by the terrorists on their crossing into southern Israel, who manned Israeli border observation posts. 

According to the HRW report, five different Palestinian armed terrorist groups engaged in war crimes, violating international law by killing, torturing, taking hostages, looting and committing crimes involving sexual and gender-based violence, primarily the mutilation of girls and women before they were raped and murdered. All the groups were led by the Hamas Qassam Brigades.

 

Photographs of some of those taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 attack on Israel are seen in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 18.   Leon Neal/Getty Images

 

HRW researchers relied on a report by a special United Nations envoy who had found "reasonable grounds" to believe Hamas committed sexual violence during the attack, while claiming its own researchers had been unable to independently verify claims of sexual violence and rape. Somewhat akin to Medecines sans Frontieres claiming that since it had not actually witnessed these atrocities, it could not subscribe to their condemnation.

At 230 pages in length, the report focused on the October 7 attacks without examining actions taken by Hamas or Israel linked to the subsequent war brought to Gaza. As the terrorists launched a "widespread attack directed against a civilian population, theirs was a crime against humanity". HRW's Belkis Wille had arrived in Israel mere days following the October attack, spending  a month in research with local staff.

Palestinian terror attacks at 26 civilian sites were examined by the researchers, who spoke with close to a hundred survivors, along with 50 experts and first responders to the violent tragedy. The conclusion was reached by the researchers that following their review of hundreds of photos and videos the majority of the Palestinians taking part in the atrocities were terror-group affiliated, not random civilians who had taken advantage of the open fence.

 

A family photo hangs on the wall inside a burned-out house in Kibbutz Be'eri in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 assault by Palestinian armed groups on southern Israel, October 14, 2023. Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times

Footage of the events observing the terror operatives included those who wore civilian clothing, communicating via walkie-talkies, taking orders from commanders, which led the researchers to conclude the operatives who carried out the worst abuses, particularly in the early hours of the attack, belonged to 'armed factions'. 

Hamas issued a nine-page response to the report, elucidating that the Qassam Brigades had planned and led the attack, and the Hamas political movement was not involved; operatives, they claimed were instructed to avoid targeting civilians. A claim that even HRW found "false". The organization concluded their report by calling on Hamas to release the 120 hostages immediately, along with bodies of hostages remaining in Gaza.

Israeli soldiers inspect houses that were destroyed in a battle between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants on Saturday's Hamas attack on a kibbutz in Be'eri, Israel, on October 14.

Amir Levy/Getty Images

Guilty as Charged

"In the final analysis, the court does not retain the hodgepodge of explanations provided by Gabriel Sohier Chaput about his writings."

"[The court] rejects his entire account, because his explanations leave no doubt. The court finds that the explanations provided are specious, insincere, opportunistic, deceptive, far-fetched, implausible, concealers of the truth, and were cobbled together to conceal the true intention of the accused."

"[Sohier Chaput] intentionally promoted hatred, through the Daily Stormer platform, against people of Jewish faith."

"The evidence in this regard is overwhelming. In closing, allow [myself] to make the following observation: the victims [Jews and other groups] of the Holocaust and also the victims of other genocides perpetrated throughout history, as well as their families deserve to be left in peace. The suffering they have been put through is inexpressible and defies the meaning of humanity."

Quebec Court Judge Manlio Del Negro, Montreal

"We need to make sure no [social justice warrior] or Jew can remain safely untriggered."

"[2017] will be the year of action."

"Non-stop Nazism, everywhere, until the very streets are flooded with the tears of our enemies."

'Zeiger' aka Sohier Chaput, Dailu Stormer

Gabriel Sohier Chaput aka 'Zeiger'

A series of articles published by the Montreal Gazette in 2018 described Gabriel Sohier Chaput as one of North America's most prominent writers on the Daily Stormer, an infamous, race-baiting, antisemitic rag of a far-right news website. Sohier Chaput was linked in the articles to the Zeiger pseudonym he signed off with when publishing hundreds of articles on the website of the Daily Stormer where it was pointed out that he organized meetings for a local neo-Nazi group.

The publishing of the Montreal Gazette articles in a display of investigative journalism uncovering the  presence and influence of a coterie of neo-Nazis and fascists actively working to denigrate, demonize, slander and harass Jews and their institutions led B'nai Brith Canada to file a complaint to the Montreal police. This led to a warrant being issued for the man's arrest in 2018.

 

Andrew Anglin, Founder, Daily Stormer

Sohier Chaput was charged under the Criminal Code with willful promotion of hatred "by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, [that] willfully promote hatred against any identifiable group". On conviction, the charge carries a maximum penalty of a two-year sentence in prison. When the trial began a year ago, Helene Poussard, the defence lawyer, stated that while her client was guilty of having posted between 800 and 1,000 items under the Zeiger pseudonym he was within his constitutional rights.

 

His writings were repugnant, stressed the lawyer, but he had a right to post them under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Her argument failed to impress Justice Del Negro, who ordered that Sohier Chaput be taken into custody. Since the warrant was issued for his arrest in 2018 he had never been earlier detained. "There is nothing ironic in the fact that millions of Jewish people and others were exterminated during the Holocaust orchestrated by the Nazis ... it is one of the saddest events in the history of humanity."

 

Members of the Montreal Antifascist collective protested outside of the courthouse Friday, as closing arguments resumed in the hate propaganda trial of Gabriel Sohier-Chaput. The 35-year-old Montreal man appeared in court by video conference. (Radio-Canada)

 

Black And Dead : Vigilantism Lives

"[The three men had] no badge, no uniform, no authority [and were] just some strange guys in a white pickup truck."

"You can't make a citizen's arrest because someone's running down the street and you have no idea what they did wrong."

"Standard stuff: malign the victim, it's the victim's fault. You can't claim self-defense if you are the unjustified aggressor. Who started this? It wasn't Ahmaud Arbery."

“I was hopeful based on the evidence that we presented in the case that we put forth that the jury would see the truth of what actually took place and bring justice for the Arbery family. After we picked the jury, we looked at them and realized that we had very, very smart, very intelligent, honest jurors who were going to do their job which is to seek the truth."

"And so, we felt that putting up our case, it doesn't matter whether they were black or white, that putting up our case that this jury would hear the truth, they would see the evidence and that they would do the right thing and come back with the correct verdict which we felt they did today."

Cobb County Lead prosecutor Linda Dunikoski 

Arbery's case put a spotlight on racial injustice against African Americans

"Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers will be held accountable, but a historic civil rights mobilization was necessary for the killers to face prosecution at all. There was nearly impunity for this murder, and further investigation is necessary to determine how and why officials initially refused to pursue the case."

"The circumstances of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder and the struggle required to secure a prosecution demonstrate profoundly the urgency of reforms to make equal justice real in America.”

Sen. Jon Ossoff, of Georgia

He was 25 years old, a young Black man who enjoyed jogging. For whatever reason on February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery happened to be in a white neighbourhood, jogging in the suburban community of Satilla Shores, in Brunswick, Georgia. As it happened on that night, 65-year-old Gregory McMichael watched the black man running down their street. His son Travis, 35, joined his father as he made a 911 emergency call to inform an operator "there's a Black male running down the street". 

 

An untoward episode of black-and-white that propelled the two men and their neighbour, William Bryan, 52, into action.

 

Father and son reached for shotguns. This was no jogger, they convinced one another, this was someone who had invaded their neighbourhood, committed a crime and was now running away. They got into their pickup truck and sped after the jogger. The chase went on for an estimated five minutes through looping streets. The victim, Ahmaud Arbery, was not available this week to testify how terrified he was at being followed by three white men trying to corner him in the darkening streets of an unfamiliar neighbourhood.

But the jury at the three men's trial, viewing a graphic cellphone video that Bryan McMichaels happened to shoot as his son pumped three bullets into the captured black man's chest left nothing to the imagination. That Sunday afternoon jog didn't turn out as Ahmaud Arbery assumed it would; a refreshing run to cap off a good day. That Sunday was not a good day for anyone. But justice took its time. None of the three was immediately taken into custody. Until the video surfaced and the public howled.

At a trial that took two weeks in coastal Brunswick city, the case revolved around whether the three defendants were right to confront the unarmed jogger, based on the supposition he was running away after having committed a crime. The neighbourhood, the defence stressed, had suffered a number of break-ins. They argued on behalf of their clients that there was justification for the shooting after Mr. Arbery ran past the McMichaels' driveway. The defence of property trumping a human life.

The jury was comprised of eleven white men and women, and one Black man. They listened to the prosecution and the defence, asked to hear the 911 call again and to view that damning video and two days later delivered their verdict. All three convicted of murder for chasing and shooting Ahmaud Arbery; rejecting the self-defence claim. The three were charged with murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal intent to commit a felony.

To teach an uppity Black man who imagined himself a proud American citizen, free to exercise his limbs on a public street, a lesson he might never forget to ensure his error would never be repeated. In the process making certain the man would never run again, never have the opportunity to irritate and inflame the minds of whites who view Blacks as looters and criminals, they proved themselves to be  killers and will pay the price.

 

Life in prison, perhaps with the possibility of parole.

It took two months before action was taken to apprehend the three after the cellphone video came to public notice. There is another trial scheduled for the three men who see a looter every time they see a Black face. A federal trial next year, on hate-crime charges.

 

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