The Abandonment of Palestinians in Gaza

"For the past several days, our reporters and several of Gaza’s most prominent anti-Hamas activists have been subjected to an intense campaign of surveillance and intimidation by Hamas." 

"And we’re hearing about many activists who have been effectively placed under house arrest by Hamas. They’ve made it clear their number one goal is to prevent any anti-Hamas demonstrations from taking place in Gaza."

"What the world doesn't really know, is that there is a strong opposition movement inside Gaza today that's developing against Hamas."

"A lot of people are fed up from the war, fed up from Hamas's wrong choices, and they want to protest [demanding that Hamas disarm, and leave the Strip] in order to stop the war, to stop the Israeli attacks, and to rebuild Gaza."

"[At least half of Gazans want Hamas out], so they  can get a better future, a better life. [The same number were in retrospect] unhappy with the October 7 attacks." 

Hadeel Oueiss, editor-in-chief, Jusoor News 

 

"Hamas was much better prepared than we were [they were tipped off]."

"[Hamas has] the weapons, the force and the means to intimidate people. They threatened families and reportedly paid money to influential clan leaders to publicly announce that they would disown any family member who participated in t he demonstration."

"[The opposition movement wants Hamas to disarm] so that reconstruction can begin ... [and] living conditions can improve."

Mohammad Hussein Lafi, protest organizer 

Members of Hamas cracking down on Gazans. Photo: Screenshot from X account of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

 

"The situation in Gaza is very difficult. They are kidnapping people and threatening people. The level of terror is high."

"There are fatwas calling for killing and fatwas declaring people infidels in the mosques, and calls saying the protest movement has been postponed."

"Things are very difficult. Since the morning, they’ve been arresting people and kidnapping people from the streets. Things are very bad."

Name withheld by request 

 

"[Hospitals across Gaza had been turned into] makeshift police stations, interrogation sites, and torture centers."

"Families are being threatened, people placed under house arrest, and Hamas’s al-Qassam brigades [the forces responsible for October 7] have been fully mobilized to reinforce police and intelligence units with explicit shoot-to-kill order."

"[The mainstream media has failed to report on the campaign] apparently because Israel is not involved – so no Jews, no news."

"This is what the abandonment of Palestinians in Gaza looks like. Shame on all who stay silent in the face of jihadi, ISIS-like violence against the very people they claim to champion."

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, humanitarian activist originally from Gaza, now living in the U.S.

 

"The fact that organizers announced the protest weeks in advance made it easier for Hamas to prepare, intimidate people, pressure families, and silence the movement before it reached the streets."

"In Gaza, protest movements have often been more successful when they were organized quietly and appeared suddenly."

"This time, the early announcement gave Hamas the time and pretext to suppress it."

Ahed al-Hendi, senior fellow, Center for Peace Communications  

To all Western media, including pro-Palestine outlets: right now, thousands of Palestinian civilians are taking part in massive anti-Hamas protests across the Gaza Strip. Stand with them. Carry their voices. Don't abandon them. Ihab Hassan 

 

Hadeel Oueis, a U.S.-Syrian-based journalist, editor of Arabic-language Jusoor News reporting on Middle East news, has been informed by many dissidents in Gaza through phone interviews that the mass protest dubbed "Day of Rage" scheduled to take place on June 26, with the demand that Hamas disarm and step down, had their plans crushed before they even took to the streets. Although smaller protests elsewhere proceeded in some areas, organizers were warned by the terror group that anyone among the would-be demonstrators attempting to join would be subject to violent reprisals. 

 

One of the protest group's organizers, Mohammad Hussein Lafi described his arrival at a designated gathering point in central Gaza: it was already filled with Hamas security forces openly displaying their weapons. He was informed that cellphones had been confiscated from anyone suspected of being part of the protest movement; some among them physically assaulted and detained. A year earlier Lafi, a graduate of the Faculty of Physical Education at Gaza's Aqsa University, was arrested by Hamas accused of speaking out against the October 7 attacks among his friends.

 

He was "severely beaten and tortured during detention", which convinced him that an end must come for Hamas's rule in Gaza. With the scheduled protest deferred due to threats, a more discreet 'soft protest' took place on Friday at 10:00 p.m. that saw Gazans banging pots and pans, and whistling for an hour from within displacement camps and tents in response to an online call by organizers. An ad hoc demonstration the following day independent of organized plans took place by others.  

 

A funeral procession nearby planned protest sites took place with mourners carrying signs reading "God willing, Hamas out", "We are not pawns", and chants of "enough with the destruction" also took place. Hamas, according to Mustafa Asfour, a Gaza activist living in the U.K. for four years and one of the June 26 demonstration organizers, "launched a media campaign to discredit the movement, accusing it of betrayal and targeting anyone" participating. 

 

In the days leading up to the planned protest, Hamas pressured prominent families "to hold press conferences denouncing the June 26 movement"'; pro Hamas media then circulated statements presuming to be the names of major clans with the claims they opposed the protests. "Many of these families later issued official statements saying they had never released such declarations and rejecting the statements attributed to them", explained Mustafa Asfour. Threatening phone calls were received by families with warnings not to allow their children to participate, and displaced people were informed anyone who joined the protests would b e expelled from the camps.

 

NGO silence, argued Asfour, has emboldened Hamas. He and others had reached out, he explained, to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, drawing their attention to the planned protests, warning against repression. Their efforts bore no fruit. Other than for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, no response was ever received, but the Center's response was four lines to say the "matter raised by you is under follow-up"; a stock, non-committal response. 

 

Ms. Oueis accuses Hamas of making everyday life for Gazans miserable through aid diversion, heavy taxation and a harsh crackdown on dissent. In "The worst days of hunger and lack of food in Gaza", she said, residents were interviewed who alleged that Hamas "Hijacked every truck that came with food to Gaza, stored it in its own storage, stole this aid that's coming from international organizations, and kept it." The aid was handed out selectively "only to their soldiers", and pro-Hamas communities; those lacking a fighter in the family "won't get aid".

 

Hamas "captured and arrested" close to 200 activists and dissidents since the start of the ceasefire last fall, many accused of collaborating with Israel; some tortured to death. One of Jusoor's reporters was arrested, beaten "very badly and left unable to walk. He's paralyzed because he made this coverage, anti-Hamas coverage from Gaza", emphasized Ms. Oueis. Her reporting team interviewed Gazans who were tortured for posting criticism of Hamas on Facebook.  

 

Palestinian Hamas stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly October 7 2023 attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 22, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled/File Photo

  

"Most of the Islamists of Gaza are pro-Hamas. Many deeply religious Muslims [are among those calling for change], a lot of the people who are going to protest and taking initiative in spreading the word against Hamas are religious Muslims [who reject Islamist politics."

"[Some Gazans openly argue that] It's time to stop the wars between Israel and Palestinians, and it's time to have peace with Israel." 

Hadeel Oueiss, Jusoor News

 

"[My motivation for helping with demonstrations is the] belief that civilians in Gaza have the right to express their voices peacefully, and to demand dignity, safety, and a better future."

"[The world should know that they demand] accountability, and the right of people to have a voice in decisions affecting their lives."

"I lost my home during the war, like many other families in Gaza. My experience, like many Palestinians here, has been shaped by years of difficult circumstances, but also by a strong sense of community and the desire to build a better future."

Kareem Joudeh, 30, formerly of northern Gaza, displaced to central Gaza, working with World Central Kitchen 

Hamas stand guard on the day of the release of Keith Siegel, a US-Israeli dual national hostage held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Gaza City, February 1, 2025. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

 

Buying Entrance to the Corridors of Power

"The Palestinian people of Gaza have been sold out to a pack of thuggish terrorists who must be confronted, destroyed, taken on, eliminated, and removed from the scene."

Palestinian Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib

 

"[Hamas better keep its promise to disarm or there will be trouble]."

"They will disarm or we will disarm them."

"I spoke to Hamas and I said, 'You're going to disarm, right?' 'Yes, sir. We're going to disarm'."

U.S. President Donald Trump 

 

The U.S.enforced ceasefire of last weekend succeeded in rescuing the last twenty living Israeli hostages from the purgatory Hamas kept them in; manacled, mistreated, malnourished and malevolently teased with the prospect of impending death. Earning U.S. President Trump the status of peacemaker that he so urgently stumped for in hopes of being honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize. There was a brief, hopeful period of silence; no bombs, no artillery a stand-down of troops in Gaza. Then the wait for the release of the 28 dead hostages held by Hamas, to complete phase one of the agreement for a ceasefire.

 

Violation of the ceasefire were swift in arriving. Alongside refusals of the terrorist group to allow itself to be disarmed, and given a brief period of time to sort things out, in Mr. Trump's judgement. Turning the ceasefire into a hudna, where Hamas swiftly turned on that proverbial dime, given past performances of the same, to once again brutally reassert its dominion over that 47% of the Strip not in Israeli control. The business of rearming, reassembling, recruiting, replanning all well in hand. Taqiyya lives!

 

The Israeli military campaign following the Hamas invasion of southern Israel in October 7, 2023 "is not over", emphasizes Prime Minister Netanyahu even while President Trump insists that the Gaza war is over, and as a result of his personal intervention "the guns are silent in a region that will live in peace for all eternity". This, while Hamas death squads execute civilians in Gaza, thanks to Trump's green light "for a period time" to deal with "gangs" causing trouble in the enclave. 

 

Palestinian terrorists stand guard on the day that hostages held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, are handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, October 13, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

 

The very Palestinian women and girls that Hamas public relations portrayed as collateral victims of the IDF's campaign to obliterate Hamas, snuggling itself deep within the civilian population, are now in danger of their lives by Hamas execution, charged with "collaborating" with Israel. Public executions to both entertain the populace and to convince them that defying Hamas and opposing its rule has consequences they would do well to avoid.

 

Video shows Hamas armed men dragging seven men into a circle of people in Gaza City, forcing them to their knees and executing them.  From Social Media/Reuters

 

Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are mutually agreed; no one can force them to hand over their weapons to anyone, much less Israel or the U.S. The prerequisite before phase two is to begin which includes the $60-billion reconstruction of Gaza. 

 

Hamas has demands of its own; among them that the interim administration hire 40,000 Hamas employees (UNRWA  redux). And wait: Hamas operatives, demands Hamas spokesman Basem Naim, must be integrated into a post-transition Palestinian state. "Before that, no one has the right to deny us the right to resist the occupation by all means." It seems the ceasefire agreement signed by all inducted by Mr. Trump into a force for peace 'in their time' has left the adversary of peace confused over its role in this theatre of the absurd. 

 

An agreement whose implications have left a clear winner -- and it's not necessarily Israel whose determination to completely wipe out Hamas  terrorism has been truncated to be left unfinished in the opinion of its friends and supporters, none of whom have ever had to cope valiantly over a 80-year period with one bloodily lethal challenge after another to its existence. While claiming to 'love' Israel, and having only its best interests at heart, Donald Trump has favoured the very cunningly generous Muslim Brotherhood-loving, Hamas-supporting, Iran-friendly, Qatar.

 

That Qatar -- the one whose oil wealth has given it extraordinary clout through its suborning of Western values while generously handing out millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions to universities, political parties, and social groups in democracies whose capitalist instincts never shy away from pricey gifts by foreign nations with discreetly cloaked agendas of influence while shielding aspirational approach to worming Islamism into the fabric of societies steeped in oblivious unconcern -- becomes the major beneficiary.

 

To grasp the importance of Israel’s unprecedented September attack on Hamas negotiators in Doha, just look at President Trump’s decision to sign an executive order guaranteeing Qatar’s security — a startling step for a non-NATO ally.  AOL

 

Israel, in planning to assassinate the very leaders of Hamas residing in Qatar, protected by Qatar, that Qatar whose universally influential news media Al Jazeera has become the mouthpiece and publicity generator for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, has offended an American president whose family businesses owe much to their very integrated business dealings with that country, generous in its penchant for scattering financial opportunities to those willing to court criticism should anyone notice the odour of corruption.

 

Following Israel's failed attempt in ridding the world of the Hamas politboro in Qatar, President Trump featured his administration's displeasure by forcing Israel to apologize to the Emir of Qatar, and signed an executive order signally that an armed attack on Qatar (who now would ever think of attacking Qatar but Israel in another bid to eliminate the cancer that keeps metastasizing?) would be seen as "a threat to the peace and security of the United States". How so? Through irritating elite political insiders engaged in robust and profitable business deals with affable Qatar.

 

Back during his previous administration, President Donald Trump referred to Qatar as a terrorist supporter "at the highest level". When Qatar signed a $23-billion deal to buy American F-15 fighter jets, that all changed. What hasn't changed, however is Qatar's support of Islamist terrorist groups throughout the Middle East, while Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates shun the Muslim Brotherhood and abhor Hamas terrorism.

 

US WAR SECRETARY Pete Hegseth meets with Qatari Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the Pentagon earlier this month. 

(photo credit: KEN CEDENO/REUTERS)

 

Suing Meta for Hosting The Ravaging of Israeli Civilians

"[Meta failed to activate its live content monitoring systems, deploy its rapid response team or remove the content quickly], nor long thereafter (and in fact -- to this very day)."

"The Respondent acted contrary to its policy, its commitments, and its obligations, allowing its social networks to serve as a weapon, as an inseparable part of the terrorist attack on the State of Israel."

"For many hours, in real time and long after the terrorist attack, horrific documentation from the attack was disseminated, showing innocent civilians — children, elderly, women, and men — subjected to atrocities that even paper cannot bear to describe."

"[The footage included] murder, extreme violence [and] abduction of civilians and soldiers, both living and dead [among other brutal scenes]."

Lawsuit statement of claim

 

"Our hearts go out to the families affected by Hamas terrorism. Our policy designates Hamas as a proscribed organization, and we remove content that supports or glorifies Hamas or the October 7 terrorist attack."

"Following the attacks, we established dedicated teams that work around the clock to remove content that violates our policy, while ensuring our platforms remain available for condemning Hamas and raising awareness for the victims, including the hostages held in Gaza." 

Meta response to Class-Action Lawsuit

View of the Re'im music festival massacre, in southern Israel, January 16, 2025.

(photo credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

 

A class-action suit has been filed against Facebook parent Meta by families of victims of the October 7, 2023 invasion of southern Israel by Hamas terrorists. The lawsuit contends that Facebook failed to block distribution of footage of the murder, abduction and torment of their loved ones. Filed in Tel Aviv District Court, the lawsuit seeks 4 billion shekels (roughly US$1.1 billion) in damages. The distribution would see 200,000 shekels to each victim of October 7 who suffered savage violence that was documented and shared on social media. 

 

Of the total sought in damage compensation, 200,000 shekels is to be awarded to immediate family members and close friends for whom the  footage was a painful moral outrage, as well as 20,000 shekels apportioned to each Israeli exposed to the footage. The plaintiffs include some survivors for whom the footage turned Facebook and Instagram into "an integral part of the terrorist attack on Israel".  

 

 

 

The Givatayim-based law firm of Matri, Meiri, Wacht & Co. represent the plaintiffs, with the firm's lawyers arguing that the videos were permitted to remain for weeks to be viewed online, contradicting Meta's stated policies. One of the lead plaintiffs discovered his grandmother's death through a Facebook post by the terrorists. His grandmother had been a resident of Kibbut Nir Oz. 

 

To be perfectly clear; the horrors of the October 7 invasion were sadistically savage in nature, atrocities that went beyond what most civilized populations could ever imagine might be perpetrated against innocent, vulnerable civilians. The rapes, mutilations, remarkably inhumane methods of murdering children, the elderly, women and entire families were meticulously videoed by body cams for the express purpose of demonstrating what demonic psychopaths were capable of, and proudly so.

 

Those videos were downloaded on social media platforms with the intention of boasting on the part of Palestinians dedicated to the eradication of the Jewish state and the mass murder that would accompany it, as a supreme act of 'resistance' against the 'occupation' of 'Palestinian territories' by a military whose sole purpose was to defend and protect the population of a nation whom Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were indoctrinated to hate and to consider martyrdom through sacrifice in killing Jews was their supreme destiny. 

 

 

 

Israel At War To Bring Peace

Israelis visit the Nova Music Festival site in remembrance of the Horrors   Getty Images

"Despite the slaughter, pillaging and rapes committed by Hamas and many of its fellow Gazans, the international outbreak of antisemitism and the deaths of its soldiers in the ensuing war, Israel is stronger now than it was before October 7, 2023."

"Recall the circumstances before that terrible day. Israel was surrounded by a ring of united enemies avowedly dedicated to its destruction."

"Iran was moving toward nuclearization, referring to Israel as a one-bomb country given its size and repeatedly declaring its intention to eliminate the Jewish state."

"Israel was paralyzed from fighting back because it was in the crosshairs of Hezbollah's 150,000 missiles stationed across the border in Lebanon." 

Howard Levitt, National Post 

Getty Images

 

The attack by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists when an estimated five thousand of their operatives flooded across the border from Gaza into southern Israel, followed by any number of Palestinian civilians eager to take part in the savage bedlam that was to ensue, was as though an earthquake had shaken the foundation of the Jewish State. The tsunami that followed after the sadistic bloodletting and mass rapes, with Israel's government dispatching the Israel Defense Forces into the Gaza Strip to root out the terrorists, their enclaves, command posts, leadership while destroying their network of tunnels also served to divide Israelis.

 

Newly recruited fighters who joined a Houthi military force intended to be sent to fight in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, march during a parade in Sanaa, Yemen.

(photo credit: REUTERS/KHALED ABDULLAH)

 

Those Israelis whose loved ones had been kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival, from the farming Kibbutzim, demanded that their government focus primarily on returning the hostages to their families. Hunting down the criminal malefactors who savaged the country in a chaotic melee of bloodletting that took the lives of over 1,200 Israeli civilians, soldiers and foreign farm workers should be secondary, they insisted. From the very moment that a stunned Israel began assessing the attack and the country's losses demonstrations roiled the country.

 

The government leaders who focused on neutering and eliminating the existential threats that surfaced and resurfaced endlessly by Palestinian leaders nourishing their populations on hate, inciting them to become blessed martyrs in the battle against Israel's existence were damned and condemned by a large segment of the population that demanded conflict be halted and negotiations for hostage return be implemented at any cost to the future of the state. The country divided itself left and right, and no reconciliation was possible for the year and a half since the tragedy.

 

On the positive side, the periodic wars that Israel faced, the regular missile attacks that disrupted Israeli airspace and fell close to and occasionally on border communities from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank alongside terror attacks within Israel from Palestinian infiltration intent on wreaking as many deaths of Jews as possible was finally being extirpated with the no-holds-barred incursion of the IDF into both territories. Israel was amending the loss of its military omnipotence advantage destroyed by October 7.

 

Many of Hezbollah's top leaders, including its long-time chief Hassan Nasrallah, were killed in air strikes in Beirut's southern suburbs

Moving on two fronts to respond to Hezbollah's missiles into northern Israel in solidarity with its Hamas allies, then the Houthis from Yemen, and finally Iran itself, Israel found itself competently and urgently destroying its enemies' capabilities to inflict ongoing destruction by targeting leading terrorist leaders for assassination, by bombing weapons depots, by ignoring the condemnation from the West and targeting civilian complexes where terrorist groups set up their command posts to maximize the destructive punishment it promised its enemies.

 

The tunnels throughout Gaza became tombs for the terrorists who sequestered themselves therein, blown up along with their weapons depots. Senior Hezbollah operatives were killed or injured when Israeli-produced pagers were detonated last September. Israeli warplanes  attacked the massive Hezbollah missile caches, in a stroke of military prowess destroying much of the terrorist group's Iran-provided arsenal of missiles. 

 

Israel rigged thousands of pagers with explosives and detonated them remotely on 17 September  AFP

Iran learned to its disbelief after launching missiles into Israel, that the counterattacks by Israel were capable of destroying its missile capacity, wiping out air defences and leaving Iran in fear of the next Israeli attack on its nuclear installations. The opposition in Syria, with a weakened Hezbollah took advantage of this created opportunity to oppose and remove Bashar al Assad in Syria. And though the victorious Syrian Sunni groups have now taken Syria from the Shiite Alawites, there have been no attacks on Israel from that quarter.

 

Israel has been demonstrating to the world at large -- always prepared to criticize and demand of Israel forbearance that none of them would ever exercise were they to be attacked as Israel has always been -- that it is, and remains fully capable of defending itself. Interestingly, while Israel has made inroads in establishing peaceful relations with a growing number of Muslim states in the Middle East and beyond, with more expressing tentative interest in joining that number in the Abraham Accords as they disown terrorism, the West has allowed itself to be infiltrated by Islamist groups threatening disequilibrium in democratic nations. 

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is seen on posters in Beirut. Iran is Hezbollah's main backer.

Until the Hostages are Released and Hamas is Defeated

"It is time for the countries of the world to take seriously our unwavering commitment to bring back all our hostages home and defeat the enemy."

"Nothing will stop us from fighting to free our hostages, who have been held in brutal Hamas captivity for 527 days."

"We will show no mercy against our enemies while our hostages languish in Hamas terror tunnels." 

Danny Danon, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations

 

"If the Hamas terror organization continues to refuse to release the captives, I instructed the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] to capture additional areas, evacuate the population and expand the security zone around Gaza for the protection of Israeli communities through a permanent hold of the area."

"As long as Hamas continues its refusal, it will lose more and more land to Israel."

"[The IDF will] intensify [its military campaign in Gaza] through the expansion of the ground manoeuvres until the hostages are released and Hamas is defeated."

"[Israel will use] all military and civilian pressure [to achieve its goals, including the] implementation of U.S. President Donald Trump's voluntary migration plan for Gaza residents."

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz 

IDF troops operate in the Gaza Strip. March 23, 2025.

(photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

 

Even while Palestinian civilians in Gaza yearn for the conflict to come to a stop, they are bitterly aware that Hamas has no intention of standing down, no intention of delivering the remaining hostages -- both dead and alive -- to Israel for return to their families; burial for some, return to life for the living. Hamas leaders are adamant the release of the remaining hostages can only be achieved if their demands are followed. A permanent ceasefire and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

 

That the existing ceasefire that was in effect before October 7, 2023 was deliberately broken by Hamas itself -- which had planned a coordinated attack well in advance of the actual invasion of southern Israel on that fateful day, preparing its operatives in the thousands to surreptitiously enter an unaware and sleeping southern Israel to wreak the horrors of mass rape, mutilation, an unstoppable carnage of slaughter of young and old, women and foreign farm workers, the weak and the ill, soldiers and police on watch in a harvest of human victims to satisfy their blood lust -- is obviously irrelevant to Hamas in its current imperious demands.

 

Hamas terrorists seen in Khan Yunis, February 20, 2025

(photo credit: ABED RAHIM KHATIB/FLASH90)

The current stalemate that led to Israel's decision to once again re-enter Gaza in search of Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives and its leading figures arrived once the Hamas leadership rebuffed proposals by U.S. Middle East envoy Steven Witkoff for an extension of the first phase of the Gaza truce through Ramadan and Passover. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu observed that future ceasefire negotiations with the group "will only take place under fire". Return of the 59 hostages is imperative.

 

On Thursday, the Israel Defence Forces began conducting ground operations to  continue the dismantling of Hamas infrastructure in southern Gaza's Rafah. Ground activity also continued in the northern and central Gaza Strip, with the Israeli Air Force striking the terrorist assets across the enclave. Extensive strikes were launched by the IDF against Hamas targets early on Tuesday morning, prior to the entry of the ground forces.

 

On Sunday night, a hospital in southern Gaza was hit by the Israeli military, with the Nasser Medical Complex partly in flames. A statement ensued by the Israeli military that the strike was carried out on a "key terrorist in the Hamas organization who was operating inside" the hospital. It was Al-Aqsa TV, affiliated with Hamas that reported Ismail Barhoum, member of the Hamas political bureau and his nephew Ibrahim were the targets that were killed in the Khan Younis Nasser Medical Complex.  Infamously, Hamas favours using hospitals, schools and other civilian structures as command posts.

 

People gather as smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike at Nasser hospital, according to the Palestinian civil defence, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 23, 2025.

Hussam Al-Masri/Reuters

 

Also on Sunday, IDF troops concluded encirclement of Tel al-Sultan, to the west of Rafah, to once again dislodge Hamas from the district to "reinforce control and expand the security zone in southern Gaza". During the night, the troops encircled the area, eliminated several terrorists, and conducted a targeted raid on a terror infrastructure site that was used over the past few months "as a command and control center of Hamas terrorists."
 

Palestinian civilians were given warning by the Israeli military to evacuate the Tel al-Sultan area immediately while troops launch an offensive.The ordering of Gazan civilians out of harm's way at both critical Rafah areas, means that a very large number of Gazans are required to move toward the al-Mawasi humanitarian area, where many only two months earlier were moved at a time when the military had invaded all of Rafah.

"If all the Israeli hostages are not released and Hamas is not removed from Gaza, Israel will act with forces you have never encountered before."

"Take the advice of the U.S. President. Return the hostages, remove Hamas and other options will be open to you -- including leaving to other places in the world for those who wish."

"The alternative is total destruction and devastation."

Defence Minister Israel Katz

Also on Sunday in an overnight strike in southern Gaza, the IDF announced it had eliminated Salah Bardawil, a senior terrorist in Hamas's political bureau, who headed the Hamas planning and development office. In the framework of his role Bardawil led the Hamas strategic and military Gaza Strip planning.

 

IDF operations in Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip, March 22/ 2025. (IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

Palestinian Armed Gangs Looting Humanitarian Aid in Gaza

"This ... highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza."

"⁠The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated: without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive."

Louise Wateridge, senior emergency officer, UNRWA

 

"We have been warning a long time ago about the total breakdown of civil order."

"Until four or five months ago, we still had local capacity, people who were escorting the convoy. This has completely gone, which means we are in an environment where local gangs, local families, are struggling among each other to take control of any business or any activities taking place in the south. It has become an impossible environment to operate in."

"But the convoys were looted and there was absolutely nothing to take from the warehouses."

 UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini

 

"It was terrifying."

"But the worst part was we weren't able to deliver the food to the people."

Hazem Isleem, Palestinian truck driver

Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza via an unfamiliar route ordered by Israel, say UNRWA and the World Food Program. CBC

Armed looters ambushed a 100-truck convoy of humanitarian aid being brought into southern Gaza in November. Among the truck drivers was Hazem Isleem whose load of aid was stolen when one of the gunmen broke into his truck, forced him to drive to a field nearby and unload over a ton of flour. By morning of the following day all of the supplies from his truck had been stripped by the gang. And by extension the convoy of just under 100 trucks comprised of UN aid -- meant to feed tens of thousands of Palestinians -- had been stolen.

 

There was nothing new about this, particularly. When humanitarian aid trucks first began entering Gaza to provide aid to Palestinian civilians, Hamas operatives, armed and focused, had comandeered the aid into their possession, stockpiling it for their members and in so doing depriving ordinary Palestinians from food aid meant to be handed out to everyone in need. Following the Hamas example, armed Palestinian thugs formed their own gangs to replicate the actions of the terrorists.

 

Much of the food ended up in open air markets for sale at exorbitant prices; food that was meant to be distributed free of charge to any who needed it, now available at a price for any who could afford to purchase it, in the process enriching those who had taken illegal possession of humanitarian aid for their own profit. Hunger is reported to be widespread in Gaza. 

 

Aid groups in Gaza say the food crisis is continually getting worse and the limited supplies aren’t getting to those who need them. Israel says there is enough food and few people are going hungry.CBC

 

And Israel, conducting a war against terrorist groups which had themselves declared war on Israel by invading southern Israel farming communities and slaughtering 1,200 mostly civilians, enacting horrific scenes of mass rape, mutilation and incinerating entire families in their homes before making off back to Gaza with over 250 infants, elderly, ill people along with a number of Israeli soldiers and foreign farm workers, as hostages, is expected to monitor the humanitarian aid situation to ensure food is delivered to those in aid.

 

In no other conflict has a military responding to aggression against its state and its people been obligated to ensure that the enemy's population is fed; a concern that Hamas itself has spurned, focusing instead on continuing its violence against Israel, complacent in the knowledge that it will always be Israel held to account for those Palestinians that Hamas uses as human shields, not themselves. Palestinian civilians who just incidentally, approve in the vast majority, of the Hamas atrocities committed against Israelis.

 

Armed gangs have taken over from Hamas in the ransacking of humanitarian aid; presumably the stockpiles of aid; medical supplies, food, fuel, that Hamas amassed in their warehouses, closed off from access to the general population represents a surfeit of supplies to keep the terrorists in good health while they continue to bombard Israel with rockets. 

 

 

Truckloads of relief have been piling up at Kerem Shalom, the main border crossing between Israel and southern Gaza while the truckers await a safe window of opportunity to deliver the relief, in fear they will be looted. The initial small-scale efforts on seizing aid now has assumed "systematic, tactical, armed, crime-syndicate looting" by organized groups, according to Georgios Petropoulos, senior UN official based in the southern city of Rafah. "This is just larceny writ large", he commented. 

Well, yes it is; but it is in fact just Palestinians taking advantage of a situation that suits their agenda; sparing little thought for those among them who may be in dire need of aid, yet positioning themselves to deny that aid to the needy, while stockpiling it for their own nefarious purposes of gain through theft. The astronomical prices the gangs demand for the commodities such as flour, oil and other items needed in parts of Gaza represents the incentives the gangs respond to, to the extent that they will shoot to kill anyone who gets in their way.

And while international aid workers take pleasure in accusing Israel of permitting looters to act with impunity, the United Nations will not allow Israeli soldiers to protect the aid convoys. The reason stated, that it would appear to affect their neutrality, is beyond hilarious, given that UNRWA employees consist in part of members of various Palestinian terror groups, Hamas members primarily, some of whom took part in the October 7, 2023 atrocities committed in Israel.

It is true that Israeli forces sought not to intervene by targeting looters other than those affiliated with Hamas or other terror groups. Shani Sasson, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military agency that regulates aid to Gaza, noted that Israeli forces now target armed looters attacking convoys. Israeli forces opened fire on looters waylaying trucks in Rafah, forcing their retreat. the UN aid trucks with the pathway cleared, rushed into central Gaza. And then the gangs regrouped and hijacked them on the road, stripping the trucks bare.

 

Trucks pass through as trucks carrying humanitarian aid make their way to the Gaza Strip at the Erez crossing in southern Israel, Oct. 21, 2024. (Janis Laizans/Reuters)

 

 

Canada's 'Two State Solution' For Thee, Not For Me

 

"[The Foreign Affairs Committee is called upon to] immediately study the issue of how the Government of Canada can advance the recognition of the State of Palestine within a two-state solution."

"[The motion] supports the recognition of a viable and independent State of Palestine."

Motion before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Canadian Parliament

 

"[Trudeau] has said that the recognition of the state of Palestine will happen, not necessarily at the end of the process, but sometime during the process where the timing and conditions will be such that it will foster lasting peace."

"We need to know what that timing is, what the issues are and what the conditions should be, because we want a two-state solution."

Rob Oliphant, Toronto Liberal MP

 

"To veer from [Canada's traditional] path would reward violence and authoritarianism as a path to achieving statehood."

"[The committee adopted] a radical position [that parts-way from Canada's long-standing agreement that recognition can be achieved only as part of a negotiated agreement."

Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong 

"Canada's foreign policy should hold Hamas accountable, not legitimize them with status as a governing power."

"Put bluntly, they are the terrorists who murdered 1,200 Israelis, eight Canadians, continue to hold and executive hostages, and want to eradicate the Jewish people."

Liberal MP Marco Mendicino

"I can't pre-empt what the government will respond to. What I can tell you is our position is a two-state solution to this longstanding conflict."

"We believe that a two-state solution is the best path forward for lasting peace in the Middle East -- that's our position."

"How we end up getting there is something that obviously, is something (sic) that the government will continuously look at based on the situation on the ground."

Liberal MP Omar Alghabra introduced the motion. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

A motion tabled in the House of Commons presented by Liberal Member of Parliament Omar Alghabra called for Canada to recognize a Palestinian state, upending the past 75 years of tradition calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state, but only as a component of a two-state solution. Four Conservative votes were against but the motion passed by eight votes of members of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee in agreement representing the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois.

 

That the committee motion to fully recognize a 'Palestinian State' arrives mere weeks before the one-year anniversary of the October 7 savagery that rent apart farming communities in southern Israel when the Gaza-governing terrorist group Hamas led thousands of terrorists from Gaza across the border into Israel in a planned orgy of pillage, rape, torture, murder and hostage-taking, speaks volumes about the current government of Canada led by Justin Trudeau and the sensibilities of his Muslim-Canadian caucus members.

 

One can only wonder whether the Liberal party that forms Canada's current government is comprised of a majority of legislators under the illusion that their opinion on world matters has any merit, and in particular their decision that a two-state solution be achieved seeing Israel and the Arab Palestinians living in harmony is a true reflection of their mind processes, or that they are deliberately obtuse to the realities on the ground. 

 

That being primarily that the Hamas rulers of Gaza reject a two-state solution in their overt commitment to the destruction of Israel. As opposed to the covert commitment by the Fatah-led West Bank government of the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas which also envisions and nurtures the prospect of destroying Israel, leaving the entire geography 'from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean sea' in Palestinian hands, giving them their desired one-state solution.

For almost a year now, pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel crowds have been marching through the streets of Canadian towns and cities shouting 'long live the Intifadeh!' and 'From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free!', the obvious message of a one-state solution, the reality of which appears to have eluded the government of Justin Trudeau which prefers to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. A caution it lifts from time to time, to criticize Israel and its leadership and to charge Israel, not Hamas, with war crimes.

Canada has no wish for a two-state solution for itself. The Bloc Quebecois in the House of Commons still opts for separation for Quebec from Canada. The province is the only one in Confederation that bills itself as a 'national' entity. It has extracted special powers given no other province in Canada, as its just due as one of the two founding 'nations' of the country. But its true agenda is to achieve full sovereignty, something that the government of Canada will never countenance.

Yet this Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has worked out a winning formula for Israel; to accept a two-state 'solution' despite since its founding in 1948, Fatah and later Hamas and other terrorist Palestinian groups have always violently challenged Israel's right to exist. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas pays out handsome rewards to the families of suicide bombers or those ending up in Israeli prisons for crimes against Israel. 

Palestinian school curricula teach the younger generations of Palestinians to hate Israel and Jews, viewing them as their oppressors living on land rightfully belonging to Arab Palestinians who claim sole possession of ancient Judean ancestral lands -- as well as their traditions and history. According to the PA even that world-renown Jewish pacifist-scholar Yeshua, was actually 'Palestinian'. But only in the sense that during the Roman Empire Judean lands were named a Roman province called 'Palestine'.

Yet Justin Trudeau's government has arrived at the solution to the Arab Palestinians' aggrieved victimhood which considers the rebirth of Israel a 'disaster'. A day celebrated by Jews the world over as having finally, after millennia of a far-reaching, forced diaspora, Jews finally had a homeland of their own returned to their possession. That day one of mourning as the 'Nakba', memorializing the loss of Arab Palestinians' aspirations of their own state. 

The Palestinians created their Nakba when they rejected the Partition Plan offered by the United Nations to both Jews and Arabs, when the Jews were ecstatic about their return to Zion, and the Arabs awaited the onslaught of the combined Arab armies to vanquish and destroy the newborn state of Israel. They have never stopped trying. While most surrounding Arab/Muslim states have finally surrendered to the reality of Israel's presence, the 'Palestinians' forge on in their aspiration to kill Jews and destroy their state.

“Palestine will remain ours. And if anyone were to leave, it will be the occupying usurpers,” he declared.

UN Photo/Loey Felipe

Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, addresses the general debate of the General Assembly’s seventy-ninth session.

Gazans, Living With Terrorists

"We suffer with Hamas. [They] are responsible for our suffering. And there will never be a future for us under their control, even if Israel just disappeared, we still suffer under Hamas."

"I was a child when Fatah was the government of Gaza, but I remember what my family used to say about Fatah and the corruption among Fatah members and that's exactly why people elected Hamas in 2006."

"So there was corruption, but the security and safety was way better than when Hamas took control of Gaza."

"It's either you join Hamas to benefit and get a job and get some assistance in your life or you prefer to be an independent guy who struggles almost every day."

"You don't know if you are talking to a Hamas guy or not. You start talking against Hamas and you find  yourself arrested the next day."

"No one in Gaza can speak against Hamas without being arrested and tortured. That's why [surveys] come out of Gaza that shows the entire population are supporters for Haas, which is completely wrong."

"There are a lot of people opposed to Hamas and just want to overthrow them, but they are afraid of the consequences. They might be tortured, they might lose their jobs, many things."

"We protested Hamas in 2019 and we protested them in 2023 just three or four months before the [Oct.7] attacks. Both times I was arrested."

"No day passes without torture at Hamas prisons. The first time I [was] arrested, I remember that I was beaten every single day."

"The first time I was there [in prison] for three weeks. My family tried to visit me more than ten times and every time they said, 'No, he's not here'. But when my family was willing to pay the $3,000 they said, 'Yes, he's here'."

Hamza Howidy, Palestinian Gazan

A PEACE activist holds up a sign near Gaza.

(photo credit: REUTERS)

Having fled Gaza in August of 2023, Hamza Howidy now seeks asylum in Germany. He would prefer to return home to Gaza, but he fears Hamas labelling him a traitor for his criticism and activism. "So as soon as they get me, they will kill me immediately. I left Gaza with an intention to not be silent about what's happening, to speak out, for those who couldn't leave Gaza." Howidy is angry about university students at the protest rallies who he feels, should be placing the focus on Hamas terrorism.

He lived most of his life under Hamas, a child when Hamas was elected in Gaza, killing many of the Fatah party members who then governed Gaza, when a brief civil war erupted in 2007. When he matured to early manhood he attended the Islamic University of Gaza, majoring in accounting. Aware that without joining Hamas or becoming a Hamas supporter, his chances of finding employment were low to nonexistent. He also knew he was being watched by any number of operatives in the network of spies throughout the region who reported back to Hamas.

The first time Howidy was arrested in 2019 for protesting he was held for roughly three weeks before his family paid $3,000 for his release.As it happened, Howidy did not seek membership in any political party in Gaza. He did join the We Want to Live protest movement, a youth organization in Gaza rallying for better living conditions. Where were the student protests throughout the West, he wondered, when Palestinians were pushing back at Hamas.

"Part of us [in We Want to Live] believed in peace and coexistence [with Israel] but it's way too dangerous to call for that. So we choose to call for better living conditions. Which led to his arrests  in 2019 and 2023 for protesting. He wants the world and the student protesters to know that Hamas is at the root of the violence in Gaza. He nurses hope that Hamas can be replaced with a governing party that can create "a new page in our history, one that does not include terror."

"No one spoke [the current mass protests claiming to be 'pro-Palestinian' charging Israel with 'genocide' in Gaza] when Hamas arrested all of us and tortured us -- twice. None of them spoke when Hamas killed 700 Palestinians in 2006 and 2007. So I think they are motivated by their hatred of the Jews or Israel in general."

"Enough. We have lost both Palestinians and Israelis."

Hamza Howidy, Gaza Palestinian

STUDENTS HOLD a protest encampment in support of Palestinians on the Columbia University campus, in New York City, this week. (credit: CAITLIN OCHS/REUTERS)

Who Knew What and When?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) meets with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (C) and military chiefs at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv for a security assessment on October 8, 2023. (GPO)

"We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings."

"[Egypt, which often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, spoke repeatedly with the Israelis about] something big."

Egyptian official

 

"[Egypt’s Intelligence Minister General Abbas Kamel personally called Netanyahu ten days prior to October 7 that Gazans were likely to do] something unusual, a terrible operation [according to the Ynet news site.

"[Unnamed Egyptian officials informed the news site they were shocked by Netanyahu’s indifference to the news and said the premier told the minister the military was] submerged [in troubles in the West Bank]."

Ynet News

Israeli soldiers patrol near the West Bank city of Tulkarm after clashes between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli forces on October 5, 2023. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)

"A month and a half before the war, we saw that in one of the Hamas training camps they had built an exact, scaled model of an observer’s position, like the one we operate. They started training there with drones to hit the [machine gun] shooter."

"In the last two months, they started sending up drones every day, sometimes several times a day, right near the border, some 300 meters from the fence, and sometimes less than that."

IDF early-warning spotter Ilana

 

"[We flagged a lot of worrying border behavior nearby Nahal Oz, where 20 tatzpitaniyot [Israel’s predominantly female border surveillance forces] were killed on October 7. Desiatnik was one of only two surveillance soldiers at the base on the day who was not killed or abducted]." 

"It’s infuriating. We saw what was happening, we told them about it, and we were the ones who were murdered."

Yael Rotenberg and Maya Desiatnik, female surveillance soldiers

Soldiers are telling the media that their superiors did not heed warnings of unusual activity inside Gaza | Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

 

"The cards they had been holding for a future attack against Israel had been shown by the Palestinians: penetrating inside Israel, airborne [assaults], the element of surprise."  

"[Effectively upstaging a] well-known plan by Hezbollah’s elite al-Radwan to infiltrate the Galilee."

Lebanese source

Smoke rises from inside an Israeli army position which was hit by missiles launched by the Hezbollah terror group, as seen from Tair Harfa village, a Lebanese border village with Israel, south Lebanon, October 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Le Figaro has published allegations difficult to verify that three Hamas elite operatives were the sole individuals that held the intelligence of date and time of the October 7 massacre in southern Israel of 1,200 people; purportedly the plan was shared with allies only about a half-hour before the beginning of the invasion. The plan was solely that of Yahyah Sinwar, a hard-bitten foe of Israel who would never countenance any agreement recognizing Israel that speculation had it was being considered by his superiors in rank.

Hamas terror group leader Yahya Sinwar holds the child of an Al-Qassam Brigades member, who was killed in the recent fighting with Israel. (Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)

Saleh alArouri, overseeing Hamas activities in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) was informed of the impending invasion a mere half-hour ahead to enable him to alert Hassan Nasrallah the head of Hezbollah. Another top Hamas representative to Lebanon, Osama Hamdan -- he of the oath that Hamas was fully prepared to launch any number of additional October 7 events in its dedication to the destruction of Israel -- discovered from media reports that the assault had taken place, according to Le Figaro.

Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal is quoted in the Le Figaro report as saying: "Only three people knew the exact date, time and details of the plan." The Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas's sponsor along with Hezbollah, reportedly were taken by surprise on learning of the attack. Tehran characterized the attack as a response to the 2020 targeted killing in Baghdad of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani by the United States.

 

"The Al-Aqsa Flood (name given to the Oct 7 attack) was one of the acts of revenge for the assassination of General Soleimani by the US. and the Zionists", announced Brig.Gen. Ramezan Sharif, IRGC spokesman. Hamas, however, disagreed, insisting that their operation was in response to Israeli 'crimes' at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Mashaal, in an interview published in Le Figaro offered a conciliatory gesture to Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah.

The Islamist group, he informed the newspaper, is prepared to consider a joint P.A.-Hamas-led governing body for the Gaza Strip, and Judea and Samaria. "Rebuilding the Palestinian political scene without Hamas is a move destined for failure, but we are ready for reorganization within the framework of the PLO as part of a national consensus", Mashaal informed the French news outlet. Needless to say there have been attempts in the past to mend the hostile distance between Fatah and Hamas

Sectarian and tribal memories are long and unforgiving. Secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas agree on one thing only; their hatred for Israel and for Jews, not their methodology. Hamas's campaign is up front and readily identified, while Fatah's is more discreet, hiding behind a facade of quasi-democracy where the West is lulled into the fantasy that the PA is longing for a state of its own to live in peace beside Israel. Whereas the truth is neither envision a future for Israel and both plan for a single, 'Palestinian' state.

When Israel left Gaza unilaterally in 2005 at a time when the Strip was in the control of Fatah and mass disorder, chaotic crime broke out at Israel's withdrawal, Hamas moved in, to establish control and in the process wrench the coastal strip from Fatah. In the process of which Hamas operatives in a conflict with Fatah proved victorious in its gruesome slaughter of its competitor terrorist group. Memories are not all that short in a region known to nurse grievances for generations.

 

"Sooner or later, the United States will argue that Hamas is a reality and enjoys legitimacy among the people. We must learn from history. The Americans accepted the Taliban. (PLO founder) Yasser Arafat even won the Nobel Peace Prize" (sharing it with Israeli politicians Shimon Perez and Yitzhak Rabin for 'achieving peace in the Middle East; only two of the trio sincere, the third a risible sham). Like everything else that comes out of the mouths of Palestinians this too is delusional.

And everything plays out while Israeli ground, aerial and naval forces continue their operations across the Gaza Strip in an all-out determination to fully emasculate Hamas as a terrorist threat to Israel -- and Fatah can be accommodated as well as Hezbollah in a fully frontal campaign to rid the area of its death-cult fanatics.

Of course, there is a remaining question: if a mere three individuals only were in possession of the imminent assault against Israel, how is it that Egyptian sources had advance knowledge of a huge attack that was imminent, intelligence which it gamely attempted to pass on as a warning to their neighbour, busy confronting what might have been a ruse coming from that other quarter in Judea and Samaria?

Palestinian terrorists head toward the border with Israel from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. (SAID KHATIB / AFP)