In Canada, Prosecuting Funders of Islamist Terrorism -- While the Liberal Government Funds Terrorism-Enablers

On May 12, 2025, at the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto, Khalilullah Yousuf (36), of Toronto plead guilty to two charges relating to the largest terrorism financing scheme in Canadian history.

Between September 2019 and December 2022, Mr. Yousuf used cryptocurrency and money transfers to fund terrorism overseas. Yesterday, in an agreed upon statement of facts, Mr. Yousuf admitted to the financing of terrorism, contrary to section 83.03 of the Criminal Code of Canada.

"As part of the plea agreement, Khalilullah Yousuf has admitted to raising over $15,000 through the platform "GoFundMe" and contributing over $35,000 to multiple receivers for the benefit of Daesh, a listed terrorist organization."

"Regarding the second charge, Mr. Yousuf has plead guilty to participating in the activities of a terrorist group, contrary to section 83.18 of the Criminal Code of Canada. He has admitted to creating and distributing a collection of over 3,800 internet-based hyperlinks. These links were curated with the purpose of radicalizing, indoctrinating and recruiting for the benefit of Daesh, a listed terrorist organization. Between October 2020, and March 2021, Mr. Yousuf communicated with an individual in the United States who was later convicted there for attempting to provide material support to the same listed terrorist organization."

"This is the largest terrorism financing conviction to date in Canada in terms of monetary value. This conviction is also the first successful terrorism financing conviction in Canada where the accused used crypto currency and the first where they used online crowdfunding."

"The success of this RCMP-led project would not be possible without the contributions of the following Canadian partnerships: RCMP Federal Policing Central Region (Ontario) The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), Forensic Accounting Management Group (FAMG), Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC), Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG), and the Toronto Police Service (TPS)."

"The RCMP would also like to recognize and thank our international partners that were instrumental in this file: The Spanish Guardia Civil Special Central Unit 2, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Maldives Police Service."

Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 15 May 2025 report 

An RCMP patch is seen on the shoulder of a Surrey RCMP Officer in Charge on Friday, April 28, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

"At its core, terrorism is violence that seeks to justify itself. But the violence needs support by advocates, recruiters, and financiers as essential parts of the cycle of intimidation and destruction."

"The verdicts and sentences… represent how Canadian society in accordance with the rule of law, emphatically holds to account those who make the violence possible."

George Dolhai, director public prosecutions, Public Prosecution Service of Canada

 A 12-year prison sentence was handed down to a man, now 36 years of age, who has Canadian citizenship and was a resident of Toronto. Khalilullah Yousuf pleaded guilty to involvement and taking part in financing a terrorist group named as the Islamic State. He admitted to crowdfunding on such sites as GoFundMe on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza and for Muslim religious events, all the while collecting the funding by Canadian contributors to send what he collected to ISIS group supporters in the United States, Spain and other countries.

 

He had applied for, and received pandemic COVID Emergency Response Benefits (CERB) and contributed that money too that he received from the government of Canada under false pretenses. Supporters, on receiving the tens of thousands he provided for ISIS benefit, forwarded to him as proof ISIS was receiving the funding, photographs of weapons and ammunition provided by the funding, along with an ISIS flag.

 

Crowdfunding, or raising money from several investors over the Internet, has made websites like GoFundMe and Kickstarter popular. Photo: Karissa Donkin/Telegraph-Journal

 

This man and his schemes do not represent the rare and only incidents of funding collected in Canada by groups and individuals portraying themselves as legitimate charities whose only concern is raising funds for charitable programs to benefit Palestinians or other so-called marginalized groups, or civilian groups caught up in conflict in the Middle East, sending funding collected in actual fact, to the very terrorist militias that cause sectarian, tribal and anti-Western, along with anti-Israel war situations. There are a multitude of such groups masquerading as humanitarian while financially supporting Islamist terror groups.

 

In this instance, Khalilullah Yousuf, who was closely embroiled in an international ISIS funding network, communicated with the group through encrypted messages online, while taking part in recruitment and creating propaganda while providing methodology to supporters on how to mount successful attacks on behalf of violent Islamist culture. A two-year investigation on this man's activities involved intelligence forces in Canada, the U.S. and Spain, leading to an arrest in July of 2023. 

 

Cryptocurrency, increasingly being used for funding terrorism, may have signalled to authorities that there was something to investigate there. Samidoun, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hezbollah and Hamas, have all received funding through Canadian sources that have successfully exploited the Canadian public to fund terrorism both abroad and internally.

 

Popular fundraising sites encourage crowdfunding in various and mostly specific categories that include patient medical needs, support of school teams, raising funds for Palestinian children, with sky-high funding goals. And while the platforms emphasize their trust that users will collect funds only for the stated reasons and not resort to illegally collecting funding in support of proscribed terror groups, any kind of actual policing of the results is not followed as being unfeasible.  

The Government of Canada itself sends mixed messages on the funding of terrorism; on the one hand decrying terrorism, and on the other continuing to fund it with taxpayer money. As with the Liberal government overturning the previous Conservative government's cutting off of UNRWA funding in recognition of its complicity in Palestinian terrorism where UNRWA-run school curricula teach Palestinian children to hate Jews and to visualize themselves as future martyrs in the 'struggle' against Israel.

 

Proven reports that UNRWA staff were actively involved in the October 7 attacks on southern Israel, and that almost two hundred were, while on UNRWA staff, also Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives. UNRWA teachers glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis and incite to antisemitism among their Palestinian pupils, modelling them in the vision of Hamas. Despite all of this, known and yet excused, the Liberal government continues its funding of UNRWA.

 

Photo sent by ISIS facilitator to show donated funds were going to fighters. U.S. Department of Justice

 

 

 

"All Out For Gaza"

"[Jews were] lying [about the attacks]."

"Is it possible that if they are lying about these events and creating a false genocide, it is likely they may have lied about certain details of a previous big genocide [Holocaust] that may have occurred?"

Toronto4Palestine

 

"In the last several days, we have witnessed the active decolonization of Palestinian land led by the Palestinian resistance."

"May the memory of our martyrs continue to guide us on the steadfast path to liberation."

Palestinian Youth Movement 

"The most prolific organizer [of 'pro-Palestinian' solidarity marches in the wake of the October 7 attack on southern Israel] has been the Palestinian Youth Movement, a group active in both the United States and Canada. It was the PYM that marshalled the first wave of celebratory "All Out for Gaza" marches that appeared in all of Canada's major cities in the immediate hours after the October 7 massacres."

"And in the dozens of events held since, the protests have included everything from displays of the swastika to children leading open calls for "intifada" as the "only solution."

Tristin Hopper,  journalist, National Post

A rally in Montreal on Nov. 12, 2023. Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

It is well enough known that the terrorist Palestinian group Hamas which governs Gaza orchestrated a savagely sadistic day of slaughter in southern Israel on October 7, when its operatives flooded into Israel at the Gaza border to begin a massacre of Israeli civilians, mass rape of girls and women, killing of infants and children in a sadistic orgy of psychopathic hatred. Then it was revealed unsurprisingly, that Palestinian Islamic Jihad was also involved.

And finally came the realization of ordinary Palestinian civilians opportuning themselves by following the terrorists into the breaches of the separating walls at the border to commit their own atrocities on Jewish families in the border towns, villages and kibbutzim. While Israel has been induced to commit to a temporary ceasefire in the hopes of having at the very least women and child hostages returned to Israel, the plight of a ten-month-old baby, his 4-year-old sibling and their mother gripped the nation.

The three  were to have been returned to Israel in an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Hamas informed Israel they were unable to locate the three. They followed that up with saying they were in the hands of another terror group. And finally, that they were dead. That other group was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, notorious decades ago for its plane hijacking and murders of Jews. The family, it appeared, died at their hands. Their father, taken hostage separately, was forced to watch a video of his family's death.

Finally, Hamas refused to release any more of the Israeli women, some ten in number along with several children. Speculation is that they are either dead or close to death; the terrorists gang-raped women to death, breaking the pelvic bones of some and others taken hostage for use as 'sex slaves'. None of this happened, however, according to Palestinians in Canada, organizing mass protests in the streets of Canadian cities, accusing Israel of genocide and celebrating the courage of Hamas and others.

Now it has been revealed that affiliates of the PLFP have been directly involved in many "ceasefire" and "stop the genocide" mass rallies clogging Canadian streets. Bearing in mind that Hamas, PIJ and PLFP are listed terrorist groups in Canada. The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network headquartered in Vancouver and founded by Khaled Barakat, a leader in the PFLP's Central Committee has been actively arranging protests. 

Germany, following Israel's example, listed Samidoun as a terrorist entity amidst a nationwide crackdown on 'pro-Hamas' organizations. German Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser spoke of Samidoun as having an "antisemitic, inhuman world view, particularly repugnant". Yet in Canada the group has achieved federal non-profit status as a charity. In May they posted images of protesters in Vancouver there to affirm "the right of Palestinians to carry out popular and armed struggle to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea".

It has also been busy as a key organizer of Canadian anti-Israel rallies following the very first hours after the October 7 attacks. Former B.C. Civil Liberties Association head Harsha Walia praised the "Palestinians on hang-gliders" responsible for the massacre of over 200 young people attending a musical festival close to the Gaza border, in Israel. Other groups have been organizing waves of "ceasefire" and "stop the genocide" mass rallies.

Social media channels have been rife  with such groups posting open praise for terrorism in the months leading up to October 7, followed by ecstatic celebrations as the initial details of the massacres reached the public. A frequent organizer in the Greater Toronto Area, Toronto4Palestine hailed news of the October 7 terror attacks as acts of "heroic resistance", that "has shaped a new precedent for our national liberation struggle".

And the Palestinian Youth Movement ranks as the most influentially busy of the groups in organizing events publicized as "ceasefire" or "peace" rallies, while at the very same time the group has openly supported Palestinian terrorism; their ultimate goal to see Israel violently destroyed; a carbon copy of the Hamas manifesto of its reason for existence as a death cult.

And the federal government in Ottawa, of Justin Trudeau? Well it hesitates to 'take sides', deploring the horrific atrocities committed by Palestinians against Israeli Jews, while at the same time warning Israel that its response to the constant threats, attacks and this final barbaric episode, must be measured, that the lives of Palestinians must be held as sacrosanct as those of Jews were not.

So no action to stop the constant rallies in support of Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups which fly the flags of fascist terror groups outlawed in Canada (wink-wink), for fear of alienating a large voting bloc. In view of which, Canadians will perhaps eventually get around to asking themselves and then posing the question to their government:  

Why has Canada permitted the importation into the country of people as immigrants, migrants and refugees who bring with them these hateful ideologies, and why are they allowed to air them so aggressively in public?

Oh, right, I plumb forgot! A majority of Canadians has expressed -- through several nationwide polls -- their extreme concerns over the situation of citizens, presuming to be Canadian and expressing and acting on these issues in a morally indefensible way, not reflective of the general Canadian feelings that there are indeed two sides; one a nation of democratic values that upholds universal laws of justice, the other an uncivilized, barbaric rabble for whom crimes against humanity is just business as usual.

"As the morning dawns on 7 October 2023, the resistance is rising throughout occupied Palestine, smashing the siege on Gaza with a comprehensive offensive confronting the occupier by land, air and sea, the resistance fighting to advance return and the liberation of Palestine."

Samidoun Network

Declaring 'Victory'

"Hamas can't hide anymore. That's a great achievement for Israel."

"We eliminated an important part of Hamas's and Islamic Jihad's command echelon."

"And whoever was not killed knows today that our long arm can reach him anywhere, above ground or underground."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

 

"We will rebuild what the occupation [Israel] destroyed and restore our capabilities."

"And we will not abandon our obligations and duties to the families of martyrs, the wounded and those whose homes were destroyed."

"[We are grateful to Iran] which has not given up on providing the resistance with money, weapons and technology."

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh

Palestinians wave national flags in front of the Dome of the Rock in the al-Aqsa mosque complex in Jerusalem, Friday, May 21, 202, as a cease-fire took effect between Hamas and Israel after an 11-day war. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

 

Israel is determined and prepared to defend itself against any and all violence perpetrated by state actors or terrorist groups against its sovereignty and its population. This is a country which, since its return to its heritage geography 73 years ago, has been forced to build and to weaponize a military for the sole purpose of defence. A country surrounded by neighbours for whom irredentism is as much a part of their shared culture of the Middle East, as striving for peace is for Israel. Israel has been forced time and again to mount defences against armies of its neighbours joining in a military offensive to destroy its presence.

And while following one decisive battle after another where Israel has won its defence, or seen fit to withdraw when it was given little option but to pursue those who constantly challenged its sovereignty and killed its people, its purpose has always been defence, never offence. Those successful defences finally delivered the message to its tormentors that the Jewish state was entrenched for good where it belonged, and no amount of military conflict forced upon it to defend itself would serve to extricate it from its inheritance in the Middle East.

It is no longer the purpose of Arab Muslim countries in the Middle East to destroy Israel. That goal is left only with Aryan Muslim Iran, where its theocracy continues to conspire, threaten, and launch attacks against Israel through its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza. The Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas (along with other terrorist Palestinian/Arab militant groups such as Islamic Jihad and Fatah) whose charters specify directly that their goal is the destruction of Israel and its Jewish population, dream of 'victory' over the Zionist state; a pejorative in their sense, a point of pride in Jews.

 

Palestinians pray by the bodies of members of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas movement, who died in Israeli bombardment of a tunnel, during their funeral in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, May 21, 2021.  (AP Photo/Yousef Masoud)

 

Israel speaks with the relief of having, in the tribal, sectarian, clan and ethnic-sect language of the Middle East, demonstrated amply that it will not absorb the violence meted out by the vicious trifecta of Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas. Attack Israel and there's a steep price to pay. Israel's attackers, on the other hand, know nothing beyond the crude, barbaric violence of threat and assault to gain the advantage they seek to destroy Israel. For Israel it is survival motivating its action, for the others it is a wargame of death delivery to those they deem an enemy.

A resident of Gaza, surveying the damage done to his neighbourhood by aerial bombardment when Israel responded to the barrage of thousands of missiles and rockets shot from neighbourhoods exactly like his, and his included, comes the rhetorical question: "How can the world call itself civilized?" Far more to the point were he to mull over the reality that the terrorist group that rules his neighbourhood uses his crowded civilian enclave and all others as convenient shields behind which it mounts its attacks clearly inviting a response in kind precisely where civilians in Gaza live; their schools, hospitals, their mosques.

 

People walk by a residential building covered with Israeli flags last week after it was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ramat Gan, central Israel, Friday, May 21, 2021.  (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

 

The death toll during the destructive air attacks is greater in Gaza than it is in Israel because this is how Hamas plans their strategy; the higher the Palestinian death toll the more sympathy can be extracted from the international community over the dire fate of Palestinians, in the line of fire of the Israeli Defense Forces. A death toll of 243, resulting from one thousand air strikes and buildings bombed is nothing short of miraculous, since it also includes largely the number of Hamas 'fighters' Israel managed to target. The civilian toll would have been far higher had Israel not, at every opportunity, forewarned people to evacuate buildings it meant to bomb because of links with Hamas.

Hamas builds networks of extensive underground tunnels. There are no bomb shelters built by Hamas to protect the population of Gaza whom Hamas constantly places in direct danger. Israel, the recipient of Hamas violence and well over four thousand rockets and missiles in the past eleven days, builds bomb shelters everywhere because it must, to protect its population; Jews, Druze, B'hai, Arabs, Muslims, Christians and any others who live in the country, including foreign workers.

U.S. President Joe Biden declared his intention that humanitarian aid would be sent to Gaza coordinated with the Palestinian Authority which governs the West Bank "in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal". An interesting statement when in reality it is Israel and Israel alone to which the task of prevention of restocking of military arms prevention for Hamas rests with, along with some assistance from Egypt. Both Israel and Egypt know the tunnel network Hamas so diligently constructs carries smuggled weaponry along circuitous international routes from Iran through to Egypt and into Gaza.

Of the 4,350 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, an estimated 640 fell short of their targets, landing back into the Gaza Strip, while 90 percent of the remainder that crossed the border were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system. Of the 640 that fell back into Gaza, a number were involved in killing Palestinians and wounding many others. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are guilty of war crimes, firing weapons purposely at civilians, both in Israel and indirectly in Gaza itself. With the ceasefire, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards issued a warning to Israel to expect "deadly blows".

Rubble of the al Jalaal building in Gaza, after a ceasefire   AP

Why Is Israel Bombing Gaza Again?

"We will continue as long as it takes in order to restore calm for all of Israel's citizens."

"One other thing: I"m sure that all of our enemies around us see the price we are exacting for the aggression against us and I am certain that they will have absorbed that lesson."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

 

"Tensions Rise in Middle East As One Side Wants To Kill Jews And The Other Side Are Jews Who Don't Want To Die And Neither Will Compromise."

The Babylon Bee

Rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip toward Israel on Wednesday. (Hatem Moussa/The Associated Press)

 

This is a determination and an attitude born of no longer wanting to accept a ticking time bomb perched on Israel's border prepared to explode at any time. This is a nation of a people that has been tried and tested far too often by malevolent forces believing it has no human right to exist, bolstered by the silent support of countless others whose visceral hatred of Jews leads them to criticize Israel when it responds to violent provocations threatening the lives of its citizens. Those critics who deny bias against Jewish survival cannot really expect a state constantly attacked by missiles, rockets, suicide bombers, car rammings, knife attacks and violent riots along with incendiary events to do nothing to defend itself.

None of the countries that see fit to urge Israel to curb its response to ongoing rocket barrages that have only one purpose, to kill as many Israelis -- preferably Jews, since a hefty minority of the population is non-Jewish, belying the apartheid label -- as possible, would themselves sit calmly by not bothering to react when missiles fly by and hit random targets like schools and synagogues and apartment buildings in their own countries. Israel has up to the present after over a week of attacks from Gaza, sustained a relatively low rate of deaths and injuries, in comparison to the numbers of deaths and injuries sustained in Gaza. The low-death rate of Jews appears to mystify and bother onlookers from abroad.

And that owes largely to the fact that bomb shelters have been built everywhere in Israel to protect the population from the never-ending grip of Palestinian terrorist attacks. These are terrorists who enjoy their games of delivering death to Jews. All costs related to the weapons used, the rockets and other military equipment, courtesy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah in Lebanon, all fostered by, trained and equipped by the Iranian theocracy. If Israel were to wait until "the Arabs love their children more than they hate us", to paraphrase former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, it would be an endless wait.

 

An Israeli bomb squad unit inspects the site where a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit a sidewalk, in Ashdod, Israel, on Wednesday. (Heidi Levine/The Associated Press)

 

For Palestinians who hate Jews and the presence of Israel, are accustomed to teaching their impressionable children from a young age through school curricula, television, songs and family tradition, that Jews are their enemy, and there is nothing finer than to aspire to become a martyr in defence of Palestinian intentions to annihilate Israel so Palestine can be free 'from the river to the sea'. Mothers praise their children who die as 'martyrs' while attempting to or succeeding in killing Jews. They don't speak for the countless others who would prefer to live in peace with their neighbours but fear speaking out and revealing themselves.

Western media appear to exult in framing their reportage around Israeli responses to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad efforts to destroy Jewish lives, as though it is Israel that is the aggressor and Palestinians in Gaza the helpless victims. Gaza Palestinians are indeed victims, but of the ruling Hamas in Gaza who deliberately inflict danger on the population for the greater goal of luring the Israel Defence Forces to bomb civilian enclaves which Hamas uses as shields and props for their missile and rocket launches.

The Palestinians have no bomb shelters to head to. There are only underground tunnels laced below the towns and cities in Gaza, affording protection for Hamas terrorists, their commanders and their foot 'soldiers', where undisturbed, they can produce new rockets and maintain a sizeable inventory of munitions. Civilians can look to their own devices; they are there as fodder for the Hamas public relations machinery that can point out to the international community and the media hungry for sensational 'news', the number of Palestinian women and children that Israel 'targets'.

 

Smoke billows after an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City targeted the Ansar compound, linked to Hamas, in the Gaza Strip on Friday.  Mahmud Hams / AFP - Getty Images

 

While Hamas denies bomb shelters for the people they govern even as they use them as human shields, drawing fire toward crowded urban settings like hospitals, schools and mosques, the IDF makes every effort to alert people living in areas where Hamas-linked buildings are located, to advise them to leave before a bomb is dropped. Hamas deliberately targets crowded civilian venues like border towns, as a war crime. Its goal is to terrorize and to kill; that it succeeds in the first instance and less so in the second seems to give Israel an 'unfair advantage' in the minds of its critics; the Israeli death toll is too low to satisfy those who point to the greater number of Palestinian deaths in the carnage that Hamas has brought to Gaza.

When the IDF portrayed itself earlier last week as being on the cusp of an invasion into Gaza, Hamas quickly ordered its commanders and 'fighters' to assemble in the underground tunnel system popularly referred to as "the Metro" by the IDF, where weapons manufacturing, storage, launch sites are installed in a voluminous underground network. From there, they were prepared to launch an attack on IDF troops supposedly entering Gaza.  IDF intelligence is such that it was able to determine these anticipated responses where key tunnel entrances and exits are located, then bombed them to trap those inside, along with their weapons.

Zealously and endlessly digging miles and miles of underground tunnels beneath urban centers and elsewhere in the Gaza Strip may seem at first glance to be a tactical winner, but what it does is destabilize the integrity of large buildings built above ground with an unstable foundation supporting them as a result of the wide-ranging, deep and extensive excavations. The buildings 'destroy' themselves as the ground they're on and the streets nearby collapse when bombed.

 

Thanks to a naive and gullible international population reading spurious headlines reporting on Israel's 'uneven' response to Gaza rockets, people ask: "Why is Israel attacking Gaza again?"

Journalists work near the destroyed Al-Jala'a building, which housed international press offices, and Hamas security offices, following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Saturday, May 15   CNN

How Much Longer This Round? And The Next? And The Next?

"Netanyahu was on the ropes at the beginning of this week. The opposition parties were poised to muster a majority."

"Netanyahu's preoccupation with his own political and legal problems is part of the reason that he has not reined in the Israeli police's heavy-handedness in Jerusalem, and part of this rapid escalation of the crisis can be explained by that preoccupation."

"He is under a huge amount of criticism in Israel, especially over the breakdown of law and order within Israel in mixed Jewish-Arab towns. That said, there is a silver lining for him here."

Anshel Pfeffer, biography author of the Israeli Prime Minister

Rockets launched by Hamas have hit Ashkelon, southern Israel  Reuters

 

Suddenly, the 'government of change', on the cusp of seeing Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed as prime minister, are themselves dismissed by the trajectory of events that has roiled Israel and the Gaza Strip. Unwittingly, the terrorist group Hamas favoured the current prime minister to extend his experienced stay as the helm of executive government administration by their own self-serving move to demonstrate to the Arab world and Palestinians in particular that they have the courage to bomb Israeli civilian enclaves.

Israel is now imploding within and without. The Israel Defence Forces have the 'without' explosions well in hand, and under the direction of the prime minister will carry on their dual task of protecting the Israeli population through coordinated defence strategies while teaching the basic elements of assaultive conflict reversed with a conscientious view to preserving human life as much as it is in their capacity to do so, to a self-proclaimed enemy of the Jewish state which they feel entitled to destroy.

Hamas has enjoyed considerable assistance from the Islamic Republic of Iran, the theocratic Islamist government whose major achievement has been to foster the formation and weaponizing of terrorist militias loyal to Iran. The arsenal of deadly weapons that Hamas has been enabled to amass has come courtesy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force for whom the destruction of Israel represents a priority goal.

 

Israelis clean up a rocket-damaged synagogue in Ashkelon  Reuters

 

The late, lamented Qassim Soleimani, sent on a pilgrimage to Paradise by former U.S.President Donald Trump in collaboration with unnamed sources, was  happily responsible for Iran's connection with Hamas, taking personal responsibility for orchestrating the arms buildup of Hamas, enabling the terrorists to make fast and loose with their expendable rockets and missiles in the knowledge that some of them would find their targets -- and they have.

Israel is leaning slightly back in its shock over the plenitude of the rocket barrages barrelling through the night-time sky crossing the border from Gaza into Israel, hitting border communities, coastal enclaves and central Israel, creating a challenge for the missile-busting Iron Dome defence system in a creative endeavour to overcome the system's capacity through sheer volume of attacks. Lest Hamas celebrate too soon, the Iron Dome is managing to stop those rockets bearing down on populated areas.

And leaving those that misfire, falling back into Gaza, to create victims there, to fall where they may, even though Hamas's public relations will relay to the collaborative media and the international community at large, that Palestinian deaths -- mostly women, children and babies of course, with special emphasis on the malice of Arab-hating Jews -- are all on Israel's vicious head. Israeli civilians caught in the maelstrom; the elderly, infirm and children, both Jewish and Arab, hit by rocket blasts are also Israel's fault. For provoking Hamas by refusing its bellicose orders.

 

Suzy, six, was rescued from rubble in Gaza City on Sunday, but five members of her family died   Reuters

 

The sturm und drang has had its dramatic effect, leading Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Jewish youth to emulate what is occurring externally, by calling out the thugs in each of them, leading them to assault one another, to threaten and commit crimes against each other in their dark vision of the enemy within, to loot and to torch schools and places of worship, and to generally make a  heroic effort to undo all the patient effort on both 'sides' to go along to get along.

The world, fed a long diet of 'pro-Palestinian' sympathy, is convinced that the heavy hand of Israeli authority has impeded free access to the Islamic world's third most sacred site in Islam, compounding the stress between Jew and Arab in Israel through a scenario where a few Israeli-Arab families have been informed they must vacate addresses whose properties are the legal possession of Jewish owners, when in fact, the crux of the matter is a Palestinian Authority administration in the West Bank that has reneged, once again, on its promise of an imminent election.

Trouble is, when Mahmoud Abbas, the current President of the PA, elected for a four-year term 14 years ago, suddenly remembered/realized/recoiled at the realization that he and his Fatah party are less popular than the equally democratically-flawed Hamas party, and election results just might make that abundantly clear. So he called off the scheduled election, claiming that Israel's oppressive manner toward Palestinians has forced him to that decision.

And the Hamas 'authorities' took it from there, to a) demonstrate to the Palestinian voters that they have the courage that Fatah/Abbas lacks, to face down the Israelis by rocket and missile attacks, penetrating 'the enemy's' defences, killing its people, destroying its infrastructure as promised in their charter, ostensibly popularizing themselves even further, and b) by their cleverly-designed strategies to mire the IDF in a conflict where rockets are fired from within civilian enclaves, luring a response to hit that enclave and exact civilian casualties; Voila!,another public relations coup results.

Too pleased with their cleverness to see past the ruse that the IDF had in store when it called up troops to mass on the Israel/Gaza border and allow media to report that a ground invasion was imminent, activating a process whereby Hamas leaders ordered their fighters into the network of tunnels in preparation for responding to any such ground invasion, allowing the IDF the opportunity to seal off entrances and exits by well-aimed explosive devices, trapping both Hamas terrorists and their cache of weapons within.

Meeting the Challenge

"The fanatics who rule over Gaza with an iron fist cannot resist the opportunity to stir up anti-Jewish violence for their own political gain."

"If innocent Jews and Muslims die in the process, all the better for them."

"The pretext for the latest missile barrage is the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in Jerusalem, where a long-running legal dispute was scheduled for a court hearing."

"It is the kind of situation that would be handled by a local municipal court in any other country and there would be no public interest."

Bassem Eid, Palestinian human rights activist, Jerusalem

"In the last 24 hours, we have attacked underground targets. Hamas thought that it could hide there but it cannot hide there [in their underground tunnel system]."

"Hamas senior officials think that they can flee from our strikes — they cannot flee. They are paying, and will pay, a very heavy price for this."

"This is not yet over. We will do everything to restore security to our cities and our people."

"The IDF have already attacked hundreds of targets and we will soon pass 1,000. We are continuing to strike Hamas while defending our citizens." 

"We have no bigger threat now than these [internal] pogroms [where Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews in roaming gangs in mixed-residential cities threaten, stalk and commit violence], and we have no choice but to restore law and order via determined use of force."

"Nothing can justify an Arab mob assaulting Jews, and nothing can justify a Jewish mob assaulting Arabs."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli soldiers walk around tanks in a field near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, on its Israeli side May 14, 2021. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad began to target Israel on Monday, claiming they were reacting to Israeli police presence on what is called by Muslims the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews the Temple Mount. Long before Muslims built their places of worship on the Temple Mount, it housed two iterations of the Temple of Solomon, the first destroyed by Babylonians (the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar) in 598 BCE, the second in the year 70 AD by the Roman Emperor (to-be)Titus.

 

Israeli police are there to maintain order and security. The Jordanian Islamic waqf administers the affairs of the Noble Sanctuary and its Islamic religious site, by agreement with Israel, as a courtesy to the third holiest site in the Islamic tradition where the Prophet Mohammed was said to have mounted to heaven on his winged horse, but nowhere in the Koran is Jerusalem ever mentioned as having any standing in Islam whatever. Although the Temple Mount is the most sacred site in Judaism, located in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish state, Muslims will not permit Jews to worship or to pray on the Mount.

Yet praying below the Mount, on the rampart remnants of the ancient Temple, named the Wailing Wall (in memory of the catastrophic destruction of the Temple and the slaughter of Jews of the era in an uprising against Roman rule) will not be permitted. The very presence of Jews walking about on the Mount where Muslims gather to pray creates riots and stone-throwing at Jews should they make any gestures that appear as though they are praying. In the latest controversy, Muslims carried stones and rocks into the al-Aqsa mosque, weaponizing it against the police presence.

Hamas ordered Israel to remove the police, otherwise they would send rockets into Israel. And they did, an estimated two thousand rockets hitting border communities and reaching into central Israel and its coastline communities. Barrages of 130 rockets at a time in a space of mere minutes kept the IDF's missile defence  Iron Dome system busy, even as an estimated one-quarter of the Hamas rockets misfired and fell back into Gaza. More recently, Israel massed troops on the border between Israel and Gaza and began destroying tunnels.

On Thursday night the IDF flew roughly160 aircraft from12 squadrons in 150 operations to hit the underground tunnels in the northern Gaza Strip. Ground forces, artillery and armoured troops of the Israeli army were deployed along the Gaza fence, firing hundreds of artillery shells and dozens of tank shells on targets in the Strip. Miles of the Hamas underground tunnels were partially destroyed. The tunnels serve many functions, from smuggling weapons into Gaza, giving Hamas terrorists furtive ingress to Israel, and providing shelter on such occasions when Israel retaliates against Hamas bombardments.

 

Tellingly, one of the tunnels was found to contain servers and military equipment. "The tunnel shaft was located adjacent to a kindergarten and a mosque, proving once again how the Hamas terror organization deliberately places its military assets in the heart of densely populated civilian areas. The IDF takes all possible precautions to avoid harming civilians during its operational activities", the IDF declared in a public statement.

 

The violence in the occupied West Bank marked a widening-out of the conflict following days of hostilities   Getty Images

Unleashing Conflict From A Terrorist Enclave

"Hamas issued an ultimatum recently to Israel, to have all Israeli police and soldiers removed from the al Aqsa plaza or else ... they would strike at the heart of Israel, meaning Tel Aviv. Al Aqsa has been used throughout Ramadan for stockpiling weapons and rocks used to attack Israeli police and, sometimes, Jewish worshippers at the wailing wall plaza below."

"The Sheikh Jarrah situation, where families await a court ruling on eviction, has been misrepresented as a grotesque land grab, but it really is a pedestrian landlord-tenant dispute, that happens to involve Palestinians and Israelis. It is complex and has been ongoing for 40 years."

"There is speculation that internal power struggles within Hamas are partially the cause of this latest round of rocket attacks, rivals jostling for position."

Vivian Berkovici, journalist, former Canadian ambassador to Israel, Tel Aviv

Hamas rockets light up the night sky as they are fired towards Israel from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 14, 2021, while Israeli Iron Dome interceptors rise to meet them (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)

 

"The sight of the pogroms in Lod and the disturbances across the country by an incited and bloodthirsty Arab mob, injuring people, damaging property and even attacking sacred Jewish spaces is unforgivable."

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Jerusalem

"We will not tolerate this; we need to restore calm."

"If this isn't an emergency situation, I don't know what is."

"We are talking about life and death here."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Paramedics observe a fire in Ramle caused by a rocket from Gaza that landed in the city, May 13, 2021. (United Hatzalah)

 

A not-surprising state of emergency was declared by Israel's prime minister responding to riots that have been spreading across the country, leading to schools, synagogues and cars being torched in Jewish neighbourhoods, set on fire by their Arab neighbours. The uneasy peace that prevailed between Arab and Jewish segments of the population in mixed Arab-Jewish towns has been rent asunder. In the central city of Lod a curfew was imposed in response to the wave of riots led by Israeli-Arabs and countered just as violently by resident Jews who have taken offence at their schools and synagogues set ablaze.

 

The protests, riots and violence have spread to other cities in Israel, including Haifa, Acre and Ramla, while Hmas continues to fire hundreds of rockets and Israel retaliates in kind, bombing the Gaza coastal enclave. The difference between the two is that the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists deliberately target crowded civilian areas in Israel with the intention of killing Jews, in a kind of match for locating their armaments and missile sites in Gaza in crowded civilian areas, inviting a military response from the IDF to hit those areas.

 

An Israeli man checks the damages in a residential building after a rocket attack from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva, on May 13, 2021. (GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP)

In contrast, the Israel Defence Forces directly target buildings and other infrastructures owned by Hamas, used as headquarters and weapons-producing depots. Even then, there is a precursor knock-on bomb to alert residents of the buildings to evacuate before the explosives follow, to destroy the designated building. Israelis hearing air raid sirens make directly for the closest shelters. Hamas has never seen the need to build shelters for Gazans; after all Hamas members have their tunnels to take shelter in.

 

Just a short while ago, the world was commiserating with Hamas bemoaning the fact that they had no money to purchase COVID vaccines with, to protect Gaza's Palestinian population, taking issue with Israel for launching a mass vaccination campaign, while ignoring the needs of Palestinians in Gaza whose rulers were too impoverished to fund vaccines for them. The very same rulers who are at the present time, sending off hundreds of rockets into Israel, at a cost far greater than vaccines.

 

The death toll will continue to rise. There will be more Israeli deaths, of both Jews and Israeli-Arabs hit by the incoming rockets. The deaths of Palestinians in Gaza always are greater in number because they are used as human shields. Hamas uses those deaths for public relations purposes, informing the international community that Israel deliberately kills innocent Palestinian civilians and children. It bothers them not one bit that many of their own rockets misfire and land in Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians and children.

 

A long exposure picture shows Iron Dome interception missiles fired as rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip to Israel, May 13, 2021. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

Israeli chiefs of police see in the current situation echoes of the riots of 2000 heralding the Second Intifada that lasted for five years, a mass Palestinian 'uprising' against Israel. Jewish families in Lod were at work clearing debris from their burnt-out school interior. Molotov cocktails had been lobbed at the building by a group of 30 masked Arabs, witnessed by Jewish families in the area. 

 

"I am a former soldier. I was not scared then, but when I looked out the window I knew that if I went outside I would be killed", stated a 28-year-old-father of two, Yedidya Harris. A synagogue, a school and a dozen vehicles were torched overnight during the riots in Lod. A Wednesday announcement by Israel spoke of the destruction of weapons manufacturing sites used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

 

A separate strike killed several high0ranking Hamas commanders, including the head of the Gaza City military division, Bassem Issa, which Hamas confirmed. Hundreds of strikes targeting Hamas were carried out by Israel, responding to the unprecedented barrage of 130 rockets fired from Gaza at Tel Aviv in the space of mere minutes, a planned challenge to the capacity of Israel's defensive Iron Dome system, overwhelming its ability to stop them all.

 

Smoke and flames rise after an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip, May 12, 2021. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

A similar barrage of 130 rockets set off in the space of five minutes took place over Ashkelon. Plumes of smoke from rocket and artillery hits from Israel into Gaza rose over Gaza City. In a Tel Aviv suburb a woman died when her house was destroyed by a rocket that also set vehicles ablaze. Since Monday, close to two thousand rockets were fired by Hamas into Israel.

 

Israel's friends and allies speak of her need and her 'right' to respond with force against the attacks constituting war crimes, targeting civilian populations, while with the same breath her friends such as the Biden Administration's Antony Blinken urged restraint on Israel, of which he said, there was a "clear difference" between Israel defending itself and Hamas raining down rockets on civilians.

"[The government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel] condemns these incessant rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip against Israeli cities in the strongest terms. [They] could not be justified."

"Israel has the right to self-defence against these attacks."                                             Spokesman Steffen Seibert

Rockets (l) are seen in the night sky fired towards Israel from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 14, 2021, while Iron Dome interceptors rise to meet them (Photo by ANAS BABA / AFP)

Stamping Out Terrorism

"Al-Qassem Brigades are now firing missiles against the enemy in occupied Jerusalem in response to its crimes and aggression against the holy city and the harassment of our people in Sheikh Jarrakh and the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

Abu Obeidah, spokesman, Hamas

"We are in the midst of a campaign."

"Since yesterday [Monday] afternoon, the Israel Defence Forces has carried out hundreds of strikes against Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza."

"We've hit commanders and many high-quality targets."

"This is just the beginning. We'll hit them like they've never dreamed possible."

"Nothing can justify an Arab mob assaulting Jews, and nothing can justify a Jewish mob assaulting Arabs [in Israeli cities]."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

"We must use force to make sure this will stop, it's impossible to continue our lives like this."

Rachel Sharbit, Ashdod resident

 

"We must not be dragged into provocations and inflicting harm on people or property." 

"The Torah of Israel grants no license for taking the law into one's hands and acting violently."

Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system - seen here over Ashkelon - aims to protect towns and cities from rockets   Reuters

Jerusalem and southern Israel have been targeted by hundreds of rockets over the border with Gaza, courtesy of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, intent on their goal of destabilizing Israel on their way to eliminating it entirely from the Middle East. Neither has any moral qualms over sending explosive into civilian areas with the risk of maiming and killing innocent people for the very fact that as far as they're concerned there are no innocent Jews, all are guilty of doing harm to Palestinian Arabs, despite that Israel's population is inclusive of 20 percent Arab citizens.

All of whom have full voting rights and send parliamentary members representing their interests to the Knesset. Their security is assured, they can achieve personal ambitions to practise any profession they wish in the country. But they are expected, as citizens of Israel to obey its laws and to be peaceful, to go about their business and allow others the same courtesy. These are civilizational norms that are not necessarily reciprocated. Palestinian and Israeli Arabs refuse to permit Jewish citizens of a Jewish country to pray at the most sacred site in Judaism, among other inequities.

 

A large fire is seen near the scene of a Gaza rocket attack on an Israeli energy pipeline near Ashkelon   Reuters

 

Oil and water don't mix, and thus it is with Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel; simmering tensions, distrust and rage at perceived victimization persist. An Arab-Israeli sits on Israel's high court, there are Arab-Israeli diplomats, Arab-Israeli medical professionals work and are respected for their work at Israeli hospitals, Arab-Israeli MKs have their voice in the Knesset, but Friday mosque prayers come replete with incitements to violence against Jews.

Any perceived 'incident' that is held to be indicative of minimizing Arab-Israeli 'rights' and 'entitlements' come replete with violent protests. And such it was that touched off the latest round of violent riots with Arab-Israeli youth lobbing rocks and incendiary devices at police attempting to maintain public order. These pious youths defending Arab rights and Islamic principles bring rocks into their holy sanctuaries weaponizing them for use against Israeli police, against the presence of any Jews on the Temple Mount.

 

Israeli firefighters, security and rescue forces stand next to a burning bus and car that were hit by a rocket fired from Gaza   Reuters

 

Hamas and Fatah continue their vicious enmity, each vying for the trust of Palestinians, and each incite their followers to violence. Hamas from time to time tests the patience of Israel and the IDF by occasional rockets across the border into Israel, and by sending incendiary balloons over to explode in Israel's forests and agricultural fields where destructive fires then erupt creating emergency situations. The typical agenda is to have a brief and deadly exchange of rockets and aerial bombs, then to sue for peace.

Hamas depends on Egypt and Qatar to prevail upon Israel to take the blows against its border communities and to go no further into Gaza to disrupt the reign of Hamas and the predations of Islamic Jihad. This is the practise of hudna, where at an opportune time, when weapons supplies have been replenished, the two terrorist groups once again begin sending 

rockets into Israel and towns like Sderot and Ashkelon sound their alarms for residents to rush into bomb shelters.

This time it's not just a dozen rockets but over a thousand that in a period of several days have tried Israel's patience and the efficacy of its Iron Dome protective anti-rocket system. This time Israel will not, should not, must not withdraw its intention to exact a heavy price on the two terrorist groups for endangering Israeli lives and murdering innocent civilians. Hamas has succeeded itself in killing innocent Gazan civilians in misfired rockets that land in Gaza.

 

Rockets are launched by Palestinian militants into Israel, in Gaza May 12, 2021. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

 

And when the Israeli Defence Forces target a building or complex in Gaza, it sends a warning knock-on bomb to alert anyone within to evacuate before the follow-on explosives are dropped to destroy the designated building as retaliation for the antitank missiles lobbed into Israel destroying homes and vehicles and lives. Hamas demands that Israel 'vacate' the Al-Aqsa mosque, that Israel stop 'harassing' violently-rioting Arabs.

It is now long past time for Israel to stop having to use air raid sirens to warn its people of oncoming missiles. Israeli police and its military must be given the signal that disruptive violence will not be tolerated, no special dispensation allowed because of fear of international censure, and the terrorist groups that have gripped Israel in a vice of suspended apprehension must no longer have the platform to operate using Gaza's Palestinian civilian population as shields.

Smoke rises from a tower after it was hit by Israeli air strikes amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in Gaza City May 12   Reuters