Hamas's Deadly Invasion Evaluated

An Israeli armored personnel carrier heads toward the Gaza border. Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press

"The dominant view in Israel, and not just at the political level, but also within some in the security services, was that the conflict in Gaza is manageable, that we could contain it."

"The easy answer that you hear is that Hamas is an apocalyptic terrorist movement that doesn't care about human life. That's true. But they're not irrational."

"Hamas has already said ... that it wants to exchange [the Israeli hostages] for prisoners. One objective for Hamas in doing that is to boost up its ranks by freeing prisoners [jailed in Israel] in large numbers."

Thomas Juneau, political scientist, University of Ottawa

"Hamas officials have been quite open about the fact that this [normalization] would be a huge event."

"Saudi Arabia is the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam and I think Hamas fears that if there would be normalization with Saudi Arabia, other Muslim nations, other Arab nations would follow suit."

"Not only is it [Fatah] secular as opposed to Islamist but it believes in a two-state solution and Hamas does not."

"Hamas is not fighting for there to be a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Hamas is fighting to destroy Israel ... it's against peace in general."

Matthew Levitt, professor, Georgetown University Center for Security Studies

"I can give you a hypothesis and that is, we were in a situation where there was no peace process. There was absolutely no movement whatsoever on Palestinian issues. And I think that Hamas took the decision that they had to shuffle the deck, that they had to do something or they wanted to do something, which would make the status quo untenable."

"It's not at all clear to me how [Hamas] thought the endgame would work out. They would have known that this would have brought a major Israeli military operation, that that would include ground operations."The last Israeli ground operation [in 2014] was the biggest boost in history to Hamas's popularity."

"Clearly ... it wasn't meant to be an incremental thing. It was meant to be a game changing thing. And that includes the deliberate targeting of civilians."

"Are you going to occupy all of it? You're going to fight street by street into downtown Gaza?"

"If you destroy Hamas, who will you hand [Gaza] to when you leave? Do you want to occupy it?"

Rex Brynen, Middle East expert, McGill University

Rockets fired from Gaza City are intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome defense missile system in the early hours of October 8, 2023. EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images

 

The Palestinian Authority, commented Dr. Juneau from his perspective as an academic with a focus on the Middle East, is highly incompetent and corrupt. That alone has led to resentment among Palestinians which has been responsible for growing support for radical groups like Hamas. October 7th's incursion by Hamas into Israel, he stated, represents "the most significant escalation of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in several decades", he said, quoting the Council on Foreign Relations.

"We just don't have great insight into Hamas's strategic judgement", added political scientist Rex Brynen. October marks 50 years since the Yom Kippur War when a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria led a surprise attack on Israel, which may entirely be coincidental. Since Hamas stated the October 7 attack had been planned out carefully for a year before the event.

At the same time, Israeli public opinion and support for the current government led by Benjamin Netanyahu with the 2022 coalition government including hard-right religious factions, and the government's intention to change the judicial reform process that Israel's liberal-left supports, fracturing the country, and in the opinion of onlookers from outside the country, believing it to have been in a weakened state. Opportunity perhaps beckoned, all the more so when the dissenting opinions took place at all levels, including the IDF and its reservists, some of whom refused to serve.

 

 

The ongoing normalization process between Israel and Saudi Arabia was a red flag to Islamists and Palestinians in general, realizing it left them outside the loop; the reality being that the 'Palestinian refugee' problem was being sidelined in the greater interests of achieving regional peace that would lead to greater regional prosperity and in no small part greater security, in the majority Arab Sunni region where Shiite Islamist Republic of Iran presents as a threat.

 

An issue that Dr. Juneau expressed his  skepticism over. On the other hand, they all acknowledged, Fatah, the leading party in the Palestinian Authority and the PA itself are unpopular and viewed as weak by the  general Palestinian population they govern. Even among West Bank Palestinians Hamas is admired and supported to a far greater extent than the Palestinian Authority. Then there are relations between Fatah and Hamas; the latter despising the former as a secular group to Hamas's Islamism.

Dr. Brynen expressed his opinion that the 'success' of the Hamas attack surprised even Hamas. The much higher Israeli body count and hostage taking surpassed its expectations. And the corollary to that was a far greater response from Israel than Hamas might have anticipated.

One thing all three agreed upon in their debate was that whatever the original reasons behind the unprecedented scale of the attack -- whether to bring international attention to focus on the Palestinians; to eliminate Israel for replacement by an Islamist state; to free prisoners convicted of crimes in Israel; or to help Iran -- the ultimate goal was to effect a massive change in the region's dynamics. 

 

To that degree, and to the dimensions of the attention given its deadly exploits in the outside world, they succeeded.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather during a rally for Gaza outside the Israeli Consulate General in New York on Oct. 9. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

When Is A 'Refugee Camp' A Modern City and a Terrorist Redoubt?

Smoke billowing over Jenin during IDF counterterrorism operation

(Photo: AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

"The Palestinian belligerents, likely shocked by the aerial strikes and the rapid entry of IDF ground forces, have fled -- gone into hiding, avoiding confrontations with IDF forces while lurking inside the houses and alleys of the refugee camp. Forces will likely employ some creative ruse to compel the terrorists to reveal themselves and increase the number of casualties among them."

"Such a move would carry a much greater risk for the IDF, Shin Bet and Border Police fighters operating in the camp. The intensification of friction poses a dangerous threat to both sides, and this must also be taken into account because any escalation could shift the ongoing offensive from a net plus to a negative."

YNet News

IDF soldiers take up a defensive position in the Jenin refugee camp on July 4, 2023 during a large-scale IDF operation in the area. (photo credit: YONAH JEREMY BOB)

 

Palestinian terrorists will not be dissuaded from their mission to murder Jews in Israel. One attack after another taking place in Israel and celebrated by Palestinians as another notch in their goal to enact acts of terror inspired by their exposure from cradle to grave by Palestinian leaders that it is their duty as loyal Palestinians determined to rout Jews from the ancient Judaean land in a reborn Israel to free it for their own aspirations to establish a Palestinian state. The fiction the West is so fond of, that reason will prevail and a peace agreement between the antagonists will lead to a two-state solution is a fantasy.

But it is a fantasy held dear to the hearts of Western democracies that don't have to deal day-by-day with the constant threat of terrorist acts from their neighbours. Neighbours who are encouraged by the West through their charitable funding of the Palestinian Authority for whom it remains a sacred duty to not only incentivize its citizens to become terrorists, but to reward them financially when they do, whether or not they succeed in their killing missions.

The irony is that the Palestinians convince the world at large that they are victims of an Israel that threatens to obliterate them. Israel thus becomes the aggressor when it defends itself and its citizens from the depredations of a hostile, death-delivering Palestinian horde that never tires of celebrating its intentions to destroy Israel. Photographs of children being indoctrinated into a lifelong mission of 'resistance' against 'occupation' fail to convince the West that the Palestinian leadership is at fault, nor does the fact that terrorists are rewarded and memorialized as heroes.

When Israel finally determines it is time to respond to violent provocations, the foreign press speak of 'Palestinian militants', never of terrorists, and emphasize the death of Palestinians, cautioning Israel's defence forces and its government that the world is watching -- and judging. Sympathy goes to the grieving families of Palestinian 'fighters', trained in strategic guerilla tactics aimed directly at Israeli civilians. Now, Israel has launched another raid in the city that calls itself a 'refugee camp' to root out the 'militias' plotting Israel's destruction.

With the IDF strike force of 2,000 soldiers there were targeted drone strikes in Jenin along with the ground forces. In the northern West Bank (occupied by Palestinians) Jenin is a densely populated city, used as a base by groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad; one of the most volatile areas of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli army launched a drone strike on a command centre in Jenin, then sent in troops and bulldozers. Operated by the Jenin Brigades, a unit formed of various Palestinian terror groups, the building was one of the targets.

The focus was on finding and confiscating or destroying weapons. "We're acting against specific targets. We're not planning to hold ground", explained Lt.Col. Richard Hecht, a spokesman for the Israeli military. Israel's government has faced intense pressure from Israelis for a tougher reaction on terrorist groups embedded in Jenin from which numerous deadly attacks on Israelis have been launched. The ember that finally launched the fire of response was the killing of four Israelis in the settlement of Eli, in the Palestinian-occupied West Bank.

In the IDF action, the largest in decades, there was purpose: multiple streets were blown up or chopped, depending on whether they had been bulldozed or set off by the IDF’s bomb squads while other streets nearby remained untouched. The IDF was targeting roads with explosives dug into place beneath them.

IDF soldier stands in the Jenin refugee camp during a large scale operation on July 4, 2023. (credit: YONAH JEREMY BOB)

 

Aerial photographs were released of what the Israeli army called an "advanced observation and reconnaissance centre" targeted by drones early on Monday. An apartment building in the centre of Jenin was used by the terrorists to warn one another of approaching Israeli military forces. Also targeted was a "weapons production facility" and an "explosive device storage facility". Jenin is now known to have surpassed Nablus as the centre of Palestinian terrorist activity.

The goal of this raid was obvious enough; to stop terrorist Palestinian groups from planning and launching attacks on civilians in Israeli cities, such as Tel Aviv, as well as Jewish settlements in the Palestinian-occupied West Bank. Yet no one in authority in Israel can be under the illusion that the terrorists, now in hiding, will not emerge in their numbers, once the IDF has withdrawn its forces, to resume their Israel-targeting activities. A relative handful of the terrorists were eliminated in this raid.

 

Mosque in Jenin which was used to remotely detonate the explosive devices against the Panther IDF vehicle earlier this month (YONAH JEREMY BOB).

In the Palestinian Islamic Jihad-associated Al-Ansar Mosque, empty of worshipers, the door was blown off its hinges to enable IDF entry. From a window on the ground floor there is a window from which terrorists used remote surveillance last month of an IDF Panther vehicle, ambushed by an explosive device under one of the streets, taking IDF forces by surprise into a battle where the Palestinians had the tactical advantage

Within the mosque itself Israeli forces found explosives and weapons, and it became the site of a lengthy firefight on Monday though it doesn't appear to have suffered any damage other than to the door. 

The IDF summed up that it had carried out an airstrike against a joint war room shared by various armed groups in the city including the so-called Jenin Battalion, which "served as an observation post, a gathering place for armed terrorists before and after terror acts, a cache for munitions and bombs and a communications center." 

This is not the first time. It will not be the last time.

Israel, the Jewish Homeland, Here to Stay in Perpetuity

"The Palestinians' views were disclosed in a public opinion poll conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) on the 75^th anniversary of the "Nakba" ("Catastrophe," the term used by Palestinians to describe the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, when Arab armies initiated -- then lost -- a war to prevent the Jews from having their own state)."

"The findings of the poll, which was conducted between June 7 and 11, show that the Biden Administration and all those who continue to talk about reviving the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians are living under an illusion. The results of the poll indicate that most Palestinians are more interested in killing Jews than making peace with them. The results, in addition, show that most Palestinians want as a successor to their current leader, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who has ties to terror."

"According to the poll, the largest percentage of Palestinians (24%) believe that the rise of extremist Islamist terror groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) was "the most positive or the best thing that has happened to the Palestinian people since the Nakba." Another 21% said that the eruption of the two Palestinian uprisings, or intifadas, in 1987 and 2000, during which more than a thousand Jews were murdered and thousands more wounded in terror attacks, was the most positive thing that has happened to the Palestinian people since 1948. And 9% said it was the establishment of Fatah and the launch of "the armed struggle." This means that a majority of the Palestinians see terrorist groups and the murder of Jews -- not the construction of schools and hospitals -- as their proudest accomplishment over the past seven decades."

Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute -- International Policy Council 

The results of a recent public opinion poll indicate that most Palestinians are more interested in killing Jews than making peace with them. Pictured: Palestinian terrorists in Jenin on March 8, 2023, at the funeral of fellow terrorists who were killed the previous day when they attacked Israeli soldiers. (Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)

The international press, reporting on the violence in the Middle East, and more specifically, violence perpetrated by terrorists against Israeli targets, invariably classify those whose intention it is to terrorize and to murder, as 'militants'. They are certainly militant, viciously, violently so, but they are also terrorists, but that labelling somehow goes against the grain by journalists and news sites who prefer to somehow empathize with Palestinians and to consider Israel's defences as 'oppressive' and Israel itself in its maneouvres to protect its citizens as 'occupiers'.

'Occupiers' of their own ancestral land, land contested for claims of ownership by Arabs who migrated to the area of what was historically once Judea and Samaria, Judaean lands until Jews were twice exiled in antiquity, the last time by Rome after an insurrection against Roman occupied dominance of indigenous Jewish territory, which included Jerusalem. 

 

When the United Nations felt they had a reasonable solution to Israel's claims of ancestral territory by announcing a Partition plan, which gave what remained of Judaea's historical territory once TransJordan received its slice, between the nascent Jewish state of Israel and the Palestinians demanding their own state, Israel gratefully accepted, the Palestinians waited out the anticipated success of combined Arab armies that marched on the fledgling Israeli state.

The outside world believes, because Palestinians play to their sense of justice and assure them that it is now prepared to accept what it once rejected, that there is hope the Arabs -- which co-opted the ancient designation of 'Palestinian' from its historical rightful owners, Judeans, just as it seeks to do the same with its territory -- are prepared to agree to a peace settlement with Israel. When, in fact, the real agenda is one expressed by the slogan 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free', meaning the complete elimination of Israel.

Palestinian leaders make no secret of their goal, to destroy Israel by any means it finds practical. They have somewhat less support now than they did 70 years ago, but the support remains, principally from Iran, although Iraq, Qatar, Syria and Lebanon (captured by Iran's protege-proxy terrorist group Hezbollah) all of whom encourage, support and arm Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other newly-burgeoning groups in a no-holds-barred long-term strategy to ensure that Israel's existence is short-term, and demolished.

 

Israel is not peopled by shtetl Jews, Jews who throughout the history of their diaspora, were subject to oppression, violent hostility, suspicion, persecution, pogroms and ultimately genocide. Its collective of Jews from around the world, from Morocco to Mexico, Afghanistan to Cuba, as Israeli citizens and Jews of multilingual, multi-cultural, multi-colour variations on a theme of ethnic/cultural/religious Jewry will defend themselves on both the micro and macro level. No amount of placating or sincere efforts at negotiations has resulted in an 'understanding' of 'live and let-live' between Jews and Arab Palestinians.

 

Attacks by Arab Palestinians against Israeli Jews are never-ending, and not surprising, given the culture of antisemitism nurtured by the Palestinian leadership, including the 'moderate' Palestinian Authority who surround Palestinians from cradle to grave with media of every dimension that portrays Jews as their mortal enemy who must be slaughtered before the opportunity to kill them comes to hand. Hatred as deep and dense as that of the Palestinians', groomed to resent and detest Jews as robbers of their destinies to inherit Jewish land, identity, opportunities -- sears their souls.

 

Palestinian towns still called 'refugee camps' despite all the trappings of any modern cities, harbour and celebrate Palestinian youth who are encouraged by incitement to aspire to 'martyrdom', to sacrifice themselves for the honour of murdering Jews. When the Israel Defence Forces intervene and Palestinians are killed either because they are involved in violence with the intention to kill, have killed, or are simply the cheering section, they become propaganda fodder for Palestinian public relations with the West, enabling them to portray Jews as killers of Palestinians, particularly Palestinian children.

 

Two days ago, residents of the Palestinian town of Turmus Ayya saw themselves 'invaded' by hundreds of Israeli 'settlers' who stormed their streets, setting fire to cars and homes in vengeance against the deaths days earlier of four Israelis, a minor among them, killed by a duo of Palestinian terrorists designated by Western media as 'gunmen'. To stem the violence emanating from Israeli 'settlers', the Israeli military deployed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the uptick in violence by announcing plans to build new settler homes.

 

Israeli military forces have been involved lately in raids to detain and arrest terrorists in the West Bank town of Jenin, whom the West names as 'militants' and 'gunmen', and whom Israelis, faced with the constant spectre of these ongoing deadly attacks, call terrorists. The Israeli army dispersed the incursion of the settlers determined to exact a price in burned homes and vehicles from the very people who champion the rise of new terrorist gangs, the better to terrorize their Jewish neighbours. 

 

Settler vigilantism does not have the support much less approval of the Israeli government or its military. National security calls for organized, military operations to defend the Israeli public; those who take matters into their own hands cause obstruction and consternation, but they are fulfilling a personal obligation to no longer allow themselves to be intimidated, denigrated, challenged, and attacked. One day after another of deadly shootings, stabbings, car rammings, has an effect on a people whose history is one endlessly long recounting of violence perpetrated against them.

 

The Jenin stronghold of terror must be eliminated. Any new such strongholds must be confronted and defanged. If the Palestinian Authority, which to the outside world proclaims itself prepared and capable of administering a country to the benefit of its people without posing as a constant threat to its neighbour cannot and will not deal with its own terrorists which it has groomed to behave in precisely the way they do, then there is only Israel left to do so. Israel's military and its civilian population grapples existentially with terrorists, not 'gunmen', and not 'militants'.

 

A Palestinian man runs near a burning object, after an attack by Israeli settlers, near Ramallah, in the West Bank, June 21, 2023 (photo credit: REUTERS/MOHAMAD TOROKMAN)

Victimized Palestinian Refugees

"[The spike in terrorism  happens] in part because of, over $6 billion in U.S., Canada, and European Union aid given to the Palestinian Authority [PA] and the United Nations Relief Works Agency [UNRWA] since 2008."

"The PA invests a substantial share of its budget, and hence of this foreign aid, on inciting terrorism, on glorifying terrorism and on financially rewarding terrorism."

Henry Kopel, (retired) U.S. Federal Prosecutor

"[We believe that] the unfortunate but glaring reality here is this: Decades of negotiations, agreements, promises, warnings, moral appeals, and temporary aid suspensions all have done nothing to reduce or prevent the Palestinian Authority's relentless commitment to inciting, glorifying, and financially rewarding acts of terrorism committed against innocent Israelis."

The Abraham Accord Peace Initiative

Terror attack in a synagogue in Jerusalem: This evening at around 8:30pm local time, a terrorist arrived at a synagogue in the Neve Ya'akov boulevard in Jerusalem and proceeded to shoot at a number of people in the area   Israeli Police Photo

 

Spontaneous, erratic, random terrorist attacks can take place anywhere, at any time in Israel, incited by a Palesltinian leadership commitment to convincing Palestinians that they are victims of Israeli aggression. It is a message that has a much wider audience as well, through a clever institutionalized program of 'public relations' propaganda painting Israel and Jews who support Israel, as illegal 'occupiers' of their own Biblical-era ancestral geography in the Middle East. 

The hugely aggressive and highly successful strategy used by the Palestinian Authority in what is called the West Bank (of the Jordan River) and their sectarian counterparts, Hamas in Gaza, a Western-acknowledged terrorist group has had little difficulty initiating a Western-popularized sanctions regimen popularly called the BDS Movement, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions isolationist move against Israel. 

 

Unions and Academic institutions in particular have taken to the BDS program with great enthusiasm, all too willing to endorse the slander that Israel is actively engaged in blocking a peace agreement that would lead the way to a formally internationally recognized Palestinian state. The PA and its cohorts smear Israel with refusing to negotiate in good faith for a peace agreement, while in reality at the negotiating table Israel has time and again offered all the conditions demanded by the PA only to have them back away.

 

Palestinians celebrate a Jerusalem terror attack that killed seven Israelis near a synagogue, in Gaza City, January 27, 2023. (Mahmud Hams/AFP)

 

Israel has been forced by Palestinian Authority intransigence over negotiations and the PA's institutionalized teaching of young Palestinians from grade school forward through school curricula, social media, television and news networks that Jews are their enemies and there is no finer future for an aspiring Palestinian hero than to conspire to murder Jews. Through such achievements as delivering death to Jews, the perpetrators receive celebrity status, their families are given generous financial pensions..

 

These acts of terrorism are excused by Western allies of both the PA and Israel as inevitable, a people victimized and frustrated, fighting for their human rights. The murder of Jewish Israelis, from young children to adults to elders to soldiers and police fail to impact the conscience of the world community which has grown comfortable viewing Jews and Israelis as having the upper hand, convincing them that their sympathy is rightfully placed with the Palestinian 'victims' of Israeli 'apartheid'.

 

Should Jews venture by misadventure into a West Bank village or city (cities called 'refugee camps'), their lives are immediately endangered. No Jews may live among Arabs in the West Bank, whereas several million Arabs live in Israel as citizens with equal rights to Jews. Palestinian Arabs sit in the Israeli Knesset (parliament), are appointed judges, their youth attend Israeli universities, medical practitioners practise out of Israeli hospitals.

 

In the Jewish apartheid state, Druze, Bedouin, Arabs, Christian, Baha'i and a host of other non-Jews have citizenship with all the rights associated with that status. Most non-Jewish Israeli citizens, including Palestinians have no wish to live under PA rule, preferring to remain in Israel which speaks volumes about the assurances of justice and security guaranteed to all. Still, among those living in the West Bank, in Gaza and in Israel itself, Palestinians are readily convinced by their leaders that their finest calling is as a martyr in the 'struggle' against the 'oppressor'.

 

While the Palestinian Authority continues to reward terrorism; Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said outright that nothing could induce him or the PA to stop what is called 'pay-for-slay', which says all that is needed to fully understand how much of a 'partner-for-peace' Israel has in the current Palestinian administration -- and it has never been any different under any previous leader. In effect, every Western power that sanctimoniously helps fund the PA in the assumption they are helping the Palestinians is complicit in their terrorist actions and the death of Jews. 

This is no secret. The evidence is blatantly available, even boasted of. Media in the West play deliberately into the hands of the PA media machine. Headlines never fail to emphasize the latest news from the canted perspective of the 'Palestinian cause'. When Israel Defence Forces defensively cause the death of an armed terrorist who has just killed Israelis, news headlines blare: the IDF kills a Palestinian overlooking the cause and effect.

The world -- certainly not the United Nations, and much less so, the UNRWA arm of the UN specific to the Palestinian 'situation' has no interest in removing the identification of 'refugees' from a people who left the territory in favour of returning once assembled Arab armies destroyed the nascent Israeli state after refusing the UN Partition plan for side-by-side states, Israeli and Palestinian. Remaining refugees consolidates their victimhood status.

There is no expectation that the Palestinians will be civilized, will develop the core infrastructure of a responsible state, will be capable and amenable of administering itself in a manner expected of a sovereign state with full employment for its population and a standard of living that would not include international handouts in pity of a marginalized population. 

 

The time has long passed for Palestinians to be proud of themselves as responsible, independent people. It's never too late but that time won't come as long as they're being coddled with no expectations of civilized behaviour, encouraging their victimhood.

Israeli forces, paramedic reach the site of terror attack, image via Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/ Getty Images

Sacrilege in Al-Aqsa Mosque

"We are working to restore calm, on the Temple Mount and across Israel."

"Alongside that, we are preparing for any scenario and the security forces are ready for any task [n responding to violent Palestinian confrontations and possible attacks]."

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett

 

The Abrahamic trio of Judaism, Christianity and Islam focus on the ancient city of Jerusalem in their historical antecedents where Jews and Christians and Muslims venerate sites sacred to their religious traditions. This year, the traditional holy week holidays of Passover, Easter and Ramadan fall close to each other on the calendar. In the order of precedence, Passover celebrates an ancient memory of freedom from exile in Egypt, predating by millennia the much later celebration of a Jewish sage arising from the dead, and much later still, introspection on the Prophet's revelation of the Koran.

When Jordan took it upon itself to occupy the Old City of Jerusalem, it banished Jews from their ancient habitation, and, until the war of 1967 which freed Jerusalem entirely from its control, no Jews were permitted to access the most sacred site in Judaism. Israel has made every effort possible to accommodate the religious and cultural traditions of the faiths that erupted from the tradition of Judaism. Faiths which from antiquity to the present have never given full respectful due to their progenitor religion. 

In the peace accord signed between Israel and Jordan, it was agreed that Jordan would continue to have authority through its Waqf over the Islamic holy site--third in its pantheon of sacred places, after Mecca and Medina--while Israel would retain the responsibility of maintaining public order. Islam's Jerusalem holy site is the Noble Sanctuary, built directly over the ruins of the infinitely older two Temples of Solomon. Jordan's refusal to allow Jews entry to their most sacred site lives on in Palestinian rage over Israeli Jews accessing the site though they are forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount to appease Islam's sense of sole entitlement.

 

During Friday prayers, mosques throughout the world, including in Jerusalem often incite the faithful to acts of civic disruption, targeting Israel and Jews for violence. In Israel that takes the form of 'resistance' to the 'occupation' of Jews in the Jewish state that has not been averse to sharing its national state with people of other ethnic origins, cultures, traditions and religions. Israel is established on a small proportion of its original Judean heritage. Jews are held by Arab Muslims to be 'occupying' land sacred to Islam whose presence must be eradicated.

 

Palestinians clash with Israeli security forces at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City Friday, April 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

This weekend, yet again, as on so many other occasions, violence erupted on the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary, where Palestinian men and women gathered at the Al Aqsa Mosque to protest Israel permitting Jews to be present on the Temple Mount for Passover. What other country in the world must pacify a minority population by disallowing the country's indigenous majority to pray in their most holy of sanctuaries? Only Israel, only Jews.

 

In Friday's rioting where Palestinian mobs threw rocks and incendiary devices at Israeli security forces, there to maintain order and peace for worshippers of two religions, two ethnic groups, two cultures, two traditions, 150 Palestinians sustained injuries as they clashed with Israel riot police attempting to restore order that would allow peaceful Israeli-Palestinian citizens to access the mosque and pray peacefully in celebration of Ramadan. Palestinian rioters sustained injuries incurred by rubber bullets, stun grenades and being beaten with police batons according to the Palestine Red Crescent.

 

This, at a time of particularly high alert following a number of deadly Arab street attacks on Jews throughout the country in the past two weeks. Israeli police described hundreds of Palestinians hurling firecrackers and rocks at their forces. And nor did they spare the Jewish prayer section of the Old City's Western Wall raining rocks down on the Jewish faithful, following morning Ramadan prayers. For a religion that celebrates itself as one of peace, it is beyond peculiar that Ramadan, a time of peaceful introspection, all too often results in violent riots perpetrated against Jews.

 

Hundreds of rioting Palestinians were detained. And the Foreign Ministry of the Palestinian Authority in reference to the violence that took place in the holy compound stated it "holds Israel fully and directly responsible for this crime and its consequences", when the crime was committed by Palestinians and Israel had no other option but to restore order while bringing the rioters under control as a 'consequence' of their violent actions. Strange how skewed perspectives can be. Yet a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas insisted that immediate intervention take place in the international community to "stop Israeli aggression against Al Aqsa Mosque and prevent things from going out of control".

 

Sacrilege in Al-Aqsa Mosque

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

There Is No Equivalence to Terror

"What we were targeting is an elaborate system of tunnels that spans underneath Gaza, mostly in the north but not limited to, and is a network that the operatives of Hamas use in order to move, in order to hide, for cover."

Lt.-Col. Jonathan Conricus, IDF spokesman

"The talks have taken a real and serious path on Friday."

"The mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations are stepping up their contacts with all sides in a bid to restore calm, but a deal hasn't yet been reached."

Palestinian official

"[The al-Aqsa Mosque's] sanctity has been violated several times during the holy month of Ramadan [in violations] unprecedented [since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war]."

Sheik Ikrima Sabri, Palestinian cleric

A house was damaged by a rocket in the Israeli town of Sderot on Saturday, May 15    Reuters

It was not the presence of Israeli police whose job it is to maintain order and security on the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary that desecrated the al-Aqsa mosque, but rather the worshipers who piled rocks in the sanctuary, to use to pelt the police as a sign of their respect for peace, law and order. As an alternative to throwing rocks at police, any Jew who would wish to surreptitiously pray on this most sacred of Judaic sites would also be pelted, as might Jews in prayer below the Mount, at the Wailing Wall.

In Israel, as far as international news when clashes between Palestinian and Jews take place as they often do, the aggressors are transformed into the role of victims, and those who are attacked are viewed as the aggressors when they take necessary military measures to protect the safety of all citizens, whether Jew or Arab or any of the other minority groups who live in peace as citizens of Israel. Arabs constitute close to 21 percent of Israeli citizens; a sizeable minority in a country with a total population of 9 million souls.

Most Jews and Arabs are accustomed to living in Israel in recognition that as a democracy it has accommodated itself to multi-religions, customs, social situations and ethnicity and heritage, under a sole system of government and justice. Israel was established as a Jewish state, but unlike the surrounding Arab nations it never mass-exiled those who lived in the area before Partition. Most of the Arab Palestinians who left in 1948 did so with the intention of returning as soon as the combined armies of the Arab states destroyed the nascent Jewish state.

They lost, Israel remained and grew and prospered, taking in an equal number of Jews who were summarily exiled from their ancient domicile in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and other Arab states, their properties confiscated. While citizens of Israel, Palestinian Arabs enjoy equal rights as citizens, yet among them are those who continue to agitate for Israel's destruction, led by incitement by Fatah's Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.

The violence that emanates from the West Bank is not of an organized type similar to that of Hamas-ruled Gaza, however, where Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, as well as other smaller terrorist groups actively pursue a military-strategic assault-type conflict with Israel. As they did on the pretext of caring whether a handful of Palestinian families had a disagreement over squatter-rights on property owned by Jews in an Arab quarter of Jerusalem, or the presence of Israeli police on the Temple Mount.

Hamas ordered Israel to remove Israeli Police from the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary for their presence as PA President Mahmoud Abbas once stated 'polluted' the sacred territory, and to stop proceedings to evacuate the Palestinian families in a strictly neighbourhood issue to be settled by the courts. When Israel predictably ignored the Hamas order, last Monday saw the beginning of thousands of rockets and missiles fired into Israel by the terrorist groups.

Whose convention is to fire those missiles from within crowded civilian urban sites, inviting retaliatory responses from the Israeli military, with no regard for the human life on both sides placed in danger of death. In its response, the IDF messages Palestinians to vacate buildings and areas that are marked for bombing, pausing operations until it is gauged that sufficient time has elapsed for residents to evacuate before levelling the buildings involved; chosen because there is a direct Hamas connection.

 

The remains of the multi-storey Al-Jalaa tower, which was home to various media organizations   EPA

 

News has it that 122 people have died in the violence in Gaza since Monday, with 900 wounded. Israelis are warned by sirens when incoming missiles are detected and they rush toward bomb shelters for safety, though not all apartment buildings have them. Palestinians have no such shelters; their rulers' imperative is not to shelter the population, but to build miles of tunnels for Hamas terrorists to pass through, to store ammunition, and to take refuge from aerial bombardments; civilians are left to their own devices, thus the disparity of deaths between Gaza and Israel. 

 

In comparison, 8 Israelis have so far died in the bombardments. All of those lives lost to an early death by hate-driven violence represent a dreadful human toll irrespective of whose side the deaths are on. Gaza's Palestinian population mourns its dead, a loss from which those who loved them will never recover. Hamas and Islamic Jihad use those deaths for public relations propaganda purposes to elicit sympathy from the world community under the guise of caring for their own while portraying the IDF as the perpetrators, not a military tasked to protect civilians while disarming attackers.

 

About 2,300 rockets have been fired from Gaza at Israel since Monday, while some 1,000 of the missiles were intercepted by missile defences, and 380 fell short, dropping into Gaza itself, sometimes causing casualties among Palestinians. Israel uses its anti-missile defence system when it judges that missiles will fall on urban areas; those missiles seen to fall elsewhere are allowed to fall as long as no human life is in jeopardy.

Image caption Israeli police officers detain a young Palestinian man at the Damascus Gate Image copyright by Getty Images

Clashes erupt in East Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israeli police.

Palestinians are angry over barriers which had been placed outside the Damascus Gate entrance to the Jerusalem‘s Old City preventing them from gathering there after prayers at the Old City’s al-Aqsa Mosque on what is the first night of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Palestinian discontent had been stoked earlier in the day when President Mahmoud Abbas called off planned elections, implicitly blaming Israel over voting arrangements for Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Hamas - Mr Abbas' Islamist rivals who control Gaza and were running in the elections - react angrily to the postponement.

Violence around Damascus Gate and elsewhere in East Jerusalem continues nightly.

Timeline: BBC

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