Israeli Retaliation

"The [Israel Defense Forces] is responsible for the security of the country and its citizens, and on Saturday morning in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, we did not do it. We will learn. We will investigate. But now is the time for war."

"The entire system under him [Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's Gaza Strip leader] are dead men. We will attack them. We will dismantle them."

"We will do everything to return the [Israeli and foreign men, women and children] hostages back  home."

Israeli chief of defence staff Lt.Gen. Herzl Halevi

Israelis inspect the rubble of a building a day after it was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Sunday   Oded Balilty/AP

Speculation is that the training of hang gliders, the preparations for Saturday morning's deadly incursion into Israel by Hamas over the border from Gaza, the coordinated plans for the use of explosives and bulldozers to break through Israel's high-tech, supposedly impregnable border wall, took place elsewhere than the proximity of the border, that rehearsals were enacted and instructions taught in areas elsewhere than where they could be detected by Israeli  intelligence. And to ensure that no prior warning come from within Gaza itself, only top-echelon leaders in Hamas had knowledge of the timing.

 

The reality is that it was still a failure of Israeli intelligence that led to the critical lack of awareness resulting in the invasions that followed when scores of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists streamed under cover of rocket fire across the border to Israel to prowl through the streets of border towns, villages and kibbutzim, firing at anyone they came across, entering homes to butcher families and their children. And with them were unaffiliated Palestinian Gazan men who took the opportunity to join the vicious attacks, to take part in the killing and looting.

 

And, of course, Hamas hunted down and slaughtered no fewer than 260 young people attending a music festival taking place close to the Gaza border. Where the loud sound of music and the revelry of young people in love and at play at first failed to take notice of the explosions until they were confronted by armed and vicious terrorists whose mission was to slaughter them all. And the nightmare that unfolded went on for hours, people trying to flee, finding temporary cover in shrubbery as the terrorists continued their rampage, raping women, murdering, taking hostages of horrified, terrified Israelis.

 

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, as seen from Ashkelon in southern Israel October 7, 2023   Amir Cohen/Reuters

 

Lt. Gen. Halevi made no effort to make any excuses for the failure of the army, he forthrightly and clearly admitted he and they had failed to guard the border fence, enabling the terrorists to stream through to terrorize the Israeli border communities in the western Negev, leaving a horrendous count of over 1,300 people dead, many mutilated, bodies burnt. Most of the dead were civilians, a smaller number of 220 represented soldiers taken by surprise and murdered by the terrorists.

Expressing sympathy with the families missing their loved ones, captured as hostages and taken to Gaza, Lt. Gen. Halevi swore that everything possible would be done to return them to Israel and to exact the ultimate price from their kidnappers. Between them, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad claim to have taken130 hostages, although there are reports that up to 200 are being held. When Israeli troops temporarily entered Gaza searching for hostages and their captors, they discovered the bodies of some of the hostages.

Following the sorrowful admission of responsibility and regret Lt. Gen. Halevi praised those Israelis, including long retired reservists who had rushed south to repel the attack, and the thousands of reservists who have reported to duty, including the many Israelis returning from abroad with the intention of joining their brethren in their common fight against Islamist terror emanating from Gaza. Rockets continue to be fired from Gaza, triggering sirens around Netanya, and Ariel in Judea and Samaria. There is much work to be done ahead.

Fire and smoke rises above buildings during an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on October 8, 2023. Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

"The fighting spirit of the IDF hit Gaza with all its force. And we won't stop here. There's in this decisiveness and rage. In the process of a widespread attack, we are killing many terrorists, many commanders, destroying and demolishing terrorist infrastructure that supported this cruel and terrible crime."

"Gaza will not look the same. We will get to a situation where whoever leads Gaza will be hit hard. We'll take him apart."

"We will do everything to restore this contract [the trust of Israelis in the protective security of the land by its military forces], to restore security."

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

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