How Goes The War

"Hamas's end is near. For your future."

"Anyone who can present information that could help us arrest the individuals who brought destruction and ruins to the Gaza Strip will be rewarded."

Israel Defense Forces

"[Jerusalem cannot comment on the] various intelligence means [used to keep tabs on Sinwar and other terrorists]."

"We certainly will continue making every effort to bring them to justice and to get our hands on all of the monsters responsible for the October 7 massacre."

Israeli PMO spokesman Eylon Levy

Palestinian fighters hold weapons above their heads as they surrender near the Kamal Adwan hospital in the northern Gaza Strip. Photo by Israeli Army/ AFP via Getty Images

During an operation in the northern Gaza Strip, in the area of Kamal Adwan Hospital, some 70 terrorists with Hamas surrendered to Israeli forces, laying down their weapons in the process. Soldiers had located a building  used by Hamas operatives and a 'military' officer and after a fight the terrorists were killed. In Gaza City Shejaiya neighbourhood and Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip battles continue to rage, the IDF reporting "many terrorists" killed.

Soldiers searched a school complex in Shejaiya "that served as a central focus of the fighting of the Hamas Shejaiya Battalion" and proceeded to destroy the compound's infrastructure, as well as engaging with the Hamas operatives there as well. IDF soldiers discovered weapons and grenades in the Khan Yunis area where they destroyed two tunnel shafts, a rocket launch pit, and a weapons warehouse.

Terrorist infrastructure was demolished by the IDF near the Jabalia refugee camp, and weapons were located and destroyed. A Hamas sniper identified by ground forces was eliminated by a helicopter gunship. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to fire rockets into Israel, leading to warning sirens sounding in border communities.

The death toll for Israeli soldiers killed since the ground operations in the Gaza Strip began on October 27 rose to 116 with the death of Maj. Elisha Levinshtern, 38, killed in action. Since the conflict began on October 7 -- that fateful day when terrorists and ordinary Palestinian civilians flooded across the broken border from Gaza into southern Israel to attack border towns and villages, slaughtering at will, raping and mutilating, taking hostages back into Gaza -- a total of 445 Israeli troops have perished.

 

Flyers dropped by the IDF detailing rewards for information on Hamas leaders' whereabouts, December 14, 2023

(photo credit: according to Article 27 A of the Copyright Law)

The Israel Defense Forces dropped flyers in the coastal enclave, urging Palestinians to  help remove Hamas from the enclave's leadership, promising up to $400,000 in reward money for information leading to the apprehension of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar; $300,000 for intelligence on his brother, commander Muhammad Sinwar; $200,000 for information on Rafa'a Salameh, commander of the Khan Yunis Battalion; and $100,000 for information leading to Mohammed Deif, commander of Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades 'military' wing.

 

The reward-offering flyers promised strict confidentiality, included an Israeli telephone number to call, and the username of an account on the Telegram messaging app. IDF troops last week had surrounded the residence in Gaza of Sinwar, believed to live in Khan Yunis in the southern Strip. "His house is not a fortress and he can escape but it's only a matter of time before we get to him", Prime Minister Netanyahu promised.

Thought to be one of the masterminds of the October 7 savagery that devastated southern Israel kibbutzim and a music festival with some three thousand young Israeli attendees where the terrorists ran down fleeing festival-goers, mass rape took place, and hundreds were slaughtered, it is felt that Sinwar who eluded capture last week, may attempt an escape into Egypt through entry points under mosques.

The Hamas Religious Endowment Ministry ordered the opening of mosques to accept displaced persons, a slight diversion from their usual use as storage areas for caches of military weaponry. Those corridors, it is feared, could provide Sinwar with an escape route, along with other senior Hamas leadership members.

"Yahya Sinwar is the face of evil", said IDF International Spokesperson Lt.Col. Richard Hecht, who informed journalists that Sinwar and his entire command team were in Israel's sights.

Yahya Sinwar Gaza Strip chief of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement, waves to Palestinians during a rally to mark the annual al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), in Gaza, April 14, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA)

Hamas Mass Butchery

"Those who wish to 'contextualize' the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a way to dismiss Hamas's brutality prove they do not care about actual suffering. They are more interested in seeing the whole world through a Marxist lens, where there is always an oppressor and an oppressed, and where one group's good fortune can only come through the exploitation of another group."

"Hamas did not attack Israel because of an occupation in Gaza, an occupation that ended in 2005, or because of the years-long blockade against the territory, which Egypt has also enforced. Hamas attacked because it wants to eradicate Israel from the map, and because of its twisted desire to murder Jewish people."

"In practice, a humanitarian pause would be just another way to punish Jews and give comfort to Israel's terrorist enemies. In Gaza, Hamas would be free to continue putting rocket launchers next to schools, using hospitals and residential buildings as military planning bases and stealing aid to fund and support terrorist  attacks. Its own citizens would continue to be deliberately sacrificed for the sole purpose of blaming Israel for their deaths in order to turn international opinion against the Jewish state."

"A so-called humanitarian pause makes this outcome all the more likely. It would give Hamas time to regroup, refuel and refortify, not to mention providing easier access to weapons and other supplies from Iran, its backer. Pausing fighting could also be deadly for Israelis. Retired Canadian General Rick Hillier [said] a pause could result in the deaths of hundreds of soldiers."

Carson Jerema, Journalist, National Post

Israeli soldiers remove the body of a civilian killed in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz close to the border with Gaza. Photograph: Amir Levy/Getty Images

 

The mind freezes at the appalling brutality and sheer inhumanity of the terrorist attacks that took place in southern Israel at the Gaza border on October 7. The scale of the barbarity, the enjoyment evidenced by the Hamas operatives, their glee in videoing their atrocities, their boastful shout-outs to their companions is breathtaking in the scale of vicious inhumanity portrayed by the terror group. Yet they were assured enough of support from the Arab and Muslim world, particularly that part of the Umma residing in the West, that they proudly circulated the videos on social media.

 

Israeli soldiers stand by an engine from a hang glider that Palestinian terrorists used a few days earlier in an attack on this kibbutz near the border with Gaza, in Kfar Gaza, Israel, Oct. 10, 2023.  Amir Levy/Getty Images

One video begins with Hamas members camped out along highways relentlessly firing straight at all vehicles driving within reach of their guns, to kill drivers and vehicle occupants. The vehicles, ending up in roadside ditches, are double-checked for anyone still alive, to ensure that additional bullets would take them out of their misery and from life's existence; another notch in the death toll. 

Another video documents terrorists waiting at a gate into a kibbutz where two men are in hiding, emerging only when a car approaches and the gate opens, when they ambush the vehicle  and the driver and passenger are left in pools of blood while a flood of terrorists enter to begin their butchery of the kibbutz residents; children, their parents, grandparents, and the mass rape of girls and women, before some are taken hostage into Gaza, while the village is ransacked.

Hamas members are shown via body-cam footage going house-to-house, firing through windows, ringing doorbells, bursting through doors, setting homes on fire and shooting dogs to death. Grenades are tossed into houses, killing families. These are viral scenes of rabid berserkers intoxicated with death, enjoying the carnage they're perpetrating on innocent civilians; guilty by virtue of the inescapable fact that they're Jews.

 

Israeli soldiers stand next to the bodies of Israelis killed by Hamas terrorists in kibbutz Kfar Azza.   Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

The terrorists in this well-planned and -executed mass atrocity are armed with grenades and AK-47s, but also with cellphones and body cameras, and big smiles, cheerfully taking pictures for posterity of the scenes they are responsible for having created, bodies strewn everywhere about them, littering the ground soaked with the victims' blood.

And then there are recordings of the victorious return of the terrorists into Gaza, to a heroes' welcome, dragging with them young women, beaten and raped, half-clothed, viewed lying battered and comatose on the backs of trucks. When Israel collated the videos and produced a longer version of their own for instructive purposes, and exposed the footage to the international press, some of the best-known news sites distinguished themselves by writing up the event, while carefully avoiding using the word 'terrorists'.

Even before Hamas had completed its day of slaughter, there were 'protesters' out in public proclaiming their pride in Palestinian 'resistance', celebrating Hamas's victory over the 'occupier'. And before Israel had the opportunity to begin responding to this horrendous act of war, the nattering began over its 'disproportionate' response, not one shot yet fired back in defence against the terrorists. In Ireland, its premier suggested that Israel's response amounted to 'collective punishment'; the campaign in Gaza, said its foreign minister "disproportionate by any measure".

The Israel Defense Forces placed countless calls, sent out text messages, dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets on Gaza warning civilians to evacuate areas being targeted. Awkward to say the least, considering that Hamas built tunnels purposely along with subterranean bases underneath hospitals, schools and mosques, placing rocket launchers next to apartment blocks and playgrounds. And as Israel responds, Hamas has instructed its people not to evacuate, despite the warning from Israel.

Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Israel, where Hamas terrorists attacked, and killed scores of people.

ABC News