A ministry spokesman, Ashraf al-Qudra, said early last month that more than 100 people in the Astal family alone had been killed in Israeli attacks. Of 88 family members on the Oct. 26 list, 39 were identified as children and 25 as women.
After a detailed profile of the Astal family suffering, the Times manages to throw in:
A few of the family’s dead were linked to Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years and that led the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.One family member, Hamdan al-Astal, appears to have been among those who attacked Israel. He was not on the Oct. 26 list, but Palestinian news media in Gaza reported his death the day after the assault, saying he had participated.Another family member who survived, Yunis al-Astal, is a longtime Hamas lawmaker and firebrand sheikh who has compared Jews to bacteria and apes and said it was justifiable to “wipe them out of existence.”Ten days after Hamdan al-Astal’s death was reported, family members buried Ramzi al-Astal, also identified in Palestinian news media as a Hamas fighter.
The article makes it sound like the al-Astal family only had a few, peripheral Hamas members. But it isn't true.
The al-Astal family has been a leading Hamas family for decades.
I found a 2008 article I had translated that described the first Hamas tunnels being built, under schools and under Hamas member homes. Clearly, any Hamas member with a tunnel under his home is a major figure. Here's what the article said:
Hamas has been digging a tunnel under the house of one of their Qassam Brigades commanders named "Ismail Astal", leading to the ground under Khalid Hassan Secondary School for Boys in Khan Younis and a branch to a school for boys in Bani Suheila. Another branch leads o the house of a Qassam leader Omar Al-Astal, this tunnel will continue to the house of another named Abdel Hamid Al-Astal. All these tunnels under the ground connect with each other.The Hamas militia dug a tunnel in the house of another person named Ashraf Fahmi Al-Astal, an executive officer of the Hamas, and branches go to the Farhana School for Girls near the police station in Khan Younis and then to Haifa prep school for girls will go to the house in charge of internal security of Hamas in the south
That is four major Hamas leaders in 2008 named al-Astal who were important enough to be among the first to have their own personal tunnels.
In 2014, at least two terrorist Al Astals were killed: Ashraf and Muhammad.
And if you do a search on mujahadeen "martyrs" from Gaza named al-Astal, you see plenty of people -not only Hamas but other terror groups as well.
Ahmed Muhammad Mahmoud Abdel Qader Al-Astal
Khaled Salim Al-Astal
Qassam Brigades Field Commander Ismail al-Astal
Ammar Farid Tawfiq Al-Astal (Fatah, died in a 2019 "work accident")
Muhammad Musa al-Astal, who apparently died in a tunnel accident.
(I see a number of Islamic Jihad Al Astals as well but the website with their photos is down.)
The family originally comes from Iraq. They emigrated to Egypt in the 16th century and at one point the sultan wanted land they owned for a planned mosque in Cairo, and he compensated them with large land holdings in Gaza, "because Palestine at that time was almost an uninhabited desert," so the family owns a decent part of Khan Younis.
The al-Astal family was proudly in the forefront of the 1936 riots against the Jews and British, as well as in the 1948 war.
The family is well known in Khan Younis as being Hamas leaders today. The New York Times, pretending to be even handed by mentioning a couple of them as Hamas members, is hiding the real story - this is a family that has led Hamas for years.
