Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Real international law expounded in the House of Lords: Proportionality, sieges, and lies

This speech was delivered at the House of Lords yesterday by Guglielmo Verdirame, a professor of international law at the King’s College London department of war studies and a non-affiliated member of the House of Lords.

It demolishes the farce of how the media reports on legal issues.

There has been a lot of talk about proportionality in the law on self-defence. I refer to the words that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, used a few days ago on the test of proportionality. It does not mean that the defensive force has to be equal to the force used in the armed attack. Proportionality means that you can use force that is proportionate to the defensive objective, which is to stop, to repel and to prevent further attacks.

Israel has described its war aims as the destruction of Hamas’s capability. From a legal perspective, these war aims are consistent with proportionality in the law of self-defence, given what Hamas says and does and what Hamas has done and continues to do.

Asking a state that is acting in self-defence to agree to a ceasefire before its lawful defensive objectives have been met is, in effect, asking that state to stop defending itself. For such calls to be reasonable and credible, they must be accompanied by a concrete proposal setting out how Israel’s legitimate defensive goals against Hamas will be met through other means. It is not an answer to say that Israel has to conclude a peace treaty, because Hamas is not interested in a peace treaty.

Proportionality also applies in the law that governs the conduct of hostilities, not only in self-defence. The law of armed conflict requires that in every attack posing a risk to civilian life, that risk must not be excessive in relation to the military advantage that is anticipated. That rule does not mean, even when scrupulously observed, that civilians will not tragically lose their lives in an armed conflict. The law of armed conflict, at its best, can mitigate the horrors of war but it cannot eliminate them. The great challenge in this conflict is that Hamas is the kind of belligerent that cynically exploits these rules by putting civilians under its control at risk and even using them to seek immunity for its military operations, military equipment and military personnel. An analysis of the application of the rules on proportionality in targeting in this conflict must always begin with this fact.

There has also been some discussion about siege warfare. The UK manual of the law of armed conflict, reflecting the Government’s official legal position—it is a Ministry of Defence document—says:

“Siege is a legitimate method of warfare … It would be unlawful to besiege an undefended town since it could be occupied without resistance”.

Gaza is not an undefended town. It is true that obligations apply to the besieging forces when civilians are caught within the area that is being encircled, and those obligations include agreeing to the passage of humanitarian relief by third parties. But it is not correct to say that encircling an area with civilians in it is not permitted by the laws of war.

A further point that concerns the laws of war is also of particular relevance to the British Government’s practice. It has already been mentioned that the Government have taken the view that Gaza remains under Israeli occupation, even though Israel pulled out in 2005. The traditional view until 2005 was that occupation required physical presence in the territory. That view is consistent with Article 42 of the Hague regulations of 1907, which states that a territory is occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the occupying power. Again, it is also the view taken by the UK manual of the law of armed conflict, which reflects the UK’s official legal position and states that occupation ceases as soon as the occupying power evacuates the area. The European Court of Human Rights, in its jurisprudence, has also adopted a similar approach to occupation. So I have always been rather baffled by the British Government’s position on this issue, which, as far as I know, has not changed. Yes, it is true that Israel has exercised significant control over the airspace and in the maritime areas, but even as a matter of plain geography it takes two—Israel and Egypt—to control the land access points to Gaza.

More fundamentally, it is Hamas that has been responsible for the government and administration of Gaza. I appreciate that this is a legal matter on which the Minister may not want to respond immediately but it is an important one, because the legal fiction that Israel was still the occupying power under the laws of armed conflict has been relentlessly exploited by Hamas to blame Israel for everything, while using the effective control that it has over the territory, the people and the resources to wage war.

On a final note, I would like to say something briefly on the way in which the war is being reported. When a serious allegation is made, particularly one that could constitute a war crime, the immediate response of the law-abiding belligerent will be to say, “We are investigating”. The non-law-abiding belligerent, by contrast, will forthwith blame the other side and even provide surprisingly precise casualty figures. The duty to investigate is one of the most important ones in armed conflict. What happened in the way in which the strike on the hospital was reported is that the side that professes no interest whatever in complying with the laws of armed conflict was rewarded with the headlines that it was seeking.

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The @WashingtonPost and human rights NGOs defend believing the casualty numbers of people who murder children. Despite all evidence, they simply cannot believe that they are being lied to by Hamas.

The Washington Post headline reads, "Why news outlets and the U.N. rely on Gaza’s Health Ministry for death tolls."

A key defense of Hamas statistics comes from Human Rights Watch:

Many experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements.

“Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “In the times in which we have done our own verification of numbers for particular strikes, I’m not aware of any time which there’s been some major discrepancy.”

Shakir said Human Rights Watch would not use figures provided by parties with “a propensity to misrepresent information.”

“We know that a health ministry is going to base [death tolls] on assessments coming from hospitals, morgues, etc.,” he said. “They have an ability to collect that in a way that other sources not there can’t do.”

HRW's Shakir is somewhat correct - about the past. The Gaza Health Ministry numbers were generally within perhaps 10-15% of the estimates given by others in previous Gaza conflicts.

This war is not at all like the other wars.

In all the previous Gaza wars, there were independent organizations on the round that could do their own reporting. In all the previous Gaza wars, the Gaza Health Ministry issued lists of the names of the dead where the lists could be checked against the names listed by NGOs like Al Mezan and PCHR and the UN-OCHA.

In other words, in previous wars, there were mechanisms to keep Gaza's Health Ministry honest. As someone who has spent hours checking the names myself, I can say that this time Hamas has kept a tight lid on information on casualties. (And Hams is also ensuring that it doesn't publish the names of of its own "martyrs," similar to previous wars, to make it appear that a higher percentage of the dead were civilian. Hamas has instructed Gazans for years to only refer to all the dead as "innocent civilians." )

This time, there are no lists of "martyrs." PCHR stopped its own reporting of the names of those killed after the second day of the war. And even then, it was careful to not report the names of those it knew were terrorists:

At 11:00 (October 7): Ameer ‘Abdullah Mohammed al-Khour (19) was killed when he was coincidingly passing by an area, where IOF’s warplanes were targeting Palestinian armed groups in southern Gaza City.

The names of the members of "armed groups" killed are carefully not reported - because Hamas doesn't want them to be.

This time, Hamas has ensured that it controls all the information coming out of Gaza. And once it has that control, it can exaggerate the casualty count at will, knowing that no one in Gaza would dare contradict it.

The most obvious example is the Al Ahli hospital bombing, where absolutely no analyst agrees that 471 people were killed. It is clear proof that the Ministry of Health has no compunction about lying to the world.

The hospital incident proves beyond any doubt that the health ministry lies and makes up casualty numbers out of thin air. And yet the Washington Post and HRW defend it.

The incident of the explosion at the convoy of cars heading south on Salah al-Deen Street on October 13 is similar. Israel is blamed for an airstrike even though it confirmed that it did not operate in the area at that time, and the explosion appears to be from an IED beneath the truck - meaning that Hamas evidently mined the road specifically to keep Gazans from fleeing. But beyond that extraordinary example of Hamas willingness to murder its own people that has been ignored in the media, the Hamas health ministry claimed 70 people were killed when video taken immediately afterwards showed no more than 12 bodies.

In a way, the Salah al Deen incident was a dress rehearsal for the Al Ahli hospital incident. Hamas saw that it could make up numbers with impunity and that the media will report them uncritically.

The ministry, of course, counts their inflated casualty figures at l Ahli and Salah al Deen in their authoritative sounding press releases.

In previous wars, never has the health ministry been so brazen in lying about incidents and in issuing obviously faked casualty statistics. That is quite enough for any real reporter to call out their track record of lies every time they mention them.

Beyond that, has any reporter actually read the ministry's Facebook page? There is nothing objective about it. Its language is the language of propaganda, not sober reporting. It even publishes obviously staged photos, complete with makeup:

In short, there is no reason to trust the health ministry, and every reason to assume that their statistics are lies.

There is another factor here: Hamas' unprecedented sadism and cruelty on October 7 should prompt every single reporter to question everything they have ever assumed about Gaza. Why would someone assume good faith from a group that wantonly murders children and rapes women? Would they trust ISIS press releases?

Which brings up the real question: how can the Washington Post write an article defending a ministry that has been proven to lie, that is part of the most vicious terror group on the planet today?

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A collection of Arab and Muslim celebrations at the massacre

This is not nearly an exhaustive list.

Amman, Jordan, October 7:

West Bank Palestinians, October 7::

News report from Algeria, October 7:

Also in Algeria.

Palestinian camp in Lebanon, October 7:

Sidon, Lebanon as well.

Istanbul, Turkey, October 7:

Kuwait, October 7:

Yemen, October 9 (you can hear them chant "Khaybar, Khyabar ya Yahud!)

There were also celebrations in Iran, Syria, Mauritania and elsewhere.

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10/24 Links Pt2: Why Do So Many Young People Support Hamas?; How the Democrats betrayed the Jews; Why Jewish lives don’t matter to BLM

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: Why Do So Many Young People Support Hamas?

“Fitting Israel into the intersectional framework has always been difficult, because its Jewish citizens are both historically oppressed—the survivors of an attempt to wipe them out entirely—and currently in a dominant position over the Palestinians, as demonstrated by the Netanyahu government’s decision to restrict power and water supplies to Gaza,” Lewis wrote. Intersectionality is, indeed, the “framework” on display here. It started out as little more than a thought experiment, but it has since transmogrified into a way of life.

Pioneered by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, theoretical intersectionality asks its adherents to conceive of their fellow citizens not as unique individuals but as stereotypical cutouts representing their respective demographic traits. It presupposes that everyone in the American melting pot owns a variety of immutable traits, some of which are subject to more discrimination than others. African Americans endure some prejudices, women endure others, while gays and lesbians experience an entirely distinct level of prejudice. Some of these prejudices “intersect,” so, for example, a gay black woman will experience a host of bigotries that someone who can only lay claim to one or two of these minority identities will not.

In practice, the framework reduces humans to their various demographic signifiers, and it does so in a particularly chauvinistic way. The stereotypes that intersectionality requires its adherents to marinate in are uniquely American. So, the descendants of American slaves are owed no more deference than recent African or Caribbean migrants because the cliched racist will not draw those distinctions. Now, apply this framework to American Jews. In the antisemitic imagination, American Jews are comfortable, powerful, and well connected. They enjoy influence and success disproportionate to their numbers. It’s a bigoted conception, but that is the point of intersectionality — to think in bigoted terms if only to understand and navigate what intersectional theorists believe is the fundamentally bigoted American landscape.

But once you subscribe to this philosophy, you’ve just internalized plain-old antisemitism. Through this framework, people are reduced to statistics, and their tormentors become automatons responding predictably to a set of historical incentives. Intersectionality is, in that regard, no different from the framework of Marxism, which asks its adherents to view the workings of history through the prism of class and capital distribution. Individuals are robbed of their agency through the application of this theory, and events are boiled down to root causes that have almost nothing to do with their perpetrators. Intersectionality is distinct only insofar as it substitutes class and capital with race and ethnicity.

David Mamet: How the Democrats betrayed the Jews

I grew up in a tiny Jewish enclave on Chicago’s South Side. When I first saw New York, in the Sixties, I was awed as by no subsequent marvel of nature: stretching north from Columbus Circle, up the West Side, was a Jewish metropolis.

New York, in my lifetime, had always been a Jewish city: the rhythms, the accent, the humour always felt to me like home. Because they were home. The populace, of whatever ethnicity, was formed or noodged by Yiddishkeit, much as the Chicago of my youth was by the culture of the Irish and the Poles. Like what you’re reading? Get the free UnHerd daily email

The New York Times and The New Yorker were run by Jews; they were both our Rialto and our Bible. New York Theatre, in my lifetime, had always been Jewish. The playwrights were Miller, Odets, Elmer Rice, Ben Hecht, Sidney Kingsley; and, later, Arthur Laurents, Lillian Hellman, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, Wallace Shawn, and myself.

We New York Jews have always voted for the Democrats, as their policies appealed to the immigrants and the first generation (my parents). A Fair Shake, a safety net, and unionism were manna to the newly arrived — in spite of (in both their and my lifetime) quotas and antisemitic discrimination. The immigrant Jews did well here, and voted for Franklin Roosevelt. And we are voting for him still.

His Advisor on Jewish Affairs (jude-suss, or “house-Jew”) was Rabbi Stephen Wise, the “dean” of the American Rabbinate. He referred to FDR as “Boss”, and brought home to his community Roosevelt’s assurance of aid to the dying Jews of Europe. Yet Roosevelt’s aid stopped with his assurances, and tens of thousands of Jews died because of his restrictive immigration policies, and millions in Europe because of his refusal to interdict the Holocaust.

Still, today, Jews vote Democratic: electing Presidents who refused to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister (Obama and Biden) in times of “peace”, who gave and give aid to the terrorist state of Iran in exchange for some semi-specified “deal”. American “Aid” to Iran pays for the equipment and ordnance, which is, at this moment, eradicating Jews.

Why do Jews vote Democratic? Partly from tradition — conservatives have heard a Liberal Jew, when asked to defend or explain various absurd or inconsistent Democratic positions, shrug and joke: “I’m a Congenital Democrat.” I understand, for I was one, too.

But there is no more cosy mystery in the antisemitism of the Democratic Party; Representatives are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists and pro-Palestinians, calling for the end of the state of Israel — that is, for the death of the Jews. And Democrat Representatives repeat and refuse to retract the libel that Israel bombed a hospital, in spite of absolute proof to the contrary, and will not call out the unutterable atrocities of Hamas. The writing is on the wall. In blood.

The World is Freaking Out Because Its Favorite Victims Suddenly Became Human Butchers

What do you do when a cause you deeply cherish betrays you?

What do you do when you spend a lifetime fighting for the Palestinian cause, and then, overnight, it becomes associated with the butchering, beheading, raping and mutilating of 1400 people, including infants, babies, women, rave dancers, families and the elderly?

How do you spin that?

You might try to deny and downplay, but with all the graphic and gruesome videos out there, that’s not easy. And as much as you’d love to erase the word Palestinian next to the word Hamas, you know the connection is a fact.

No, the only real option is to make so much noise that you drown out the horrible news about the mass murder of Jews.

That’s why immediately after October 7, we saw global protests against Israel and in support of Palestinians. This was before Israel launched its counterattacks. And naturally, when Israel did go after Hamas, the attacks against Jews have only accelerated. On streets around the world and across college campuses, Jew haters are now out in full force. The slaughtering of 1400 Jews is all but forgotten; now it’s all about Israel’s reaction to the massacres.

Whether it’s the media jumping to (falsely) blame Israel for the bombing of a Gaza hospital, or the global cries for a “ceasefire” before Israel has even entered Gaza to eliminate the terrorists and deter future attacks, the world is doing all it can to downplay the narrative of “Palestinians as butchers.”

The world’s most popular victims, after all, cannot be allowed to be butchers.

For half a century, Palestinians have managed to charm the global elite with the seductive narrative of glorious, helpless victimhood. In a world that worships the oppressed, especially if they’re not white or western, Palestinians became the forever oppressed.

The influential Palestinian scholar-activist Edward Said’s 1978 book, “Orientalism,” which portrayed the West’s view of the East as demeaning and ignorant, helped shape and popularize the Palestinian narrative. As a revisionist movement began to associate the West strictly with the sins of colonialism, imperialism, racism and capitalist abuse, Palestinians became the Swiss army knife of causes for the virtue signaling set. Accurate or not, they had it all.

Latest memes

Cartoons will be in a separate post.

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Former president Barack Obama wrote his thoughts on his Medium account:

It’s been 17 days since Hamas launched its horrific attack against Israel, killing over 1,400 Israeli citizens, including defenseless women, children and the elderly. In the aftermath of such unspeakable brutality, the U.S. government and the American people have shared in the grief of families, prayed for the return of loved ones, and rightly declared solidarity with the Israeli people.

As I stated in an earlier post, Israel has a right to defend its citizens against such wanton violence, and I fully support President Biden’s call for the United States to support our long-time ally in going after Hamas, dismantling its military capabilities, and facilitating the safe return of hundreds of hostages to their families.

So far, so good. But then:

But even as we support Israel, we should also be clear that how Israel prosecutes this fight against Hamas matters. In particular, it matters — as President Biden has repeatedly emphasized — that Israel’s military strategy abides by international law, including those laws that seek to avoid, to every extent possible, the death or suffering of civilian populations. Upholding these values is important for its own sake — because it is morally just and reflects our belief in the inherent value of every human life. Upholding these values is also vital for building alliances and shaping international opinion — all of which are critical for Israel’s long-term security.

Obama's language assumes that Israel is not adhering to international law. That is condescending and false.

And then he warns Israel that by not following what he thinks international law is, that could be bad for Israel. It is a very subtle threat, but a threat nonetheless.

A real friend of Israel would say that Israel has more experience in applying international law to conflict than anyone else in the world, and the US supports Israel and will defend its interpretations - which are, as far as I can tell, fully in line with what the Department of Defense says in its Law of War Manual, July 2023.

According to that manual:

It is lawful to besiege enemy forces, i.e., to encircle them with a view towards inducing their surrender by cutting them off from reinforcements, supplies, and communications with the outside world. In particular, it is permissible to seek to starve enemy forces into submission.

....A commander of an encircling force is not required to agree to the passage of medical or religious personnel, supplies, and equipment if he or she has legitimate military reasons denying such requests (e.g., if denying passage may increase the likelihood of surrender of enemy forces in the encircled area). Nonetheless, commanders should make reasonable, good-faith efforts to do so when possible.

...Commanders should make arrangements to permit the free passage of certain consignments:
• all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians; and
• all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing, and tonics (i.e., medicine) intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers, and maternity cases.
However, allowing passage of these items is not required by the party controlling the area unless that party is satisfied that there are no serious reasons for fearing that:
• the consignments may be diverted from their destination;
• the control may not be effective; or
• a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy

In short, the US Army says it is legal to even starve civilians if it is likely that their food will be stolen by Hamas, allowing Hamas to keep fighting.

I'm not saying that Israel should do that - but it would be legal. And for Obama to lecture Israel on international law, when that law as interpreted by the US itself allows such extreme measures to destroy Hamas, is not an expression of friendship.

Obama continues:

The Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population threatens not only to worsen a growing humanitarian crisis; it could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, and undermine long term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region.

He is invoking a fallacy: that Palestinians respond rationally to Israeli goodwill. As I have proven using UN sources, Israel has shown huge amounts of goodwill in recent years in allowing travel and goods to go into and out of Gaza, higher than before the Hamas takeover. The Palestinian response was a massacre, one supported by most Palestinians.

Israel doesn't need to be lectured on the "benefits" of improving the lives of Gazans. It learned exactly how much they were appreciated. Nothing Israel does would make Palestinians like it any better, and evidence shows that the terrorists take full advantage of any loosening of rules. Israel's allowing tens of thousands of Gaza workers into Israel resulted in Hamas having detailed maps of the kibbutzim surrounding Gaza.

It’s therefore important that those of us supporting Israel in its time of need encourage a strategy that can incapacitate Hamas while minimizing further civilian casualties.

How, exactly? I'm sure if Barack Obama has a plan on destroying Hamas without hurting civilians that Israel hasn't thought of, it would be welcomed by the Israeli government.

But he doesn't. The IDF lawyers and Israel's High Court and Israel's government have spent far more time on these issues than Obama ever has. They know the downsides of killing civilians while attacking terrorists better than Obama does.

That's why this article, supposedly advice to a friend, is so patronizing. Obama is trying to tie Israel's hands behind its back and say, go ahead, defend yourself.

Israel doesn't need such friends.

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10/24 Links Pt1: A Record of Pure, Predatory Sadism; Ceasefire advocates are Hamas’s useful idiots; Israel slams UN chief for saying Hamas attack ‘did not occur in vacuum’

From Ian:

A Record of Pure, Predatory Sadism

The videos show pure, predatory sadism; no effort to spare those who pose no threat; and an eagerness to kill nearly matched by eagerness to disfigure the bodies of the victims. In several clips, the Hamas killers fire shots into the heads of people who are already dead. They count corpses, taking their time, and then shoot them again. Some of the clips I had not previously seen simply show the victims in a state of terror as they wait to be murdered, or covered with bits of their friends and loved ones as they are loaded into trucks and brought to Gaza as hostages. There was no footage of rape, although there was footage of young women huddling in fear and then being executed in a leisurely manner.

Edelstein said that the IDF chose to show the footage out of necessity. It is not every day that snuff films of Jews are shown at an IDF screening hall. (The original site of the screening was a commercial theater, which would have been even worse.) “What we shared with you,” Edelstein said, searching for words, “you should know it.” And he said he struggled to understand how some journalists could present the IDF and Hamas as comparable. This footage would refute that false equivalence.

“We are not looking for kids to kill them,” he said. “We have to share it with you so no one will have an idea that someone is equal to another.”

To me the most disturbing section was not visual at all. Like the clip of the father and his boys hunted in their pajamas, it was upsetting in part because it showed a relationship between parent and child. The clip is just a phone call—placed by a terrorist to his family back in Gaza. He tells his father that he is calling from a Jewish woman’s phone. (The phone recorded the call.) He tells his father that his son is now a “hero” and that “I killed 10 Jews with my own hands.” And he tells his family, about a dozen times, that they should open up WhatsApp on his phone, because he has sent photographs to prove what he has done. “Put on Mom!” he says. “Your son is a hero!”

His parents, I noticed, are not nearly as enthusiastic as he is. I believe that the mom says “praise be to God” at one point, which could be gratitude for her son’s crimes or pure reflex, indicating her loss for words to match her son’s unspeakable acts. They do not question what their son has done; they do not scold him. They tell him to come back to Gaza. They fear for his safety. He says, amid rounds of “Allahu akbar,” that he intends “victory or martyrdom”—which the parents must understand means that he will never come home. From their muted replies I wonder whether they also understand that even if he did come home, he would do so as a disgusting and degraded creature, and that it might be better for him not to.

Fearing denial and disinformation, Israel shows journalists raw footage of Hamas attacks

On Monday morning, Roxane Runel posted a photograph to Instagram of two Israeli military officers addressing a crowd of reporters in an auditorium. Behind them is a giant television screen.

“Press conference between the international media and the Israeli army after it disseminated images and recordings of the Oct. 7 attacks,” Runel, a reporter for France’s M6 television channel, wrote across the photo, touting an upcoming broadcast. “Why? What is at stake?”

Runel, who has reported from several countries, has already interviewed relatives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, which killed and wounded thousands. Yet in the middle of Monday’s screening of the attack footage, she was one of a number of journalists who stepped out early.

“It was too much,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I knew coming here that the hardest thing for me would not be the images but the sound, because you can close your eyes if the images are too much.”

Runel was one of about 200 journalists who attended the screening, which the Israeli government billed as raw and unedited audio and video taken from Hamas terrorists’ body cameras and phones as they massacred communities on Israel’s border with Gaza. In addition to clips of Hamas attackers shooting people, the 43-minute compilation contained graphic images of children being murdered, bodies burned, civilians being mowed down and other atrocities.

Gruesome photos and videos have circulated online in the two weeks after the attack, along with harrowing accounts of the violence visited upon Israelis. The images have become so ubiquitous that Jewish day schools in the United States cautioned students to delete their social media apps to avoid seeing them, while journalists and other public figures have expressed ambivalence about sharing them.

The IDF has taken delegations of foreign journalists into some of the hardest-hit communities, with one spokesperson saying just days after the attack, “Walking through here is like Eisenhower walking through Bergen-Belsen and seeing the destruction and carnage. The world needs to witness this firsthand.”

Jonathan Tobin: Ceasefire advocates are Hamas’s useful idiots

The choice between Hamas and Israel is not complex. It is one between an Islamist tyranny and a democratic state, between a group whose Western ideology isn’t merely alien to Western thought but steeped in what can only be described as evil. The comparison between Hamas and ISIS is apt; they are both modern-day Nazi movements that share an eliminationist mentality when it comes to Jews and the Jewish state.

The destruction of the Hamas regime is not merely a difficult policy option that will generate criticism from Western humanitarians, as well as hysteria on the “Arab street” and throughout the Muslim world. It is a moral imperative and should be treated no differently from the implacable determination of the West to wipe out the ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria, or the Allies goal to destroy the regimes of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II.

In neither of those examples did the toll of civilian casualties, however tragic it may be, serve as a deterrent to pursuing the goal of victory over those evil entities.

In Mosul in 2017, when Iraqi and Allied forces recaptured Mosul from ISIS with the assistance of the United States, as many as 11,000 civilians were killed in the fighting inside the city. And some 800,000 German civilians were killed during the Allied bombings of Germany. On top of that, perhaps 150,000 civilians were killed during the 1945 invasions of Germany that ended with, in addition to the fighting elsewhere, a brutal house-to-house battle in Berlin.

We know that in neither of those cases did those seeking the end of those regimes take as much care in avoiding civilian deaths as Israel does now. Yet those casualty numbers were not terrible enough to render the wars to destroy ISIS and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi murder machine immoral undertakings.

The same moral calculus must be applied to the war in Gaza.

Contrary to Kristof’s despicable attempt at moral equivalence, Israel doesn’t seek to kill Arab children to make Israeli kids safe. He should know that a regime that murders and beheads Jewish infants cannot be allowed to hide behind the Palestinian children that they have endangered by launching this war. And those who would let it do so are not demonstrating wisdom or superior morals to those correctly demanding Hamas’s elimination.

Western minds raised on moral relativism and uncomfortable with the concept that some movements and governments are evil rather than merely misguided or mistaken. That is why they find a war that can only end in the complete defeat of Hamas—no matter the cost—to be in conflict with their understanding about how the world works.

Still, it’s much simpler than all that. If, despite condemnations of terrorism, you advocate for policies that will enable Hamas to emerge alive and well from the murderous rampage it undertook on Oct. 7—and which started this war—then you are their unwitting accomplices and as reprehensible as those who cry in the streets for more Jewish blood to be spilled.

Two antisemitic articles in major Egyptian daily newspaper today

Al Masry al Youm, an influential and non-partisan Egyptian newspaper, published at least two antisemitic articles today alone.

One summarizes a book about Jews called “The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and the Sunnah,” by the late Imam Dr. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi who was the head of Al-Azhar.

Tantawi said part of his motivation to write this book was to expose Jewish lies. The book says that examples of their corruption on earth include murder, assassination, espionage, concealment behind religions, inciting strife and wars, and spreading vice. It says that Jews deserved all of the expulsions from different countries through history because of their corruption.

The book also says that Judaism says that Jews have the right to steal from someone who is not a Jew, to deceive him, to lie to him, and to kill him if they are confident that their crimes will not be discovered.

The last chapter says the Jews did not learn their lesson from Nazi Germany, and they are continuing in the Nazi path in how they treat Palestinians. Which is obviously the reason this book written years ago is being featured in today's newspaper.

Another op-ed describes Jews who moved to Palestine as "parasites:"

If we use the medical language, I can say that what happened in Palestine is similar to a parasitic infection. Scientifically, a parasite is a living organism that lives on or inside another living organism and benefits from it, and this is what happened...

This is a quick overview of this parasitic creature, which has wreaked havoc on Earth, under the cover of the United States and its European allies.

This kind of thing is published daily in Arab media. The incitement against Jews spreads to the Arabic speakers in the West and from there the Palestinian "intellectuals" re-frame this hate into the language of progressivism and human rights, to spread antisemitism in the West as well. And this is allowed because they are only describing their "lived experiences" so antisemitism gets a pass.

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Two weeks ago, pop star Madonna posted on her Instagram:

What is Happening in Israel is Devastating.. Watching all of these families and especially children being herded, assaulted and murdered in the streets is Heartbreaking.
Imagine if this was happening to you??
It’s Un-fathomable.
Conflicts can never be resolved with violence. Unfortunately Humanity does not understand this Universal truth. Has Never Understood it. We live in a World Ravaged by Hate.
My heart goes out to Israel. To Families and Homes that have been destroyed. To children who are lost.
To Innocent Victims who have Been Killed.
To All who are Suffering or who will suffer from this conflict.
Im Praying For you. I am aware that this is the work of Hamas and there are many innocent people in Palestine who do not support this terrorist organization. This Tragic attack will only cause more suffering for everyone
Let us all Pray. For Israel. 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱For Peace. ♥️ For The World.

Immediately, her IG was filled with anti-Israel invective, saying not only that she was not mentioning Palestinians but that she must be anti-Palestinian for posting something expressing sympathy for Israeli civilians who had been slaughtered..

After she also expressed sympathy for all victims at a concert in London, as well as the young Palestinian boy who was horrifically murdered in Chicago, Haaretz reports, "Her remarks set off an explosion on social media, with hateful comments expressing doubt about her skills as a mother and calling her 'Kabbalah bitch.' Since then, Madonna’s security detail has been upgraded."

This incident indicates that the most extreme form of Arab zero-sum mentality about Israel has infected the West. If people are sympathetic to Jews, the thinking goes, they must hate Palestinians. You have to choose a side and put all your energies into opposing the other side.

This is why so many anti-Israel demonstrations were organized and held within 24 hours of the news of Black Shabbat. Israel-haters believe that anyone expressing any humanity towards innocent Israeli civilians is the enemy and therefore it must be countered with a huge anti-Israel publicity campaign. To the zero-summers, there can only be one victim who can elicit sympathy; if people feel sorry for Jews then they are by definition anti-Palestinian.

This is mainstream Palestinian thinking, and before the Abraham Accords, it was mainstream Arab thinking as well. One of my favorite examples came from a Gulf News article by a UAE political science professor in 2006 that argued that - despite southern Lebanon having been decimated by war with Israel - it was a victory for Arabs:

Logically, when Israel is in a worse condition, which is the case now, Arabs are definitely better off.

Although Israel was not routed in the battle, it surely seems defeated and frustrated. It is also living in a state of doubt and comprehensive review of its military and political performance during the war.

The equation of victory and defeat between the Arabs and the Zionist state has always been and will remain zero equation.

This mentality permeates all levels of Palestinian society. Anything that is good for Israel - like the Abraham Accords ot the US Embassy in Jerusalem - is considered obviously bad for Palestinians, even if it does not affect Palestinians at all. The extreme anger at UNRWA plans to teach about the Holocaust in their schools is one obvious example of this quite sick mindset.

Most scholarly papers on zero-sum thinking look at the fallacy that it applies to economics - that if someone makes money, then others must be losing. The idea that all boasts can rise in a growing economy is not considered.

But the Palestinian mentality that there is a limited supply of world sympathy and feeling bad about dead Jews takes away from being pro-Palestinian has taken hold in the West. Palestinians must corner the market on victimhood and tears.

As the case of Madonna shows, the psychosis is so embedded even in the West that anyone who feels sorry for victims of a massacre becomes the enemy and must be attacked.

Similarly, the massacre itself is a victory because it hurt the enemy - "winning" trumps morality. Israel haters welcomes the massacre as schadenfreude even as they claimed that what Palestinians experience every day is worse.

If Western nations are adopting this backwards thinking, they are in danger of turning into third-world nations themselves.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Half of American people under 35 think that the massacre of Israelis by Hamas can be justified by Palestinian "grievances."

Jews in America are in serious trouble.

In the latest Harris/Harvard poll, 76% of American voters say that "the Hamas killing of 1200 Israeli civilians on Israel cannot be justified by the grievances of Palestinians" and fully 24% say it can.

A majority of respondents, between the ages of 18-24, 51%, feel that the mass murder of Israeli Jews is justified.

And 48% of those between 25-34 agree the slaughter was justified.

What. The. Actual. F......

Half of young Americans think that killing Jewish civilians is perfectly OK - as long as, you know, they deserve it.

And, yes, they know this is about Jews. Because the very next question asked if those same Hamas attacks on Jews "genocidal." And in this case, over 2/3 of those 18-34 agreed that, yes, these attacks were genocidal against Jews.

Meaning that a significant number of people under 34 think that genocide is OK against Jewish civilians as long as there is a strong enough "grievance."

The language of "grievance" indicates that the people who hold immoral, antisemitic opinions are overwhelmingly on the political Left. And the crosstabs of the poll give hints that this is indeed the case: 36% of self-defined "liberals" of all ages agreed that the attack was justified, compared with 16% of "conservatives."

Perhaps more concerning is that the people with the highest levels of education are most likely to agree, with 29% of college grads justifying Hamas murder vs. 21% of those who didn't graduate.

The young people who are best educated are the most likely to be antisemites. Not just antisemites - they justify the most extreme kinds of violence against Jews.

For years, we have been told ad nauseum that the only antisemitism out there is from the extreme Right. And of course that exists. But there is a serious problem where America's young people are being taught immoral lessons on campus, where the most heinous crimes imaginable are perfectly OK as long as the victims are considered to be "privileged" and the slaughterers are "victims."

According to this younger generation, does this justification to murder and rape apply to American Zionists - Jews - as well? It is not a difficult leap to get to that conclusion, when your entire moral sense is so perverted to begin with.

People wonder how Germans could have become such enthusiastic murderers of Jews. This poll shows exactly how: teach a generation of young people that Jews are oppressors, and the oppressed have a moral authority to murder every man, woman and child.

Decades of anti-Israel propaganda has borne fruit for Jew-haters. They always claimed it was merely a political position, but Jews knew it was personal. And this poll proves it. Jews have not been "criticized" by anti-Zionists, but demonized. That demonization has turned into tacitly supporting genocide.

The trend of younger people more likely to justify a genocidal attack on Jews means that things are not going to get any better in this country. It also shows that all the efforts to stop antisemitism with liberal education have not only failed, but may have backfired.

October 7 was a watershed for Israeli Jews. But it may end up being just as significant for the future of American Jewry as well. If nearly half of Americans under 35 believe that killing Jewish civilians is OK, then the future for American Jews is as bleak as it has ever been.

One only has to glance at social media to see that the demonization of Zionist Jews has reached new levels. This poll shows that this will only get worse.

(h/t @JonSutz )

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

10/23 Links Pt2: Col Kemp: Time to debunk the media's anti-Israel narrative: You have blood on your hands; Israel confirms Hamas released 2 hostages

From Ian:

Konstantin Kisin: The Day the Delusions Died

When Hamas terrorists crossed over the border with Israel and murdered 1,400 innocent people, they destroyed families and entire communities. They also shattered long-held delusions in the West.

A friend of mine joked that she woke up on October 7 as a liberal and went to bed that evening as a 65-year-old conservative. But it wasn’t really a joke and she wasn’t the only one. What changed?

The best way to answer that question is with the help of Thomas Sowell, one of the most brilliant public intellectuals alive today. In 1987, Sowell published A Conflict of Visions. In this now-classic, he offers a simple and powerful explanation of why people disagree about politics. We disagree about politics, Sowell argues, because we disagree about human nature. We see the world through one of two competing visions, each of which tells a radically different story about human nature.

Those with “unconstrained vision” think that humans are malleable and can be perfected. They believe that social ills and evils can be overcome through collective action that encourages humans to behave better. To subscribers of this view, poverty, crime, inequality, and war are not inevitable. Rather, they are puzzles that can be solved. We need only to say the right things, enact the right policies, and spend enough money, and we will suffer these social ills no more. This worldview is the foundation of the progressive mindset.

By contrast, those who see the world through a “constrained vision” lens believe that human nature is a universal constant. No amount of social engineering can change the sober reality of human self-interest, or the fact that human empathy and social resources are necessarily scarce. People who see things this way believe that most political and social problems will never be “solved”; they can only be managed. This approach is the bedrock of the conservative worldview.

Hamas’s barbarism—and the explanations and celebrations throughout the West that followed their orgy of violence—have forced an overnight exodus from the “unconstrained” camp into the “constrained” one.

Col Kemp: Time to debunk the media's anti-Israel narrative: You have blood on your hands

Discussing the Al Alhi hospital incident with a British reporter, I was told the accusation against Israel was made because it was “a fast-moving news situation”, and that corrections were published by many papers and broadcasters as the situation became clearer. But “clarification” usually meant substituting the false assertions against Israel with reports that “both sides traded blame”. As though there can be any equivalence between a proscribed terrorist murder gang and the official statements of democratically accountable armed forces.

I got no answer from the reporter on why Hamas statements were automatically given immediate credence, including the grossly exaggerated casualty figures churned out by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. When media did correct their fake news it was too late and their stories had already been eagerly recycled, including by politicians such as Canada’s Justin Trudeau and former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as well as human rights organizations like Amnesty International, well known for their anti-Israel bias.

Such stories are also seized on in the streets, leading to mass protests, violence and even terrorism. Three days after media accused the IDF of the Al Ahli incident, the Daily Telegraph reported that a terrorist attack occurred in Britain; when arrested the perpetrator told police he had done it for “Palestine”. No further details have yet been published, supposedly for legal reasons.

In the last few days, Jewish students at colleges in the U.S. and UK have been set on and physically attacked as a result of disinformation spread by the media, which stokes and inflames pre-existing anti-Zionist movements so rife on many university campuses. Police in London report a 1,353% increase in antisemitic offences this month compared to the same period last year.

During a Sky News interview a few years ago, I contested the standard falsehoods about illegal occupation, illegal settlements and the old trope of “Israeli apartheid”. Afterwards, a veteran Sky Middle East correspondent told me privately that he agreed with me. I asked him why, then, did his reporting always reflect the opposite perspective? He told me if it did not he would be fired.

This sums up the intractable problem that dominates the editorial policies of the BBC, Sky and so much of U.S. and European media. That is the lie that Israel is an illegitimate state that deliberately oppresses innocent, peace-loving Palestinians whose land has been stolen. They may not say as much publicly, but the dominant view, even after such horrific attacks as 7th October, is that the Israelis had it coming, or at least have a major share in the blame.

The flimsy mask seemed to slip last week when Sky News journalist Kay Burley claimed the head of the Palestinian Authority mission to the UK had said Israel “had it coming”, a remark he did not make.

Perhaps a case of projection of her own views and so many of her media colleagues? The only way to end the all-pervasive anti-Israel bias in so much of the media is to shake their underlying narrative, which forms part of the greatest slur campaign in history. And how, exactly, do you do that?

NGO Monitor: NGO Atrocity Inversion: False Accusations of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing to Distract from Hamas Massacre

On October 7, Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups perpetrated the world’s deadliest one-day massacre in more than 20 years. The horrific murder, torture, rape, desecration of bodies, and kidnapping of civilians revealed the depravity and evil of Hamas, as well as those who celebrated and justified the slaughter. This posed a challenge for the network of anti-Israel NGOs, many funded by European governments, that try to paint Israel as the worst violator of human rights in the world. In the aftermath of the brutal pogrom, how could Israel continue to be portrayed as worse than Hamas? The solution of these NGOs is to repeat the accusations that Israel is guilty of even more outrageous and extreme international crimes: genocide and ethnic cleansing. The only way to make Israel look worse than Hamas was to allege that it was acting to “eradicate the Palestinian people.” This atrocity inversion – whereby the real crimes of Hamas are projected onto Israel – is a central piece of the demonization campaign, and will play a key role as NGOs and their allies push the UN and ICC to investigate and indict Israelis.

Brendan O'Neill: The Islamo-left is a menace to Jews and decency

This suicide pact between desperate leftists and radical religionists that would string them up given half the chance has now reached an unspeakable nadir. A ‘day of celebration’ is how one of the editors at Novara Media described Hamas’s invasion of Israel. ‘Rejoice’, said the newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party. Hamas’s actions were ‘invigorating’, said a radical Cornell professor. And let’s not forget the unspoken apologism of marching alongside extremists who chant ‘Allahu Akbar’ and call for ‘holy war’ on Israel. That, too, speaks to how thoroughly the left has accommodated to the carnival of lethal reaction that radical Islam represents.

‘But Israel is bombing Gaza, do you really expect us to protest against Hamas?’, leftists will ask. Yes. That is precisely what I expect you to do. A left that took seriously its Enlightenment traditions would absolutely be on the streets supporting the hammering of Hamas. Of this socially regressive, apocalyptically violent movement that is committed to killing Jews. And which is racist in the extreme. And which started the current war. And which is just as happy to sacrifice the lives of Palestinians as it is the lives of Israeli Jews – Hamas knew full well Gazans would die when it invaded Israel and murdered hundreds of its people. Opposing Hamas should be paramount for anyone who believes in secularism, freedom and peace for both Israel and Palestine.

The West’s Islamo-left is playing the exact role allotted to it by Hamas. Hamas banked on getting the cultural elites of the West on to the streets in a frenzy of existential loathing for Israel, and it has got its way. What are a few thousand Israeli and Palestinian lives in comparison with the brilliant PR hit of goading the West’s influencers and luvvies to take to the streets alongside Islamists to demand more punishment of Israel? Our witless chattering classes have no idea of the cog-like role they are playing in Hamas’s vain and demented warmongering on Israel.

Here’s the thing. If you are agitating against Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza but you have not condemned Hamas’s genuinely genocidal terrorism against the Jews of southern Israel, it is possible you are anti-Semitic. If you march with Islamists who referred to Hamas’s slaughter of Israeli Jews as a ‘day of good news’, it is possible you have sided with racial hatred. If you say ‘ceasefire now’ but you don’t say ‘release the hostages’, it is possible you are demonstrating to the world that you value Jewish lives less than other lives. Solidarity with Jews is the priority of all true progressives right now, especially following yesterday’s confirmation that our state, our institutions and the left have abandoned Jews in favour of the deathly embrace of radical Islam’s ‘feeling of revolt’.

CAIR is a terrorist supporting group right here in America - and it never condemned Hamas

I just received a press release from the Council on American-Islamic Relations declaring that they consider Israel's attacks on Hamas to be "genocide."

It is disgusting. CAIR fully accepts Hamas' lies about how many were killed.

Looking back, their press releases since the massacre on October 7 have been truly disgusting. The very first one, drafted when the first news of a huge attack on Israeli civilians were being published, was a blatant attempt to change the subject and imply that no matter what happened to the Jews, it is their own fault.

It was an obvious attempt to exonerate Hamas and blame Jews for being massacred.

The following Monday, their first statement was more of the same, "CAIR Urges Congress to Address Root Cause of Mideast Violence - Israel's Occupation of Palestinian Lands." They reluctantly said that anyone calling up their representatives should first "acknowledge the loss of lives and recognize the humanity on both sides, including Israelis and Palestinians" before urging Congress to do exactly what Hamas wants it to do: handcuff Israel.

CAIR never condemned Hamas. Not once - not even when Hamas was blowing up buses and pizza shops in the second intifada.

This is even though the only genocide in the Middle East was Hamas' attempt to murder every Jewish man, woman, senior citizen an child it could find.

This is even though CAIR claims that it always condemns terrorism, no matter who the guilty party is.

It never condemned the rapes or murders or kidnappings. It never called on Hamas to release the hostages.

This last part is interesting because CAIR has called for the release of other hostages, even those held by Muslims in Iraq and by the Taliban.

Apparently, CAIR condones the attacks on Israelis. There is no other explanation.

Moreover, CAIR condemned Israel for the Islamic Jihad rocket that fell in the parking lot of a hospital. There has been no correction even as every major government and independent researchers all agree that Israel had nothing to do with it.

Remember, CAIR was consulted on the US strategy to fight antisemitism.

But its website makes it quite clear: CAIR implicitly supports Hamas and everything it does.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Rai al Youm, a news and opinion website founded and led by Palestinian British journalist Abdel Bari Atwan (who used to be a fixture on the BBC), often publishes blatant Jew-hate. This article by Dr.. Ishib Ould Abati is right in line with the general editorial direction of the site.

Lowlights:

The Jewish kingdom of lies and the normalized kingdom of Zionism!

It must be noted that Martin Luther spent twenty years trying to convince the Jews of his reformist call in order for them to back down from their policies of usurious trade, deception, cheating, lying, corrupting public morals, despising everyone who is not Jewish, stealing children, and eating pastries with their blood on the anniversary of the exodus of Moses, peace be upon him, from Egypt.

On May 14, 1948, the state of the Zionist entity was established in Palestine, and with the permission of the One and Only One, they will be expelled from the entire Arab world and the region will be cleansed of their evil, and of the evil of their supporters.

Martin Luther was the outstanding thinker of his time, but despite that, he fell into the deception of the Jews for twenty years before he criticized the religion of the Jews, their abhorrent behavior, and the policies of their rabbis in which they combined religion with usurious trade, with which they impoverished European and human societies, as they are today.

So when will the Arab politicians, and indeed America’s “agents,” wake up after fifty years of deception - and not after twenty years, as happened with Martin Luther - which the Zionists have led them into since the “Camp David” Accords, Wadi Araba, Oslo, and pagan Abrahamism?!

Will the “Al-Aqsa Flood” be the actual beginning of the migration of Zionists from Palestine, as we expect and hope, or will the control of the Arab oil and gas devils, the sectarian warlords, steal this achievement and hand it over to America, just as they handed over to it the two American hostages who were taken out of Gaza without anything in return?

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

10/23 Links Pt1: IDF Screens Raw Footage of Hamas Terror Attack for Media; Hamas might release 50 hostages with dual citizenship

From Ian:

IDF shows foreign press Hamas bodycam videos, photos of murder, torture, decapitation

The Israeli government on Monday screened for 200 members of the foreign press some 43 minutes of harrowing scenes of murder, torture and decapitation from Hamas’s October 7 onslaught on southern Israel, in which over 1,400 people were killed, including raw videos from the terrorists’ bodycams.

The government said it had decided to show journalists part of its collected documentation in order to dispel what a spokesperson characterized as “a Holocaust-denial-like phenomenon happening in real-time,” as doubts have been raised around the world about some of the most horrific of Hamas’s atrocities.

Journalists were not permitted to record the screening, which took place on a closed military base.

The footage was collected from call recordings, security cameras, Hamas terrorists’ body cameras, victim dashboard cameras, Hamas and victims’ social media accounts, and cellphone videos taken by terrorists, victims and first responders. Over 1,000 civilians were slaughtered by the terrorists, and at least 224 people were abducted.

In one pair of videos that were screened, Hamas terrorists are seen dressed in IDF uniforms, flagging down passing cars and then shooting their occupants.

Dead bodies are dragged out of vehicles and left in the middle of the road after terrorists rifle through their belongings and in some cases steal the blood-soaked, bullet-ridden cars.

In another video, first responders are seen pouring bottled water over still-smoldering bodies, hoping to snuff out the remaining embers.

IDF hits Gaza tunnels; ground forces conduct raids ahead of offensive

The Israeli Air Force struck hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza in recent hours, including tunnels with terrorists in them, while infantry and armored corps conducted raids on the ground in the enclave in preparation for a wider ground offensive, the Israeli military stated on Monday.

Dozens of operational command centers housing Hamas and PIJ operatives were also hit, according to Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

Strikes were also conducted on targets that posed a threat to forces in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, including dozens of mortar and anti-tank missile launch sites, according to Hagari.

The raids into Gaza are being conducted by armored and infantry units against terror cells that were “preparing for our next stage,” while also seeking out information for hostages and the missing, Hagari said on Monday.

On Sunday, during a visit to the IAF’s Operations Command and Control Center, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “In terms of the operational aspects of maneuvering—at the end of the day, nothing will stop the IDF. It is a combination of two things: Our aerial capabilities and ground maneuvering. This should be our last maneuvering operation in Gaza, for the simple reason that afterwards there will be no more Hamas.”

Gallant added that “It may take a month, two or three, but at the end there will be no more Hamas. Prior to meeting our armed forces on the ground, the enemy [Hamas terrorists], will be faced with IAF strikes.”

On Sunday, one Israeli soldier was killed and three injured in an anti-tank missile attack on a tank and engineering vehicle during a raid in the Kissufim area.

Hamas might release 50 hostages with dual citizenship

The Hamas terrorist group may release 50 hostages with dual citizenship it holds in the Gaza Strip, “separate from any broader deal,” The New York Times reported on Monday, citing an Israeli military source.

Qatar and the United States are negotiating the release of abductees with dual nationality separately from those who have only Israeli citizenship, the report claimed.

Israeli senior officials have previously said that Israel is not involved in any kind of negotiations related to the release of the Israeli captives.

Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Monday that the military has so far confirmed that terrorists kidnapped 222 persons during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, in which 1,400 people were massacred in Israel and more than 4,500 were wounded.

On Friday, Hamas freed two hostages for what it called “humanitarian reasons.”

“Judith Tai Raanan and her daughter, Natalie Shoshana Raanan, were released by the terrorist organization Hamas,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office confirmed. The pair were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the Oct. 7 invasion of the western Negev.