That was the week that was

While Simchat Torah is the time when the Jewish people start a new year, with the recitation of the Five Books of Moses once again from the beginning, 

Never has a Jewish new year had such an auspicious beginning.

There is no looking back. 

After what occurred on this Simchat Torah, there can no longer be any illusion of a peace process with the PLO, which had fostered a coalition with Hamas, the entity which murdered 1200 Jews in  less than  five day, most of them unarmed civilians of all ages- men and women, boys and girls. 

The unkindest cut of = when the children’s communal bedroom in one of the kibbutzim overrun by Hamas was  opened a few days after the murders commenced , only to reveal a sight that no one  will ever forget;  Hamas had slit the throats and crushed the skulls of forty little Jewish children.

 To make matters worse, neither the Palestinian Authority nor the Saudi Arabian Kingdom would condemn mass murder of Jews at Jews at the hands of Hamas. 

So much for the delusion and illusion of a peace process with  either entity. 

Dr.  RONNI SHAKED, the journalist scholar of Islam who has guided my work for more than 25 years, assesses that Hamas had been preparing for the moment of infiltrating Israel for over 30 years  and gained momentum with Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2007. 

Since then, Hamas’s religious-nationalist fundamentalism, centered not around love for Islam but rather of total Jihad war against   Israel, Zionism, and Jews, while indoctrinating into the minds of the younger generation, from nursery school children to university students with genocidal terror

Hamas  did this through the new Palestinian education system, 

 Yassir Arafat had offered the education portfolio of the Palestinian Authority to Hamas, where they focused their efforts primarily through an informal education system, especially among refugees. 

They ran summer camps, military training camps for children and young people, sports clubs in mosques, military parades, and massive demonstrations showcasing their arsenal of weapons intended for use against Israel. They emphasized indoctrination with the right of a  tangible hope to return to Palestine, from which they were displaced between 1948 and 1953

The “right of return by force of arms”  was systematically embedded through brainwashing, including the use of visual aids, such as the construction of “The Return Park” in Gaza, featuring a railroad track over 1 km long leading to Jerusalemaifa, Acre, and Safed, or the beachfront benches in Gaza, each bearing the name of a Palestinian city or village that existed before 1948.

Hamas built  a military force  , sending dozens of Gazans  sent for training in Iran

Iranian military advisors worked in Gaza, Training camps were established, including the simulation of Israeli towns to prepare for attacks. 

Dr. Shaked’s research uncovered tunnels for access to launch combat operations, enabling movement within Gaza without exposure, command tunnels, and attack tunnels. 

Tunnels to the seashore were built to facilitate the free movement of Hamas’s naval commandos.

Rearmament was  done by smuggling weapons via tunnels along the Egyptian border or by sea. Simultaneously, with the help of engineers and weapon specialists trained in Iran, Pakistan, and even Indonesia, a military-industrial complex was established that produces not only rockets but also anti-tank missiles, explosive boats, and large explosive devices..

Did Israel know about this rearmament, the tunnels, the level of training, and the strengthening of Hamas militarily? 

That will be the subject of  the forthcoming investigation of  Israel intelligence community which was supposed to know how to combat terrorism.. 

The political leadership, headed by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu,  thought that peace on the part of Hamas would be achieved though economic benefits – such as allowing thousands of Gazans to enter Israel each day to work, and by providing electricity to the city. It also allowed Hamas to receive millions in cash from Qatar- with no conditions,. 

After this week’s attack, Hamas media declared  that “Israel has the Western weapons and aid, and we have Allah the Great.” 

Somehow, the IDF was  unprepared on Simchat Torah when a torrent of  white Toyota vans,  with machine guns mounted on the roof of the vehicles –loaded with Hamas combatants who broke through the Gaza fence in thirty places, murdering soldiers and civilians on their war path.  

The death toll of more than 1200 murdered Jews made this year’s Simchat Torah the Jewish Day Infamy. 

Meanwhile, public opinion in Israel is seething. 

People of Israel will settle for nothing less than the death of every Hamas combatant, 

 A judicial inquiry will determine why Israel intelligence was caught asleep at the wheel