Military forensic teams in Israel have examined bodies of victims of last week’s Hamas attack on communities around the Gaza Strip and found multiple signs of torture, rape and other atrocities, officers said on Saturday.
Around 1,300 bodies have been brought to an army base in Ramla in central Israel where forensic checks to determine the identity of the dead and the circumstances of their death are carried out by specialist teams.
Around 90% of the military dead have been identified and teams are half way through identifying civilians, said Rabbi Israel Weiss, former army chief rabbi, one of the officials overseeing the identification of the dead. He said many bodies showed signs of torture as well as rape.
“We’ve seen dismembered bodies with their arms and feet chopped off, people that were beheaded, a child that was beheaded,” a reserve warrant officer identified only by her first name of Avigayil told reporters.
She said multiple cases of rape were found by forensic examination of the bodies, which have been stored in refrigerated containers.
“We do the identification with all the means that we have,” said a military dentist, identified as Captain Maayan. “We see them in severe stages of abuse. We see gunshots and we see signs that are purely torture.”
The military personnel overseeing the identification process didn’t present any forensic evidence in the form of pictures or medical records.
Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, has denied accusations of abuse.
Hundreds of Hamas gunmen, some on motorcycles, broke through barriers around Gaza in the early hours of Oct. 7 and tore through nearby communities, attacking a large outdoor dance party as well homes and military bases and abducting more than 120 Israelis and foreigners.
The assault caused profound shock in Israel due to both the unprecedented number of dead from a single day as well as the graphic footage that has emerged from the towns and kibbutzes that were overrun.
In response, Israeli jets and artillery have bombarded the Gaza Strip for days, killing more than 2,200 Palestinians and destroying thousands of buildings ahead of an expected ground invasion.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has compared Hamas to Islamic State, which gained worldwide notoriety for its campaign of public beheadings in countries like Syria and Iraq.
Reporting by Peter Hirschberg; Editing by Daniel Wallis
Initial medical report on the condition of the hostages and missing persons: Immediate danger to life and unbearable suffering for some of the hostages and missing persons.
This emerges from an initial medical report detailing the physical condition of a significant number of the hostages and missing persons.
The report, presented today to International Red Cross representatives in Israel who visited the Families Headquarters, reveals the horrific situation: Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis patients, people with special needs, infants, and the elderly are enduring extreme conditions as time runs critically short.
Examples of critical cases:
– A 9-month-old baby being fed only baby formula in need of proper nutrition and vital baby products.
– Children ages 5, 13, and 16, with autism, requiring special assistance.
– A 23-year-old woman with untreated gunshot and wounded people with amputated limbs.
– A 27-year-old woman with Crohn’s disease requiring biological treatment and medical nutritional therapy, at risk of worsening.
– A man with a severe autoimmune disease requiring hospital biological treatment, at risk of worsening and death.
– A 60-year-old man with multiple sclerosis, who has difficulty walking.
– An 85-year-old woman with heart failure, kidney disease, asthma, and cardiac arrhythmias at risk of developing blood clots, fluid retention, and death.
– An elderly woman with Parkinson’s, dementia, who suffers from being underweight, at risk of worsening and death.
*Summary (the full medical report compiled by Prof. Hagai Levin is attached for your review):*
The report submitted to the Red Cross by the medical team headed by Prof. Hagai Levin describes the condition of the hostages and missing persons suffering unbearable and life-threatening torture due to lack of access to medical care. According to the report, they are undergoing indescribable suffering and need urgent treatment with life-saving medications and care for injuries. Based on initial information: Many wounded (after amputations; severe injuries from rape), medical conditions such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and cancer; and patients with special needs such as autism, dementia, and infants.
A detailed file with information on over 150 hostages and missing persons was sent on 14.10.2023 to the contact person of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and then an additional update was sent.
The full medical report is attached for your review.
With a very heavy heart, I am called to share with you the Official Statement by UNRWA Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, on today’s tragic developments in the Gaza Strip:
“As Gaza remains under heavy bombardment with Israel tightening its grip over the overpopulated Strip, it is left to the UN and humanitarians to protect civilians.
“The call from the Israeli Forces to move more than 1 million civilians living in northern Gaza within 24 hours is horrendous. This will only lead to unprecedented levels of misery and further push people in Gaza into abyss.
“Since 7 October, over 423,000 people have already been displaced. Of them, more than 270,000 have taken refuge in UNRWA shelters, where basic food, medicine and support is provided to retain dignity and a glimmer of hope.
“The scale and speed of the unfolding humanitarian crisis is bone-chilling. Gaza is fast becoming a hell hole and is on the brink of collapse.
“There is no exception, all parties must uphold the laws of war; humanitarian assistance must be provided at all times to civilians.
“In Gaza, more than 2 million people are caught up in this conflict. UNRWA is struggling to fulfil its mandate.
“I urge all parties and those with influence over them to put an end to this tragedy and provide immediate and unconditional humanitarian access and protection to the civilian, among them far too many women and children.
“The time for humanity to prevail is now”.
, Thank you for always supporting UNRWA and Palestine Refugees.
We are honoured to have you by our side.
UNRWA Spokesperson / Director of External Relations & Communications
I wrote to you on the 24 May 2021(see attached) regarding the Dyson Report and the Balen Report of 2004 in to the BBC’s deliberate manipulation of facts and asked what steps HM government Department of Justice and/or Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport intend to take to investigate the cover up that prevented the publication of the Balen Report. Some two and a half years later I still await your response and that of the ministry.
I have over the last six days listened to, viewed the TV reports, as well read on their web site the coverage the BBC has provided regarding the POGROM that the terrorist organization Hamas perpetrated on Israel.
Firstly, the absolute failure of the journalists, newscasters, international editors to identify Hamas as terrorists but using terminology as ‘gunmen”, militants and fighters instead of TERRORISTS depicts anti-Semitic racial bias – for any other people be it bombers in the UK, USA etc. such actions would be classified as terrorism, the exception being made by the BBC comes when their aim is to kill Jews in COLD BLOOD.
The BBC throws up the excuse it is written in their Editorial Guidelines – exactly who wrote these guidelines and who approved this utter nonsense and why have they not been rescinded in the last six days. Who failed to take this decision must be the question that the Secretary of State Department of Culture, Media and Sport must immediately address as well as Members of Parliament.
On Tuesday morning on the BBC Radio 4 Today program the BBC International Editor Bowen was asked by the anchor in Jerusalem, Martha Kearney, to describe the scene at Kfar Aza but he somehow managed to wiggle out of mentioning the BEHEADINGS of the 40 plus babies and children and put over his political views of the situation, if he was such an expert he would be advising the UK government instead of working for the BBC! This is not acceptable, Bowen has over the decades demonstrated a pro-Arab stance and as such his reporting is blatantly bias against Israel and Jews. When I heard this broadcast I was utterly flabbergasted that this man has the temerity to turn around facts and truth. This is all clearly documented by Camera UK on its web site https://camera-uk.org/2023/10/12/bbcs-bowen
does-whataboutery-in-kfar-aza/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=es. It is time he was immediately removed from his post.
As a former employee of the BBC you are well aware of the workings of the BBC. It would appear they are more concerned with pacifying the UK and international Islamic population.
I am aware of the Prime Minister’s views on this but it is totally unsatisfactory for this situation to continue. Accordingly, I should like to question what immediate steps HM Government intends to take to rectify the situation given that their reporting incites and is responsible for enhancing international anti-Semitism.
Please don’t, as you have often done in the past given me your personal views, as part of your duty under the Representation of the People Act to your constituents this letter must be forwarded to the relevant government departments for a response.
Yours sincerely
24 May 2021
Dr M Offord MP
House of Commons
London
BY Email
Dear Dr Offord,
Lord Dyson Report into the Princess Diana Newsnight interview
Lord Dyson identified serious breaches of honesty within the organization including a cover up within the upper echelons of the BBC that is extremely disturbing.
This report covered events some 25 years ago and totally discredits the honesty and integrity of the BBC and clearly identifies the lengths it has gone to withhold honest disclosure. As such it indicates that it has been far from objective in its reporting.
As a result of serious complaints regarding the BBC’s subjective reporting of the Arab – Israel conflict the organization commissioned the Balen investigation. The corporation, despite it being publically funded, has refused to disclose the contents of the findings of the 20000 word investigation into the 2004 Balen Report.
Given the disclosure contained in the Dyson Report there is clear evidence that there is a cover up since the corporation refuses to publish the document, making ridiculous claims as to its “right” to do so. I am aware that you are a former employee of the BBC and may be aware of some of the inner workings of the organization, particularly within the news gathering and distribution in respect to the World at One, etc, but the public has the right to know as Lord Dyson disclosed..
Under the circumstances prevailing on the basis of the disclosures within the Dyson Report I should like to enquire what steps HM government Department of Justice and/or Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport intend to take to investigate the cover up that prevented the publication of the Balen Report.
On the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War the enemies of Israel and the Jewish People chose another religious holyday to launch their version of the final solution.
Like the Amalekites who attacked the vulnerable Israelites in the wilderness as they made their way to the Promised Land their modern-day incarnations displayed their barbaric intentions for all to see.
An overwhelming desire to murder and maim Jews is at the root of their agenda. This is a fact that no amount of woke political correctness on the part of progressive apologists can cover up. If there had been even the slightest doubt in the past, this latest genocidal attempt should have dispelled it.
The tragedy is that lessons of the past were never learnt and even now in the face of overwhelming evidence, there are still those whose wishy-washy responses stand out.
The time has finally arrived when not only must the facts be clearly and fearlessly articulated but resolute action must be taken to make sure that the terrorists involved can never again perpetrate their murderous objectives.
Mealy-mouthed politicians must be outed, hypocritical experts must be exposed and tendentious media reporting must be countered.
In other words, and in plain English, the gloves need to come off and we need to finish the job once and for all.
Obviously, there will have to be inquiries at the end of this war about the various factors which preceded this conflict and why Israel was once again taken by surprise.
Some vital questions need to be posed in the midst of the ongoing conflict. If we do not learn from past mistakes and false assumptions the results at the end of this round will be yet another dismal failure which, in turn, will inevitably lead to future misery.
Let’s get a few things straight right from the beginning.
Any inane thought that some people may still have that a Palestinian State is the answer to any strife in the region should be consigned to the garbage bin. It never was going to be a solution but critics have always been derided as warmongers and merchants of fear. Yet, a cold hard understanding of the root causes of the conflict reveals a basic truth. The one and only reason we have arrived at the situation we face today is because of the fundamental refusal to recognize any sort of Jewish legitimacy in the indigenous Jewish homeland.
This rejectionist policy has been at the core of Islamic terror against Jews regaining their sovereignty. No matter what sort of compromise has been proposed it has always been rejected by an Arab leadership which instead preferred to incite their followers to murder and destroy. That in turn led to attempts at aborting Israel’s rebirth and subsequent recurring wars.
Thus was born the pernicious fantasy that each and every disaster suffered by the Arabs of mandated Palestine was as a result of someone else’s crime. This enduring myth, fostered and coddled by revisionist peddlers effectively absolves the Arabs from any sort of responsibility for their own obsessive hatred of any sort of Jewish presence.
While some in the Islamic world have obviously in the meantime managed to face reality, the plain and simple fact remains that those touted as peace partners are still mired in their own manufactured cesspool of hate. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah remain firmly committed to the destruction of Israel and the murder of its citizens. Fatah, the PLO and the PA pretend otherwise. This is a sham as their rhetoric conclusively proves.
As reported by PMW, the official PA daily media proclaimed: “Israel is a bastard State established to realize the will and strategy of its lords from the colonialist capitalist western states.” “The Jews defile our Jerusalem and holy places.” Fatah: “Strike the sons of apes of pigs… slaughter everyone who is Israeli”
This follows the massacres of Israelis by Hamas. Can the evil ideology which motivates these people truly be the basis for the establishment of a fake two State solution living in democratic peace and harmony? How detached from reality can one be to still believe this nonsense? Yet the international community continues to burble this mantra even after the barbaric events of the past few days.
The media is a willing propagator of these lies and fables. Murderous terrorists are never described as such. They are laundered as “militants” or “fighters” and elevated to the exalted status of oppressed martyrs fighting for freedom.
Tiptoeing on eggshells in order not to appear too non politically correct has been the failed and preferred option of many. That failed strategy should have been ditched a long time ago in favour of hard-hitting truths. An assertion that “the residents of Gaza are not the enemy but only Hamas,” is a typical example. Of course, the residents of Gaza are the enemy. Who elected Hamas? Who participate in terror if not the residents of Gaza? It isn’t aliens from Mars. Trying to assert otherwise will not gain anyone any brownie points because in the eyes of the UN there is only one culprit.
Experts are now convinced that Iran has had a major hand in planning and training Hamas to launch its terror war. Who funds Hamas? The answer is Qatar and Iran. Who recently gifted US$6 billion to Iran as ransom money? What do you think the Iranians are going to do with this windfall? There are those who claim that there is no proof Iran had anything to do with the Hamas attack. Yet Colonel Kemp, a respected expert on security, has stated that “Iran and Russia are pulling the Hamas and Hezbollah strings and providing support.”
Russia has openly declared that it wants a closer relationship with Iran. So who do we prefer to trust?
When the first sirens wailed on Shabbat, I predicted that one of the first inanities which would be forthcoming from some apologists, would be a warning about “disproportionate responses.” Presumably, an appropriate response to the taking of men, women and children as hostages would be, for some, the payment of billions in ransom and the release of incarcerated terrorists. After all, if Iran can get away with it, why not Hamas? Without a doubt their Tehran sponsors taught them how.
Equating the slaughter of 270 youngsters at a rave party by Hamas terrorists and the atrocities that followed with Israel’s retaliatory responses is obscene.
That, however is the normal knee-jerk reaction, and as Israel’s responses ramp up you can expect more asinine drivel. Urging “restraint on civilian targets” when Hamas, Fatah and Hezbollah intentionally target Israeli civilians is a mockery.
The morally corrupt UN has already launched its ritual condemnations of Israel with some of the world’s worst abusers of human rights and democracy bleating forth.
Israel has already been asked what sort of a “deal” it would contemplate to get its kidnapped citizens back. As President Herzog made it perfectly clear at his press conference with international media reporters, there is NO contemplated deal. The abducted men, women and children must be released unconditionally. Failing that, as Israel has already made clear, neither the electricity nor the water will be turned on again.
Let’s not beat about the bush. It’s either them or us. Until now we have naively believed that by being benevolent, we could buy peace and quiet and the rest of the world would applaud.
History should have taught otherwise but the peace hallucinators ignored the inevitable. Now that reality has hit them full in the face there is much gnashing of teeth.
We are in a declared state of war.
The only way forward after this lamentable event is to totally defeat the terrorists, demolish their infrastructure and eliminate each and every one of their leaders. That is how Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan were defeated. This is how the masterminds and perpetrators of the Munich Olympic massacres of Israeli athletes met their fate.
We must make it clear to Abbas and his corrupt PA that there is no chance in hell for the establishment of another terror and hate-sponsoring state in Israel’s heartland. Pretending to go along with this international charade is no longer a viable option and would be an insult to those murdered.
Iran must be made accountable and thwarted. Its terror affiliates must be liquidated and its ability to kidnap and threaten the destruction of its neighbours must be degraded.
If all this is “disproportionate” then so be it.
Turning the other cheek and remaining silent in the face of barbarous savagery is no longer an option.
The time for pussyfooting around has long since passed.
On the morning of October 7, 2023, more than 3,000 terrorists infiltrated Israel and massacred 1,200 women, children, men, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The infiltration was masked by more than 3,600 missiles fired by the terrorists, indiscriminately targeting Israel’s civilian population. While Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepted most missiles, others fell on high-rise buildings, synagogues, and hospitals.
These were explicit acts of war and clear war crimes.1
As Israel responds to the atrocities, several basic principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) are essential to be familiar with.
In IHL, four basic principles are meant to guide the parties’ actions on the battlefield: Distinction; Military Necessity; Unnecessary Suffering; and Proportionality.
The principle of distinction is the foremost IHL protection for non-combatants. The code requires that the object/person being attacked is part of the enemy’s military apparatus and is, accordingly, a military objective. The term “military objective” includes all Gazan terrorists, from the lowest foot soldiers to the organization’s commanders and the entire terror infrastructure.
The “distinction” principle requires that all attacks be focused on military targets instead of purely civilian targets that do not contribute to the war effort. Military targets included objects that, by nature, location, purpose, or use, make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture, or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.
The principle of military necessity protects the warring combatants. The principle dictates that while IHL permits attacking combatants, those attacks must be necessary to forward the goals of achieving the military objective. Accordingly, the warring sides must avoid wounding or permanently injuring combatants except as part of the fight.
The principle of unnecessary suffering also protects the combatants and prohibits the warring sides from using weaponry that causes superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.
The most commonly misunderstood principle of IHL is the principle of proportionality.
In IHL, proportionality refers to a situation in which a military target is attacked, and that attack causes incidental or collateral damage. Attacks of this nature are legitimate so long as the loss of life and damage to property incidental to the attack are not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained. As the value of the military target grows, so too does the extent of permitted incidental damage.
The following are several concrete examples of situations that may occur during the impending war and their basis in IHL:
1. The IDF attacks a military target, and civilians are also killed
While the deaths of civilians during war are, of course, regrettable, the deaths caused are not, per se, illegitimate or illegal unless they outweigh the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained by the IDF from the specific target. For example, when Hamas deliberately locates its operational headquarters in high-rise buildings, and the IDF places a high tactical military advantage on destroying that capability, no provision of IHL would prevent attacking that target, even if it means destroying the entire building. In this scenario, IHL considers that civilian property may be destroyed and civilians may be killed.
2. Why does the IDF plough roads as a precursory measure for troop movement?
It is well-known that the terrorists planted landmines on the roads critical for advancing the IDF troops. For this purpose, the IDF can use engineering equipment to neutralize the threat. This action is analogous to using engineering equipment to clear any other minefield. The fact that the terrorists planted land mines in the civilian environment does not negate the fact that clearing a minefield is a clear military objective and that IHL permits measures taken to support or facilitate achieving those objectives.
An IED (improvised explosive device) landmine explodes under an IDF armored vehicle in Jenin in 2023.
3. Is every attack on a mosque, medical facility, or UN installation inherently illegitimate?
In IHL, some sites enjoy specific safeguards and should not be attacked as a general rule. Medical facilities and places of worship are examples of these sites. However, when the enemy specifically abuses these sites and uses them to carry out or facilitate military operations – including using them as command centers or warehouses/storage areas to stockpile ammunition and weapons – the installations lose their special protection and become legitimate military targets.
An entrance to an underground storage site for weapons and explosives discovered by the IDF in a mosque in the Jenin refugee camp, July 3, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)
The terrorists in Gaza are well versed in IHL and intentionally place their terror infrastructure near or directly in mosques, medical facilities, UN installations, and other sensitive sites, such as schools. In doing so, they hope to hinder and complicate the IDF operations while using the destruction of these sites to delegitimize Israel and promote anti-Israel propaganda.
4. Can civilians become legitimate military targets?
Generally, civilians should not participate in fighting and should not be directly targeted. But being a “civilian” is not necessarily synonymous with wearing civilian clothes or not wearing a uniform. IHL recognizes the fact that, in some cases, civilians participate in military operations. Civilians (irrespective of their dress code) who directly participate in hostilities are considered combatants and legitimate military targets. As a general rule, most of the terrorists in Gaza do not wear a uniform to feign civilian status.
5. Is Israel permitted to cut off the electricity to the Gaza Strip?
The electricity provided by Israel to the Gaza Strip is essential for the terrorist war effort. It allows the terrorists to operate command centers and other electricity-based capabilities, among other things, even minor things such as charging batteries for UAVs and drones that were also used in the initial attack on Israel.
Limiting the flow of electricity into Gaza from Israel would substantially impair the enemy’s military capabilities. Conversely, continuing the unhindered flow of electricity would mean that Israel is substantially contributing to the ability of the terrorists to continue attacking Israel and their attempts to murder Israelis.
In this context, it is necessary to recall that Israel agreed to provide electricity to the Gaza Strip as part of the Oslo Accords.2 At the time, thousands of Israeli citizens still lived in the Gaza Strip, and several IDF military bases existed. The electricity grids served both the Israelis and the Gazans. In 2005, Israel expelled the Israeli citizens from Gaza and redeployed its military personnel. In June 2007, Hamas seized the Gaza Strip. Instead of developing the Gaza Strip’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants, for the last 16 years, Hamas devoted its capital and capabilities to building its terror infrastructure.
The terrorist attack on Israel and the slaughter and kidnapping of hundreds of Israeli citizens breach the Oslo Accords, and there is no basis to argue that Israel is still bound by its Oslo Accord commitments while the terrorists and terrorist authorities in Gaza deny Israel’s right to exist, invade Israel, and massacre Israelis.
As Israel enters the war, no provision in IHL requires Israel to provide the enemy, which slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, injured thousands of others, and kidnapped scores more, with a resource essential to further its homicidal terrorist goals.
The argument has been made that Israel’s cutting electricity to the Gaza Strip is tantamount to starving the civilian population or could be considered collective punishment.
These arguments have no basis.
In this context, it must be understood that the Gaza Strip does not, even in regular circumstances, enjoy a steady and constant electricity supply by no fault of Israel. As part of the punitive actions implemented by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas against Hamas, the PA refused to pay for the electricity provided by Israel for extended periods. The decision caused a substantial reduction in the electricity supply to the Gaza Strip. Again, no provision in IHL or any other body of law requires Israel to provide free electricity to the Gaza Strip, including the homicidal terrorists and their terror infrastructure.
Cutting the flow of electricity from Israel is not designed to impose collective punishment and does not meet the definition of collective punishment under IHL.
In IHL, collective punishment assumes the imposition of a criminal-type sanction upon a group of persons for the acts of others.
As noted, Israel provides electricity to the Gaza Strip as part of its contractual agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Oslo Accords have been fundamentally and repeatedly breached by both the PLO and the terrorist leadership in Gaza, and there is no basis to require Israel to continue alone to fulfill its commitments.
Additionally, it should also be noted that some of the electricity of the Gaza Strip comes from a power plant in Gaza, and some comes from Egypt.
As regards the claim that cutting the flow of electricity to the Gaza Strip would breach the prohibition of starving the population, it must be understood that even in 2023, hundreds of millions of people worldwide do not have access to electricity grids. No one claims that these people are the subject of intentional starvation. Moreover, no one made this ludicrous argument when Abbas decided to stop paying for the Gazan electricity usage. Raising the argument solely against Israel as it responds to the heinous massacre of 1,200 people, the injury of thousands more, and the kidnapping of scores of others is purely hypocritical.
6. Is the death of every Palestinian child a “war crime”?
Some groups seeking to vilify Israel claim that the death of every Palestinian child is tantamount to a war crime. As noted above, IHL takes into account that civilians, including children, will be killed during an attack on a legitimate military target, and as such, in as much as Israeli forces do not knowingly and intentionally target a child who was not participating in the hostilities, the incidental death of a child during the fighting would certainly not constitute a crime of any nature.
Nonetheless, ignoring this reality, on May 28, 2021, the New York Times published a front-page spread containing 65 pictures of children supposedly killed earlier in the month after the Gazan terrorists fired missiles at Israel and Israel responded.
An in-depth investigation of the pictures revealed that at least nine of the children pictured were killed when errant Hamas rockets fell short of reaching Israel and hit Gazan civilians. Some of the children pictured by the Times were actually terrorist operatives. For example, Muhammad Suleiman,16, a member of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, was killed with his father, Tsabar, a Hamas commander, on May 10, 2021.
An innocent “child” listed by the New York Times was a Hamas fighter.
Recent investigation3 has also exposed the deliberate recruitment by the terrorist organizations of Palestinian children to serve as “spotters” reporting on the movement of IDF forces. The abuse of children to perform military activities rescinds their protection and turns them into legitimate military targets.
The funeral of a 15-year-old girl fighter in Jenin who served as a “spotter” for terrorists. (Screenshot, Newsflare, Funeral in Jenin, #532117)
The recruitment and deployment of children by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad is a fundamental international war crime.
The assumption that every death of a Palestinian child is tantamount to a war crime also ignores the documented history of the Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza intentionally using Palestinian children as human shields.
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Hitler taught the Arabs how to slaughter Jews, yet it can surprise us that the Einsatzaruppen’s chapter in Gaza City could not find a 50-foot deep ravine to gun down the 1200 or more Jews who were massacred on Saturday morning.
Nor did they think to build sufficient space in the gas chambers that could be waiting for 150 captives routed from Israeli villages and other sites; most towns are located east of the border separating Israel from Gaza.
Let us call them out for what they are. They are Nazis. They are wannabe Putins. They are war criminals.
People insist that we should avoid comparing contemporary events to Adolf Hitler or the Holocaust. I concur for the most part, but at times Hitlerian references suit the occasion.
These savages are even more barbaric than the Nazis, who were often satisfied with a few fatal bullets or mass gassings. The Gazan monsters beheaded both babies and soldiers, shot hundreds of fleeing Israelis in the back, burned families alive in their homes and seized hostages that included children, grandmothers and the disabled.
The beheading of babies was confirmed by the Israel government at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday, just as I was completing this column. One broadcaster on CNN said she was “losing it.”
Two comparisons to Nazis were presented on Tuesday, first when Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told CNN that the attacks constituted “Nazi-level” activity, and a victim’s mother called the Gazan terrorists “Nazis” during an interview with MSNBC.
We can dispute Greenblatt’s characterization. He is wrong when he calls It “Nazi-level” activity. It is Nazism. Period. Even that is incorrect. Try Nazism-plus.
By the late evening, New York Times reporter Ronen Bergman told “The Last Word“ host Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC, “They don’t have any boundaries.”
The Hamas raid resembled the Babi Yar bloodbath more than any other event in Jewish history that I can recall. At Babi Yar, Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen mobile squads swept into Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, on Sept 19, 1941, and subsequently posted this order:
“K—s of the city of Kiev and vicinity! On Monday, September 29, you are to appear by 7:00 A.M. with your possessions, money, documents, valuables and warm clothing at Dorogozhitshaya Street, next to the Jewish cemetery. Failure to appear is punishable by death.”
The Jewish Virtual Library recounts that the Jews were marched to Babi Yar, a ravine two miles from the center of the city where they were stripped, shot and buried. A truck driver at the scene provided eyewitness testimony:
“Once undressed, the Jews were led into the ravine…When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schultpolizer and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot. That all happened very quickly. The corpses were literally in layers.
“A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun…I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other … The marksmen would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew who had meanwhile lain down and shoot him.”
In the space of a week, almost 34,000 Jews were massacred in the same manner. Reading through the JVL description nauseated me, just as the Hamas raid on Saturday nauseated most of the Jewish people and much of the rest of the world.
It was the carnage at the music festival that most resembled Babi Yar. Terrorists found hundreds of young Israelis gathered in a large open space at about 7 a.m. Saturday and wiped out 260 people or more and sent many of them to Gaza as hostages.
Survivors managed to outrun the killers and their guns or hide for hours in nearby bushes.
The starkest differences from Babi Yar were the numbers of the dead and failure to find a ravine for piling up the bodies. I almost forgot to mention Nazi efficiency.
The terrorists’ search for Jews in the Israeli border towns is reminiscent of the nights when Nazi soldiers broke into Jewish residences, dragged them from their homes and transported them to concentration camps where many died in gas chambers.
In case of doubt, my opening reference to gas chambers is sarcasm. Still, Hamas and other terrorists will surely try any tactic murder Jews and destroy Israel. That would be Hitler’s most grisly posthumous feat.
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
One of Israel’s treasures is Doron Almog, who is decorated with many crowns. He is a recipient of the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement, a former major general in the Israel Defense Forces reserves, and currently is chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI). Above all, though, Almog is a mensch, a man of vision and action and morals, a true leader.
Almog is also bereaved, having lost his brother, Eran, exactly 50 years ago in the Yom Kippur War. Almog named his second son after his brother. Eran, the son, who was born with brain damage that resulted in significant developmental disabilities, died at the age of 23. Almog’s third child, Shoham, was born with a severe heart condition and died a month after her birth.
To ensure his son received the special care and appropriate facilities he needed, Almog founded Aleh Negev, a state-of-the-art village that provides residential, medical, and social services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities from throughout southern Israel—regardless of religion. Following Eran’s death, Aleh Negev was renamed Nachalat Eran.
Twenty years ago, also in October, five members of the Almog family, including two children, were killed in the suicide bombing at the now infamous Maxim restaurant in Haifa. As we are learning the names and faces of the victims of the current massacre, Almog has shared that six of his family members—Chen and Nadav and their four children—were murdered in their home on a peaceful kibbutz near Gaza where they lived. How much can the cup of sorrow overflow? How many tears and how much blood does one family need to shed to ensure they have contributed enough to the building blocks of this country? Doron Along is a close and dear friend of the JCC Movement, and we send him our deepest and most sincere condolences.
Today, the Israeli army revealed the annihilation that took place on that kibbutz, Kfar Gaza. Journalists were invited to witness firsthand the aftermath of the murderous barbarism of the Hamas terrorists who went from house to house and massacred entire families. In fact, nearly the entire kibbutz was wiped out, its idyllic trails turned into killing fields. The deafening silence, the unimaginable destruction, and the hate-filled inscriptions scrawled in Arabic on the walls of residents’ homes reveal the true horror of last Shabbat.
Until four days ago, this kibbutz overflowed with life. Couples and children, loving families, lived there, nurturing their dreams for a joyful future. Children born on the kibbutz took their first steps in its fields, filling them with laughter and joy. Now they are dead, their lives cut short by evil and violence. Today, the silence of death rules. My good friend, Tzachi Levy, lives on that same kibbutz, and she told me the Israeli media is doing us a favor by filtering out the harsh scenes and hiding the intensity of the horror.
Not too far from Kibbutz Kfar Gaza is Kibbutz Beeri, which lost more than 100 of its members. IDF soldiers, at the end of battles to free the kibbutz from the terrorists, held a short ceremony in which they lowered the Israeli flag to half-mast.
This morning we awoke to an unbelievably shocking number: 900 people killed in one day. To better understand our shock, that number equates to 32,000 (!!) U.S. citizens. It seems unfathomable but seeing the names and faces—whether we knew them personally or not—makes it all personal. Very personal.
Yesterday, President Herzog said that not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been murdered in one day. But not all were murdered. Some were kidnapped and taken into Gaza—including innocent babies snatched from their homes, with or without their families— and now, in the hands of bloodthirsty and revengeful murderers, they are being used as bargaining chips. It is too painful for me to share the horrific images of Israeli babies locked up in Gaza that are being published on social networks. If my tears could flow through this post, the paper would be wringing wet.
Only now is the world’s media beginning to understand what we in Israel have known for a long time and have learned the hard, painful way: Our neighbors in Gaza are controlled by terrorists whose only desire is to destroy the State of Israel and its people—and any and all means are acceptable.
It is comforting to see government buildings and national icons around the world, including the White House, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and Sydney’s Opera House, among others, awash in blue and white lights. It’s reassuring to hear sympathetic media coverage for a change. These acts of solidarity are important to us. I have received videos and photos of solidarity events at JCCs of all sizes across North America, and I am heartened that in many of them, the Israeli flag is being flown at half-mast. I am deeply grateful to the JCC Movement for the many community-wide rallies being held in support of Israel and the vigils in memory of the dead.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the love and support. You have no idea how meaningful it is to all of us here.
Leah Garber is a senior vice president of JCC Association of North Americaand director of its Center for Israel Engagement in Jerusalem.
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