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Hamas Terrorists Labeled ‘Resistance’ in Odious Op-ed Published in ‘The Observer’
Teenage hostages before Oct. 7 and after their capture by Hamas to Gaza. Photo: Screenshot from Israeli government X/Twitter account
A recent opinion piece published in The Guardian’s sister Sunday newspaper, The Observer, warned that Israel’s battle to rout Hamas risks not only “perpetuating the cycle of violence but spreading it wider.”
Written by Ahmad Samih Khalidi, a writer and former Palestinian negotiator under Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the op-ed is headlined: “Israel’s plans for Gaza’s future will only keep the flame of Hamas resistance burning.”
If it sounds like Khalidi is lionizing Hamas, it’s because he is.
Make no mistake, using phrasing like the “flame of Hamas resistance” in the context of an internationally proscribed terrorist group that raped and massacred countless unarmed civilians on October 7 serves to glorify them.
Trust @guardian‘s sister paper @ObserverUK to platform someone who highlights Hamas “resistance.”
Reminder: Hamas is a proscribed terrorist org in the UK (& elsewhere) & murdering, raping & kidnapping Israeli civilians isn’t “resistance” – it’s terrorism.https://t.co/IzJFc5jChW pic.twitter.com/j7wlgfVpAo
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 21, 2024
Khalidi opens the piece with a brief history of “Palestinian resistance,” tracing how Islamic cleric Izz ad-Din al-Qassam — after whom Hamas’ military wing was later named — led a guerilla campaign in what was then British Mandatory Palestine.
He then summarizes the last few decades of Hamas history:
The past 30 years have witnessed an accelerating competition between Hamas’s claim to embody national resistance to Israeli rule, and Fatah’s collapse into discord, corruption and collusion under the banner of the Palestinian Authority’s ‘security cooperation’ with the Israeli occupation. This race culminated in Hamas’s 7 October assault that was designed as much to shock and terrorise Israel as it was to discredit Fatah/ Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and consolidate Hamas’s position as the primary inheritor and embodiment of the Palestinian national movement and its liberationist cause.”
Aside from the grossly flippant way in which he views the Hamas atrocities on October 7 as being the culmination of a “race” between Hamas’ claim to represent Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority’s declining loss of credibility, Khalidi’s assertion that the Hamas attacks were equally designed to “discredit” the PA is revealing.
Perhaps without realizing it, Khalidi actually let slip that the key to winning popular support among Palestinians is by doing what Hamas did and slaughtering Israelis and Jews — not, as many naive media commentators assume, by laying out a vision for a Palestinian state that is peaceful and prosperous.
The piece goes on to complain about how various powers have not devised a comprehensive plan for the Gaza Strip after Israel’s military withdrawal.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for example, is accused of “utopian” thinking over what Khalidi scornfully described as Blinken’s focus on “an as yet invisible ‘pathway to Palestinian statehood’.”
Of course, Khalidi completely ignores why Palestinian statehood seems so elusive — specifically, that every single peace deal has been rejected by the Palestinians since Israel’s founding in 1948, including peace offers that were on the table when Khalidi himself was acting as a negotiator for the Palestinians.
There are numerous problems with the piece, including glossing over the horrors of the Hamas massacre and presenting dubious casualty figures, but the most galling aspect of is Khalidi’s suggestion that the United States and the West, in general, will be to blame for another extremist group or organization rising to power in the Gaza Strip after the war:
Hamas’s brutal tactics in its 7 October assault have been washed out of Palestinian political consciousness by the subsequent indiscriminate and mass erasure of Palestinian civilian lives, and the US/west’s complicity in supporting, arming and allowing this onslaught to continue under the guise of Israel’s right to self-defence with no evident expiry date attached. Rather than crush Hamas, its most likely effect will be to remythologise the notion of resistance and sow the seed for future iterations that may be inspired by Hamas but have no necessary connection to its history, ideology or organisational structure.”
First, the statement that Hamas’ brutal actions on October 7 have been “washed out of Palestinian political consciousness by the subsequent indiscriminate and mass erasure of Palestinian civilian lives” is absolutely absurd.
Let us be crystal clear: the depravity perpetrated by Hamas was never in any type of Palestinian consciousness whatsoever. As innocent children were being murdered in their beds and as women were sexually tortured in the streets on that Saturday morning just over three months ago, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were filmed celebrating the violence and vowing to repeat it.
Second, the suggestion that America’s support for Israel’s defense will unintentionally “remythologise the notion of resistance” with groups inspired by Hamas taking their place, is a tacit way of absolving all Palestinians — including those in the future — of any responsibility.
In Khalidi’s view, if another extremist group akin to Hamas rises to power in the Strip and wages war against Israel, the fault will not lie with the Palestinians. Rather, it will be America’s responsibility, due to its sheer temerity in supporting Israel’s right to self-defense during this conflict.
And that’s the crux of it: for those like Khalidi, Palestinians are always blameless and Israel is the original sin. And nothing — facts or otherwise — can disturb that dichotomy.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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