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A Message to Israel: Stop Raising Flags in Gaza
A rocket is fired from a Hamas position towards Israeli troops near Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters handout
Israel should not be marking its territory in Gaza. First, the IDF released images of the Israeli flag planted along the beach in Gaza. Then they conquered the Hamas parliament building, and released a photo of soldiers waving the Israeli flag there. Then Bibi Netanyahu made a trip to visit troops in Gaza, demonstrating that it is firmly within Israeli control.
This is a mistake.
How can Israel claim that it is not trying to recapture Gaza and displace the Palestinians there when these images suggest otherwise? Every time Israel releases an image of the Israeli flag in Gaza, it undermines the position that Israel’s military campaign is righteous and not just a land grab.
There are other ways to flaunt military might and demoralize the enemy.
Gaza is not the only front in this war. While Israel clearly has the military advantage, it is arguably losing the war of public opinion. And the two fronts impact each other.
What happens on the battlefield influences public opinion, and public opinion affects what happens on the battlefield. Hamas’ strategy of maximizing harm to its civilian population is effective because public pressure for a ceasefire grows with every civilian casualty.
Israel cannot afford to provide propaganda for its adversaries. These images of the IDF planting flags in Gaza are a gift to the Hamas apologists in the media and on college campuses.
Qatari state-owned Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera was very quick to post the images, because the pictures support the narrative that Israel is using the October 7 massacre as an excuse to annex Gaza. Hamas is extremely adept at manipulating world opinion — because much of the world seems inclined to believe that Israel is evil and Hamas is a legitimate resistance movement.
Israel does not need to assist them further.
It doesn’t help that Netanyahu said he plans to “retain security control of Gaza indefinitely.” That statement is as reckless as it is tone deaf, even if he has since walked it back a little.
Netanyahu’s support for the expansion of settlements in the West Bank has undermined Israel’s standing in the world. At the very moment when the IDF instructed Gazans to evacuate the north, Netanyahu was telling the world that Israel intends to occupy Gaza indefinitely.
You can’t blame Gazans for fearing that by complying with orders to evacuate, they are forfeiting their homes. For Netanyahu to be so cavalier about occupation shows a complete disregard for how his comments will be interpreted by anyone who is not a member of his right-wing coalition.
While Israel must demilitarize Gaza and defang Hamas, it cannot and should not occupy Gaza indefinitely. Doing so would cost untold IDF casualties and put peace even farther out of reach.
So what should Israel do once the threat that Hamas poses has been neutralized? An international peacekeeping force should relieve the IDF in Gaza, and allay concerns over annexation. Such a force would not provide a target for terrorists, and it would lower the tension in the region. Turning down the temperature will be necessary in the months that follow, in order to create the conditions in which a long-term solution can be negotiated.
At the moment, the military campaign in Gaza has been paused. While calls to extend the ceasefire grow, the idea that it will become permanent is a fantasy. Eventually, Hamas will run out of hostages to trade for time, or Israel will refuse to release more prisoners, or the truce will founder for some other reason.
Despite pressure from the international community, this respite will end and the fighting will resume. When it does, Israel should resist the temptation to plant its flags all over Gaza.
The post A Message to Israel: Stop Raising Flags in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.