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Hamas Says It Wants Oct. 7 Massacre Again and Again; Why Won’t the Media Believe Them?
The body of a motorist lies on a road following a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel October 7, 2023. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Not long after Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel to rape and massacre scores of civilians — then dragging hundreds of hostages back to the Gaza Strip — senior Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad spoke with Lebanese news outlet LBCI.
During the interview, Hamad said: “Israel is a country that has no place on our land,” explaining that it was the job of Hamas to “remove that country.”
Questioned about the October 7 atrocities, Hamad responded:
We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again.
The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight … Nobody should blame us. On October 7, October 10, October one million — everything we do is justified.
There can be no doubt about Hamas and its goals: the terrorist group wants to destroy Israel and every single one of its citizens.
Hamas’ leaders have not hidden the fact that they believe the October 7 massacre was justified, and that they will try to replicate the horror over and over again.
Likewise, before October 7, Hamas never masked its genocidal aims, having been founded on a charter that swears Islam will “obliterate” Israel.
Why, then, do media outlets keep presenting Hamas as a viable partner for peace, while implicitly suggesting that the terrorist group’s extremism is, at least in part, a response to the hawkish right-wing Israeli government that was formed in 2022?
In a recent op-ed in The Guardian, Peter Hain, a former UK Middle East minister, argues that while Israel is damaging Hamas militarily, it cannot hope to totally destroy it because “Hamas is a movement and an ideology that, in many respects, Netanyahu’s extremism helped to promote.”
He adds: “Rightwing Israeli governments have thwarted serious negotiations with Palestine’s more ‘moderate’ party, the late Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, since the Camp David summit in 2000 – more than 20 years ago. They have also consistently oppressed Gaza residents, imposing a near-constant state of siege. Is it really surprising that many Palestinians turned in desperation to an extremist alternative in Hamas?”
Several points must be made in response.
1. The claim that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “extremism” helped promote Hamas is not just inaccurate, but grossly offensive.
Whatever one’s view on Netanyahu, he is in no way responsible for furthering Hamas’ warped ideology. Not only does Hamas long predate Netanyahu, but — as is clear from Ghazi Hamad’s comments — it has vowed to carry on attacking Israel regardless of who is in the government.
2. Hain is palpably wrong to suggest that Palestinians in Gaza “turned in desperation to an extremist alternative in Hamas” following the failure at Camp David, and what he described as a “near-constant state of siege.”
The blockade on the Gaza Strip, which Egypt also maintains, began in 2007 and came after Palestinians voted for Hamas and after it fought an internecine war against rivals Fatah, who were expelled from the territory.
3. It is a lie that successive right-wing Israeli governments have “thwarted serious negotiations” since Camp David. There have been numerous attempts by Israel to restart peace talks since 2000, and Netanyahu himself acknowledged in 2011 that Israel would have to give up land to create “genuine peace.”
Hain goes on to state that finding a peaceful solution will have to include Hamas at the negotiating table, arguing that discussions that only involve the discredited Palestinian Authority will be doomed to failure.
And here is the problem — Hain, like many other commentators, is wrong to believe that Hamas could ever be a peace-loving neighbor of Israel.
Hamas has sworn that it will not stop attacking until Israel and all Jews are dead.
Why do people like Peter Hain believe Hamas will suddenly abandon its genocidal pursuit if a less right-wing Israeli government is in power?
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.
The post Hamas Says It Wants Oct. 7 Massacre Again and Again; Why Won’t the Media Believe Them? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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