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Hamas Turns Gaza Streets Into Deadly Maze for Israeli Troops
FILE PHOTO: A terrorist fires a rocket launcher during what Hamas says is an engagement with its fighters during a battle with Israeli forces amid Israel’s ground offensive in a location given as near Beit Hanoun, Gaza, in this still image taken from video released November 17, 2023. Hamas Military Wing/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
The Israeli army’s death toll in Gaza is already almost twice as high as during a ground offensive in 2014, a reflection of how far it has pushed into the enclave and of Hamas’ use of guerrilla tactics and an expanded arsenal.
Israeli military experts, an Israeli commander and a Hamas source described how the Islamist group has used a big weapons stockpile, its knowledge of the terrain and a vast tunnel network to turn Gaza’s streets into a deadly maze.
At their disposal they have arms ranging from drones rigged with grenades to anti-tank weapons with powerful twin charges.
Israel’s military said on Sunday that 121 soldiers had been killed since the ground campaign began on Oct. 27, when tanks and infantry began to push into Gaza’s cities and refugee camps.
That compares with 66 in the 2014 conflict, when Israel launched a more limited three-week ground incursion but the goal then was not to eliminate Hamas.
“There is no comparing the scope of this war to 2014, when our forces mostly operated no deeper than a kilometer inside Gaza,” said Yaacov Amidror, a retired Israeli major-general and former national security adviser who is now at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).
He said the army “has yet to find a good solution for the tunnels,” a network hugely expanded in the past decade.
Israel’s offensive was launched after the Oct. 7 rampage by Hamas gunmen who Israel said killed 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostage – some of them now freed.
Hamas-controlled health authorities in Gaza say thousands of people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave since the war began, although experts have cast doubt on the reliability of their casualty figures.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday Israel would wage war “until absolute victory.” Israeli officials have said it could take months before being complete.
“It has been a challenge from day one,” Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser to Netanyahu, told Reuters, saying the offensive had come with a “huge price” in Israeli soldiers.
“We know that we’re going to probably have to pay an additional price to complete the mission.”
HEAVY FIGHTING
Hamas has posted videos on its Telegram channel this month showing fighters with bodycams weaving through buildings to launch shoulder-held rockets at armored vehicles. One of them, posted on Dec. 7, was from Shejaiya, east of Gaza City, an area where both sides reported heavy fighting.
In another post on Dec. 5, a camera emerges from a tunnel, like a periscope, to scan an Israeli camp where soldiers rested. The post said it was later hit by an underground blast.
Reuters could not verify the videos.
A Hamas source, who spoke to Reuters from inside Gaza on condition of anonymity, said fighters moved as close as possible to launch ambushes “taking advantage of the land we know like no others do,” often moving around or emerging from tunnels.
“There is a huge discrepancy between our power and their power, we don’t fool ourselves,” he said.
Hamas has not said how many of its fighters have been killed. Israel’s military has said it has killed at least 7,000. The group has previously dismissed the Israeli figure, saying it includes civilians.
Hamas spokespeople outside Gaza did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on this article.
An Israeli commander, who fought in 2014, said the expanded scope of this operation meant more troops were on the ground, giving Hamas the “defender’s advantages,” so higher troop casualties were to be expected. He asked not to be named because he is an active reservist in this war.
Israel’s military does not release numbers of troops involved or other operational details.
Israel’s Channel 12 television showed one army reservist unit, wary of booby-trapped doors, smashing through the wall of a building to enter a room to discover a munitions cache.
Mirroring tactics used in 2014, Israel’s military has posted images on social media showing routes smashed through built-up areas by bulldozers so troops can avoid existing roads that might have landmines.
Even in some districts in north Gaza where many buildings have been pounded into rubble, bouts of fierce fighting have persisted.
BUILDING UP FORCES
“Hamas made some huge steps to build up its force since 2014,” said Eyal Pinko, a former senior official with Israel’s intelligence services who is now at Bar Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
He said some advanced arms, such as Russian-designed Kornet anti-tank missiles, were smuggled in with the help of Hamas’ ally Iran. But he said Hamas had mastered building other weapons in Gaza, such as RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades, and the militants now had a bigger munitions reserve.
Hamas posts have said the group’s weaponry includes “tandem” anti-tank weapons with two charges to pierce armor, which Pinko also said was in the terrorists’ arsenal.
Hamas videos often show big blasts when vehicles are hit. Israeli military experts said a blast did not mean a vehicle was destroyed as they said it could also be caused by defensive systems that exploded to halt incoming projectiles.
Ashraf Abouelhoul, the managing editor of Egypt’s Al-Ahram daily who previously worked in Gaza and is a specialist on Palestinian affairs, said terrorists moved as close as possible to launch missiles and “locally-made projectiles.”
But he said Israeli drones and other tactics were eroding their ability to surprise, even in urban areas. “City fighting has become more difficult” for the terrorists, he said.
Israel’s military posted a video this month that it said showed terrorists emerging from a tunnel under a bombed building, before both were struck by missiles.
“Hamas may post their new weapons and tactics, (but) in principle, it remains a guerrilla resistance movement,” said Alexander Grinberg, a former Israeli military intelligence officer with the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.
The post Hamas Turns Gaza Streets Into Deadly Maze for Israeli Troops first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Incoming US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has threatened to push legislation imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) if it does not halt its efforts to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Thune, who was picked last week to be the next Senate majority leader once the Republicans take control of the legislative chamber in January, wrote Sunday on X/Twitter that he will make it a “top priority” to punish the ICC if it refuses to walk back its arrest warrant application issued against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The US lawmaker also indicated he would take action if Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the current Senate majority leader, does not do so against the intergovernmental organization.
“If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their outrageous and unlawful actions to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis,” he wrote. “If Majority Leader Schumer does not act, the Senate Republican majority will stand with our key ally Israel and make this — and other supportive legislation ‚ a top priority in the next Congress.”
In May, the ICC chief prosecutor officially requested arrest warrants for the Israeli premier, Gallant, and three Hamas terrorist leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh — accusing all five men of “bearing criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Israel or the Gaza Strip. The three Hamas leaders have since been killed, and Gallant was recently fired as Israel’s defense minister.
US and Israeli officials subsequently issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan has come under fire for making his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation infuriated US and British leaders, according to Reuters, which reported that the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Thune’s Republican colleagues praised his threat to the ICC, suggesting that the Senate should target the international organization.
“Well done Senator Thune. The ICC’s actions against Israel have been outrageous, and an independent review into the prosecutor’s actions is more than called for,” wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). :The Senate should take up the ICC sanctions bill that passed the House in a bipartisan manner. Standing up for Israel today protects America tomorrow.”
“The Senate must immediately pass legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court,” stated Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY.), chair of the Senate Republican Conference. “Senate Republicans stands with Israel.”
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee can and should act ASAP to pass ICC sanctions legislation. We waited for months for the majority to schedule the vote only to have them postpone it before the election. We will not fail to act when Republicans are in the majority,” wrote Sen. John Risch (R-ID), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wrote that the Senate “should immediately consider the bipartisan legislation passed by the House to sanction the ICC.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) added that Thune is “right” and that “Chuck Schumer should do his job” by advancing legislation to sanction the ICC.
The US has said it does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and rejects the implied equivalence drawn between Israel and Hamas.
The post Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’
It was announced quietly, wit a small, two-paragraph notice replacing the web page for Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), along with an unrelated stock […]
The post Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre
US Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks during the National Action Network National Convention in New York City, US, April 7, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
In his final weeks as a US federal lawmaker, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has continued his persistent condemnation of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating “apartheid” against Palestinians, expressing pride in not supporting a resolution condemning Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, and arguing against the funding of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
During a newly released interview with left-wing pundit Rania Khalek, Bowman reflected on his unsuccessful reelection bid earlier this year. The lawmaker blamed the “pro-Israel lobby” for his loss in the Democratic primary, claiming that his outspokenness about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war made him a target for “Zionists.”
Bowman, one of the staunchest critics of Israel in the US Congress, argued that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, overwhelmed his campaign by spending roughly $15 million to aid his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer. He added that his constituents were stunned that a “special interest” group such as AIPAC “can remove a congressman” by submerging a primary race in a torrent of money.
“Now the world has seen AIPAC for who they are,” Bowman stated.
The stated mission of AIPAC is to seek bipartisan support to strengthen the US-Israel relationship.
Bowman admitted that he did not know much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he initially ran for office, opting to parrot talking points such as Israel “has a right to exist” and a “right to defend itself.”
Bowman said that his opinion on Israel was transformed after he visited the country on a trip sponsored by J Street, a progressive Zionist organization that recently called for the US to impose an arms embargo against the Jewish state. The left-wing firebrand said that the trip — which consisted of a series of discussions with peace activists, scholars, and former Israel Defense Force (IDF) officers — soured his view of the Jewish state, comparing the security checkpoints and barrier wall that separate Israel and the West Bank to protect against terrorism with the Jim Crow laws in the US south segregating black Americans.
Khalek asked Bomwan if his view on Iron Dome has shifted, citing that the missile interception system “shields Israel from the consequences for bombing all of its neighbors, for constantly stealing land.”
The congressman claimed that his view on Israel’s air defense system has changed, arguing that it represents “a weapon to use and continue apartheid, oppression, open-air prison, occupation, and now the genocide” of Palestinians. He said that he regrets voting in favor of Iron Dome funding, and that the missile defense system should only be replenished if the Palestinians are given a fully-funded army on Israel’s borders.
Bowman also criticized a congressional resolution condemning the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, suggesting that AIPAC authored the document. He dismissed the notion that the mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7 was “unprovoked,” claiming that Israel initiated the aggression by enacting “apartheid” on Palestinians. He then lambasted American governors, senators, and President Joe Biden for immediately showing empathy to Israelis, saying that legislators were being “dishonest” and not having a “full conversation” about the Jewish state.
In the year following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Bowman intensified his rhetoric against Israel and pro-Israel organizations. Over the summer, he condemned AIPAC as a “Zionist regime.” In a desperate attempt to salvage his ill-fated primary effort, he promise the Democratic Socialists of America — a prominent far-left organization that has made anti-Israel activism a top priority — that he would vote against future Iron Dome funding in exchange for financial backing of his campaign. Bowman infamously dismissed the widely reported and corroborated allegations of Hamas terrorists raping Israeli women during the Oct. 7 onslaught as “propaganda” before being forced to walk back his remarks.
In June, Latimer cruised to a commanding victory over Bowman, winning by a margin of 58 percent to 41 percent.
The post Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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