THE HAMAS COMMANDER of the military wing of the group is Mohammed Deif. It is a nom de guerre that translates to “the Guest.” It is apt given the practice of militant Palestinians to sleep in a different bed of sympathizers every night. His ambition is simply to destroy Israel. Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet has a lengthy file on two generations of men in his family going back to the 1950s, but he remains a mystery even though they have attributed the death of well over 50 civilians to him.
He was well-known to Israeli security who nearly killed him two decades ago in an airstrike that cost him, literally, an arm and a leg (and an eye) and left him wheelchair-bound. A survivor of five Israeli attacks, he is revered by many aggrieved Palestinians. He video-taped a message that was chilling. It was released within hours of the attack on Israel on Saturday. He said:
“In light of the continuing crimes against our people, in light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and Western support, we’ve decided to put an end to all this so that the enemy understands that he can no longer revel without being held to account.”
Videos were also released by Hamas on social media showing its militants paragliding over the border along with gruesome pictures of dead soldiers and terrified civilians. Footage was shown beheading soldiers. It wasn’t amateur hour. As of Monday evening, more than 900 Israelis have been killed, 2,600 injured, and others captured and taken hostage. Apparently the attack that was celebrated by Palestinians and Muslims worldwide, was rehearsed in plain sight. By Monday evening, U.S. time, Hamas threatened to execute 150 hostages online. It appears the analogy of it being Israel’s 9/11 was fairly accurate.
Some, including the third-largest Israeli newspaper Haaretz, blame Bibi Netanyahu for the deadliest attack on the Holy Land in a half decade when Egypt and Syria attacked in 1973’s Yom Kippur War. Netanyahu and his “fully-right government” was derelict in identifying the dangers of his government’s practice of “annexation and dispossession” and the appointment of certain men hostile to Palestinians and Palestinian statehood who are intent on expanding Jewish settlements. The military and intelligence failures by his government does not absolve him of responsibility either, the newspaper opined. Brokering a peace deal with Saudi Arabia gave the Palestinians nothing, it added. Netanyahu’s three corruption cases, it claims, made him unable to look after affairs of the state.
Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Affairs blames the European Union for funding “antisemitic propaganda.” And halfway around the world, there was plenty of blame for the completely incompetent Joey Biden, who has been illicitly occupying the White House since 2020. Specifically, he abandoned a massive cache of military weapons and equipment when he suddenly and irresponsibly bugged out of Afghanistan which, it appears, found its way to Israel.
Biden also unfroze $6 billion in assets of Iran in a recent prisoner swap, which, it also appears, was used to fund the attack on Israel. (Iran’s involvement via its militia, Hezbollah, has been acknowledged by Hamas.) Aside from that, Biden’s irresponsible, unmeasured, and unaccountable giveaway of American weapons, including equipment, supplies, and money, to Ukraine and its corrupt president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has resulted in the shipment of war spoils from fallen Ukrainian soldiers to Hamas militants, a fact admitted to by Kyiv. Plus, Biden has been distracted with his own corruption and that of his son, Hunter, as well as the many international and domestic issues plaguing what was recently considered the world’s most major power.
Netanyahu, for whatever his degree of fault may be, deemed Hamas “worse than ISIS” and vowed to get vengeance. He is, after all, a living master class in propagandizing. By Monday, his response had killed 3,000 in the two-day blitz over Gaza. A full-scale ground invasion is expected to commence on Tuesday. Some very graphic photographs have been published (and not yet censored by U.S. authorities) of the response in The Sun. With its 300 rocket launchers, 173,000 active troops, 465,000 reserve personnel, 2,200 tanks, and 601 planes, Israel’s complete response promises to be unforgiving and bloody. How the Iron Dome was overwhelmed isn’t clear, but undoubtedly, it will be examined.
Claiming “we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant promised, “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” referring to Gaza.
A senior Hamas official reportedly said the group was open to a possible ceasefire given it had “achieved its targets.” But Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog lamented that “not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed in one day,” and Netanyahu has officially declared war, so a ceasefire, understandably, wouldn’t seem likely to be on the negotiating table. Typical Palestinian mismanagement!
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