8 Oct, 2023, Samaria:
Well, the war is in full effect.
During the night around 5:10 am the doors and windows rattled; Since no Arabs broke thru my apartment, I think it must have been sonic booms from fighter jets passing high overhead. I turned on the Israeli news hoping to see live views of Gaza hit by surgical strikes, but nothing, just more commentary and opinions about the war so far. Hamas is bringing much sorrow to the people of Gaza; they are the ones that will suffer for what Hamas has done to Israeli civilians in cold blood. And yet, when the voters in Gaza voted for Hamas to replace the Fatah party government in 2006, then-President Obama comforted the world saying that we need to respect the democratic process in Gaza. Hamas then began throwing the Fatah members of the former government off the top of high rise buildings and dragging their bodies through the streets. The State Department had no criticism for that. There has never been an election in Gaza since. Whether the voters actually voted for Hamas or whether that election was rigged, either way they are stuck with Hamas in power unless they have their own uprising. However they seem to be blinded by their hatred for Jews to the point they have not been able to see the enemies in their own ranks who do not hesitate to use them as human shields.
Sadly, this time I suspect that Hamas will use the 165+ Jewish hostages in Gaza as human shields to protect their bases and munitions from Israeli fire. So I would think it would be a great strategy to break with Israeli tradition and use the Air Force to flatten all military areas in Gaza without any respect to whoever is there. This won’t happen. If Israel did so, it would convince Hamas for good that there is zero value in taking hostages – which would be a good thing. But Israel has built up a strong reputation of showing more restraint than any army in the whole world. Israeli army has dropped paper fliers and sent millions of text messages to the cell phones in Gaza to warn the people of incoming fire and the location. After that Israel drops “knock knock” empty bombs on the rooftop to alert the people inside that the real bomb is coming within a couple minutes — giving them time to get out. All of this weakens Israel’s strategic advantage, obviously, but this is what Israel does in order to preserve civilian lives in Gaza.
Thus, if Israel is not going to bomb Hamas and Islamic Jihad military assets along with all civilians nearby, I would expect that Israel will instead sacrifice scores of young men with a ground troop invasion into Gaza, hoping to rescue hostages and neutralize Arab military assets. This would be bloody, in an arena of urban guerrilla warfare.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two reigning organizations in Gaza, have zero concern for civilians, whether they be their own Arab civilians, or the Jewish civilians of Israel. Yesterday morning during the Shabbat and the Great Day of the Feast of Tabernacles they flew over the fence with powered paraglider ultralights, motorcycles, brand-new Toyota pickup trucks with military guns mounted, full of weapons and men, and by foot. They swept into a Jewish all-night trance techno party and mowed the people down with guns as they fled in the dawn light towards their cars. The surviving partiers said that they had heard the rocket explosions but thought it was part of the music. Many partiers were taken as hostages. The terrorist rode into border towns, shooting everyone on sight, breaking into homes, slaughtering civilians indiscriminately and taking hostages. Obviously all that Hamas and Islamic Jihad does (and both parties have publicly taken responsibility for starting this war) does is multiple war crimes according to international law. My Israeli friends who have served in the Intelligence departments of the Army are completely mystified as to how a border breach could go undetected for enough minutes for such attacks to occur. The Israeli people will have to be persistent if they will ever get any satisfactory explanations from the peoples’ army, the Israel Defense Force.
Where is the nations’ condemnation of Hamas? All I see so far is the normal false equivalence: “We condemn violence on both sides.” There is no equivalence between an army that acts morally and lawfully and an army that does not. One type of violence is quite different from the other and both types cannot be leveled with a blanket statement of “violence,” unqualified. Such behavior from the world media outlets must not be tolerated.
We request your prayers and financial support during this difficult time.
