Israel At War

"As the chief of staff said this week, the war will continue many more months."

"My policy is clear. We will continue to fight until we have achieved all the objectives of the war, first and foremost the annihilation of Hamas and the release of all the hostages."

Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu

 

"We don't have water. We don't have enough food."

"The kids wake  up in the morning wanting to eat, wanting to drink. It took us one hour to find water for them."

"We couldn't bring them flour. Even when we wanted to take them to toilets, it took us one hour to walk."

Nour Daher, displaced woman, tent camp, Rafah, Gaza 

People inspect the damage to buildings after Israeli airstrikes on Khan Younis. Photograph: Mohammed Dahman/AP

 

A dreadful plight. Twofold, in the sense that a country that has never known acceptance and peaceful neighbourliness, always vigilant against renewed attacks and seemingly unstoppable violent assaults against its citizens, has been forced by these circumstances to focus on building a regional military presence, to acquire self-protecting high technology weaponry and finally has been placed in the position where no option was left but to respond forcefully to the most heinous, sadistic savagery that slaughtered its citizens in an orgy of organized mayhem.

An assault so dreadful its baleful depths are still being unearthed months after the mind-numbing assault. An assault heralded by the citizenry of the belligerent neighbourhood in Gaza as a glorious moment to be savoured and celebrated, that their heroes had taken the lives of 1,200 human beings in a matter of hours, raped and mutilated and butchered innocent civilians that lived close to their border, civilians of the 'other' who had in fact, commiserated with those now celebrating, attempting to improve their miserable lives.  Their celebratory congratulations to the terrorists have turned to ashes in their mouths.

The Hamas heroes of 'liberation' from 'oppression' who cared nothing for the welfare of the citizens under their care deliberately created a predictable situation that the now-internally-displaced grieve over. Hamas, proudly confident that sacrificing Palestinian lives and that of their children would be agreeable to those desperately seeking to escape retaliatory bombing aimed at liquidating future opportunities for Hamas to repeat the atrocity, in the face of the terrorist group's repetitive promise it planned to do just that.

The international community calls for ceasefires. They don't face these threats, as Israel does. A ceasefire that would allow Hamas to regroup, rearm, re-strategize and repeat its lethal attacks on Israel. Even without the 'ceasefire', Hamas continues to send rockets into Israel. Humanitarian aid that is brought in to the zone of conflict is being commandeered by the terrorist group, denying medications, food, water, fuel, to the population that Hamas deliberately placed in harm's way. As Hamas continues its attacks over the border with rocket fire, it continues to shield itself behind the population, where its rockets are launched from within crowded civilian enclaves.

 

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, January 1, 2024. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

 

The tunnel system burrowed deep and wide under cities and towns as weapons depots and command posts, reflect the deliberate strategy of Hamas. To ensure its military installations are directly within the crowded confines of civilian life. Deliberately placed in, under and beside schools, hospitals, multiple-stacked dwellings to deter the humanitarian instincts of an Israeli fighting force with defined scruples and instincts deterring it from inflicting casualties on civilians as opposed to their terrorist targets' lack of humanity. 

 

Yet when the Israel Defense Forces despite attempts at accuracy and avoidance and pre-warning of the population at risk, does cause deaths, that too is a victory for Hamas which then uses the collateral damage and destruction of human life to paint Israel as embarking on a genocide. 

 

Israeli warplanes struck urban refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij in Gaza's central region while ground forces moved deeper into the city of Khan Younis in the south. According to the Gaza Health Ministry over 21,600 Palestinians have died in the numerous air and ground offensives since October 7's terrorist attack in southern Israel. The number of deaths declared makes no distinction between civilian and terrorist deaths. Of the number cited having died in the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry announced that 70 percent were women and children. Another favourite emphasis of Hamas.

An estimated 85 percent of Gaza's over two million residents have been displaced. Great swaths of people seek shelter where Israeli warnings have directed them to, out of harm's way. Yet while warning civilians, that warning informs Hamas operatives where they too may find shelter from Israeli bombardments, moving along with the civilians. And since they are the targets, the Israeli military then finds itself in need of moving to bomb those areas as well, leaving no place 'safe' for either the terrorists or the people they boast are willing martyrs for their cause.

Displaced Palestinians at a tent camp in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Photograph: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

An increased tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed into the crowded city of Rafah in southern Gaza, with Israeli forces expanding its ground offensive this week. Displaced people arriving on foot, on trucks and carts piled with household goods. With space scarce in overwhelmed shelters by UN warehouses, thousands of tents and makeshift shacks sprang up. This is the humanitarian catastrophe that Hamas in its arrogant belligerence and lust for carnage and a bloodbath in Israel has brought Israel to, in its military quest to destroy the threat of future barbaric savagery victimizing Israelis.

And ultimately, it is a reflection of a hatred so intense through a death-cult's resolve to destroy a neighbour whose intent is to remain a beacon of freedom and salvation for the world's Jews eternally escaping from a hostile global community whose intolerance for their presence is so great that millennia of residence among them has not inured them to the allure of humanity's reviling the presence of Jews. Impelling a Zionist movement into existence to return to an ancient homeland for no less purpose than to provide that minuscule proportion of humanity identified as Jews a haven in their ancestral home.

Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir attends the weekly cabinet meeting at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, 31 December 2023. ABIR SULTAN/Pool via REUTERS