Israel, Targeting Hamas Elites

"While the assassination of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in an airstrike in Beirut [Lebanon] on Tuesday was the highest-profile attack on the terror group, it is by no means the last."

"Israeli leaders have vowed to track down and kill Hamas leaders wherever they are."

"Israel has not confirmed that it was responsible for the strike which killed al-Arouri along with several senior operatives at Hamas's Beirut headquarters."

"But Mossad chief David Barnea hinted that Israel was behind the assassination, as is widely believed in Israel and across the Middle East."

Baruch Yedid, Jewish News Syndicate

Israeli troops walk past destroyed buildings on the outskirts of Gaza City  Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

 

Former Mossad director Zvi Zamir, 98, was buried on Wednesday. He was chief of Mossad in the 1970s. "Operation Wrath of God" took place under his direction of the intelligence agency. The Black September Palestinian terrorists, who were tasked by Yasser Arafat to mount a terrorist operation during the 1972 Munich Olympics, responsible for the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes in a horrendously barbaric attack were each and every one patiently and thoroughly tracked down and over the years faced the justice of 'martyrdom' for their crimes.

 

"Let every Arab mother know that if her son took part in the massacre [of October 7], he signed his own death warrant", Mossad chief David Barnea stated, at the funeral. Now, so many years after the Munich Massacre, the Hamas terrorist group is slated for destruction in response to their sadistic savagery mounted on southern Israel at the Gaza border, when it ruthlessly slaughtered 1,200 infants, elderly, families, children, women and men for the sheer elation they gained in indulging in mass murder, alongside torture, mutilation and rape.

 

While all Hamas operatives are slated for retribution for the butchery and the kidnapping of over 240 Israelis and foreign farm workers into Gaza as pawns in prospective trade agreements for Israel to release hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli prisons for terrorist activities, it is the elite commanders of the terrorist group that Israel has in very particular their sights on. Some commanders of the terrorist group have already fallen, but it is the top-slate executive that the Israel Defense Forces seek to destroy.

 

Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif, left, and Yahya Sinwar  Wikimedia commons/Getty

Hamas's Yahya Sinwar, the Gaza Strip leader and mastermind of the massacre of October 7, is a dead man walking. The 61-year-old Sinwar took over as Gaza's strongman in 2017, when his predecessor was erased. Hamas's Majed squads specializing in hunting down and gruesomely killing Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel were created by Sinwar, himself personally responsible for killing a dozen such 'informers' whose deaths were grisly events.

 

He was sentenced to serve four life sentences for killing four Palestinian collaborators and while in prison Israeli doctors diagnosed and surgically removed a cancerous tumour in his skull. Sinwar was among the 1,027 security prisoners that Israel freed in 2011 in exchange for the prisoner swap to bring Gilad Shalit home from Gaza. Israel may have saved the life of this seasoned killer, but has since lived to regret that humanitarian impulse as misplaced in this particular instance.

 Hamas' top leader, Ismail Haniyeh

Hamas's supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, takes good care to ensure he is not vulnerable to Israeli search-and-destroy techniques, sequestering himself in Qatar of Turkey for safe haven, both countries and their leaders, supporters of Hamas. Although Haniyeh and other Hamas top leaders had been deported in 1992 to Lebanon, it took them but a year and a half to return to Israel. Now 60, Haniyeh is a billionaire, the humanitarian funding courtesy of the UN, EU and other Western nations siphoned off to building the vast Gaza tunnel network and his personal bank account.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Muhammed Deif, leading the Hamas military forces, masterminded suicide bombing attacks, and supervised Hamas rocket attacks and tunnel warfare. He helped to plan and gave final approval to the October 7 attacks that devastated Israeli kibbutzim and towns as well as the Nova Music Festival, where over 360 festival-goers, young Israeli men and women, were murdered. The 62-year-ld Deif topped Israel's most-wanted and has managed to survive seven assassination attempts by Israel. Secretive and rarely seen, his messages are delivered through  a spokesperson.

Sahar Jabarin, Saleh Arouri's deputy, the terror group's key financier, is one of the longest-serving members of Hamas, helping to establish its first terror cells in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), recruiting many of the senior figures in Hamas. Hamas's bombmaker, Yahya Ayyash, was his best-known recruit, responsible for the death of at least 90 Israelis. for which he was assassinated in 1996 by Israel. Jabarin serves a senior position responsible for Hamas terror capabilities in Lebanon.

Mohammed Deif's deputy, Hamas number two military figure, Marwan Issa, is thought of as one of the most secretive senior Hamas officials. He took part in a series of secret meetings in Egypt dealing with the release of Hamas prisoners and with Salah Arouri, played a central role in the deal that released Gilad Shalit.And then, there is Yahya Sinwar's younger brother, Mohammed Sinwar, commander of the Khan Yunis Hamas brigade and considered to be one of the October 7 key planners, who has to the present survived six assassination attempts.

Civil defence workers search for survivors inside an apartment following a massive explosion in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024. The TV station of Lebanon's Hezbollah group says top Hamas official Saleh Arouri was killed Tuesday in an explosion in a southern Beirut suburb.(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)