Screams Before Silence

"Hamas is a political force."

"When you think of Hamas, you should not necessarily think of cutthroats, people armed to the teeth, or fighters. It's not like that." 

"Our collective obliviousness to what led, 100 years ago, to the Third Reich’s expansionism and the genocide of people not in conformity with the 'pure race' is asinine. And it is leading to the commission of yet another genocide..."

"Fellow Europeans, Italians, Germans: after the Holocaust, we should instinctively know that Genocide starts with dehumanizing the Other. If Israel's current attack agst [sic] Palestinians doesnt [sic] prompt our strong reaction, the darkest page of our recent history has taught us nothing."

"...Many Jewish people worldwide, unconditionally in love with Israel, live a lie. Premised upon the invisibilization/erasure [sic] of the Palestinians, Israel's founding ideology [and lie] is now leading to a genocide. What a disgraceful epilogue."

"Time to #UNseatIsrael from the UN."

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese  

A general view shows the assembly during a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in Iran, at the United Nations in Geneva. (Valentin Flauraud/AFP)

  

After two years of conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, following hard on Palestinian terrorism committing unspeakable atrocities in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, the guns are silent. Almost. The guns are still there. But the full-blown assaults one on the other have been stilled. Hamas deliberately and with malice aforethought planned a devastatingly traumatic event in an orgy of hate and blood-lust, when it dispatched four thousand operatives, mostly representing Hamas, but also Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, with orders to commit mass rape, torture, a wide arc of killing, and the abduction of Israeli children, civilian men and women, and foreign farm workers as hostages.

 

Matters were too silent for too long as far as Hamas, which had signed a ceasefire/hudna with Israel, felt, and matters were proceeding that disturbed their agenda of isolating Israel, demoralizing its population and finagling the Jewish state's elimination, when important Arab/Muslim countries like the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, joined Egypt and Jordan in signing a peace agreement with Israel  under the Abraham Accords, with signals that more would follow. The atrocities the Palestinian terrorist groups, joined by two thousand ordinary Palestinian civilians, wrought in Israel that day were flagrant examples of sadistic savagery meant to traumatize the Israeli population and shock its government. It did all of that.

 

 

And then the enormity of the event, the depth of the depravity in mutilating girls and women while raping and murdering them, of burning entire families alive in their homes, of killing anyone the marauding terrorists found in the streets unaware of a vicious armed invasion taking place, and hunting down thousands of fearful young Israelis at a music festival  to rape, murder and abduct, galvanized the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Forces into a response, where the military following government orders set out to destroy Palestinian terror, its infrastructures, its weapons depots, its hiding places, while searching for the hostages.

 

The Gaza population was offered as a sacrifice to terrorism's goals with the deliberate intention on the part of Hamas leaders, to have as much collateral damage as possible inflicted on their populace to serve as a springboard in presenting Israel as a genocidal aggressor, augmenting their general representation of Palestinian victimhood at the hands of an oppressor that had nothing better to do than target Palestinians for death, a complete inversion of the Hamas covenant that bound it to the complete eradication of the Jewish state from the Middle East, and the death of Jews anywhere.

 

Screams Before Silence, presents testimonies from victims, rescuers, and researchers about the violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7

 

Latent antisemitism comes alive when Israel is portrayed as a heartless aggressor, and those in any society that seem to have Jew-hate imprinted in their DNA are always eager to take such charges at face value, justifying their own beliefs about Jewish intentions to rule the world. The United Nations, the international institution whose stated goal is world peace, assigned an arm to oversee conditions and give aid to Palestinians in Gaza through UNRWA, and like the UN's Francesca Albanese, its appointed heads have always been thorough antisemites, while their employment of local Palestinians featured members of the various terrorist groups; neutrality is an unknown concept there, as is fairness and decency.

 

The people of Gaza have been ruled for the past several decades by an Islamist totalitarian government. Funded by the international community, overseen by the United Nations which has never had a problem defending the ongoing violence that Palestinians perpetrated over the last 80 years on Israel, while their leaders refused time and again to lay down arms and malice and agree to recognizing Israel's right of existence and establishing a state of their own alongside Israel. Their solution was a one-state settlement; a Palestinian state and no room for the presence of a Jewish state.

 

Armed fighters in Khan Younis, southern Gaza on Monday.  Abed Rahim Khatib / DPA via Getty Images

 

Now that the conflict has been paused, settled, awaiting results, plans are afoot to reconstruct Gaza once Hamas has surrendered its arms and faded into history. Hamas has no intention of doing either, despite its agreement to the ceasefire and its conditions, and the anxiety of the Middle East (with the exception of the Iran axis) to cement peace between Israel and 'Palestine'. In foreign parts across the world, Europe and North America, the massed protests supporting Palestine (and Hamas) calling for a ceasefire, should rightly see a mass sigh of relief, but those who were dedicated to achieving a ceasefire, were also firmly dedicated to opposing Israel's existence.

 

That hasn't changed, thanks to a massive influx of Muslim supporters of Palestine having over time infiltrated Western society, finding common cause with Western homegrown socialists, Marxists, 'progressive' academics and unions and just plain old closet Jew-haters, feeling free now to exit their dank basements to rally alongside fellow antisemites. 

 

And Gaza? How's it faring? If you're a member of Hamas, very well. As a civilian Palestinian who desperately wants an end to endless conflict, to repression, to threats and violence, not so good. Because, no longer distracted with shielding itself from Israeli fire meant to destroy the presence of terrorists, Hamas can now devote all its time to rebranding itself as the rightful governance of the territory they plotted to be the recipient of an Israeli response. Now Hamas is free to 'identify' those Palestinians they claim opposed their rule, and chose to collaborate with Israel or with Palestinian clans opposed to Hamas.

 

The order of the day now in Gaza is threats, beatings, public executions and full-blown violence between Hamas operatives charged to destroy family clans that reject Hamas as the ruling power in Gaza. Hamas once again rules that part of the territory where the IDF has no presence. Insisting they are implementing law and order, and executing the 'criminals' in Palestinian society. The population of Gaza once again faces the threat of death from its leaders, now that Hamas gangsters have emerged fully uniformed from their tunnels. Score-settling has turned a war zone into a death zone.

 

Masked gunmen prepare to execute a group of men in Gaza City.  via Reuters

 

 

Wheeling and Dealing ... Crass Interests Dominate

"In the end, the peace deal was exactly like previous arrangements stretching back more than four decades."

"Israel released prisoners and detainees for the living hostages. This time, the ration was a hundred to one, which is actually low by historical standards."

"The IDF ceased fire and withdrew from some territory, into which its enemies reconstituted themselves."

"This was lamented as 'mowing the grass' in Israeli security circles, meaning that from time to time, the growth of terror had to be dealt with, but after the mowing, it would grow back."

"This time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- with widespread Israeli support at the outset -- vowed that the Hamas green grass would not be allowed to grow back. This time, it would be scorched earth -- and under the earth."

"He persisted until Trump made him get on his riding mower and cede half of Gaza to Hamas, which is already fertilizing the ground with fresh blood." 

Father Raymond J. de Souza, National Post

Netanyahu called Trump the 'greatest friend' Israel had ever had in the White House  Reuters

 

There are plans afoot for a new security and stabilization force to become actively engaged in Gaza, in phase 2 of President Donald Trump's remarkable peace plan that brought a ceasefire in Gaza. Above all, the return of 20 live Israeli hostages. It sounds quite convincing, if one manages to overlook the presence of Turkish and Egyptian troops and Qatari money in Gaza, and speculate the necessity of disarming Hamas and getting on in good time ... and for a long time ... in deradicalizing the Palestinian civilian population in preparation for their long-awaited Palestinian state coming to fruition -- one which does not include the displacement of Israel to fulfill the Palestinians' full-throated 'from the river to the sea'.

 

That takes thought and a hard second look: Qatar and Turkey have both hosted on the most generously helpful terms, the 'diplomatic' arm of the leaders of Hamas. In both countries Hamas is considered to represent a legitimate freedom movement, one dedicated to disengaging Gaza from Israeli oppression and 'occupation'. How diligent can they be expected to be in disarming Hamas, in the context of their own Islamist dedication to jihad, after all? While Egypt and Saudi Arabia have outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas's big brother, both Qatar and Turkey are in complete support of the MB and all it stands for; the total eradication of Israel.

 

The Hamas leadership is, if nothing else, skilled in manipulating the West. That Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and its various public relations arms have fully infiltrated academia, politics, unions in the West, while Qatar has most generously endowed Western universities with unlimited cash, the disarming has been to the advantage of radical Islam whose agenda appears to be fogged by Western inattention to the slow and rapidly growing influence on university campuses, union halls, and the progressive left, to demonize Israel and diaspora Jewry and to hold them accountable for the conflict in the Middle East.

 

Gaza City has been reduced to grey rubble: Hamas's willing sacrifices   Reuters

 

Qatar in particular has bought its way into the corridors of power, following in the malign footsteps of China but for their own reasons. Qatar's public relations media Al Jazeera, has become a Hamas mouthpiece, airing and emphasizing condemnation of Israel for responding to the October 7, 2023 savagery when sadistic rapists and murderers exploited Israeli inattention and complacency in the belief that nothing threatened the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza since Israel had agreed to allow Qatar to bankroll Hamas and itself demonstrate good faith and trust by employing 20,000 Gazans in southern Israel kibbutzim.

 

With Gulf promises of funding for Gaza reconstruction, will there be any foolproof method of ensuring that the money is used for actual reconstruction of civic infrastructure and  homes for displaced Gaza civilians, and not diverted for the reconstruction of the terrorists' vast underground tunnel network, to rebuild its bases of operation and weapons caches, while recruiting and training and arming more graduates of the academy of Hamas's death cult focusing on following through with its mandate of killing Jews and destroying the Jewish state?

 

Hamas has been busy in fact, reconstructing itself as a fighting force, focusing for the present on rounding up its opponents within Gaza itself, the 47% of the strip that has been allocated temporarily to them, where the current imperative of punishing Palestinian civilians they blame as traitors on charges of aiding Israel, and where powerful Gazan clans have been intent in the last two years of conflict, on unseating Hamas's power base, hoping to continue Israel's war on Hamas for their own purposes of ridding themselves of their presence.

 

Video shows Hamas armed men dragging seven men into a circle of people in Gaza City, forcing them to their knees and executing them.    From Social Media/Reuters

 

Punishments meted out by Hamas operatives in breaking arms and legs of those they accuse of deserting the Hamas jihad enterprise, of surrounding areas in Gaza where clans dominate, to enter guns blazing, grenades exploding, to execute clan leaders, rounding up others for public executions to make certain that Gazans fully understand and remain complicit with Hamas back in charge as the dominating group that none must dare oppose.

 

As for President Trump who has given his assent to Hamas cleaning up and clearing away the 'bad guys' in Gaza belonging to family clans, his focus is on "A lot of cash, unlimited cash!", exulting at the prospect of the United Arab Emirates funding the Trump version of a Palestinian state. For its part, Saudi Arabia has threatened to withdraw its pledges for reconstruction funding should Hamas not be demilitarized and ousted from Gaza. Trump, while avowing his love and support for Israel, was enraged when the IDF attempted to assassinate Hamas officials in Qatar.

 

It is not to the benefit of Israel that President Trump's peace plan is moving ahead, but to Qatar's, the source of Hamas's funding and future. Israel's missile assault on Qatar moved Trump to declare that Qatar's sovereignty was inviolate, forcing Mr. Netanyahu to apologize for its effrontery in visiting violence on the very country that funds violence on Israel. If the Muslim Brotherhood has an assured haven, that place is in Qatar. Yet President Trump has seen fit to sign a military treaty with Qatar guaranteeing its inviolability. 

 

 US President Donald Trump and Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani meeting during the ceasefire summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, on October 13. Blondet Eliot/Abaca/Sipa USA

 

"Qatar was a tremendous help to getting this done. I hope people can realize that. It was very tough and very dangerous for Qatar. They were very brave." 

"His Highness Sheikh Tamim is respected by everybody. He’s respected by everybody, and in the most positive way."

"Not only because of power, because of his heart. He’s got a tremendous heart and he’s a great leader, and his country loves him."

U.S. President Donald Trump 

When Suddenly Everything is Palestinian-Political

"We always aimed to avoid political involvement, focusing solely on raising funds for CHEO [Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario]."

"Unfortunately, we were unaware of the complexities tied to the Gaza situation."

"Our personal opinions about what's happening in Palestine has nothing to do with Juice Dudez. Juice Dudez will never, ever be bullied into talking about politics."

"We're here to make people happy and healthier."

Nasr Nasr, owner, Juice Dudez, Ottawa juice bar

"As mayor [of Ottawa], I am focused on the people of Ottawa and doing everything possible to keep our community and our residents safe."

"I will continue to do everything I can to ensure we are fighting back against rising hatred and racism until our community is safe for everyone."

"Every life matters. And everyone who has lost a loved one is suffering equally."

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe

"This isn't a political issue like you have implied: it's a humanitarian crisis. Canada today supports and personally funds the ethnic cleansing of an entire nation."

"It is your moral duty as a Canadian and as an Arab to speak out against this."

Staying 'not political' is an unacceptable stance."

Ibrahim Helmy, Instagram post to Nasr Nasr

Nasr Nasr is the owner of Juice Dudez stores in Ottawa. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

Pure inadvertence that an apolitical juice bar owner has been inducted involuntarily into the overheated politics surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nor did he ever imagine that by inviting the mayor of Ottawa to a CHEO fundraiser that he would become a target for pro-Palestinian rage. Suddenly, however, Nasr Nasr finds both himself personally and his business the target of online slander resulting from a fundraising event he staged on December 8 to benefit the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, based solely on having the mayor of the city in appearance. The goal was not to become a target of pro-Palestinian slander, but to raise $10,000 to benefit the hospital.

Now, the juice bar owner sees himself on the wrong end of support for the Hamas massacre in southern Israel, undoubtedly not his intent, but now his punishment for ignoring the strident threats being issued against politicians by those purporting to be concerned over Palestinian welfare, barely masking their hatred for Israel and chanting 'gas the Jews' and 'final solution', along with other messages, like 'intefada!' and 'from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean); aka destruction of Israel. No one is immune from the pressure and some defy it.

Now, a boycott campaign has been launched where Nasr sees his business given poor online reviews, calls for a boycott of his business, and  his messaging inbox filled with hate mail. On his Instagram post, Nasr was pilloried for not having taken a public stand on the military campaign unleashed by Israel in response to the Hamas bloodbath of Israelis in southern Israel on October 7. That Nasr shook hands with Mayor Sutcliffe has enraged his accusers, viewing the mayor as pro-Israeli.

The mayor has adopted a locally focused approach to the Middle East conflict, condemning the terror attacks by Hamas terrorists, and giving his opinion that Israel has the right to self-defence. He has angered his critics by failing to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. He  has met with Palestinian families with extended family members in Gaza, and coordinated an effort in mid-October resulting in over 50 local faith leaders issuing a joint statement renouncing all forms of hate, discrimination and violence in the city.

In some Canadian municipalities such as Brampton, Ontario and Burnaby, B.C. motions were passed demanding a Gaza ceasefire. The National Council of Canadian Muslims called on all Canadian municipalities to do the same. Born in Lebanon, Nasr founded his business four years earlier and has stores in several locations in the city selling smoothies, juices, desserts, waffles, crepes, gelato and coffee. He feels his personal opinions of the situation in Gaza are just that; not part of his business.

Some of the personal message he has received have also been supportive, such as one that wrote "I feel so strongly about what's happening in Palestine, I can't even sleep, but boycotting our own people with no good reason is the last thing we need". He has responded to the pressure by inviting any one of his critics to his store and he would be pleased to serve them with a hot chocolate and they could then have a chat.