#how hamas Is really fighting in gaza

[eretzyisrael]

"How Hamas Is Really Fighting in Gaza: Tunnels, Traps and Ambushes" writes the New York Times, in the first full article in any newspaper that reveals how Hamas is using schools, homes, hospitals and civilians, while its military fight in civilian garb, what is really happening in the Gaza War between Hamas and Israel....

They hide under residential neighborhoods, storing their weapons in miles of tunnels and in houses, mosques, sofas — even a child’s bedroom — blurring the boundary between civilians and combatants.

They emerge from hiding in plainclothes, sometimes wearing sandals or tracksuits before firing on Israeli troops, attaching mines to their vehicles, or firing rockets from launchers in civilian areas.

They rig abandoned homes with explosives and tripwires, sometimes luring Israeli soldiers to enter the booby-trapped buildings by scattering signs of a Hamas presence.

Through eight months of fighting in Gaza, Hamas’s military wing — the Qassam Brigades — has fought as a decentralized and largely hidden force, in contrast to its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which began with a coordinated large-scale maneuver in which thousands of uniformed commandos surged through border towns and killed roughly 1,200 people.

Instead of confronting the Israeli invasion that followed in frontal battles, most Hamas fighters have retreated from their bases and outposts, seeking to blunt Israel’s technological and numerical advantage by launching surprise attacks on small groups of soldiers.

From below ground, Hamas’s ghost army has appeared only fleetingly, emerging suddenly from a warren of tunnels — often armed with rocket-propelled grenades — to pick off soldiers and then returning swiftly to their subterranean fortress. Sometimes, they have hid among the few civilians who decided to remain in their neighborhoods despite Israeli orders to evacuate, or accompanied civilians as they returned to areas that the Israelis had captured and then abandoned.

Hamas’s decision to keep fighting has proved disastrous for the Palestinians of Gaza. With Hamas refusing to surrender, Israel has forged ahead with a military campaign that has killed nearly 2 percent of Gaza’s prewar population, according to Gazan authorities; displaced roughly 80 percent of its residents, according to the United Nations; and damaged a majority of Gaza’s buildings, according to the U.N.

By contrast, fewer than 350 Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since the start of the invasion, according to military statistics — far fewer than Israeli officials had predicted in October.

Yet despite the carnage in Gaza, Hamas’s strategy has helped the group fulfill some of its own goals.

The war has tarnished Israel’s reputation in much of the world, prompting charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague. It has exacerbated long-running rifts in Israeli society, prompting disagreements among Israelis about whether and how Israel should defeat Hamas. And it has restored the question of Palestinian statehood to global discourse, leading several countries to recognize Palestine as a state.

Just as important for Hamas, its war doctrine has allowed it to survive.

Hamas’s leader in the territory, Yahya Sinwar, and most of his top military commanders are still alive. Israel says it has killed more than 14,000 of Hamas’s 25,000 fighters — an unverifiable and disputed number that, if true, suggests thousands remain active.

An analysis of battlefield videos released by Hamas and interviews with three Hamas members and scores of Israeli soldiers, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, suggests that Hamas’s strategy relies on:

Using hundreds of miles of tunnels, the scale of which surprised Israeli commanders, to move around Gaza without being seen by Israeli soldiers;

Using civilian homes and infrastructure — including medical facilities, U.N. offices and mosques — to conceal fighters, tunnel entrances, booby-traps and ammunition stores;

Ambushing Israeli soldiers with small groups of fighters dressed as civilians, as well as using civilians, including children, to act as lookouts;

Leaving secret signs outside homes, like a red sheet hanging from a window or graffiti, to signal to fellow fighters the nearby presence of mines, tunnel entrances or weapons caches inside;

Dragging out the war for as long as possible, even at the expense of more civilian death and destruction, in order to bog Israel down in an attritional battle that has amplified international criticism of Israel.

“The aim is to vanish, avoid direct confrontation, while launching tactical attacks against the occupation army. The emphasis is on patience,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and former fighter in its military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul. Before Oct. 7, the Qassam Brigades operated as “an army with training bases and stockpiles,” Mr. al-Awawdeh said. “But during this war, they are behaving as guerrillas.”

At the start of the war, Hamas and its allies fired a barrage of rockets toward civilian areas of Israel, including roughly 3,000 on Oct. 7 itself, often using launchers hidden in densely populated civilian neighborhoods in Gaza. The Israeli Army captured and destroyed scores of launchers, including some it said it found near a mosque and a kindergarten, bringing the rocket fire to a near halt.

After Israeli ground troops invaded in late October, Hamas went further in transforming civilian areas of Gaza into military zones, setting traps in scores of neighborhoods and creating confusion about what a combatant looks like by dressing its fighters as civilians.

Israeli officials say that Hamas’s tactics explain why Israel has been forced to strike so much civilian infrastructure, kill so many Palestinians and detain so many civilians.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official based in Qatar, dismissed criticism of Hamas’s use of civilian attire and storage of weapons inside civilian homes, saying that it deflected attention away from Israeli wrongdoing.

“If there’s someone who takes a weapon from under a bed, is that a justification for killing 100,000 people?” Mr. Abu Marzouk said. “If someone takes a weapon from under a bed, is that a justification to kill an entire school and destroy a hospital?”

Other Hamas members acknowledge and defend the movement’s use of civilian clothes and civilian homes, saying the group had no alternative.

“Every insurgency in every war, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, saw people fighting from their homes,” said Mr. al-Awawdeh. “If I live in Zeitoun, for example, and the army comes — I will fight them there, from my home, or my neighbor’s, or from the mosque. I will fight them anywhere I am.”

Hamas militants wear civilian clothes in a legitimate attempt to avoid detection, Mr. al-Awawdeh said. “That’s natural for a resistance movement,” he added, “and there’s nothing unusual about it.”

How Hamas Reacted to the Invasion

Hamas’s response to Israel’s ground invasion on Oct. 27 became a model for its strategy since.

When Israeli tanks and infantry battalions surged into Gaza that Friday, they were met with little to no resistance for the first couple of miles, according to four soldiers who were among the first to cross the border.

Lior Soharin, an Israeli reserve sergeant major, helped overrun a Hamas outpost a few dozen yards from the border. There was no one inside, he recalled.

“We learned in retrospect that they were there — just underneath the ground,” Mr. Soharin said.

Having retreated into their labyrinth of tunnels, Hamas fighters had ceded thousands of acres of farmland to Israeli forces.

That was partly because the Israeli forces advanced along routes that Hamas had not lined with explosives and traps, according to a Hamas junior officer from northern Gaza who left the territory before Oct. 7 and remains in close touch with his subordinates. But it was also because the Qassam Brigades’ strategy was to ambush Israeli soldiers once they had advanced deep into the territory, instead of counterattacking immediately, according to the fighter.

Dozens of Hamas propaganda videos, posted by the group on its social media channels, show small groups of Gazan fighters — often clad in jeans, sweatpants, sandals and sneakers — emerging from tunnels to take potshots at nearby Israeli tanks and personnel carriers; rushing on foot toward tanks and attaching mines near the turrets; firing rocket-propelled grenades from residential buildings; and shooting at soldiers with sniper rifles.

Hamas had been preparing for this moment since at least 2021, when the group began scaling up production of explosives and anti-tank missiles, in preparation for a ground war, and stopped making so many long-range rockets, the Hamas officer said.

It also expanded a vast network of tunnels, creating entry points in houses across Gaza that would allow fighters to enter and exit without being seen from the air but made targets of civilian neighborhoods. The network was fitted with a landline telephone network that is difficult for Israel to monitor and that allows fighters to communicate even during outages to Gaza’s mobile phone networks, which are controlled by Israel, according to the Hamas officer, Mr. al-Awawdeh and Israeli officials.

By the start of the war, Hamas had enough explosives in its underground arsenals for an extended campaign — as well as enough canned vegetables, dates and drinking water to last for at least 10 months, the officer said.

The tunnel network grew so extensive that it ran underneath a major U.N. compound and the largest hospital in Gaza, as well as major roads, countless homes and government buildings. Nine months later, senior Israeli officials say that they have destroyed only a small fraction of the network, and that its existence has stymied Israel’s ability to destroy Hamas.

Hamas’s commandos had also been trained to remain alert and focused during shortages of food and water, the officer said. Before the war, fighters were sometimes ordered to spend days eating only a handful of dates and to sit for several hours without moving, even as instructors splashed water on their faces to distract them, the officer said.

As vast swaths of Gaza began to empty out in October, Hamas fighters began booby-trapping hundreds of houses that they expected the Israeli troops would seek to enter, the officer said. The mines were linked to tripwires, movement sensors and sound detectors that detonate the explosives once triggered, the officer said.

The terrain prepared, the fighters then descended into the tunnels — and waited for the Israelis to arrive.

How Hamas Sets a Trap

In the best-planned ambushes, Hamas squads have lulled Israeli forces into a false sense of security by allowing them to move freely for hours or even days in areas marked for attack.

Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers say that Hamas tracks the Israelis’ locations using hidden cameras, drones and intelligence provided by civilian lookouts. Five Israeli soldiers said those lookouts include children, who stand on roofs and relay information to commanders below.

Hamas’s ambush squads typically stay hidden until an Israeli convoy has moved through an area for several minutes, or Israeli forces have grouped in a particular place for hours, creating the impression that Hamas has left the area, six Israeli soldiers and the Hamas officer said. After a period of calm, a squad emerges from a tunnel, often as a group of four.

Two fighters are tasked with fixing explosives to the sides of a vehicle or firing anti-tank missiles at it, according to the Hamas officer. A third carries a camera to film propaganda footage. A fourth typically stays at the tunnel entrance, preparing a booby-trap that can be activated as soon as the others return, to kill any Israelis who try to follow them underground.

A well-planned ambush aims to take out not only the initial Israeli force, but also the backup fighters and medics who come to rescue the injured, according to soldiers who experienced such ambushes and the Hamas officer.

One Israeli special forces member recalled how a group of Hamas fighters appeared to have positioned itself specifically so that Israeli backup forces would have to fire across stricken comrades in order to hit the ambushers.

Another described Hamas fighters waiting after members of an Israeli unit had been wounded by an exploding mine and then emerging to fire on the rescuing force. In a June 11 attack in Rafah, both Hamas and the Israeli military said that Qassam fighters fired mortars at an Israeli relief force that came to rescue soldiers who had been attacked earlier in the day.

Hamas showed off most of these approaches in an extensive eight-minute video released on its social media channels in early April.

The video appears to show fighters carrying out a multistage ambush that is said to take place in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

The video seems to show Hamas fighters, their faces blurred, sitting on patterned mats as they plan the attack. They use pen, paper and a digital tablet to draw simplistic maps detailing where they want to plant a set of roadside mines.

“We ask, O Lord, for the ambush to achieve its goals — let us kill your enemies, the Jews,” the narrator says.

Next, Hamas men — wearing civilian clothes — are seen laying those explosives in the rubble of a ruined neighborhood. Then, the video cuts to what appears to be the planned ambush: Filmed by hidden cameras, a group of Israeli soldiers pick their way through the rubble before being hit by gunfire. That attack seems to lure an Israeli relief squad to the scene, and the arrival of those rescuers appears to trigger the mines.

“This is a miniature sample of what their defeated army is suffering in the mire of Gaza,” the narrator concludes.

How Hamas Uses Homes

In addition to setting traps in houses, Hamas has also used residential buildings to conceal scores of small arms caches across the territory, according to more than a dozen Israeli soldiers who have found such stockpiles.

The soldiers said it became normal to find munitions hidden inside civilian homes and mosques, which is one of the reasons, they said, the army had destroyed so many such buildings.

Some soldiers said their units needlessly destroyed civilian property, or filmed themselves vandalizing it, creating the impression that the Israeli military often had little reason to be searching civilian homes. But others said there was usually a clear military purpose to picking through civilian belongings: One recalled finding guns behind a false wall in a child’s bedroom, while another said his unit found grenades in a woman’s clothes closet. International law requires combatants to avoid using “civilian objects,” which include homes, schools, hospitals and mosques, for military objectives.

Sometimes, Hamas fighters emerged from tunnels without weapons, passing as civilians until they reached a house where other fighters had hidden weapons and ammunition inside the lining of furniture, Israeli soldiers said.

To help its gunmen find these weapons caches, several Israeli soldiers said, Hamas has developed an elaborate system for marking houses that double as military storerooms, or contain tunnels or booby traps. Some buildings were marked with a particular symbol, some had red fabric hanging from windows, and others had plastic barrels or plastic bags outside — all of which told Hamas fighters something about what was concealed inside.

Some Israeli units were eventually supplied with printed guides to help them identify the meaning of each symbol or object, one soldier said.

When in doubt, soldiers entered houses by blowing a hole in their walls, in case the front doors were rigged with mines, according to a senior military officer, Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv, who escorted a reporter from The New York Times in central Gaza in January.

To draw Israelis toward a trap, Hamas gunmen sometimes scattered a building with visible signs of their presence, such as a Hamas flag. At other times, two Israeli soldiers said, Israeli troops were lured inside by a piece of Israeli clothing or identification card, which hinted that hostages might be held within.

One soldier said Hamas used chained dogs to entice soldiers toward a booby-trapped building, hoping that the soldiers would try to free the dogs.

Another soldier recalled spotting a dead Hamas fighter inside an apartment block and making his way toward the body. As he drew closer, he realized the corpse had been rigged with an explosive, he said. When his squad fired at the body, it blew up and set the building ablaze, he said.

Some soldiers said they found weapons in houses that they had searched earlier in the war. It suggested that at least some of the arms had been placed in houses after the start of Israel’s invasion.

Even in areas where Israel claims to have defeated Hamas, Israeli forces have often had to return, weeks or even months later, to continue the battle against fighters who had survived earlier phases of the war.

For Hamas, “it was always about avoiding losses for as long as possible so they can fight another day,” said Andreas Krieg, an expert on military strategy at King’s College London. “They’re nowhere near being defeated.”

[seleneprince]

I told to myself that I wouldn't do this again. That I wouldn't waste time, energy and mental sanity in responding to these kind of posts, since it's obvious people behind them are just plain ignorant and don't have any interest in being corrected or taught some culture. That people like you won't accept any other opinion that doesn't align with yours, and so there's no point in giving you wings by reblogging and giving you attention.

But seeing this, this utter, utmost, incredibly mindblowing BULLSHIT, fucking hell, i can't just leave there and forget about it. I refuse.

What unnerves me the most isn't just your blatant stupidity and ignorance about what's going on, about the thousands of years of story behind this conflict. What makes me want to puke is that this was labelled as "pro palestine".

Calling Hamas terrorists isn't an ultimate betrayal of privilege (which I'm sure you know plenty of), it's simply calling them for who they are. Hamas is a radical islamist terrorist organization with a heavily antisemitic agenda who has stated multiple times than their main objective is erradicating the Jews and a "couple of civilian deaths" from BOTH sides was an "acceptable price for their victory". This is their whole doctrine.

They're not fighting for Palestinians, they never were. Their only goal is to kill and bring chaos, and if you can't see this or still find a reason to support them, let me tell you that you're the one supporting a genocide here, just the victims are different people (but I guess these particular people don't ignite you the same pity as palestinians, right?)

Occupation, you say? There wasn't any fucking occupation. That land is the home of judaism and its people, they lived and worked that land way longer than the muslims until the colonizers, the Roman empire, drove them away. And when the Holocaust happened, there was a wave of jews refugees going to Israel to escape. It wasn't colonization, it was simply native people returning to their ancestral home. But for social reasons, the muslims living there didn't like their presence and so the war began. When the UN approved the formation of Israel and Palestine, each with their own land and government, six arab countries united to attack Israel and invade them to show their disconformism. In the way, of course, they killed and brutalized innocent people. Israel fought back, won for some sick miracle, and as a final "fuck you", they took a bit more portion of their land. But they have been never completely safe since then.

Should the Palestinian people simply lie down and die, while Israel are cheered on when they drop bombs on innocent people?

Should the Israeli people do it, then? Have you forgotten when Palestinians fucking cheered on and spit on a dead girl's body as she was paraded through the streets by Hamas? Have you forgotten about the amount of celebrations and "congrats" from pro-palestinians for all the jews killed, being all happy about it and "hoping" the number would grow bigger? Or the chants from Hamas supporters with "gas the jews"?

Jews are the only community in the world that whenever they're under attack, they're expected to roll over and let it happen. They've been defending themselves since the consolidation of Israel as a state simply for being a country for Jews, all while Hamas enacted a rule of terror in Palestine.

There hasn't been an election since Hamas rose to power. They're known for killing, torturing and eliminate every single person that opposes to them, and if some of them happen to be palestinians, guess what? They don't care. They've stolen public funds to invest them in their expensive mansions and pretty cars for them and their allies, while their people starved and died in poverty. They've taken away basic resources like water and electricity to use them in their terroristic acts. Go on and listen to interviews of palestinians who used to live there. Trust me, they don't see Hamas as their "freedom fighters". They're fucking dictators. Everything you accuse Israeli government of, Hamas has already done it too, and worse.

The fact you have the gall to come here and write that shit under "pro palestine" tag it's deeply insulting but also laughable, since it only shows that you know nothing of what you speak about. You're just another girlie following the new trend of "pro-palestine", copy pasting what tiktokers and liberal activists say on social media, so everyone sees you're a "freedom fighter" too.

Fuck you. You're not pro-palestinian, you don't care about them. Not when you're actually defending their opressors who have tore families apart and ruined their lives simply for disagreeing or being in the opposition. The responsible of their overall poverty and lack of medical services. The same people that allow them to get killed in favour of their senseless war. If you remotely cared about their lives, you've done your basic research and you'll understand something bas basic as Hamas.are.fucking.terrorists.

Calling Hamas a terrorist organization is the ultimate betrayal of privilege. Palestinians are fighting back against their oppressors. Did you think that resistance in the face of occupation would be bloodless, or 100% free of casualties? Should the Palestinian people simply lie down and die, while Israel are cheered on when they drop bombs on innocent people?

It's "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" not "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free as long as they remain within the confines of calm debate". Get your heads out of your asses

[boreal-sea]

Trying to understand here... how is someone calling whats going on in palestine right now "genocide" antisemitic? The "fuck zionism" part is, I'm not denying that, but is it not true to call what's happening genocide? Thousands of Palestinians have been and are being killed without discrimination of if they are members of Hamas or Hezbollah. Innocent citizens of the Gaza strip, regardless of nation, have been and are being killed. The sheer amounts of Palestinian deaths are heartbreaking and I don't understand how people calling something out for being literal genocide can be something that makes you label someone antisemitic. I'm not being facetious, genuinely trying to understand and learn here. I've followed your account for a couple years probably at this point, since you were hadean-taiga, and I'm spelling stuff out so clearly so that I can attempt to avoid an automatic block.

No, what's happening right now is not genocide. It's war. And yeah, war really sucks.

Genocide is not just "a lot of civilians dying". I'm sorry, but it's not.

Genocide has an extremely specific definition. It requires both of two parts: a mental part, and a physical part.

The mental part of genocide is the intent to destroy, in part or whole, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

The physical part of genocide includes the following acts that must be done in conjunction with the above mental part, aka with the intent to destroy a group of people:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Genocide requires both the mental and the physical aspects.

Are Palestinians being killed and experiencing physical harm? Yes. But not because Israel is trying to wipe all Palestinians off the face of the Earth. They are dying as casualties of a horrible, awful war. Israel is at war with Hamas. Two armies fighting is not genocide, even if civilians die in the crossfire.

The intent of Israel is to defeat Hamas, so that Hamas can no longer harm Israelis, which Hamas has been doing since the 1980's.

Yes, thousands of Palestinians are dying. That's because the war, that Hamas intentionally caused, is happening in Gaza, a dense urban zone where a lot of Palestinians live. If you have a war in a dense urban area, a lot of civilians are going to die.

There are multiple proofs of evidence that Israel is in fact trying to reduce civilian deaths as much as they possibly can, which contradicts any claim they are "intentionally trying to destroy" as many Palestinians as possible. The IDF has been actively warning before its raids and strikes, it has been maintaining open pathways for aid to enter Gaza, and it literally just cooperated with Hamas for a massive polio vaccine campaign in Gaza.

Vaccinating thousands of children against polio is an act intended to protect and save lives. It is the literal opposite of an act of genocide.

War fucking sucks all on its own without being a genocide. This is why we are calling for a ceasefire! War is bad enough on its own!

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

As a Jewish advocate for Palestinian rights, let me tell you something. I’m fucking hurting right now.

I hate Hamas because they have made the plight of Palestinians so much worse with their actions in that now even fewer people will be willing to acknowledge their 70 years of suffering.

I hate that they will be used as an excuse to demonize all Palestinians, and the US is already upping their already astronomical military funding for Israel.

I hate that they’ve committed unforgivable violence in the name of a cause that is just.

I hate the Israeli government and the IDF for creating the conditions for this tragedy and countless others stretching back to the Nakba.

I hate how they have perverted my culture into a settler-colonial ideology and perpetrated on the Palestinians the very kinds of pogroms my own family fled Europe to escape.

I hate that so many Jews in Israel and throughout the diaspora face ostracism from their communities and families for speaking out against the atrocities Israel has been committing against Palestinians.

I especially hate how many of my fellow Jews have bought into an ideology that can handwave the bulldozing of homes and schools, the imprisonment of children, the bombing of residential homes, the displacement, the massacres. Virtually all things we have suffered as Jews at points in our history.

My heart aches for the innocent people murdered across the board - no matter who the bombs came from. Even though part of me thinks settlers aren’t innocent, what can you really do if you just happened to be born there? And even if you moved to Israel, do you really deserve to die? No.

But neither do all the children in the Gaza Strip currently being bombed in a revenge attack that, with the denial of food, water, and medical aid, violates the Geneva convention.

But to everyone who is posting now about Israel and these “unprecedented tragedies” - yes, these are tragedies, and my heart is so heavy with them. But they are not unprecedented. Where were you when the same things were happening to Palestinians for decades upon decades? There’s a monumental amount of video evidence of atrocities against Palestinians, but somehow people have managed to miss all of that. If you’re only paying attention to the suffering of certain people, ask yourself why.

If you’re only now posting about “of course Palestinians should be free” in posts primarily about mourning the killing of Israelis, where were your voices before now? Those of us trying to organize and fight for Palestinian human rights could have used you.

If more people had spoken out against our government’s support of what Amnesty International and countless other human rights organizations have called an apartheid regime, who knows what could have been possible.

Edit: Since this is getting a little traction, I wanted to leave these links here. Both are very reputable organizations that are providing humanitarian aid:

[matan4il]

To the Nonnie who asked me about the mass grave in Gaza, you're pretty close to the truth of it rather than the anti-Israel propaganda.

First of all, the mass grave next to the hospital in Gaza has been shown already to have been dug before Israel got there.

Now, it wasn't untouched by the Israeli army, but that is a result of two contributing factors, both of which linked to Hamas.

One is because of the bodies of terrorists, who were using the hospital, and were killed during the fighting. They had to be buried somewhere. This is the Nasser hospital, the biggest medical center which was still active in Gaza after the very biggest, the Shifa hospital, had to be raided twice, because Hamas terrorists returned and re-took it, after the IDF evacuated it to allow the place to function as normal. If during the second operation in the Shifa hospital, there were 200 terrorists killed there, and at least 900 more suspects arrested, of which at least 500 were confirmed terrorists as of the end of the operation on April 1, how many terrorists were fighting against the IDF from Nasser, the last big medical complex they could use, when we know the abuse of Gaza hospitals for murderous purposes by terrorists is systematic? (I'm not accepting any numbers claimed by "Gaza's health officials," where no terrorists are mentioned at all, because that's Hamas speaking) Where do people think all those terrorists went to, those who did not surrender? Do people think this is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and if you stake a villain through the heart, then their body just goes "poof" into thin air, and there's no need to bury it?

The second factor is that Israel did exhume corpses that had been previously buried on the Nasser hospital grounds, to test them for DNA, in case they were what was left of murdered Israeli hostages, still held captive.

This has been done for a while, before this mass grave by the Nasser hospital started making the social media "headlines," so no one can claim this is an excuse made up now, because of this, and in fact, several bodies of Israeli hostages were returned to Israel thanks to the IDF's work, and the first one that comes to mind is that of 19 years old Noa Marziano, because her body was exhumed from the Shifa hospital grounds. She was held hostage in an apartment near the hospital, then moved into Shifa itself, and murdered in its basement. So yeah, guess where they buried her... Together with Noa, Yehudit Weiss' body was also recovered from the Shifa hospital grounds, and returned to her family in Israel.

If people don't like that the Israeli army has had to check bodies buried on hospital grounds for DNA, and then re-bury them together in a mass grave in the same place, then they should take it up with Hamas for murdering people on hospital grounds and for holding corpses as hostages in the first place. We're all living in the twisted reality created by Hamas.

And you know how we can tell that this part, about the bodies being exhumed to check for DNA isn't made up? Because we have regular Palestinians themselves admitting the bodies they're currently looking for in the mass grave are of their loved ones who were already dead by the time Israel got there.

Just to summarize this lunacy, we are being accused of massacring terrorists (who are legitimate targets, killing them was not a massacre, even if we were really successful at it) and already dead people. Make it make sense.

As for the added accusations that Israel skinned the Gazans and stole their organs... The anti-Israel crowd literally claims Israel stole organs in Haiti, when all we did was to send our military emergency medical staff to set up a field hospital there (to help the victims of the earthquake in 2010), and these lies are currently being repeated in print by The Palestine Telegraph (which is based in Gaza. You know, the place where nothing is published if it goes against Hamas interests). If that act of kindness and help could be turned into something sinister and monstrous just because the Jewish state was involved, it's almost a given the same would happen when Israel is at present dragged against its will into a defensive war. It's a recycling of the age old antisemitic blood libels, portraying the Jews as bloodthirsty and capable of any monstrosity. It's antisemitism, pure and simple. THAT is why the Jewish state has to be "comically evil in every way imaginable," like you said. Remember how for centuries in Europe, the 'bloodthirsty Jew' trope served to lie that we kill Christians to use their blood when baking our Passover matzahs? The following cartoon isn't from the Middle Ages, it's from 2018, and depicts Gazans, not European Christians (see the tire in one Palestinian man's hand? In Hamas-organized violent riots that aimed to breach Israel's border in 2018, as they succeeded in doing on Oct 7, many participants burned tires to create a screen of black smoke that would impair IDF soldiers' vision):

Meanwhile, the Islamist terrorist organization and Hamas' buddy, Hezbollah (which has been intentionally firing at civilian communities in northern Israel for months), has killed yet another Israeli civilian overnight, Sharif Suad, an Israeli Arab Muslim Bedouin. Watch the anti-Israel crowd ignore his murder, just like they erase all Israeli civilians victimized. Arab deaths don't count if they can't be used against the Jewish state.

I hope this helped! Take care. xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[femwizard]

[storiesfromgaza]

"Mom, does it hurt when we get bombarded? Do we feel the pain, or do we just die at once?"

These are the questions that Reporter Youmna El Sayed began with in her interview conducted by the AJ+ network to document her struggles with her children and the suffering of all the people of Gaza

When my kids ask me, 'Mom, does it hurt when we get bombarded? Do we feel the pain, or do we just die at once?' and I have to tell them, 'No, don't worry. It's not going to hurt.' Their father reassures them, saying, 'Don't worry. It just happens once, and that's it.' In the past, we would comfort our children, saying, 'Don't worry. It's going to be okay. It's going to end soon. You'll be fine. We'll be fine.' Everything is shaking—constantly. But now, every night, we tell them, 'Don't worry. We're together, sticking together. If we die, we die together.' Death has become a looming reality since the Israeli army encircled Gaza city. The bombardments have been relentless—from the land, air, and sea. Our building is in a perpetual state of tremor. Three days ago, we awoke to the smoke of nearby fires filling our homes. We sought refuge in the basement, the best option with the least smoke, but it was still overwhelming. The kids were coughing, suffocating, and their eyes were itching. But when it comes to my children, it just hits me so hard, Dina, and I just feel that I can't control it anymore. I can't be that strong, brave woman who's able to control things or get things under control because they're my weak part. I feel a loss of control, unable to maintain the facade of strength and bravery. Judy, usually full of life, now appears quiet and terrified

She doesn't eat much. She doesn't feel like doing anything. I tried to speak to her about things, you know, bring back some happy memories, and I said, as usual, 'What would you like to do the first thing after this war ends?' She told me, 'Mommy, I don't want to do anything except for this war to end. I just want these bombardments to end, everything—the destruction, the despair, the loss.'

I think they tell you that now—we're just hearing news of people dying every now and then—people that we know, friends, colleagues, everyone around us. And it just, you know, really, like, 'May he rest in peace,' and that's it. I just—we just go on because we were just waiting for our turn. You mentioned to me that food is scarce and supplies are low. What is the water situation? We can starve, right? We can go on without food, even as adults. But without water, I'd rather die from bombardments than die from thirst. I don't want my kids at the end to die from thirst. Are you still thinking to move south, and what would that look like? The last attempt was a couple of days ago, and we found out that to move south, we need to walk for at least 6 to 7 km on foot and not carry anything at all with us—none of our belongings. Basically, walk this distance while we raise our hands to show that we surrender, just holding our IDs in one hand and raising the other. And I think that's just extremely humiliating. And it's not just that, you know?

You remember the massacre that everyone saw on TV screens for the civilians that were bombarded on the road? They're still lying there. Until this day, lying there in the streets, their bodies. The crows and the birds are eating from them, and no one has been able to pick them up. The Israeli army has not allowed anyone or ambulances or any medical teams to come to pick these people up and to bury them. How can I let my kids go through a street while they see other children and other people killed and thrown just like that, lying in the street like that, while birds are eating from them? I think that this is just inhumane and more cruel than anything. This is not to worry about fighting Hamas or Palestinian fighters. This war began by eliminating and wiping out the Palestinian people in Gaza. This isn't a war against Palestinian fighters nor Hamas; it's a genocide against Gaza.

[lemedstudent2021]

yahya sinwar

went through the tag and im disgusted by the sheer number of zionist scumbags on there. never blocked mfs so fast in my life

to the idiots out there who think theyve 'won' you couldnt be any further from the truth. interestingly enough the same news circulated in september. God alone knows whos dead and alive in palestine.

to the dumbfuck who celebrated sinwars to be confirmed martyrdom saying 'bring back the hostages and end the war', the only way to break this to you is by smashing your skull with a rock because holy fuck how stupid do you have to be to think he was in the way of the negotiations? really? killing one single man is going to end the war?

this didnt start with hamas and for all i know it might not even end by their hands (though i pray for all of them the honour of doing so). the reason being that this all started way before hamas came into existence, and the resistance will continue to grow and fight for freedom regardless of who leads. regardless of the name they bear. because they represent their people. and the people will be freed.

israels war on gaza (and by extension the sanctity of life of humanity as a whole) wont end because the they simply dont care. it is not in israels best interests to stop fighting. they couldnt care less about the hostages, they couldnt care less about the millions of lives across the region (its own citizens included) its stolen and ruined.. and the white house is more than happy to oblige.

knowing them, theyll boast about it for years to come. how they defeated the 'mastermind' behind october 7th. theyll turn it into a national holiday. they will milk it far more than its worth because they have been fighting a losing battle for a over 76 years now. and they know it. theyre all literally hanging on by a thread.

theyve illusioned themselves and the world into thinking that this will all be over as soon as they kill those they fear above all. what they fail to realise is that they were vessels for the power that is and has always been with the people. if anything morale is higher

they were public figures and politicians and fighters on the front lines and beloved members of their communities, but you have to be beyond every conceiveable definition of stupid to think that killing a leader would lead to the dissolution of the movement.

sinwar, may God have mercy on his soul and that of every martyr everywhere on this earth, was always going to die. israel didnt accomplish anything but accelerate its downfall.

(headline in arabic quotes the israeli army announcing the assassination)

theres a slight difference in the headlines across platforms and outlets and nothing has been 100% confirmed as of writing

but you get the idea. im just surprised people are so brain dead as to think that this is the end? but thats on me for assuming they had brains to begin with

from the river to the sea palestine will be free 🍉

[zvaigzdelasas]

The family were eventually driven to an apartment in a multi-storey block where they would spend the next five weeks. “You could see the sea, not very far off in the distance,” Almog-Goldstein recalled.

On some days, they were allowed to spend time in a child’s toy-filled bedroom, but they would spent most nights sleeping on mattresses in the corridor. They were not physically harmed and often ate pitta and cheese with their captors until food became scarce.

They were always watched over by at least three of their six heavily armed guards. “Because some of them would go and fight and then come back, that’s what they told us,” Almog-Goldstein said.

The family tried to establish a relationship with their guards, engaging them in long conversations as part of a “survival mechanism”. Two spoke some English and another was learning Hebrew.

“They kept on telling us they’re not going to harm us and that we were very important to them,” Almog-Goldstein said. “But we were always terrified they would flip on us, ["][...]

The guards also discussed politics and the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“Ultimately it would always end with the guards telling us to go read history books; that we’re the ones who expelled them from their lands; we’re the ones who killed them; and we’re the ones who kept them in a pressure cooker that kept bubbling and bubbling until it erupted,” Almog-Goldstein said.

Some of the guards told the social worker they wanted to live side-by-side as neighbours, but others warned her to move away. “They told me to go to Tel Aviv but don’t return to Kfar Aza. They said: ‘We’ll return, we’ll be back.’ They asked: ‘Do you know how many we are in the organisation? On 7 October, we were 3,000. Next time we’ll be 20,000.’”

Almog-Goldstein said she also witnessed moments when her captors displayed “sensitivity and care”. One of the gunmen apologised for the killing of [her husband], whom Almog-Goldstein started dating in high school.

“We saw them cry, we saw them miss their wives,” she said. “We saw them writing letters to their wives and putting them in their pockets. We were worried about this, thinking why are you writing a letter now?”[...]

From there, the family were taken on a 40-minute walk to a supermarket. It was then that they saw the damage wreaked by the Israeli offensive for the first time.

“I saw a lot of devastation and destruction,” Almog-Goldstein said. “It made me feel terrible seeing such poverty. It was very difficult to see that. It was not a great feeling of: ‘Oh great, we Israelis showed them.’”

The three guards apologised for making the family sleep in a storage room in the supermarket but said they had some hope that the war was about to end.

The next day the supermarket was hit by shrapnel from an Israeli aerial bombardment. “It was atrocious. It was the first time we really felt like our lives were in danger,” Almog-Goldstein said.

“We heard the constant shelling and bombing getting closer and closer and could already see all the stones flying around and the rubble and shrapnel. It was closing up on us to the point where the Hamas guards put mattresses over us on the floor to cover us, and then they covered us with their bodies to protect us from our own forces’ shooting.”

When the supermarket was hit again, the Palestinians living in apartments upstairs were evacuated. The family’s guards began arguing in the pitch dark outside about where to take them next.

“But there was massive bombardment again,” said Almog-Goldstein. “There was bombs falling and they shoved us against the wall to protect us.”[...]

From there, there was another school filled with tents where Palestinian families were sheltering. Many assumed the Almog-Goldsteins were also displaced from the war and offered them food and water.

The family became hopeful that the war, then in its seventh week, was ending because their captors seemed “excited about a looming ceasefire”. But their guards told them there was nowhere safe left in Gaza and that they would have to wait it out in an underground tunnel with six female Israeli hostages, including two children.

Every encounter with captives in Gaza was truly exciting,” said Almog-Goldstein. “But three of the women were wounded, some had complex injuries, and some spoke about sexual assaults.”

She said the group discussed reporting the allegations to a Hamas commander on their release. “By and large, the Hamas commanders seemed to be receptive enough that we thought there might be a chance of relaying it,” she said.

But she doesn’t know whether that happened because most of the women were left behind. She is now desperate for the remaining hostages to return home, but added: “Having experienced how horrendous the fighting and bombardment was, I can’t really understand how you can both have that and care for the captives that are there.”

3 Mar 24

[arunswild]

These kinds of comments really bug me because it's so clear how confused the person who wrote them is.

So let me clear this up for you, @nagashii

Israel has not stolen Palestinian culture. Of all the ridiculous claims you could make, this one is probably the most silly because it's absolutely meaningless. I'd love to hear what cultural things you think we "stole", but I'm just letting you know that whatever you think it is, you're wrong. I'm not gonna bother elaborating

You're making a very important distinction between Jews and Israel, which is great except you screwed it up. You are assuming that the existence of Jews is not dependent on the existence of Israel, while ignoring the fact that the REASON Israel exists is to protect the Jewish people. Even if there's a very Jewish person who has no interest in Israel, Israel has helped them in more ways than you can imagine. Israel gives money and aid to Jewish community and it's also gained the right to prosecute people who commit antisemitic hate crimes in other countries. So you can say that Jews are okay but Israel needs to die, but you're basically saying Jews need to die, which is, obviously, antisemitic and disgusting.

Israel doesn't have genocidal ideals, don't be idiotic. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, believe me, there would be no humanitarian aid, no warnings, no attempts to evacuate gazans. The IDF has absolutely no interest in harming anyone who isn't part of Hamas, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The fact that Hamas uses its civilians as human shields makes this incredibly hard. I know people who are currently fighting in Gaza. Trust me, killing more people is the last thing they want. Obviously there are some morons who want to kill everyone and take Gaza back, but they're idiots and nobody really gives a shit what they think because they're being childish and narrow. Those few people do not represent Israel.

The Jewish people are absolutely and completely entitled to have a country of their own, and the fact that Israel was the land chosen has not only Historical and Traditional but also Legal reasons. I'll reblog this with links to useful explanations. As I said, Israel is essential to the continued existence of the Jewish people which means that yes, we are entitled to it. Absolutely. Whether or not all the actions of the Israeli government are okay is a completely different story. The botton line is that Israel must and will continue to exist.

Hope this helps.

[sukifoof-art]

Hi, I really liked your art and all and was a fan of you, until you started posting things about supporting a state which is controlled by a terrorist organization that doesn’t care about their own civilians and when any donations come there it doesn’t go to the people who need it but to Hamas, and by donating to Gaza not only do you not help the people in Gaza ,but you also help a terrorist organization who doesn’t care who it needs to kill in order to achieve its goal.

Also when I saw you reposted a post who supported the people in the picture’s with all PLO flags (which weren’t the main problem there) ,it seriously hurt me to see that one picture where people were stepping on USA flags and Israel flags. like….why would you support someone who obviously hate you(assuming you’re from the USA) but even if you aren’t from the USA then think about the fact that you’re LGBTQ, these people HATE people who are Queer and kills them ,so I really can’t understand how are you supporting people who want you dead and are against feminism.

I really hope that what I wrote helped you see this complex situation more clearly and I beg you to look at the situation from both sides.

so this means everyone there deserves to die? this means that a whole school year of children needs to be wiped out? that hospitals must be bombed and millions displaced and communication be cut off? that every palestinian must pay with their lives? that every closeted queer palestinian should die? are you seriously that dense. i made it clear i do not want people who support a genocide following me. have you bothered reading palestinian voices from queering the map? those who regret not saying they were in love and dont even have the chance anymore because thousands are dying? i genuinely don't know what to say to you to make you realize these are real, actual people who are dead. you speak of palestinians as if they're a monolith and not real individual people who had thoughts and dreams. none of these people deserved to die, even if they hate people like me. people can change and learn and grow and they weren't even given the chance. i am so sick of seeing fellow queer people SUPPORT GENOCIDE because they can't be bothered to think about others and their experiences for more than two seconds. of all the queer experiences i've read this is one of the most heartbreaking, and it's from gaza.

do NOT act like queer people and their families aren't being harmed and DO NOT come into my ask box supporting ethnic cleansing. there is never any reason for thousands of people to live in fear of airstrikes and white phosphorous, or to be stuck beneath rubble and in hospitals that don't even have power. if the idea of THOUSANDS DYING wasn't enough to upset you, there are so many videos of parents mourning their children, children mourning their parents, children and pets shaking in fear for me to not have explain to you that genocide is bad. there is NEVER any reason to JUSTIFY GENOCIDE. that should be clear enough. again, if you are complicit or try to justify genocide, do not follow me and DO NOT try to make me "see the situation from both sides". to be so privileged that you can sit here and write out paragraphs supporting genocide says enough about you.

if you see this i am begging you to contact your government, just do anything you can. even just spreading the word helps because palestine can't. the most important thing is to not give up hope. mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living.

[reasonsforhope]

Heads up/warning that I'm going to start posting articles related to the Israel-Palestine War

I've worked really, really hard to keep my blog about positive news only, and that's going to continue - these posts will be only about good news related to the war.

Of which there really, really isn't much, so I don't know that there will be a lot of posts, but I will be posting articles about humanitarian aid reaching those who need it and actions that will prevent more lives from being taken.

I know that, no matter my position on the war, this is something that would be very controversial and make a lot of people upset, so I wanted to be explicit about my position on this - and my posting policy, which is not the same thing. I also wanted to give people a heads up because I know the war in general is really, really triggering for a lot of people right now, for a lot of different reasons. I'll be tagging all relevant posts, so if screening those out is something that you need to do, you can.

I have worked very hard to make this blog a space with only good news because I know how much it can matter to have just one place, if nowhere else, that you can count on to not give you emotional whiplash with horrible news. To know you have one place you can go where you are guaranteed not to see bad news that will send you into a tailspin. That's why I've had a policy of not including signal boosts or PSAs about tragedies, no matter what they are, on this blog. (I do post about some of that stuff, including the Israel-Palestine War, on my main blog, though. I consider this blog to be me trying to run a public service, basically, and so have specific policies for myself around that, including my editorial and fact-checking standards.)

I'm going to be honest, I was really, really hoping the war would end after a couple of weeks, which has historically not been uncommon for wars with/involving Israel.

But that's clearly not happening, and I can't keep not acknowledging what's happening on here, so, this post.

With that, I imagine people probably want to know my actual stance on the war, since that's what I'll be posting in accordance with.

So, here's the official stance of this blog:

Every time a civilian is killed, it is a tragedy; Every time a child is killed, it is a tragedy, no matter their nationality. I condemn all antisemitism and all Islamophobia.

I support all calls for a ceasefire, as well as demands that Israel immediately stop its repeated bombing of hospitals, ambulances, shelters (including UN shelters), and refugee camps.

There is no situation in which the repeated and/or intentional bombing of hospitals is justified.

There is no situation in which the repeated and/or intentional bombing of shelters or refugee camps is justified.

There is no situation in which the repeated and/or intentional bombing of ambulances is justified.

There is no situation in which the killing of children is justified. Yet more children have now been killed in Gaza than in all global conflict zones combined in each year since 2019.

There is no situation in which cutting off an entire country and/or territory's supply of food and water is justified.

Yes, this applies to every group involved in the war, including countries supplying either side, and any countries or non-state organizations who may yet join the fighting.

The initial Hamas attack on Israel was a tragedy. The continued Israeli bombardment and invasion of Palestine is also a tragedy.

Most of the things I post will be about aid reaching Palestinians or news about tangible, confirmed progress toward a ceasefire. I probably will not be posting good news posts about aid reaching Israel, unless it's explicitly and only humanitarian and/or barring drastic unforeseen changes in circumstance. This is because as of yesterday, November 7, the Palestinian death toll is over 10,000 to Israel's roughly 1,400 (only about 200 of whom have been killed in the past month, starting on October 8, aka outside of the initial attack by Hamas). At least 3,195 children have died in Gaza, 33 in the West Bank, and 29 in Israel.

The Palestinian death toll is nearly 8 times the Israeli death toll. The number of children killed is 110 times higher in Palestine than Israel. (Source for death toll here, ratios via calculator.) Every single one of those deaths is a tragedy - and there have been far, far too many tragedies this past month.

(On a related note, Israel stands very, very little chance of actually eliminating Hamas with this war. The US has attempted this same strategy and failed many times: the US failed to eliminate the communist/North Korean regime in the Korean War, which is technically still ongoing 70 years later; failed to eliminate the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War; failed to eliminate numerous groups of Iraqi insurgents in the Iraq War, which triggered Iraq's civil war; and failed to eliminate the Taliban in the Afghanistan War, even though that war lasted for literally 20 years. Afghanistan is once again under total Taliban control.)

The last thing we need is another 20 year war. The last thing we need is more civilian deaths. Bombing civilian settlements, as well as hospitals, shelters, and refugee camps are war crimes under international law, meaning that both Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes.

It's time for the war crimes to stop.

Humanitarian aid reaching civilians is good news, and I will be posting accordingly.

Ceasefire now.

[sayruq]

The IDF really is nothing more than a police force. I know we say that a lot to make fun of their performance in the battlefield but when you see videos like the ones below, it really hits home that these people don't know how to do anything but police brutality and kidnappings.

[Normally I would add videos so that people without a twitter account can see but I'm 99% sure that everyone we see in these videos is dead despite no visible corpses]

In the first video, a couple soldiers are camping out in the open. The camera doesn't need to zoom in for you to see them, they're hardly blending into the tall grass and shrubbery.

In the second video, a group of IDF soldiers in Gaza are standing by open windows while slowly barricading themselves in and I mean slowly, there's no urgency.

Naturally, both Hezbollah and Al-Qassam Brigades take them out easily.

These soldiers, the pride and joy of Israel, don't have the common sense God gave to dogs. I can't envision a future where they manage to beat Hamas or any of the other militant groups operating in Gaza.

They're doing badly in the West Bank too btw. They were just forced to retreat from Jenin entirely after hours of fierce fighting against Palestinian resistance groups.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Today, people in Israel are really loving Germany. If you're wondering why, it's related to SA's lawsuit against Israel at the ICJ. While the US, the UK and Canada all said that SA's accusation against Israel is baseless, Germany is actually putting its money where its mouth is. Instead of just saying the accusation is not rooted in reality, Germany has asked to join the lawsuit as a third party on Israel's side, protesting the misuse of the convention for the prevention and punishment of genocide. For the record, in the wake of the Holocaust, Israel was one of the countries pushing for the adoption of this convention, and one of the first to sign it. It's unbelievable poetic justice, that it's the Germans now coming to the defence of the Jewish state.

Yesterday, an independent Palestinian terrorist attack was carried out, one Israeli was injured, 3 terrorists were eliminated as they were breaking into a Jewish community. The man who was injured had identifies the cuts in the barbed wire fence, was hit by bullets, but was able to alert Israeli security forces, who stopped the attack. Two of the terrorists were 16 years old, the third was 19 years old. Firearms, knives and an axe were found on them. Here's CCTV footage of them while they were breaking into the community:

As the international coalition's forces have moved from defensive to offensive measures against the Houthis (the Iranian funded terrorists from Yemen), Israel is preparing for possible retribution carried out against our people, especially the southern city of Eilat.

The Israeli hostages in Gaza have not had their medications for 99 days. The Red Cross has refused to take these meds from the families, saying that while Hamas doesn't allow it, they can't pass anything to the hostages anyway. Now there's talk about Qatar possibly forcing Hamas to allow it, maybe as a part of some deal. We'll see. There's a lot of cases where reports from Qatar say Hamas have agreed to this or that (mostly in terms of agreeing to a new hostage deal), and then it turns out it was just the Qataris' suggestions to Hamas, being reported as if Hamas had accepted them. Against this backdrop, the Palestinian Red Crescent has reported it continues to provide ambulatory, mobile medical services to Palestinians who can't make it to hospitals, including giving them their meds.

Meanwhile, SA is proving once more that anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism, because it is being used to hurt Jews worldwide, by removing the Jewish captain, David Teeger, from the national cricket team under the excuse that there are anti-Israel protests against him.

Blinken says that Saudi Arabia is still interested in normalization (meaning, a peace agreement) with Israel. I'm going to be honest, I don't think it's a coincidence that it took the Saudis this long to say it. If Israel had folded, and stopped its war against Hamas, I suspect the Saudis would have taken this to mean that Israel is not strong enough to be an ally against Iran. The fact that the war continues, despite international pressure to stop (and effectively surrender to Iranian-funded Hamas), gives moderate Arab states hope that an alliance with Israel against Iran won't fail them and crumble at the first sign of trouble. I believe that's something that hasn't been talked about enough, how moderate Arab countries have been watching this war with Hamas, and how destructive it would be, if Hamas would have won. And any scenario where Hamas still exists and rules Gaza, even in a limited capacity, would be understood as their victory.

Jewish students at Harvard are suing the university for its longstanding failure to fight antisemitism, including in allowing antisemitic material to be taught in class. This is a reminder that the issue was never Claudine Gay specifically, there's a much bigger problem at hand in Harvard and other western universities, and her resignation is just the first step. I'm glad Jewish students are taking this initiative, to force Harvard to take more steps.

The Israeli Air Force has drawn this imitation of the yellow ribbon, worn as a part of the call to release the Israeli hostages, in the skies of Gaza (pic taken from inside southern Israel):

This is 71 years old Uri ben Tzvi.

I got to watch an interview with him. Uri survived the Hamas massacre on Oct 7 at kibbutz Be'eri, he and his wife hid together for hours, including 3.5 hours during which terrorists were rampaging through their home. Two hours later, they were saved thanks to their son, an IDF officer in an elite unit, who managed to make it out of his own home, and join security forces. But Uri recounted how almost any noise makes him jump now, and how almost all of his age group was wiped out. When he goes to the dining hall (kibbutzim are communal, everyone eats meals together), his friends that he used to sit with are no longer there. He insisted that Oct 7 was a kind of Holocaust, as Jewish kids were once again hiding in closets, terrified for their lives.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[probablyasocialecologist]

Any analysis of the Israeli state’s terror campaign against the people of Gaza cannot begin with the events of October 7. An honest examination of the current situation must view October 7 in the context of Israel’s 75-year war against the Palestinians and the past two decades of transforming Gaza first into an open-air prison and now into a killing cage. Under threat of being labeled antisemitic, Israel and its defenders demand acceptance of Israel’s official rationale for its irrational actions as legitimate, even if they are demonstrably false or they seek to justify war crimes. “You look at Israel today. It’s a state that has reached such a degree of irrational, rabid lunacy that its government routinely accuses its closest allies of supporting terrorism,” the Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani recently told Intercepted. “It is a state that has become thoroughly incapable of any form of inhibition.” Israel has imposed, by lethal force, a rule that Palestinians have no legitimate rights of any form of resistance. When they have organized nonviolent demonstrations, they have been attacked and killed. That was the case in 2018-2019 when Israeli forces opened fire on unarmed protesters during the Great March of Return, killing 223 and wounding more than 8,000 others. Israeli snipers later boasted about shooting dozens of protesters in the knee during the weekly Friday demonstrations. When Palestinians fight back against apartheid soldiers, they are killed or sent into military tribunals. Children who throw rocks at tanks or soldiers are labeled terrorists and subjected to abuse and violations of basic rights — that is, if they are not summarily shot dead. Palestinians live their lives stripped of any context or any recourse to address the grave injustices imposed on them. You cannot discuss the crimes of Hamas or Islamic jihad or any other armed resistance factions without first addressing the question of why these groups exist and have support. One aspect of this should certainly probe Netanyahu’s own role — extending back to at least 2012 — in propping up Hamas and facilitating the flow of money to the group. “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his Likud comrades in 2019. But in the broader sense, a sincere examination of why a group such as Hamas gained popularity among Palestinians or why people in Gaza turn to armed struggle must focus on how the oppressed, when stripped of all forms of legitimate resistance, respond to the oppressor. It should be focused on the rights of people living under occupation to assert and defend their self-determination. It should allow Palestinians to have their struggle placed in the context of other historical battles for liberation and independence and not relegated to racist polemics about how all Palestinian acts of resistance constitute terrorism and there are not really any innocents in Gaza.

[jewishvitya]

i’m not too knowledgeable of current israeli thoughts regarding this, but wanted to ask anyways - back last year, i remember seeing some israelis i knew vehemently refer to the attack on october 10 as a pogrom. wall street journal echoed that last year but i haven’t heard much about it since. is this a common sentiment held among israelis, regardless of their political beliefs? while i do not diminish the pains caused by hamas’s attack, i wonder if it will ever be officially recognized to the extreme of being a pogrom. just something lingering in my mind for whatever reason.

thank you for all you post, it’s been a wonderful resource for me and i’m sure many others. god bless!

Thank you so much!! I'm glad I can be helpful.

Yeah, Israelis regard October 7 as a pogrom, but almost more than that. There's a kind of 9/11-like thing forming around this, I don't know how to explain it.

On the morning of October 7, I was in range of the rockets, which is rare. Most don't reach as far as where I live. It was the first barrage of that scale that I experienced in this city, I was panicking. And the news of everything going on around Gaza was like nothing else we experienced. I told a friend I'm scared of what our retaliation will look like. I was terrified for the people of Gaza. I didn't imagine this, but I knew it would be bad.

The perception is that before the holocaust, pogroms were something almost inevitable we had to weather. Zionism was a movement before the holocaust, and antisemitic violence had a part in that. After the holocaust, it picked up in popularity, we said, "that's it, no more victimizing us without us fighting back. We'll have our own state with our own army and we'll never be defenseless again."

And in this context, I can tell you that October 7 is the most deaths in one attack that Jewish people experienced since the holocaust.

We do a lot of suppressing Palestinians. In response to the exploding busses on the second intifada, the wall around the West Bank was built and their movement was severely limited (I don't know how bad it was before the second intifada, I just know it got worse). In response to the attacks from Gaza on 2005, we took firm control of the borders there too. We essentially imprison them in fragments of their lands in order to hold them back from hurting us. And we hate our government, but we trust and almost idealize our military. Knowing our military is keeping them in check is how we feel safe.

On October 7, the illusion of safety and control we had was shattered. I heard several people I know talking about how nothing can be the same, something changed, something broke. Israelis feel restless and scared. Even some people I knew as leftists repeated the "but what else can we do? Hamas already said they'll repeat October 7, we can't let that happen."

So. Pogrom doesn't really cover it? It's almost its own thing. But also, yes, a pogrom.