Tag Archives: Hamas

Comparing Gaza And Egypt Shows The Failure Of Embracing Hamas

Posted on by
1

To listen to the media, would would imagine that Gaza is the worst place to live, much worse than neighboring Egypt for example, which controlled the Strip from 1949 to 1967.

Here are the statistics as reported by the World Bank.

Table 1: Life statistics in Gaza and Egypt

The average life expectancy in Gaza is 74 years, about 1.5 years longer than in Egypt. There are roughly 2.5 fewer deaths per 1,000 people in Gaza than in Egypt, with death rates of 3.8 and 6.3, respectively.

The medical care in Gaza is quite good and has extended the lives of Gazans beyond those found in neighboring Arab Egypt. The United Nations providing healthcare to its adopted wards similarly helped the young Gazans.

Table 2: Infant mortality rates per 1,000 live births in Gaza and Egypt

As seen in Table 2, babies born in Palestinian territories do significantly better than they do in Egypt. This is primarily driven by free healthcare services provided by the United Nations to Palestinian Arabs but not to Egyptians.

The United Nations also provides free education to Palestinian Arabs but not to Egyptians.

Table 3: Literacy rates for Palestinian Arabs and Egyptians

The gap in literacy scores between Palestinian Arabs and Egyptians is staggering. According to the World Bank, Palestinian literacy rate is 96.2%, while it is a terrible 67.4% for Egyptians. The Palestinian literacy rate is slightly higher than Saudi Arabia and is only surpassed by Jordan among Arab countries in the region.

Despite the better education and healthcare, Palestinian Arabs have a weaker economy, especially in Gaza.

Table 4: Wealth and poverty in Gaza and Egypt

Gaza is much poorer than the West Bank or Egypt. Until roughly 2017, the poverty rate between the two Palestinian territories were somewhat in line. Those trends broke and now the poverty rate for Arabs in the West Bank was 13.9% while it was 53% in Gaza in 2019. This can be seen in the workforce rate where unemployment in Gaza in 2023 was 45.3% and 13.1% in the West Bank. The unemployment rate in Egypt is much better at 6.96%, while GDP per capita is much higher than in Gaza. The latest poverty rates for Egypt are 27.3%, close to that in the West Bank.

Gaza’s economy is much weaker than in Egypt or the West Bank as the territory is ruled by the Hamas political-terrorist group. Israel and Egypt have a blockade around the area to stop the flow of weapons into the strip which has launched five wars against Israel since it seized the area. Many countries won’t trade with the region because of its violent jihadi leadership which pours its resources into waging war rather than to develop society.

Local Gazans often incorrectly attribute “social services” to Hamas, when the healthcare and education are principally provided by the United Nations. The similarity in healthcare and educational statistics in Gaza and the West Bank prove this out.

Despite Hamas failing Gazans, it remains extremely popular. According to a September 2023 poll, Palestinians would elect the leader of Hamas (58%) over Fatah (37%) to the presidency. Much of that is because 53% of Palestinian believe that the pathway to end the “struggle” against Israel is via violence (as pushed by Hamas), while only 20% support negotiations (as voiced by Fatah).

The United Nations has given Gazans the very best healthcare and education among the region’s Arab nations, all for free. Despite the better education and physical health, Gazans focus their efforts on destroying Israel and in the process, their own economy, and now, their infrastructure.

Related articles:

Mad World of Palestinian Quality of Life Statistics

An Inconvenient Truth: Population Statistics in Israel/Palestine

The Populations statistics in Israel/Palestine do not support the Arab narrative

A Review Of Homicides In Israel

The Reasons Behind The Spike In Palestinian Terrorism

The US And EU Must Get Allies And Partners To Label Hamas A Terrorist Group

Posted on by
2

The United States long ago understood that Hamas is a terrorist group. When the US set up a list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in 1997, Hamas was in the first class based on its 1988 Charter calling to kill Jews and destroy Israel, and following through killing dozens of people.

After the barbaric Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, the U.S. designated additional people and organizations which assist Hamas, to stop its flow of millions of dollars. Yet the United States has still not pressured many of its allies and trading partners to similarly designate Hamas, in order to isolate and destroy it.

Canada lists Hamas as a terrorist group along with several other Palestinian Arab groups. Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union also list the group as a terrorist organization.

But what about the countries in Central and South America? In eastern Europe?

The European Union ” reiterates that the terrorist organisation Hamas needs to be eliminated” but what is it doing to facilitate that outcome?

There cannot be peace in the Middle East as long as evil jihadist groups and ideologies exist. It is time for the United States and European Union to apply pressure for all countries to label the noxious evil clearly and plainly.

ACTION ITEM

Email White House “Pressure all trading partners to label Hamas as a terrorist group immediately and call for its destruction.”

Related articles:

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials

Say Its Name: ‘Hamas’

Hamas Should Face ‘Maximum Justice’

Hamas Condemns The “Judaization” of Israel

While Over A Million Muslims Visit Al Aqsa Mosque Over Ramadan, Hamas Claims Palestinians Banned And Calls For Global Jihad

Amid The Terror, The United Nations Elevates Hamas

Hamas’s Willing Executioners

NY Times Begins To Whitewash Hamas

Posted on by
3

Hamas, the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, is seemingly getting some media support from The New York Times.

Just two weeks after the brutal slaughter of 1,400 people in Israel in an unprovoked attack, The Times is softening language around the evil group.

Despite raping women and dragging them by the hair through the streets, cutting the throats of children, shooting old people at bus stops, burning families alive, and kidnapping over 200 people in one of the largest hostage seizures ever, the paper decided to not call the group “terrorists” or even “militants.”

Cover of New York Times on Saturday October 21, 2023

In two articles on the cover page of the paper, the paper referred to “Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza” and “Hamas, the group that controls the territory.”

It’s as though the Times thinks Hamas is a co-op board.

In 2014, after the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped 200 Nigerian girls, the Times was apoplectic. It wrote that Boko Haram was a “ruthless Islamist group” which committed a “horrifying abduction.” And the group didn’t even beheaded anyone.

The Times had no problem labeling the P.K.K. a terrorist group, and they didn’t burn anyone alive.

Israel is still trying to identify the victims of Hamas’s atrocities, with people so dismembered and incinerated beyond identification, that two weeks on, the number of dead and missing is unknown. But the media has moved on to their victims of preference.

As Israel pursues maximum justice for the savagery of Hamas, New York’s liberal paper is distancing the terrorist group from its evil roots and actions. It’s a form of antisemitism in which justice for Jewish victims is being reframed as an unprovoked attack on 2 million helpless and innocent residents of Gaza.

Related articles:

A Review of the The New York Times Anti-Israel Bias

NY Times Sees Neither Antisemitism Nor Dead Jews in Reporting on Murder of Two Jewish Cousins Outside A Synagogue During Religious Pilgrimage

Palestine Islamic Jihad: NY Times vs. State Department

NY Times Does Not See Antisemitism In Texas Shooting

No Israeli Good Deed Goes Unpunished For Amnesty International and NY Times

NY Times Repeatedly Tells Its Readers That An Israeli Supported A Mass Murderer, But Never That Many Palestinians Embrace Many Terrorists

Black Israeli Woman Runs Marathon. NY Times Calls Israel Racist

The Antisemitic Campus: Decolonize Palestine

Posted on by
30

There are several matters fomenting antisemitism at universities. One of them surrounds the topic of “decolonialization” and its impact on Jews on campus.

It is a plain fact that many European countries planted colonies in far away lands. The United Kingdom planted flags in the Americas, South Africa, India and Australia. Portugal took over Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Macau and others. Belgium took the Congo. France had controlled Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, Senegal, Cameroon and Madagascar. Spain took much of Central and South America while Italy took Libya. It seemed that any European country with a fleet sailed the world from the 15th to 19th century and seized lands and goods.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, European countries left their colonies and those emerging countries had varying degrees of success establishing new functioning governments. Universities established departments devoted to this topic, which analyze how the past 75 years shape events today, such as Brown University connecting the 2011 Arab Spring to “Decolonization, Development and State Building in North Africa.”

Many of the departments and conferences consider how post-colonial state-building left countries vulnerable to autocratic regimes. The issues are typically handled by region, such as Columbia University discussing decolonialization in the Americas in the Latin American Studies department and those in Africa in the Middle East Studies departments. Other schools do much the same.

Things devolve when it comes to Israel.

Many professors in Middle East Studies departments are deeply anti-Israel. They consider the Jewish State to be a colony thrust upon the local Arab population by the United Kingdom and other countries after World War I. They ignore the fact that the UK did not send any Jewish citizens to Palestine nor did the British seize local resources for British use.

Most glaringly, the anti-Israel professors ignore the fact that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. The history of Jews and the core of Judaism is in the Jewish holy land.

Those basic truths are not only ignored on university campuses, but a counter-narrative is proffered. For example, Columbia University’s Joseph Massad called the Jews in the Bible “Palestine Hebrews,” ignoring the reality that Arabs did not come to the land en masse until the 7th and 8th centuries.

It’s grossly antisemitic, and ignored by the school administration.

Beyond the cultural appropriation and historical theft, the anti-Israel movement manufactured a lie that Zionism isn’t even Jewish. At a BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) vote at the University of Wisconsin in 2017, a student said “Israel in its inception is not a Jewish idea but a European one,” a principle at the heart of the decolonialization project.

That insane idea is gaining backers. The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ) is hosting conferences to advance this proposition in universities around the country. According to its “Points of Unity” which people must sign-on to, the number one affirmation is “Zionism is a settler colonial racial project. Like the US, Israel is a settler colonial state. The Institute opposes Zionism and colonialism, and abides by the international, Palestinian-led call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.”

Its webite goes on that it “aims to support the delinking of the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies, and to reclaim academia and public discourse for the study of Zionism as a political, ideological, and racial and gendered knowledge project, intersecting with Palestine and decolonial studies, critical terrorism studies, settler colonial studies, and related scholarship and activism.”

This group is trying to sever Jews from the Jewish State and Zionism, and place Zionism in the camp of “decolonial studies” and “critical terrorism studies.”

It is Abhorrent. Repugnant.

And given air at today’s universities.

This antisemitic group is made up of a bunch of teachers in the California school system, teachers at New York University who pushed to boycott Israel, Sarah Lawrence, UMass, and Jewish anti-Zionists like Jewish Voice for Peace and Alissa Wise.

Not surprisingly, this group masks its Jew-hatred under the guise of “academia.” It said that Jews had the October 7 savagery coming to them as part of decolonialization, and was outraged at Jews demanding justice. ICSZ wrote an “open letter to universities and other institutions, demanding they retract their statements endorsing Israeli genocide against Palestinians.” By “genocide”, they meant Israel trying to rescue 200 hostages seized by Hamas, pursue maximum justice for the Satans of Gaza who butchered 1,400 Israelis, and try to return the region to coexistence on either side of the border. Equally upsetting to these evil people at ICSZ, they were “horrified by the ubiquity of messaging from our university administrations that has expressed empathy for Israeli life,” because beheading children and raping women doesn’t deserve “empathy” if the “victims” are Jewish “colonizers.”

This is the state of American academia.

Universities are miseducating students that Jews have no history in the land of Israel and that the Jewish State’s founding was a racist European colonial project. They believe that Israel’s continued existence is an “ongoing Nakba” and Israel must be dismantled “by any means necessary,” which includes the October 7 massacre.

When Joseph Massad of Columbia University wrote about the “start of the Palestinian War of Liberation,” he did not see Arab terrorists hacking children to death and killing the elderly; he saw freedom fighters throwing off the yolk of oppression of Jewish invaders as a moment of “jubilation and awe.”

This depravity is no longer a small fringe. Consider that Brown University hosted “Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial,” which promoted the idea to “normalize and globalize Hamas.” (27:00)

America’s universities are indoctrinating students in the antisemitic screed of the Hamas Charter, retouched with leftist jingoism to support the slaughter of Jews. And they are pushing the movement to go global. Jews on campuses everywhere have every reason to be terrified.

ACTION ITEM

Demand antisemitic professors and clubs like Students for Justice in Palestine be kicked off campus.

Related articles:

Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

The Noxious Anti-Semitism Of “European Settler Colonialism”

Palestinians View Jews Like The French Viewed Nazis

The Insidious Jihad in America

Hamas Condemns The “Judaization” of Israel

Should The KKK Open Chapters In Every American University, What Say You?

The Problem With Antisemitism On College Campuses Stems From Where Jews And Arabs Focused Their Donations

The Center Of Intersectionality Sounds Like Adolf Hitler

The Campus Inquisition

Deformity Of Palestinian Culture In America’s Youth

Columbia University Completely Fails Mission. And Jews

Hamas’s Willing Executioners

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials

Terrifying Trifecta Of Anti-Zionism

Believe Terrorists

Posted on by
4

The “Believe Women” slogan arose in the wake of the #MeToo movement in the United States in which women came forward with stories of sexual abuse. The idea was to stop discounting the testimony of women in favor of say, a powerful male boss. The hashtag was a call to treat the testimony of a female victim with, at a minimum, the same legitimacy as a man.

The premise that truth is not the sole domain of either sex is not controversial in western societies. Males and females are both capable of lying and hurting people, and certainly, telling the truth.

The “he said, she said” played out in the arena of terrorism this week, after a rocket hit a Gaza hospital. Palestinians and the Israeli Defense Forces traded accusations as to which party fired the missile.

Gaza hospital in flames

Beyond the narrative of “one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter,” are basic truths, beyond perspective. Should people believe both the terrorists and victims equally, or, having slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians with particular barbarity, should one assume that telling a fib is not too bright a line for the Satans of Gaza.

When the explosion rocked the hospital reportedly killing hundreds of people, Palestinians accused the IDF of a deliberate attack and the accusation was picked up by Al Jazeera, CNN and dozens of Arabic channels. Soon protests erupted around the world against Israel and the United States.

While the tsunami of Jew hatred gained energy, the IDF protested that the rocket originated in Gaza, supplying evidence of their findings. The United States agreed with the Israeli conclusion but the Arab world would have none of it. Even after CNN and other channels back-tracked on the attribution of blame on Israelis based on evidence, the question remains as to why the media quickly believed terrorists, after they had just butchered over 1,000 people in the most horrible fashion.

It goes to a matter of narrative over truth. The pro-Palestinian world – including people like Rep. Rashida Tlaib – don’t really care about the origin of the rocket; they care about spreading their narrative that Palestinians are victims at a macro level. The hospital, and for that matter truth itself, is simply a tool in the narrative. While helpful to the story if the IDF actually targeted a hospital, if the fact is that the Israelis didn’t, then that doesn’t mean that Israelis wouldn’t theoretically do such a thing.

Pro-Palestinians ignore the hospital bombing and butchering of civilians by Arabs because it disrupts from their global view which they are imparting: Palestinians are victims even when they blow up hospitals and when they slaughter babies. They are victims when they launch rockets at schools and when they rape women. They are are victims when they burn people alive and when they take hostages.

Truth is inconsequential, a tool or an annoyance to be dismissed. It is the narrative that is holy to extremists, and the Hamas narrative includes an action plan called jihad. A bloody, horrible jihad which will engulf the world if not stopped now.

When western media decides to believe terrorists’ version of facts which are completely uncoupled from reality, it transmits an antisemitic narrative and brings a dangerous jihad that much closer.

ACTION ITEM

Write White House “The global jihad must be stopped immediately. Bring the hostages home and ensure Hamas faces maximum justice.” Include excerpts of the Hamas Charter

Related articles:

The Global Intifada

The Banners of Jihad

The Insidious Jihad in America

The Narrative that Prevents Peace in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

European Narrative over Facts

The Holocaust Will Not Be Colorized. The Holocaust Will Be Live.

United Kingdom’s Home Grown Terrorism, Abroad

Teaching Palestinian Youth Compassion

The United Nations Applauds Abbas’ Narrative

The False Palestinian Refugee, Self-Determination Narrative

Names and Narrative: ‘Slain Attackers’ and ‘Popular’

Names and Narrative: Zionist Entity and Colonial Occupier

Say Its Name: ‘Hamas’

Posted on by
10

The United Nations Security Council tried to get a resolution passed last night to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza. The Russian resolution was supported by China, United Arab Emirates, Mozambique and Gabon for a total of five, while four opposed (the United States, Britain, France and Japan) and six abstained (Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, Malta and Switzerland). Nine votes are needed to pass a UNSC resolution so the matter failed.

Linda Thomas Greenfield, the US Ambassador to the UN was appalled that the resolution did not even mention Hamas by name, let alone condemn it. In summarizing her remarks the UN wrote that the October 7 “acts brought to mind the heinous atrocities by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as Da’esh, and it is these acts by Hamas that led to the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, she said, stressing: “Civilians should not suffer for these atrocities, and it is the Council’s responsibility to address the crisis, unequivocally condemn Hamas and support Israel’s right to self-defence under the Charter of the United Nations.” However, the proposed resolution does not meet these conditions, by failing to mention Hamas, she said, calling this “outrageous and indefensible”. The United States could not vote for a resolution that dishonours victims. It is Hamas that set the crisis in motion, she said, stressing that members cannot allow the Council to shift the blame to Israel.“

US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield

Albania, which abstained, said that “Albania abstained from the draft resolution presented by Russia because the text failed to adequately address all critical issues, including the condemnation of terrorist attacks by Hamas.”

It is obvious and essential to call out and name and condemn Hamas. Observers may question whether the omission was done to protect Hamas or give countries an easy reason to reject the resolution so Israel can bring Hamas to justice.

But this is familiar territory. In December 2018, the UN General Assembly tried to pass “Activities of Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza” (document A/73/L.42). While the text gained plurality support in a recorded vote of 87 in favour to 57 against, with 33 abstentions, it failed to meet the two-thirds adoption requirement. As summarized by the UN “The text would have had the Assembly demand that Hamas and other militant actors, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, cease all provocative actions and violent activity.  It would have also encouraged tangible steps towards intra‑Palestinian reconciliation, including in support of the Egypt’s mediation effort.”

The United Nations has never in its history condemned Hamas.

After its October 7 barbarity, it is more teflon than Donald Trump: Hamas can butcher over 1,000 civilians and the United Nations won’t even mention its name.

As president, Barack Obama essentially dealt with evil by placing it in one of four buckets:

  • Evil to destroy (al Qaeda, ISIL)
  • Evil to condemn (Boko Haram, al Shabab, Hezbollah)
  • Evil to tolerate (governments of Syria and Saudi Arabia)
  • Evil to ignore (Hamas)

He went to war with the first category, tried to help other forces get rid of the second, considered it realpolitik in needing to deal with the third group and thought the fourth was other people’s problem.

That is essentially a recap of the world regarding placing Hamas in the right category. Whether the group is evil and a terrorist group is not really relevant for many. Hamas speaks for local Palestinians who want to destroy the Jewish State and move into that thriving land where grandparents used to live.

Western countries are demanding that the world call out and condemn Hamas (category 2 at a minimum) and ideally support Israel, which has a category 1 score for the group. But that will not happen because those countries are not looking for a two state solution but a single Palestine solution, and Hamas is the tip of the spear (it’s a category 3 or 4 at best, and may be a force for good).

Or maybe for them it’s just theater, as Israel is so unique that there is unlikely to be spillover into their countries.

In an intense scene from Game of Thrones (The Mountain versus The Red Viper S4E8), a man came back to avenge the rape of his sister and murder of her children. He returned to a place he despised to demand a confession from the killer and bring quick justice for the heinous crimes. “Say her name!” he demanded as they fought to a common death, as spectators looked on. So it is with Israel’s return to Gaza which it left in 2005, to reclaim hostages and bring Hamas to maximum justice.

There is no debate about the atrocities committed by Hamas, they are plain facts. When people and governments refuse to call it out, they are not simply siding with those who want to see the end of the Jewish State; they are awaiting the theater of Jews and Arabs slaughtering each other over the narrow strip of land far from their shores.

If and when the United Nations can call out the evil of Hamas, thousands of lives in the region will be saved, and the terrorist group will be on a path for elimination. I am not optimistic.

Related articles:

Jamaal Bowman Abandons Hostages And Absolves Hamas

Two Views Of Justice, One American, Another Palestinian

United Kingdom’s Home Grown Terrorism, Abroad

The Dangerous Red Herring Linking Poverty and Terrorism

Columbia University Completely Fails Mission. And Jews

Posted on by
17

In the aftermath of the grotesque massacre by Palestinian Arab terrorists of 1,300 Israelis and taking nearly 200 hostages, the most prestigious school in the largest diaspora community in the world served warm water to allay Jewish fears.

The scale and barbarity of the crime against humanity has few parallels in modern times. Yet Minouche Shafik, President of Columbia University in New York City, could not clearly condemn the Hamas massacre. Instead she discussed her sadness of violence impacting BOTH SIDES. She led with:

“I was devastated by the horrific attack on Israel this weekend and the ensuing violence that is affecting so many people. Unfortunately, at this moment, little is certain except that the fighting and human suffering are not likely to end soon.

“I know many members of our community are being impacted in profound ways and I want to assure each of you that Columbia will provide any measure of care or comfort that we can. This is your community, and you are not alone.”

She would go on to discuss logistical support at the school for everyone.

She refused to clearly comfort Jews in the worst slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust and instead offered a generic “many people”, “many members” and general “human suffering.” She tied the attack in Israel to “ensuing violence.” By being generic like “All Lives Matter” in a moment of severe anguish, she very much made Jews feel alone and abandoned.

This same university has a professor, Joseph Massad, who celebrated the attack as the “start of the Palestinian War of Liberation.” Not a surprise when he has also stolen the entire history of the Jews by calling the Children of Israel in the Old Testament “Palestinian Hebrews.”

In September 2019, Columbia invited Malaysian Prime Minster Mahathir Mohamad to speak on campus, even though he is a known Holocaust denier and “proud antisemite.”

Shafik thinks that Columbia’s “job to educate, enlighten, and engage” students involves enlightening people by bringing antisemites onto campus, miseducating students that Jews have no history in the holy land, and engaging Jews that their torture is quite unimportant.

Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, Columbia University President as of July 1, 2023

It is shocking that the last president of Columbia was so moved by the killing of a single Black man, George Floyd, to internalize the “destructiveness of racism, and of anti-Black racism specifically,” that he had the university take on many new initiatives and openly support the Black Lives Matter movement, yet the current president cannot recognize the collective trauma of Jews from the butchering of 1,300 Israelis, to clearly condemn Hamas’s brutality and antisemitism, and support Jews specifically.

Marc Rowan and Jon Huntsman announced that they will stop donating to their alma mater which has become ‘unrecognizable,’ elaborating in an email “Moral relativism has fueled the university’s race to the bottom and sadly now has reached a point where remaining impartial is no longer an option.” Their university president at University of Pennsylvania had penned a letter about the Hamas slaughter which was very similar to Shafik’s tepid comments.

It is time to ask for more, much more of Columbia University. And of its alumni.

ACTION ITEM

Call Columbia University President Shafik at (212) 854-9970 “Fire the antisemitic professor Joseph Massad who incites violence and miseducates, clearly condemn Hamas, and support Jewish students whose community just experienced a trauma multiples the impact of 9/11.”

Contact Columbia alumni to stop donations and sending children to the school.

Donate to Yeshiva University, a proud Jewish and Zionist university

Donate to StandWithUs, as they fight for Jews on other college campuses

Related articles:

The Problem With Antisemitism On College Campuses Stems From Where Jews And Arabs Focused Their Donations

Act Against The Antisemitic Slanderers And Definitely Those In Power

The Noxious Anti-Semitism Of “European Settler Colonialism”

Courageous Jews On Hostile Campuses

Gazans Have Always Wanted To Kill Jews Inside Of Israel

Posted on by
43

As Israel attempts to free hostages in Gaza taken captive by the political-terrorist group Hamas, people are debating how innocent Gazans are relative to the group that administers the territory. Those defending Palestinian Arabs argue that Hamas seized the territory in 2007 from the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority so cannot be held responsible. They dismiss that Palestinians voted Hamas to 58% of parliament since that election happened in 2006 and doesn’t represent current attitudes.

Arguable the best way to truly consider Gazans attitudes towards Israel, both before and after Hamas took over Gaza, is to look at poll data.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) has been conducting polls of West Bank and Gazan Arabs since the turn of the century. There are many questions that change based on the reality of the moment and some which have remained consistent.

Supporting terrorism has been a constant through the polls. For over twenty years, it has been a question that is asked in that format: “Concerning armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, I….” with the choice of either Strongly support/ Support/ Oppose / Strongly oppose / NA. Here are the results, with links to the original polls.

DateStrongly Support / SupportStrongly Oppose / Oppose
July 200158%39%
May 200259.1%40%
April 200364.1%35%
March 200461.4%37.5%
March 200543.6%55%
March 200663.9%34.7%
June 200773.7%26.1%
June 200863.2%36.1%
March 200966.9%31.6%
March 201057.6%40.9%
March 201160.4%37.2%
March 201262.1%37.1%
March 201353.4%44.4%
March 201453.3%46.1%
April 201567.3%31.0%
March 201675.7%23.3%
March 201767.4%29.4%
March 201870.9%27.6%
June 201969.0%27.4%
March 202075.1%23.1%
March 202169.6%27.5%
March 202264%36%
March 202367%33%

As seen in the table above, two-thirds of Gazans support terrorism, specifically, killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel like the gruesome massacre of October 7, 2023. That suggests 1.5 million Gazans (67% of 2.25 million Gazans) were supporters of the Hamas barbarism.

This was not a momentary blip in time. Over the past 23 years, there was a single moment – when Israel left Gaza – that only 43.6% of Gazans supported murdering Israeli Jews. At any other time, a majority between 53% and 76% approved terrorism.

The spike in support for terrorism in June 2007 coincided with confidence that Hamas’s approach of attacks yields better results than Fatah’s approach of negotiations, both “in stopping Israeli settlement activities” which portrayed “Hamas as successful in breaking the [Israeli] siege and as a victim of Israeli attacks,” according to PCPSR.

The support is not theoretical.

In March 2011, when two Palestinian Arabs went into the town of Itamar and slaughtered two parents and three children in their beds, 51% of Gazans supported the grisly killing when asked specifically about the attack (question 67).

The people of Gaza are not “innocent” and victims of Hamas, and the media constant refrain of saying as much is a deliberate lie meant to narrow the scope of the conflict.

Related articles:

The United Nations Can Hear the Songs of Gazans, but Cannot See Their Rockets

How Many Terrorists To Target? Between 1,500 and 1.5 Million

Hamas Should Face ‘Maximum Justice’

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Every Picture Tells A Story: No Brutal Slaughter Of Israeli Civilians

Posted on by
2

October 7, 2023 will be marked in Israeli and Jewish history as one of the most horrible days in modern times. Not since the Holocaust had such Jews experienced such savagery.

It would be hard to understand that from looking at pictures in The New York Times coverage of the Hamas massacre.

The attack was featured on the front page as well as in two other pages with many color pictures.

Front page of NY Times on October 8, 2023

Four pictures were featured under the headline “Palestinian Militants Stage Attack On Israel.” The four pictures included two of Palestinians attacking Israel, one with rockets and another with a bulldozer ripping down a fence. The other had an Israeli soldier walking past “bodies of Israelis killed by militants in the city of Sderot,” which gave no clarity as to whether the Israelis were soldiers, like the one standing in the picture, or civilians. The last picture had people in Gaza carrying “the body of a slain militant.”

From the pictures on the cover, one would imagine a battle between armed opponents, Palestinian militants and the Israeli army.

Page 12 would build on this theme.

Page 12 of The New York Times on October 8, 2023

Three small pictures on the top of the page show missile strikes and debris. One shows an Israeli town being hit and two pictures show Gaza being struck. The large picture in the center of the page has an Israeli woman, shown from the back, running for cover from a “rocket siren”, and the bottom picture has young Palestinian Arabs looking up at the sky from the “sound of airstrikes.”

The picture coverage started to move to civilians, with the war being a battle from the skies.

Page 13 of NY Times on October 8, 2023

The final page of coverage continued with the theme of rocket fire, with a large picture on top showing a strike in Gaza, then a small picture of a house in Israel with damage. Below the fold was an Israeli family running from “a site that was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip.”

This pictorial narrative is utterly and completely disgraceful.

Well over 1,000 Palestinian terrorists stormed into Israel and slaughtered over 1,000 people. They set fire to homes and burned people alive. They shot up people in the streets and in their beds. The raped women and dragged them through the streets. The Arabs chopped the heads off babies and soldiers.

It was a vicious slaughter committed by people in close proximity, mostly of armed Hamas terrorists against civilians.

All unprovoked, in an attack on the Jewish Sabbath and holiday of Simchat Torah.

The New York Times attempt at showing a similar number of pictures of damage from rockets in both Israel and Gaza right after the massacre distorts the entire narrative of the grotesque slaughter of Jewish families and young people, to warrant being called antisemitic and libelous.

ACTION ITEM

Cancel The New York Times. Subscribe to The Wall Street Journal

Related articles:

Every Picture And Headline Tells A Story: Raid On Terrorists

Every Picture Tells a Story: Israel Is Scared of Female Iranian Shoppers

Every Picture Tells A Story: Palestinian Terrorists are Victims

Every Picture Tells a Story: Have Israel and the US Advanced Peace?

Every Picture Tells a Story: No Need for #MeToo for Palestinians

Every Picture Tells a Story: Goodbye Peres

Every Picture Tells a Story: Arab Injuries over Jewish Deaths

Every Picture Tells A Story: Only Palestinians are Victims

Every Picture Tells a Story, the Bibi Monster

Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It?

How Many Terrorists To Target? Between 1,500 and 1.5 Million

Posted on by
4

The current estimated population of Gaza is about 2.25 million people, all Arab. Of that number, 1.8 million (80%) are wards of UNRWA, with a fraction being over 75 years old whom can claim to be refugees or internally displaced people, if one considers that Palestine included Gaza in 1948.

Approximately 25,000 belong to Hamas and thousands of others belong to other terrorist groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The newest anti-Zionist terrorist groups to emerge over the past two years have been in Area A of the West Bank, controlled by the Palestinian Authority. They include Lion’s Den, Jenin Brigades and Tulkarm Brigades. They have been getting most of the attention of the Israeli Defense Forces as intelligence showed that they were planning and committing attacks. It’s possible that they were diversions to draw the IDF attention away from the terrorist groups in Gaza as they prepared for a major invasion.

As the IDF prepares to pursue ‘maximum justice‘ for Hamas for the heinous October 7 slaughter of civilians going about their everyday lives, the Israeli government needs to assess how far to pursue such ends to make sure that no such attack emerges from Gaza again.

To take out every member of Hamas would mean killing 25,000 terrorists, a huge figure. But they are only part of the area’s terrorist infrastructure. There may be as many as 10,000 other terrorists belonging to the other groups.

While Hamas gets funding and support from Iran, Turkey, Qatar and Sudan, it also has broad local support. An estimated 1.5 million people (67% of the population) in Gaza support the group and its goal of killing Jews inside of Israel according to recent Palestinian polls.

While it is abhorrent to realize that so many Palestinian Arabs actively support terrorism, can the Israeli government really consider wiping out 1.5 million people who want to kill Jews next door? If it would entertain such idea, the approach of sending in ground troops into Gaza where many soldiers will be killed would be insane. It would be easier to pound the region into submission from the air.

Israel makes efforts to minimize the loss of life of Arab civilians during such conflicts based on inside intelligence about where terrorists are located. However, based on the colossal failure of Israeli intelligence to foresee the October 7 massacre, it is doubtful that Israel’s operatives can be relied upon to pinpoint the terrorists.

Which leaves the question of what constitutes “crushing” Hamas so that the group essentially ceases to operate? All 25,000 terrorists in the group? 35,000 including the other terrorist groups? 1.5 million people?

It is likely that the Israeli government is trying to figure this out while it begins to hit the known Hamas locations in the war’s early days. Unfortunately, many Arab civilians have been killed – some who are part of the 1.5 million terrorist supporters and some of the 750,000 civil Arabs who are willing to live in peace with their Jewish neighbors.

One approach to minimize a horrible death toll would be for Hamas leadership and the 1,500 October 7 butchers to hand themselves over to Israel to spare fellow Arabs. I’m sure if they would agree, future bloodshed could be averted.

Assuming that Hamas remains consistent that they are in a war of liberation and will continue to fight and try to kill as many Israeli as possible, it is likely that the entire Hamas leadership and at least half of the group will need to be eliminated to end the jihadi dream of destroying Israel, roughly 12,500 people. When considering the number of civilians that will likely be killed alongside the terrorists, the total Arab dead may be 20,000 before the Palestinians relent and surrender to calm.

Before the “fog of war” sets in during battle, commanders set out their mission with some particular metrics. Hamas’s goal was to slaughter as many Jews as possible as deep into Israel as they could reach. They succeeded beyond their dreams.

Now is the time for Israel to map out its goals, before the cacophony of resolutions derail it from its aims.

Related articles:

Pray for a Lack of “Proportionately” in Numbers. There will never be an Equivalence of Intent.

Gazans Support Killing Jewish Civilians

Palestinian Arabs Are Fighting For All of Israel, Not A New State In West Bank and Gaza

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials

Gaza, The Terrorist Enclave