On Saturday, 7 October 2023, in a brutal act of terrorist attack, hundreds of armed extremists affiliated with the Islamic terrorist organization of Hamas governing in the Gaza Strip, infiltrated by land, air and sea, dozens of southern towns of Israel.
The attack was carried out under a coverage of a massive rocket barrages which were launched at various civilian targets throughout Israel, from the south of the country to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem at its center.
This constitutes a far-reaching attack on Israel’s civilians amid the Jewish religious holiday of Simchat Torah when hundreds of thousands of Israelis were on their way to synagogues to celebrate the festival and Shabbat with their families and communities.
Since the beginning of the fighting that continues until this very moment, Hamas has fired over 5000 rockets and missiles at various towns and civilian targets along Israel.
Hamas and other extremists affiliated militants of Gaza murdered over 1,400 Israelis and wounded more than 4,500 – most of them civilians going by official statistics released as at October 21. Over 200 of Israelis, many of them members of the same families including children, elderly people and Holocaust survivors were taken hostage by Hamas and transferred to the Gaza Strip. Some are believed killed or wounded. Moreover, now that the IDF has taken back control of the southern towns, the magnitude of the horror is revealed – Hamas operatives and their partners massacred and butchered entire families of Israeli civilians. Many babies were found beheaded.
And since 8 October, alternately, anti-tank missiles and mortar shell are fired from Lebanese territory, under the auspices of Hezbollah, at IDF positions on Northern point of Israel, Mount Dov. The IDF responded decisively to contain the northern front.
As a result of the horrors of the organized terrorist attack carried out from Gaza on Israel’s civilian population, the Israeli government has declared war against the terrorist organizations in Gaza. The purpose of the war is to eliminate the military capabilities of the terrorist organizations and restore security to the citizens of Israel. Israel will act to free the hostages that were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, and to return to a situation in which no terrorist group in Gaza will be able to harm Israeli citizens again.
Hamas is an internationally recognized terrorist organization, formed in late 1987 and is rooted in the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, supported by a robust sociopolitical structure inside the Palestinian territories. The group’s charter calls for establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel and rejects all agreements made between the PLO and Israel. HAMAS’ strength is concentrated in the Gaza Strip and several areas of the West Bank, governed by the government of Abu Mazen. HAMAS has a military wing known as the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades that has conducted many anti-Israel attacks in both Israel and the Palestinian territories since the 1990s. These attacks have included large-scale bombings against Israeli civilian targets, small-arms attacks, improvised roadside explosives, and rocket attacks.
Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations falsely claim that that they are fighting for the benefit of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation. The truth is that since Hamas became the sovereign in Gaza Strip in 2005, following the decision of the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to end the Israeli military and civilian presence in the Strip, Hamas has turned the place into a war zone.
When Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005, it evacuated all the Jewish settlements there and made a brave and noble decision not to destroy houses, public buildings, yielding fields, and factories that once belonged to the Jewish population. All of these were left as they are to the Arab residents of Gaza. This decision by the late PM Sharon was made despite a severe rift among the Israeli people threatening to lead to a civil war within Israeli society.
Instead of encouraging its population to develop their lives alongside the State of Israel, since 2005 Hamas and other extremists’ fractions affiliated with Islamist fundamentalism launched a continuous campaign against the civilian population of Israel – either by means of rockets, infiltrating through tunnels or by means of explosive balloons that penetrated the territories of the southern towns in Israel to kill its civilians. All this, while Hamas is using Gaza’s population as a human shield and hiding explosives and combat headquarters under hospitals and mosques in Gaza.
Since 2005, while the Hamas stockpiles weapons and digs underground tunnels for future attacks on Israeli territory, successive Israeli governments have increased the number of work permits in Israel for Gazans and promoted important infrastructure projects (energy and housing) in Gaza and for Gazans with the participation of the international community. To demonstrate, concrete that was allowed for projects in Gaza, was used to build terrorist tunnels for the purpose of infiltrating Israel.
The Hamas terrorists that infiltrated southern communities on 7 October began a murder spree, killing families and individuals in their homes, in the streets, and on their way to synagogues, in addition to kidnapping to the Gaza Strip anyone – defenseless families, women and children – who crossed their path.
Those who know to separate good from evil, must have no confusion between a desire for a Palestinian state that lives peacefully alongside the State of Israel and the harsh reality which the State of Israel faces these days by the ongoing attempt by Islamist terrorist organizations governing Gaza aiming to annihilate the State of Israel and deny it its very existence.
The false claims being made by Hamas and other terrorist organizations that “Al Aqsa is in danger” and their absurd attempt to link the terror attack to Jews visiting the Temple Mount (which routinely takes place every year) is a fabricated claim designed to inflame the feelings of the Muslim faithful, and to gather support from extremists to expand the arena of combat in Israel.
There is and could not be a legitimate pretext for the deadly barbaric attack initiated by terrorist organizations led by Hamas on the Israeli southern civil towns. Hamas is not interested in the safety or well-being of civilians in the Gaza Strip, and views them as nothing more than pawns to be exploited in its efforts to annihilate the State of Israel and deny it its very existence.
No one should have doubts, the attack reveals once again the evil face of these terror organizations – bloodthirsty groups, devoid of any moral inhibitions, who are motivated by hatred, the desire to hurt citizens in every way, and to bring about the destruction of the State of Israel.
Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza draw their inspiration and funding from countries and ISIS-like entities that are guided by an extreme ideology that seeks to harm everything that is associated with the values of life, the true faith and respect for international norms and human values. They have nothing in common with the struggle for national definition and religion.
Israel did and will do the utmost to minimize civilian casualties, mainly by early warning of coming attacks. It is the war crimes of Hamas of hiding among civilians, turning civilians into human shields that put the Gazans in danger.
Make no attempt to understand or balance. Evil cannot and should not be understood or contained.
