I have just watched some interesting interviews about the Gaza/Hamas war.
One is from some of the Hamas fighters who were captured by the Israeli Defence Forces and who say that what they did was inexcusable, and that they were tricked by the leaders of Hamas:
Another one is by the son of the co-founder of Hamas, who has nothing good at all to say about the organization:
They have an undying hatred of Jews, dating back many centuries.
And they also hate Islam and Muslim immigrants to Europe and the US.
But whom do they hate more?
Do they cheer more for the wanton mass murders of Jews committed by Hamas, or for the retaliatory shelling, bombing, blockade, and deaths in the Gaza Strip carried out by the Israeli Army?
So much hatred, so little time!!!
My friends on the left who support Hamas’ attack of a month ago are making a big mistake.
They should read, for themselves, the Hamas founding document.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
It is a call for butchery and for a Muslim theocracy over the entire world that would specifically attempt to subjugate or kill all Jews, all Christians, all atheists, and those of any other faith as well.
Read what it says about you leftists, or about the idea of a multi-ethnic, secular state in the region between the Jordan, the Mediterranean, and the Sinai peninsula!
These religious fanatics make any right-wing European or American Christian nationalist look like peace-loving moderates by comparison.
Here are a few excerpts. I highlighted a few of them.
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“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it”
…
“The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Moslem Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1968 and after.
“Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
“The Slogan of the Islamic Resistance Movement:
“Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.
…
“Strategies and MethodsStrategies of the Islamic Resistance Movement: Palestine Is Islamic [W]aqf:
“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?
“This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.
…
“Peaceful Solutions, Initiatives and International Conferences:
“Article Thirteen:
“Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. “Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know.”
“Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers?
“But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah.” (The Cow – verse 120).
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.”
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These are not people you should be allying with!
I didn’t write this, and I’ve never shot at anyone, but this article seems very apt when you think of the bloodthirsty, racist butchery last month perpetrated by Hamas in the region where I once lived.
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NOV 6, 2023
I WAS ONE MONTH into my first deployment when I saw my first dead little girl.
It was 2006 in Baghdad, and the Shia–Sunni civil war had erupted in full force. Carnage greeted us daily.
Hers wasn’t the first dead body I’d seen. Hardly. I had already responded to multiple mass-casualty car bombs that ripped through Baghdad’s markets. My boots were often covered with blood as I stepped over and through scores of dying Iraqis crying out for help.
But her murder was different.
Her body was crumpled in the back of an Iraqi Police Ford Ranger, alongside other victims of a powerful Iranian-backed terrorist group, Jaysh al-Mahdi.
We pushed the other bodies to the side of the truck and pulled her to the rear. She had been gagged and handcuffed, and her head punctured by a drill bit. We later found out that she had been raped in front of her family, to punish them for being Sunnis.
Her face still haunts me. At night, when I’m alone, and the demons come, I still see her face—with that puncture hole. Some nights, she comes to me in my nightmares, begging me to avenge her.
All I wanted was to avenge her innocence. But the culprits were my partners, the Iraqi Police. The Iraqi Police were thoroughly infested by Jaysh al-Mahdi fighters because they controlled the Ministry of Interior. I would never get my chance to avenge her death—and I’ve yet to fully forgive myself.
But I would eventually taste vengeance. During my years in Iraq and Afghanistan, I saw other atrocities up close and personal. The Taliban, the Haqqani Network, the Islamic State, and al Qaeda routinely murdered, raped, and tortured innocent civilians.
Killing those terrorists was intoxicating. Whether it was in a firefight or planning an operation and watching it unfold, slaying monsters is immensely satisfying. In fact, it is addictive, so I kept going back on six separate deployments.
THROUGHOUT THOSE DEPLOYMENTS, I learned that righteous vengeance is a potent drug.
That’s not something most people understand. When in polite society, I often speak of the horrors of war, of which there are many. This is the sort of thing that most Americans—especially well-meaning liberals—expect to hear, and want to hear.
Only once have I spoken openly and honestly about the thrill of killing. After a few too many drinks at an upscale party in Washington, D.C., an inquisitive woman asked me, “What’s the best thing about deploying?”
I stared at her deadpan and said, “Killing those animals for what they did.”
The roomful of pleasant professionals looked aghast.
THESE EXPERIENCES FLOODED MY MIND after seeing the horrific images of Hamas’s October 7 pogrom. Upon seeing the mutilated bodies of innocent children, I started thinking about all the children I had seen slaughtered by similar groups.
My fists immediately closed, and my shoulders furled forward. My jaws clenched tight, an acid taste flooding my mouth. These were the same physiological reactions I had when I saw atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As adrenaline coursed through my body and my rage peaked, I wanted only one thing—vengeance for the innocent massacred in Israel. It is the same feeling that hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers likely feel, many of them now in or preparing to enter Gaza.
In the coming weeks, the IDF will face perhaps the biggest military test since its creation 75 years ago. That is saying something for such a vaunted fighting force. They will face a determined enemy who has likely meticulously planned their defense. There will be snipers, attempts to kidnap soldiers via tunnels, human shields, suicide bombers, and likely advanced Iranian weapons (be on the lookout for explosively formed projectiles).
They will be fighting while the world watches intensely. Every exchange of fire will be filmed by ubiquitous cell phones, some broadcast in real time. Every Hamas fighter and supporter will try to paint IDF actions as inhumane so they can be used as propaganda, sapping the West’s resilience in the process.
The IDF will be held to a standard that Hamas is never judged by. It is not fair, and it will inevitably lead to the death of many IDF soldiers. It would be far easier to just fire and forget, civilian casualties be damned. Although my experiences in urban warfare weren’t existential, I often felt enraged when I could not respond in kind. Taking potshots from nearby mosques was very common in Baghdad. In Afghanistan, Taliban fighters would intentionally fire at us from crowded bazaars, then melt into the population, daring us to overreact. In Iraq, Iranian-backed terrorists often handed out toy guns to young boys. I nearly killed a young Iraqi boy during a dismounted patrol because of Iran’s disregard for life. Other American service members in a similar situation did pull that trigger—and were forever haunted.
WHILE IT IS NOT FAIR that the IDF is held to a different standard, it is also what makes them a fundamentally liberal fighting force. In a recent interview, Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official, boasted, “The Israelis are known to love life. We, on the other hand, sacrifice ourselves.”
This echoes many other terrorists since 2001 who mocked the softness of Westerners for loving life while priding themselves for loving death. Hamas believes slaughtering babies, raping women, and kidnapping Holocaust survivors is their strength, but it will be their ruination.
Hamas’s brutality galvanized public opinion against them. They are now being painted as akin to the Islamic State by many Western leaders, including, most importantly, President Biden. This type of rhetoric provides vast room to maneuver for the IDF. However, the IDF’s righteous vengeance must be properly vectored. IDF sergeants and company-grade officers will have to walk a fine line by harnessing the power of their righteous vengeance in eliminating Hamas while also ensuring they don’t become the monsters they hope to destroy.
It happened to the United States in My Lai and Abu Ghraib. It happened to Staff Sgt. Robert Bales in a small district in Afghanistan. I know American service members who crossed that line after one of their friends was killed. They hungered for vengeance. And to a man, they regret it to this day.
Soldiers cross the line in battle. It happens in every war. When you allow men to kill, some inevitably go too far. That’s because there is a powerful temptation to respond to your enemy’s atrocities with similar brutality. Again: Bloodlust is a very real thing. I know that firsthand. I’ve felt it running through my veins. But it is also perilous. While the IDF must be ferocious and unleash overwhelming force to vanquish Hamas, they must also not lose themselves in the process. The balance is incredibly difficult to maintain, especially in an urban environment where the enemy lurks in every crevice—and after witnessing the most deadly attack against Jews since the Shoah.
The IDF will be fighting to restore deterrence. They will be fighting to destroy Hamas. They will also be fighting to avenge the 1,400 Jews who were butchered. That will motivate them to endure. It will steel their resolve. It mustn’t, however, change who they are.
Israelis love life. And in the final analysis, that is their strength, not their weakness.
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