Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows that every Hamas member will be killed.
“We saw the beasts. We saw the barbarians we are facing,” Netanyahu said in a speech comparing Hamas with ISIS. “How staggering the atrocity. How great the pain … We are fighting with full force, on every front, we have gone onto the attack. Every member of Hamas is a dead man.”
At least 360,000 Israeli reservists stand poised around Gaza waiting for the order to go in.
“Just as ISIS was crushed, so too will Hamas be crushed and Hamas should be treated exactly the way ISIS was treated,” Netanyahu said. “They should be spit out from the community of nations. No leaders should meet them. No country should harbor them. And those that do should be sanctioned.”
That was a clear message to U.S. allies Turkey and Qatar, as well as to Iran.
The Worst Slaughter of Jews Since the Holocaust
The attack was the worst slaughter of Jews in cold blood since the Holocaust.
Over 1,000 Israelis were killed in the brutal slaughter brought by Hamas terrorists as they stormed out of the Gaza Strip.
The slaughter began last Friday. Hamas terrorists used drones to drop bombs that killed Israeli sentries in their guard towers. They broke through the Gaza security fence and flooded the Israeli countryside with roving gangs of terrorists.
Hamas adopted similar tactics to those shown by ISIS almost a decade ago. ISIS burned Yazidis to death and wantonly slaughtered them, just like Hamas did with the Israelis. ISIS infamously distributed videos of captives such as Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh being burned alive almost a decade ago.
The Israel Defense Forces recovered an ISIS flag among a Hamas fighter’s belongings. A 2018 report noted that Hamas supported ISIS in the Sinai with logistics and treated its fighters in Gaza hospitals.
Israeli Intelligence Suffered Catastrophic Failure
Israeli intelligence failed to detect the attack before it happened. Egyptian authorities say they warned Netanyahu’s government before the invasion, which Netanyahu denies. U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul affirmed the Egyptian notification took place.
“There was no such warning. The signs that came up hours before could be based on different intelligence signs,” IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters Thursday.
An unknown number of Israelis were taken back to Gaza as hostages. An unknown number of Americans are among the hostages.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Thursday that at least 25 Americans were among those who had been murdered. Blinken told the Israelis, “As long as the U.S. exists, you will never be alone.”
Why Did This Happen?
Westerners look in horror at what happened and ask themselves why.
Hamas relies on Islamic jurisprudence provided by clerics, including the late Shiekh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, that states Israelis are not civilians and can thus be killed. Islamic law forbids the killing of non-combatants, and diverse opinions exist within Islam.
Al-Qaradawi had a close relationship with Hamas’ top leaders and looked to him for advice prior to his death last year. He lamented that Adolf Hitler had not finished the job during the Holocaust.
“[The Holocaust] was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers,” al-Qaradawi said in a 2009 sermon.
Nazi imagery has been a part of Hamas’ propaganda and that of other Palestinian factions for some time. It therefore should not surprise people when they turn their Nazi propaganda into Nazi actions.
Hamas leaders say they would kill every Jew on the planet if they could. Its genocidal aims against the Jews are identical to those ISIS expressed toward the Yazidis.
The IDF Vows to Free Hostages and Cleanse Gaza of Hamas
The Israel Defense Forces vows it will not let that happen.
“We will do everything to return the hostages back home,” Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said Thursday. “The price of war is heavy and difficult… we are killing many terrorists, many commanders, destroying terror infrastructure that supported this terrible, brutal crime.”
“Gaza will not look the same,” he added. “It will take time and we will need to find patience.”
Halevi vowed that the top Hamas leader, who rules the Gaza Strip for the terrorist group, is a dead man walking.
“Yahya Sinwar, the ruler of the Gaza Strip, decided on this horrible attack, and therefore he — and the entire hierarchy under him — are dead men. We will attack them, we will dismantle them, dismantle their system,” Halevi said.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
