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During the Gaza war, it became clearer that Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iran-backed terrorist organizations were using
the world’s media as a potent weapon against Israel. And, quite importantly, the gullible suckers in the world were allowing themselves to be
played and manipulated by these skillful terrorist manipulators!
Hamas felt free to just pretend to negotiate a hostages-for-ceasefire deal because the world focuses on Israeli
concessions instead of pressuring the terrorist organization.
At the start of September, 2024, while speaking at the Middle East – America Dialogue Summit (MEAD),
Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch, Israel’s chief negotiator for hostages and missing persons, said, “There is a direct correlation between the
international pressure on Israel and Hamas’ desire to negotiate. When Israel is under pressure from its allies and other nations, Hamas feels
it has achieved much without negotiating.”
He went on to say, “There is a facade of negotiations” since December, Hirsch claimed, with a few days of “real talks”
taking place in March, but that was all. “We thought there was progress but unfortunately now there isn’t.” At the same time, “While our
negotiating team is in Doha, Hamas continues to kill hostages in Gaza.” The terrorists shot six hostages to death the previous week in a Rafah
tunnel after IDF forces appeared nearby, preferring to kill their captives rather than risk them being rescued.
The general said that Hamas had successfully pushed the narrative that Jerusalem was to blame for the stalled talks,
but “This is false. We have never canceled any deal that was on the table. It simply hasn’t happened.”
Hirsch pointed out that the war “can be stopped tomorrow” and “Gaza can be restored” if Hamas would return all the
hostages and agree to “demilitarization [and] deradicalization.” Israel would even agree to giving “safe passage for [Hamas] to leave the
Gaza Strip,” he said.[1]
In early September 2024, the German newspaper Bild broke a story which was too unsurprising to be much of one.
According to Bild, a document seized from a computer used by Hamas late strongman Yahya Sinwar summarized Sinwar’s strategy for pressuring Israel into
a cease-fire deal that would enable Hamas to promptly prepare for the next iteration of October 7th.
The document called for the torturing of the hostages that Hamas held in Gaza’s tunnels, as well as other measures aimed
at forcing Israel to make concessions that would permit Hamas to resume where it left off. It reportedly called for “continu[ing] to exert
psychological pressure on the families of the prisoners, both now and during the first phase [of any cease-fire], so that public pressure on
the enemy government increases,” focusing on exhausting the Israeli government and forcing it to agree to a cease-fire deal that would make a
repeat of Hamas’ October 7th massacre just a matter of time.
Sinwar knew what he was doing and he was doing it very well, reading the American Left like a book and playing
it like a fiddle. Getting the Left to accuse the victims of “genocide” was easy as pie, as long as the victims were Israeli.
Before Israel could even begin trying to identify the burned or pulverized body fragments from the innocents Hamas had
massacred on October 7th, faculty and students at prestigious American universities were blaming Israel for the slaughter. Within 48 hours of that
slaughter, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) demanded that Israel “de-escalate the violence.” With Hamas leaders vowing to repeat its
massacre again and again in accordance with a charter that calls for the genocide of Jews, The ”Squad” was dutifully blaming Israel
for genocide, not Hamas.
The moral disease on the Left has metastasized, with significant segments having drunk Hamas’s Kool-Aid with gusto.
So it was when Sinwar ordered the cold-blooded execution of six hostages Hamas had kidnapped on Oct. 7th. Sinwar sat
back and watched gleefully while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got blamed for the hostages’ murders. But blaming this war and the
suffering it has wrought on Netanyahu was and is as perverse and idiotic as blaming World War II on Franklin Roosevelt.
U.S. President Biden had at times encouraged Sinwar to believe that it would always be Netanyahu who would be blamed
for what was Hamas’ sole doing. The threat to withhold weapons from Israel if its forces entered Rafah, where these hostages were held, was
pandering to the Left, and flat-out dumb. After Sinwar’s vicious murder of the six hostages, when a reporter asked Biden whether Netanyahu was
doing enough to bring peace, Biden could have stopped and asked “Are you serious? On a day when Hamas just murdered six more? This isn’t Bibi’s
doing. This is all on Hamas.”
Instead, Biden answered “No.” Once more, Biden was allowing Hamas propaganda to call the shots while he,
Biden, was following Sinwar’s lead and blaming the victim![2]
Across the course of the past year, Israel’s military action in Gaza has been the subject of repeated challenge in
international courts. In late December 2023, South Africa began proceedings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging that Israel
had committed and was committing genocide against the “Palestinians”.
This was an extraordinary allegation to make in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October 2023 atrocities, when
Israel was using force in self-defense to attempt to rescue hostages and to degrade Hamas’s capacity to commit further acts of mass murder, rape,
and hostage-taking.
Israel responded by declaring that its actions were fully in conformity with the Law of Armed Conflict and were obviously
not aimed at the destruction of the “Palestinian people”.
It is shameful and striking that Israel’s use of force has been questioned in this way. It implied an equivalence between
terrorists who had openly committed mass murder and the leaders of a democratic state using force in self-defense against them. These developments
have yet to run their course. But it is clear that they constitute a worrying escalation in lawfare. The ICJ actions demonstrate once again a
blatant bias against the State of Israel and a perfect example of blaming the victim for the illegal and reprehensible actions of the perpetrator
of acknowledged crime and atrocities. [3]
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References:
- ‘A Facade’ – Israel’s top negotiator says global pressure on Israel discouraging Hamas from taking talks seriously,
Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News, 9 September 2024.
- Hamas hell-bent on torture, destruction, Jeff Robbins, Boston Herald, 10 September 2024.
- Israel is the victim of escalating international lawfare, Richard Ekins, The Telegraph, Accessed 18 October 2024.
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