ANALYSIS – Most of us watched in horror as reports bombarded us with the atrocities committed by Gaza-based Hamas terrorists this past Saturday, October 7. Over 1,300 Israelis (including at least 25 Americans and other foreigners) were brutally murdered by the Palestinian jihadists.
Most of the dead were civilians, including families, the elderly and children. Two hundred and forty-seven of those butchered were Israeli soldiers. This is the largest single loss of life in one day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Since then, Israel has responded with relentless artillery, air and missile strikes into Gaza and declared the thin coastal strip, home to 2.3 million people, completely under siege.
Israeli officials have stated that due to the depravity and scale of the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, the prior restraints on Israeli forces have been loosened and that the siege would remain in place until Hamas freed some 150 hostages taken during a deadly weekend incursion.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are no longer using “roof knocks,” where the air force would warn civilians of air strikes by first launching a harmless round on the targeted building, while the siege has sealed off Gaza and cut off Israeli supplies of fuel, electricity, food or water.
“Not a single electricity switch will be flipped on, not a single faucet will be turned on, and not a single fuel truck will enter until the Israeli hostages are returned home,” Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz said on social media.
Hundreds of thousands of Israeli troops are massing near the Gaza border, with Israel expected to launch some sort of ground attack on the coastal enclave.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has now increased the number of reservists it has mobilized to 360,000, with at least 35 battalions being organized into four divisions.
The public and the national security establishment in Israel are demanding massive retaliation for the Hamas attacks. This includes demands to topple Hamas rather than continuing to try to bottle it up in Gaza as Israel has tried for years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “crush” Hamas and change the reality of the Middle East.
Overnight strikes by Israel targeted Hamas’ elite Nukhba forces, including command centers used by the terrorists in Saturday’s attack.
Meanwhile, as I wrote about earlier, Hamas terrorists have fired thousands of rockets into Israel, but fortunately for the Israelis, their ‘Iron Dome’ air defense system has been very effective in intercepting many, if not most, of them.
But a ground invasion would be complicated by Gaza’s dense population, its complex underground network of tunnels and the danger it would pose to hostages.
The Economist notes that “Toppling Hamas might not be possible without an occupation,” adding:
Israeli political leaders are now considering the scope of their ground offensive. One option is a shallow incursion of the sort which occurred in 2014, when the IDF captured territory adjacent to the border with the aim of closing tunnels used to smuggle food, fighters and arms. It stuck to the outskirts of main towns to avoid urban warfare.
Another is a deeper invasion to occupy larger tracts of the Gaza Strip, a densely packed area of more than 2m people, including entering cities, as in 2009. Yet these past approaches may seem inadequate to Israelis given the widespread revulsion at Hamas’s atrocities.
“The scope of this is going to be bigger than before and more severe. It’s not going to be clean…We are going to go very, very aggressively against Hamas,” Israel’s military spokesman, Richard Hecht, told reporters on Tuesday morning. “We should all change the paradigm.” Israeli leaders have promised to “destroy Hamas”, rather than simply weaken it, as in the past. “The era of reasoning with these savages is over,” declared Gilad Erdan, Israel’s envoy to the United Nations. “Now is the time to obliterate Hamas terror infrastructure, to completely erase it, so that such horrors are never committed again.”
News of a gruesome massacre in Kfar Aza, a southern kibbutz, has hardened the mood. Some have hinted at collective punishment. “Hamas became ISIS and the citizens of Gaza are celebrating instead of being horrified,” said an Israeli general. “Human beasts are dealt with accordingly.”
The death toll in Gaza from the Israeli air strikes has reportedly risen to 1,100, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. Expect that number to go much higher in the next days and weeks.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Would it not have helped to give the Palestinians some Human and Civil Rights?
And also to take away from Settlers their unlimited Killing Permits?
Maybe even admit that Israeli “Homeland” was a result of Genocide!
(see Bible)
Fictional revisionist history, and manufactured reality is all you’ve got, and that’s from someone that’s agnostic!
Why didn’t Palestinians rise up against Hamas long ago? I bet against Israel doing an urban war. They know what to do. Aerial bombardment and total destruction of every block is how wars are won. Did anybody care about civilians when Dresden, Germany was 90 percent destroyed?
Question! When Japan made an unprovoked attack on the U.S. on Pearl Harbor how did the U.S.A. respond ?? That is how Israel needs to respond. Not with a nuke but will all the power they have available because Iran and Syria are now involved. Israel indeed has no choice left.
Why hasn’t the Jews removed the terrorist from their side of the Jordon before now. The misnamed “Palestinians” are squatters.
There is already an Arab State in the divided Israel, it is called Jordan.
It is time to reclaim the land is the Gaza Strip and Judea that God gave them.