"Who chose Hamas? The majority chose Hamas."

"I said to myself, 'how can it be? On one side he [his grandfather] invites them [Jewish neighbours] for food and drink, and on the other he says to kill them'. From a young age I understood something is wrong."

"But I knew the [IDF] soldiers, and they'd given me candy sometimes. They don't have one eye in the forehead -- they aren't like that. The Jews who came to the market in Khan Younis to give us food aid didn't have one eye in the forehead. The Jews who came to the weddings of our neighbours didn't have three legs or one eye in the forehead."

Ayman Abu Soobuch, Arab Muslim from Khan Younis/Dor Shacher, Israeli Jewish convert

“I wanted to be a Jew because I chose life, I chose love and not hatred,” says Dor Shachar, who was born Ayman Abu Soobuch, a Muslim in Gaza. Photo by Dave Gordon

 

 Ayman Abu Soobuch was born in 1977 in Khan Younis, Gaza. As a boy an episode that he found incomprehensibly puzzling led him to question the prevailing attitudes he was exposed to with respect to the neighbours of the Palestinians in the adjoining state of Israel. His grandfather after cordially inviting Jews to his home to share his Palestinian hospitality, would then turn around and urge his grandson to eventually "free the land" by killing Jews. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is known to expose Palestinian children to school curricula, children's  television programs and social media to the glories of martyrdom, to aspire to jihad. 

 

Among the young boy's neighbours in Khan Younis were those who were to go on to distinguish themselves as fearsome terrorists dedicated to the extermination of the Jewish state and the murder of Jews, instilling the fear of  terrorism among a population they despised and as a death cult, conspired to murder. These were now-well-recognizable names like Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Yahya Ayyash the bombmaker. "I knew them well (as) community faces" as well as others comprising Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the PLO. 

 

He was aware that among his neighbours were those who killed; among them his own brothers taking the call to jihad seriously.  There was one occasion in the open market when he witnessed Sinwar decapitating a Palestinian man whom he had accused of collaborating with Israel, as a crowd looked on and cheered. On one occasion when he was with his mother at the market they came across a head lying in the street. "They said he was suspected of co-operating with Israel". Bystanders took no note of the grotesque scene, walking by unperturbed. 

 

In reminiscing about his early growing years in Khan Younis he recalled television programs for children urging them to "go and kill the Jews". Sheikhs in mosques shouting that the killing of Jews represented "the greatest commandment" as "Allah's will". UNRWA (the UN's United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) schools had very similar curricula informing students that Jews were "pigs dogs and infidels", undeserving of life, as monstrosities with three legs and a single eye in their forehead.  

"Every child learned how to throw stones at Jews because they teach it. The teacher would tell us to go out and throw stones, then come back and open books as though we were studying. When the soldiers came, they saw little children studying. After the soldiers left, the teachers laughed -- 'these pigs, these dogs, these betrayers, these Jews, we will slaughter theme like Hitler did."  

As for children's plays -- dressed as Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, young students would act out killing of Jews. In his teens he left Khan Younis and Gaza to live in Israel, serving as a security informant for Israel, warning when terrorist events were to take place. Still Israeli Jews suspected his motives and distrusted him, despite that one Jewish Israeli decided to mentor him. Suspicions led to arbitrary arrests and the bureaucracy's unwillingness to allow him to convert to Judaism.  

"Yes, it would have been easier not to be Jewish."

"Sometimes you feel hungry and you want to eat or you are thirsty and you feel thirsty and you want to drink -- it's what yo feel. That I am different: I am connected to the Jewish people."

"I wanted to be a Jew because I chose life. I chose love and not hatred. I chose love, not darkness." 

In making the decision to leave Islam and embrace Judaism knowing the cost -- that he would be viewed as a traitor and worse by his family from whom he had distanced himself; from his community, which he had rejected; from the culture in which he had been raised, which he found inhumane and rejected; he was alone, an apostate. He was also living illegally in Israel and in dire poverty. When authorities in Israel discovered his presence, he was returned to Gaza.

 

There he spent months in a Gaza prison, beaten, electric-shocked, psychologically abused, and starved. He eventually escaped Gaza through Egypt, went on to Turkey and finally re-entered Israel on a Palestinian Authority passport. At the time of the Oslo Accords -- now Dor Shachar, an Israeli Jewish convert taking on an Israeli name -- he expressed his belief that Oslo constituted "Israel's greatest mistake", convinced that the compromise evinced by the Palestinians had metastasized to Jihad. And indeed, one Intifada followed another and with them terror attacks.

 

When Israel took the unilateral step of leaving Gaza, uprooting thousands of Israelis, to leave the Strip in Palestinian hands, he was dismayed, forecasting what would occur, and what in fact, did happen, with Hamas taking over the Gaza Strip from the PA in a wave of murderous assaults. His warnings to senior Israeli officials were ignored. When in 2006 Hamas was elected in a victory campaign and took up governance of Gaza he watched as cement  and iron meant for construction were waved through the border by Israeli guards, enabling an extensive tunnel network for weapons storage and terrorist-operatives haven. 

"Between Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Qassam Brigades, and any other terror group, and most Palestinians in Gaza, they share the same ideas about Jews."

"And they say, Hamas will raise our head, and they will rebuild Gaza again'."

"I will tell you what will happen in the West: the worst. Look what's happening in Europe. It will happen in Canada and America. You'll see chaos."

"In Canada, you can cry out in the streets -- and say to the prime minister, 'they go, or you go!"

"I walked in my truth in order to raise our children in shalom -- in peace -- to live."

Dor Shachar, Israeli-Arab Jew  

After the October 7, 2023 atrocities, as he saw Palestinian civilians joining the rampage of 6,000 terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the PLFP and Fatah overrun the kibbutzim in southern Israel, his misgivings went even deeper. His message too the West is that 'Allahu akbar' honours Islam. "The West doesn't want to believe it's a war of faith. People in the West are afraid, and they're nice about it, because they are afraid, or they don't want to accept reality. The Israeli army must control Gaza [to prevent additional October 7s.]" 

Toronto, Violating Jewish Residents' Trust and Security

"I don't think that three years ago, anybody would dream that such a thing would happen."

"The idea that a person that lives at Bathurst and Steeles [in the heart of the Jewish community in Toronto] would say, 'I don't know if I want you to put a menorah back because I'm afraid', is terrible, and obviously more has to be done." 

"They feel violated, that such a thing should happen literally at the door of their home." 

Rabbi Mendel Zaltzman 

 

"There is no excuse for targeting people because they are Jewish." 

"Toronto cannot look the other way while seniors are intimidated in their hallways."

"[The incident was] an act of hate directed at Jewish residents -- seniors who deserve safety, stability, and dignity." 

City Councillor James Pasternak 

 

"The permissive nature of the City's response to the rising levels of incitement and intimidation aimed at the Jewish community continues to embolden those who wish to target Jewish Torontonians."

"Now, it is a group of Jewish seniors who appear to be paying the price for the inaction of our municipal leaders."

"The inability to protect our elderly is a sign of the further decay of our society."

B'nai Brith Canada

 

"This is a public supportive housing building for seniors. They deserve to live in peace without fear of being targeted for being Jewish." 

"I will be reaching out to TSCH [Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation]leadership to investigate how this could happen."

Olivia Chow, Mayor of Toronto

Toronto police say they received reports Sunday that about 20 mezuzahs had been stolen over the weekend from a Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation building near Bathurst Street and Steeles Avenue W. (Robert Krbavac/CBC)

 

Mayor Chow need not trouble herself with this kind of sanctimonious statement. There is no need for her to 'reach out' to the  housing corporation. If she were truly concerned over the incident where someone ripped mezuzahs from the doorways of senior citizens who happen to be Jewish, living in a supportive housing complex in her municipality, she need go no further than the nearest mirror. In that mirror she would see reflected the face of authority who has gone out of her way to leave Jewish Torontonians to their own protective devices.

 

While mouthing the usual tch-tchs about antisemitism, she has displayed it amply on her own account. As the highest elected authority in the municipality whose job it is to ensure equality of security of all residents, she had but to instruct the Toronto Police Force to act in accordance with the law in reacting to  'protest' gatherings clearly flouting civil law, that target Jews. As Mayor of all the people of Toronto she might have thought it a requirement to attend not only Muslim events but those of the Jewish community as well; certainly including a memorial for the 7 October tragedy.

 

Rabbi Zaltzman, the CEO of the Jewish-Russian Community Centre of Ontario explained that the seniors targeted at the  North York apartment building are for the most part members of the Russian Jewish community. Residents were shocked and dismayed and fearful when they realized that their mezuzahs, an icon of their faith, had been ripped off their doorways. They were left with the impression of having been violated; their trust in their security, in the acceptance of the larger community betrayed. 

 

Pro-Palestinian protestors wave flags and signs in Toronto, Ontario, on September 10, 2025. (illustrative)

(photo credit: VALERIE MACON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)

 

Since the 2023 October 7 terrorist attack in southern Israel when Palestinian terror groups from Gaza led by Hamas rampaged through Israeli farm communities, shooting people at will, raping, torturing, destroying and looting, in a massacre that claimed over 1,200 lives of Israeli civilians; infants, the elderly, foreign farm workers, butchering young Jews attending a Nova music festival and taking 250 children, families, the elderly, soldiers captive into Gaza as hostages, Canadian cities, and in particular Toronto and Montreal burst into a celebration of 'Palestinian' rights.

 

Where crowds of Palestinian-inspired Canadian Muslims, leftist groups and pure unadulterated Jew-haters occupied the streets with loudspeakers vilifying Israel, calling for a global Intifada, shouting at Canadian Jews to 'go back to Poland', chanting 'Final Solution', and 'Palestine will be free from the river to the sea'; code for the destruction of Israel. Jewish students from elementary to high school to universities were harassed, Jewish shopkeepers had their buildings vandalized.

 

And Mayor Chow, at a speech to the National Council of Canadian Muslims at a fundraising gala, referenced "the genocide in Gaza". This, at a time when 40 percent of all hate crimes in Toronto, according to a police report, targeted Jews. Toronto is the site of 60 percent of antisemitic incidents in Ontario schools, according to a government report. The Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagogue was attacked for the  tenth time.  

 

Residents Shoshana Pellman (left), Miguel Camacho, whose mezuzahs were each stolen from the doors of their apartments on the weekend, commiserated with Rabbi Yirmi Cohen, who remembers when his father originally put up those mezuzahs years ago. (Ellin Bessner photo)

 

The religious/cultural symbolism of mezuzahs bring comfort to Jews who usually place them on an upright beam of a doorway, signifying that 'a Jew lives here'. Devout Jews may kiss the mezuzah entering and leaving a home. These are small metal hollow lozenges with Hebrew letters and design impressed on their surfaces, and within the hollow of each one is a sacred scroll with a prayer. Their theft strikes a blow to those elderly people whose doors and themselves were targeted.

 

Because mezuzahs were so commonly identifiable that many non-Jews during the first year of the pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas 'protests', left many Jewish families living in fear of violence potentially perpetrated against them as the protesters' threats implied, that they themselves removed their prized symbols, hoping to avoid threatening encounters. That fear had subsided to an extent, but the recent theft of the symbols of Judaism have reminded Canadian Jews of their vulnerability in a city which once meant security and inclusion.

 

Rabbi Yirmi Cohen inspects the post of one of the missing mezuzahs taken off the doors of at least 20 apartments inside the seniors' complex sometime before Sunday morning Dec. 7 in what police are calling a hate-motivated theft. (Credit: Ellin Bessner )

 

Will The Real Mahmoud Abbas Please Stand UP?!!!

"Despite all that our people have suffered, we reject what Hamas carried out on October 7."

"[The targeting and hostage taking of Israeli citizens does] not represent the Palestinian people [nor] their just struggle for freedom and independence."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas   

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly via video at United Nations headquarters, September 25, 2025. (AP/Angelina Katsanis)

 

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas lost little time in responding to the 20-point journey to end the conflict in Gaza occasioned by the 7 October 2023 incursion into Israel by thousands of Palestinian terrorists and civilians orchestrated by Hamas on a mission to slaughter Israeli civilians, rape Israeli girls and women, dismember their victims in an orgy of sadistic pleasure, and take children, the elderly, women and Israeli soldiers captive as hostages into Gaza. Hamas and the PA [PLO/Fatah] have always been political rivals, the former leading a secular authority, the latter committed to an Islamist state.

 

When the 20-point plan was released, PA President Abbas announced he was prepared to be enlisted within the plan to provide "a modern and democratic state that abides by international law, the rule of law and multilateralism and the peaceful transition of power". The Palestinian Authority under his rule was prepared to work the U.S. and assigned partners in the implementation of the peace plan; he is "ready to bear full responsibility for governance and security" in the absence of Hamas.

 

With the support of the peace plan behind him, the man promising a democratic government who has himself ruled the West Bank after an initial election two decades earlier that was never again brought to the polls, assured his Western contacts that his preparedness is there, and Hamas must hand over its weapons to the Palestinian National Authority. The messages he sends expressed in Arabic to an Arab audience fail to quite match the statements of commitment to peace and good order and rejection of violence that the UN heard from him.  

"On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a sudden attack ... killed 1,200 Israelis, abducted 250 others, and took them as hostages."

"This attack shook the foundations of the Israeli entity."

"[The attacks that day] exposed the [false] claims that ... [Israel] has an invincible army." 

Mahmoud Abbas

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa (C-L) listens as Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty (C) speaks at a press conference on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing in Rafah on August 18, 2025. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP

 

After the butchery of October 7, 2023, when Israelis were reeling in disbelief and sorrow, Mahmoud Abbas eventually, after a five-day hiatus expressed his sentiments on the massacre during a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan while in Amman, stating: "We reject the practices of killing civilians or abusing them on both sides", handily glossing over his leading role in producing school curricula for Palestinian children that characterize Jews and Israelis as loathsome colonialists stealing Palestinian land, urging children to contemplate the glory of martyrdom in defiance of Israeli 'oppression', as a cruel 'occupier'.

 

When speaking in June to the PA's daily paper Al-Hayat Al Jadida, Mr. Abbas outright applauded the October 7 massacre for "achieving important goals", attracting the attention of Palestinian Media Watch for translation to English as he celebrated the strategic achievement that Hamas achieved that day. On the other hand in a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman he wrote: "What Hamas did on October 2023 in killing and taking civilians hostage is unacceptable and condemnable and Hamas must immediately release all hostages". 

"As important as the goals that Hamas attempted to achieve through this attack may have been, they are not comparable to the damages and heavy losses that the Gaza Strip residents ... have suffered."

Mahmoud Abbas 

This handout picture provided by the Palestinian Authority’s press office shows Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas applauding as he gives a video address to a UN summit on a two-state solution in New York City, from his headquarters in Ramallah on September 22, 2025. (Thaer GHANAIM / PPO / AFP)

"They [Palestinian leaders] wanted peace. They wanted a state. They wanted self-rule. In fact they got self-rule."

"But this Hamas terrorist organization, which believed, one, that Israel can't exist at all, and there's no compromise, and that, two, Palestine must be an Islamist state, not a secular state. They set about destroying any hopes for that."

"If you're dealing with the same parties and the same actors and the same agendas, then you're likely going to have the same outcome."

"If Hamas is allowed to exist, how then does the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian government succeed in administering its population?"

"Hamas is not going to bow down to that easily. They never have. It is for Hamas, total victory or death."

Terrorism expert Lara Burns, former FBI agent 

 

Rewarding Terrorism, Complicit in Support of Terrorism/France, U.K., Canada

"This is a reckless policy that undermines prospects for peace."

"It sets the dangerous precedent that violence, not diplomacy, is the most expedient means for terrorist groups like Hamas to achieve their political aims."

"[Recognition is] especially troubling [considering the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, when citizens of the U.K., France and Canada were among those killed that day]."

"Hamas's war crimes are clear, and its rejection of diplomacy should lead your countries to impose more pressure. Instead, you offer greater rewards." 

Open letter to France, U.K., Canada by U.S. Republican Congressmen and Senators 

 

"[Carney's recognition of a Palestinian state] vindicated [hostage-taking,  handing victory to the] violent mobs who block streets, vandalize businesses, target synagogues, and even shoot up schools [in Canada, post-7 October]."

Deputy Leader, Conservative Party of Canada, Melissa Lantsman 

Protest in support of Palestine in Toronto on Saturday, October 5, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Arlyn McAdorey

"This action is an important step in establishing the right of the Palestinian people to their land and sanctities and on the path to establishing an independent state with Holy Quds as its capital, which is the result of years of struggle, perseverance, and sacrifice of our people on the path of freedom and return."

Hamas congratulatory response to Canada/U.K./France announcement  

"We are proud to sacrifice [our] martyrs. We are prepared to stage events similar to October 7, 2023, again and again until Israel ceases to exist", stated Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad. This most recent congratulatory message by Hamas to Canada in response to Palestine-supportive statements from Canada's Liberal government is the third of its kind. Canadian branches of the Palestinian Youth Movement and Toronto4Palestine student group openly celebrated the attacks of October 7, organizing demonstrators to call for supplanting the "Zionist entity" with a Palestinian state.

 

Hamas has run the Gaza Strip since 2007   Getty Images

 

A sour note was hit by Toronto4Palestine, taking a break from applauding the Liberal Party's most recent turnabout from an ally and supporter of the state of Israel, to condemning it for its military response to the terrorist sweep through southern Israel when sadistic savagery was on full display with the rape and dismemberment of Israeli girls and women, and the massive death toll of Israeli children, women, men and foreign farm workers. Prime Minister Carney was condemned by Toronto4Palestine for calling for Hamas to "play no role in t he future governance of Palestine". Even while he was praised for recognition a Palestinian state without preconditions.

 

The stated conditions for recognition of the nascent Palestinian state, in Toronto4Palestine's opinion, "undermine Palestinian self determination", failing to "acknowledge the reality in Palestine". Of course, in actual fact, Hamas itself has long had a place on Canada's terrorist list. Flying the Hamas flag, celebrating its 'courage' in confronting the Zionist Entity by murdering civilians, rapine and pillage, under Canadian law merit arrest, but no such thing happened, while the pro-Hamas contingent in Canadian society rampaged through Canadian streets chanting to universalize the Intifada. 

 

Canada's State Immunity Act emphasizes that a state must not wage aggressive war, must not commit atrocities and must not support terrorism to be recognized as a state. The status of state recognition has its rights, but carries responsibilities as well. States that finance, facilitate or take part in terrorism for the benefit of designated terror groups can be stripped of immunity and held to account in Canadian courts. The West Bank government of the Palestinian Authority which Canada proposes to govern a newly declared Palestinian state has and does in fact, finance, facilitate and take part in terrorism. 

 

 

 

Promoting the Palestinian Authority as the future governing agent of the West Bank and Gaza elevates a  terrorist financing, promoting group. And if France, the U.K. and Canada promote this accession of Fatah, itself on terror lists (while forming the backbone of the Palestinian Authority) does that not make these three Western democratic countries complicit in terrorism themselves? At the very least, willing to look past these inconveniences to shore up their arguments that Israel's determination to rout out the terrorist Hamas which uses Palestinian civilians as shields, to hold Israel accountable for deaths that Hamas causes.

 

For years the Palestinian Authority has paid convicted terrorists and the families of those carrying out attacks, bonus awards for 'confronting the occupation'. The 'Occupation', needless to say, is Israel's defense against constant, ongoing Palestinian attacks against the Jewish state and its people. Rewarding terrorism incites more terrorist acts; a double game perfected by Palestinian politicians. And it is not only Hamas, but the Palestine Liberation Front, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terror groups beloved of the Palestinians all committed to Israel's annihilation.

 

Easily overlooked by Israel's allies now turned detractors and Palestinian human rights defenders, who deny Israel's human rights. Fatah founded the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, another listed terrorist entity in Canada that excelled in suicide bombings, civilian shootings, kidnappings and October 7. Fatah is the terrorist arm of the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas. Whose popularity in the West Bank is low, while Hamas gains majority plaudits in the West Bank, greater than its support by Gaza residents. 

 

Palestinian politics:  

 

Israel's Right of Response Raises Negative Global Public Opinion

"I believe the negotiations will continue, and right now we are applying significant pressure on all fronts in order to relay a very clear message about our intentions."

"It could be that this pressure, both in Gaza and elsewhere in the world, will ultimately bring about a breakthrough in the negotiations."

Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to United Nations

 

"There's a difference between having a policy of [destroying Hamas] and then breaking international law as a country to carry it out."

"And that seems to be what Israel has decided to do and which puts it on the wrong side of the international community."

Nicholas Hopton, former British ambassador to Qatar, Libya and Iran

 

Current U.S. sanctions have not significantly impacted Iran’s relationships with its proxies. The State Department estimated that Iran spent more than $16 billion on support for the Assad regime and its proxies between 2012 and 2020. And in 2020 alone, the State Department estimated that Iran funneled more than $700 million to Hezbollah.

The October 7 massacre by the Iranian-backed Hamas terror group in southern Israel that killed over 1,200 Israelis and other foreign nationals and took over 250 hostage, has further demonstrated the threat to global stability that Iran and its terror proxies pose. Since that attack, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and militias in Iraq and Syria, have led attacks against Israel.

American Jewish Committee, June 2025

 

 

In the late 1960s Palestinian secular movements such as Al Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) began to target civilians outside the immediate arena of conflict. Following Israel's 1967 defeat of Arab forces, Palestinian leaders realized that the Arab world was unable to militarily confront Israel. At the same time, lessons drawn from revolutionary movements in Latin America, North Africa, Southeast Asia as well as during the Jewish struggle against Britain in Palestine, saw the Palestinians move away from classic guerrilla, typically rural-based, warfare toward urban terrorism. Radical Palestinians took advantage of modern communication and transportation systems to internationalize their struggle. They launched a series of hijackings, kidnappings, bombings, and shootings, culminating in the kidnapping and subsequent deaths of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic games.

These Palestinian groups became a model for numerous secular militants, and offered lessons for subsequent ethnic and religious movements. Palestinians created an extensive transnational extremist network -- tied into which were various state sponsors such as the Soviet Union, certain Arab states, as well as traditional criminal organizations. By the end of the 1970s, the Palestinian secular network was a major channel for the spread of terrorist techniques worldwide.

Frontline, The Evolution of Islamic Terrorism: an overview, John Moore, PBS

A year to October 7: Marking one year of pain, resilience, and remembrance, October 7, 2024

(photo credit: FLASH90/CANVA)

 

Israel's military incursion into Gaza following the Palestinian terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023 when thousands of Hamas, PLFP, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Palestinian citizens flooded across the border into southern Israel with the intention of slaughtering Israelis, lit a firestorm of condemnation as the IDF pursued its mission to destroy Palestinian operatives indulging in their passion for murdering Jews. There was no option but to bomb the enclave in an effort to annihilate Hamas embedding itself within the civilian population, which promised to launch endless October 7s on Israel, over and above its countless strikes to that point.

 

As Israel seeks the completion of its stated mission to eradicate the source of terrorism from Gaza, it gave additional attention to its northern border where from Lebanon, Iran-sponsored Hezbollah sent missiles into Israeli territory of the Golan Heights, and from Yemen, the Houthi terrorist faction attacked marine trade in the Red Sea with any Israeli links. Iran-supplied missiles from Yemen reached Israel, while Hamas, under siege, continued to bomb Israel. The Islamic Republic of Iran was inspired to send missiles into Israel after Hezbollah leaders were targeted in Iran.

 

Assailed from all these sources, there is no nation on the face of this Earth that would not return fire and spare no efforts to destroy its enemies before it would itself be destroyed. Yet this simple reality has not interfered with a global campaign to demonize Israel for responding to its existential threat; those world leaders and the leaders of international bodies criticize, slander, threaten consequences and do their utmost to isolate the Jewish state, calling Israel a 'rogue attack machine', destabilizing the region always on the cusp of ignition. In international law a country that is attacked has the inalienable right to respond. And any country that gives haven to the attackers sees a justified attack, also defended by international law.

 

Adina Moshe and her daughter Maya Shoshani Moshe mourn at the grave of Adina’s husband David.

Ivana Kottasova/CNN

 

Logically, Israel knew it had to cast a wide net to neutralize Hamas political leaders who preferred to live abroad rather than in Gaza or the West Bank. Posing as 'political' leaders, as opposed to the Hamas 'militant wing', haven was offered in Turkey and Qatar where the Hamas leaders who set the death-cult agenda lived in opulence and security from the consequences of their orders; they nonetheless became targets for retribution by Israel, earning the condemnation of both those from the Middle East and the West.

 

"We'll eliminate Hamas leaders in Qatar and Turkey", former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar stated several months following the 2023 savagery where Israeli girls and women were raped, mutilated and murdered. "It'll take a few years but we'll get there", he said, in memory of the 1,200 Israelis, foreign farm workers and Israeli non-Jews who were slaughtered that infamous day. The entire nation of Israel has been suffering the trauma of loss, in addition to the fearful, mourning families of the 250 children, men and women who were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists, held as bargaining chips, in inhumane conditions. 

 

 Avenging military targets in Iran, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria, all countries hostile to and demonstrably contriving to destroy Israel, became fair game to Israel's mission to protect itself from ongoing deadly attacks. The fierce response of the Israeli military under the direction of the Israeli government demonstrated once again to the world that there is a Jewish state dedicated to the security of Jewish life, one that prefers peace but will settle for the persuasive power of conflict to hammer home the message of Jewish endurance.

 

Daniel Lifshitz lights a candle on the grave of his best friend Dolev Yehud, who was a volunteer medic at kibbutz Nir Oz and was killed while trying to provide help to others in his community.

Ivana Kottasova/CNN

 

"Israel believes the best strategy is to escalate in order to deescalate", stated Brandon Friedman, a senior fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, whose specialty is the Arab Gulf. In a first thing first scenario, the decision was made to set aside relaxed relations with the Gulf until Hamas is defeated. Almost two years have passed since the devastation of October 7 and hostages continue to be held by Hamas for whom loyalty among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank remains strong.  

"I speak with the leaders of Arab countries."

"Some of them issued very angry statements about Israel. But in informed conversations they say, 'Kudos' -- both because they dislike Qatar and because they dislike Hamas and radical Islam."

"I think we should keep taking the lead in this campaign. The entire world is talking about a future without Hamas -- including even those who are today fighting us here in the UN, like France and Britain."

Danny Danon

People pray for the victims of the October 7 terror attack at the site of the Nova Music Festival.

Ivana Kottasova/CNN

 

There are International Rules of War ... and There are International Rules of Israeli War

"Once a city of 270,000 at the southernmost area of the [Gaza] Strip, Rafah has been the focus of intense combat at various times since October 7, 2023."

"Today, the city lies in ruins. Driving on a newly paved road -- in a convoy of military vehicles with heavy protection -- we passed through piles of twisted rebar, demolished buildings and rubble."

"The intact shell of one building stood, in stark contrast to the desolation."

"After about 15 minutes we arrived at our destination -- a massive humanitarian aid complex that was near completion. The Israel Defense Forces' international spokesman, Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani explained that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-based not-for profit, will operate the centre which will have the capacity to provide millions of meals daily to displaced civilians."

Vivian Bercovici, Israeli journalist 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to IDF troops in Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border, July 18, 2024. (Avi Ohayon/GPO

 

The location of which she writes is not far from the Egyptian border. Egypt, it should be noted, has recently accused Israel of committing 'genocide'. Egypt, it should also be noted, has steadfastly refused to open its border with Gaza to permit Palestinians fleeing the conflict in Gaza to enter the Sinai. Should that be interpreted as Egypt placing itself deliberately in a position of complicity in genocide? After all, Egypt, until it marched on Israel in 1967, occupied Gaza, and many Gazans of today trace their ancestry to Egypt.

 

Israel is now, once again, fighting for its existence. This time, not against the massed armies of its neighbours, but the terrorist groups that some of its neighbours in the Middle East have supported. Could an existential situation be more complex than that of Israel, when it has finally been able to sign peace treaties with some of its Arab neighbours, while the terrorist groups in Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza along with those in Iraq, all loyal to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and by extension Qatar, seek to demolish the Jewish state? 

 

In responding to the violently lethal threats of Iran's proxy militias and Iran itself, Israel risks alienating its Arab neighbours with whom it has signed those peace agreements. Egypt, a case in point, has assembled its military in large numbers along its border with Israel, as though it is preparing to launch a war against a neighbour it has long since pledged peace with. And nor is Israel's plight one restrained to the Middle East. Its Western allies in Europe and elsewhere now accuse it of disproportional force against its enemies. 

Palestinians carry humanitarian aid that they gathered after an aid drop, as they walk in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on August 18, 2025. (AFP)

 

These are death-cult Islamists whose charters declare their purpose is to destroy Israel and to kill Jews. In responding to the deadly attack of October 7, 2023, where thousands of terrorists crossed into southern Israel to rape and to maim, to plunder and to murder, Israel had little choice but to invade Gaza to hunt down Hamas's leaders and its operatives. In doing so, its northern border with Lebanon saw another terror group, Hezbollah, rain missiles down onto the Golan Heights at Israeli communities.

 

And before long, the Houthi terrorists in Yemen responded as well, attacking shipping in the Red Sea, asserting that any vessels with any connection to Israel would be targeted; in the process upsetting marine traffic internationally. Yet Israel's traditional allies, in the full knowledge that Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Iranian Republic use their own civilian populations as shields to protect the 'mujahadeen' from Israel's military responses to their attacks, focus on the plight of the civilian population in Gaza where a 'moral' military prewarns citizens of attacks and does its utmost to minimize civilian casualties.

 

Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty attends an Arab officials’ meeting in Riyadh on January 12, 2025. (Fayez Nureldine / AFP)

 

During an all-out conflict when a nation is forced to commit itself to a war against those who relentlessly and continually attack its citizens, the internationally acknowledged rules of war affirm that such a nation has the right to defend itself and its population and to counter-attack the offender out for its blood. By concealing themselves among the population for cover, and by using civilian infrastructure for command bases and by firing off missiles from launch sites deliberately placed in crowded civilian areas, Hamas has with intention, placed its civilian population in direct line of danger.

 

It uses the statistics it gathers on casualties among the civilian population, to convince the international community of Israel's intention to commit 'genocide', a charge that is not only a risible slander, but one that reality itself denies. What other country at war in the annals of international conflict through the ages has ever been expected to defend itself and obliterate an enemy sworn to its destruction, while also protecting a civilian population and to feed it, while its enemies are known to hijack humanitarian aid meant to avoid starvation among Gaza's civilians?

 

Hamas has in its possession, the remnants of 250 hostages it originally kidnapped from Israel and took to Gaza to torture and starve and even slaughter, because Jewish bodies, alive or dead are bargaining chips of great value to the Hamas terror machinery knowing full well that Israel attempts to move heaven and earth to rescue its people imprisoned in the underground hellscape of Gaza, including those held for ransom by Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who support the sadistic cruelty of their leaders in savaging Jewish lives.

 

 

"The Muwasi-adjacent site will be operated by GHF and offer ready access to food and other life essentials in a safe, controlled environment."

"Civilians will walk a 500-metre path, flat and secure, far from Hamas fighters or criminal gangs."

"Once inside the complex they will receive food aid to last several days and within minutes return to their temporary shelters in Muwasi."

"To avoid panics and crowd surges the centre would be operational 24/7 if necessary and supplies will be delivered by truck using the same road we took. At a minimum, basic life necessities will be available."

Vivian Bercovici, Israeli journalist 

Hamas Propaganda

A Palestinian pays for goods at a street market in Gaza City, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

 

"It was all staged."

"There was food in the next room -- the hostages who escaped from tunnels told us this."

"The captors are not starving. Our people are."

"We do not deny the humanitarian need in Gaza. But we ask the world not to fall for Hamas's lies."

"Condemn Hamas and tell them: You want to move forward? Release the hostages."

"In the last week alone, we've brought in 30,000 tons of aid -- 30 tons by air yesterday alone. The UN has almost 800 trucks they could distribute -- and failed to do so."

"So a lot could have been done."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog 

 

"Why are German and international news agencies continuing to use his [photographer working for Turkey's state-operated Anadolu Agency] images when many are clearly biased or staged?"

German newspaper Bild

 

"[Be forewarned of] manipulation attempts through professionally produced press photography."

"All parties involved in this war -- including media and intelligence services -- are using the power of imagery like never before to shape public perception." 

German Journalists' Association

 

 

According to a special report produced by The Press Service of Israel, citing United Nations' own numbers, 85 percent of the aid entering the Gaza Strip by truck since May 19, has been stolen. Black market profiteers and inflation have resulted in much of the international aid taken by force ending up in Gaza markets, at mark-ups making them unaffordable for most Palestinians. The food and medical supplies meant to be distributed freely among Palestinian civilians have instead been forcefully diverted to become pricey goods unavailable to the very people the aid was meant to help. 

"Where is the photographer? Who is standing around him? What do the people depicted in the picture see? Do they see what we suspect, for example a food distribution? Or are they facing photographers?"

"The images also have an additional function. They are intended to overwrite the brutal images of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Many people don't even remember these pictures."

"Hamas is a master at staging images."

"I assume that many of these pictures with starving and sick children are simply staged or come from other contexts." 

Emeritus history professor and photography expert Gerhard Paul, University of Flensburg, Germany 

The Suddeutsche Zeitung recently published an expose on the use of staged imagery by Hamas to convince international opinion that Israel has embarked on a genocidal program to prevent food and medical aid from reaching Palestinians in Gaza, suffering under the Israeli Defense Forces' invasion to destroy the terrorist group's capacity to carry on its intentional destruction of Israel. Hamas, infamous for its strategy of installing themselves among the general population, for placing its weapons in schools and hospitals, placing its rocket staging areas in dense population areas, uses civilians for cover.

 

The Hamas propaganda machine rests its case to the international community on the numbers of Palestinian citizens it claims become victims of Israeli bombs; those very citizens of Gaza whom Hamas deliberately places in harm's way, counting on them as sacrificial lambs to the Hamas agenda portrayed as victims of Israel's ruthless bombing campaigns which could readily be halted should Hamas surrender to the forces that engage in stopping it from conducting further carnage in Israel among Israeli citizens.

 

President Herzog, in his press appearance held up the two photographs of Israeli hostages Eviatar David and Rom Breslavsky, emaciated on the verge of death through deliberate withholding of food. While Israel is expected by the international community to provide humanitarian aid to the very population in which the greater majority expressed support for Hamas, for its barbaric savagery during the October 7 invasion that saw 1,200 Israelis slaughtered, Hamas gleefully publishes videos of its sadistic torture of Israeli hostages.

 

 

 

The international press treats these revelations of Palestinian terrorism and the results of their death-cult pledges to destroy Israel and kill all Jews as humdrum non-news, but the very country that is engaged in protecting its population from mass lethal psychopathy is damned and condemned for the condition in which Palestinian Gazans find themselves, while the terrorist group that governed Gaza and which uses its population as a living shield is described as 'resisting their oppressors'. 

 

The photographer whose work is being labelled as deceptive by Bild and Suddeutsche Zeitung regularly posts anti-Israel content on social media, while his photographs staged and otherwise, are published by the BBC and CNN along with other legacy mainstream media. Germany's press circles have revealed the manipulation of war photographs, condemned by The German Journalists' Association. 

 

As for the food appearing in the markets selling at prices inflated up to 300 percent, Palestinian sources within Gaza informed The Press Service of Israel that much of that food originated from international aid, including U.S. shipments for months on end. That food is stamped as humanitarian aid, visible to anyone within Gaza with the wherewithal to make that purchase. 

 

Al-Sahaba market in the Gaza Strip, July 28, 2025.  (photo credit: TPS-IL)