2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War

 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War 

Subpage	•2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/Israeli invasion of Gaza •2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/October 7

On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant groups led by Hamas infiltrated Israel from the Gaza Strip, breaking through the Gaza–Israel barrier and forcing entry via the Gaza border crossings, into nearby settlements in Israel and military installations.

Official narrative

At least 3,000 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip as a large number of Hamas militants broke through the border and entered Israel, killing at least 900 Israelis and prompting Israel's government to declare a state of emergency. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel "is at war" in a national address following the beginning of the attacks. Palestinian militants who infiltrated Israel made their way into several kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip as well as the city of Sderot.

Israeli military prisoners-of-war and civilians, including children, had been taken hostage by Palestinian militants; several of these hostages have reportedly since been taken to the Gaza Strip. Numerous cases of violence against Israeli civilians have occurred since the beginning of the Hamas offensive, including a massacre at a music festival in Re'im that killed at least 260. Hamas called it Operation al-Aqsa Storm. An Israeli operation launched in response has been called Iron Swords by the IDF.

Problems with official narrative

Given the enormous reach and capabilities of Israel's military-intelligence apparatus, the attack is unlikely to have been unexpected.

In 2021, Israel completed a sensor-equipped underground wall on its side of Gaza, a countermeasure developed after Hamas used tunnels to repel its troops during a 2014 invasion of the besieged Palestinian territory. The project also includes an above-ground fence, a naval barrier, radar systems and command and control rooms. The barrier includes hundreds of cameras, radar and other sensors, and spans 65km (40 miles). 140,000 tonnes of iron and steel were used in its construction, which took three-and-a-half years to complete.

Jonathan Conricus, a former international spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces, compared it to a "Pearl Harbour-type of moment for Israel, where there was reality up until today, and then there will be reality after today.", while the Intercept compared the attack to 911 In 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "Isis and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree." What all 3 comparison -presumably unintentionally did - was compare it to false flag events; Pearl Harbor was set up by Roosevelt, 911 was most likely done by the Israeli deep state, and Isis is a creature of Western intelligence services, including Mossad.

Consequences

Israel announced a total blockade of the already besieged Gaza Strip. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said they would cut electricity and block the entry of food and fuel as part of "a complete siege" on Hamas-run Gaza, where about 2.3 million people live in one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Israel controls Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters, as well as two of the three border crossing points; the third is controlled by Egypt.

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Ronald Plasterk	“All the more exasperating that in the reactions to Hamas's horrific pogrom, in which more Jews were murdered in one day than at any time since the Holocaust, first, it is pretended that it is indeed symmetrical, and the major media such as the NOS news even ostentatiously takes sides with Hamas and against Israel (see, for example, holding Israel directly responsible for that bomb on the hospital, without any check, and then no neat response). You can have all sorts of objections to the Netanyahu government, and because Israel is a democracy (the only one in the Middle East) there are many people even within Israel who voice those objections. You can insist on observing borders when counterattacking. If you recognise Israel's full right to defend itself, there are always limits anyway; remember, for example, that Israel is a nuclear power. But even if you keep the balance right, it is important to have in mind why the situation between Israel and Hamas is anything but symmetrical. There are civilian casualties on both sides. A first fundamental difference is that Hamas, as a terror organisation, is out to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, while the Israeli army is trying to hit Hamas while inflicting as few civilian casualties as possible. You might perhaps think that they should take even more of a margin on that point, but in any case the intention is a completely different one from Hamas’. A further difference is that Israeli soldiers may be willing to die in war, but still prefer to come home to their families in one piece. Hamas has a death culture, with the highest good being to blow yourself up, for which you are rewarded with sex with 72 young virgins (not wondering if those 72 young women feel like it). Then taking civilians hostage as human shields, including very young children. That is a serious war crime, and one would expect that all responses would constantly insist that Hamas must first release those hostages. On top of that, Hamas is also preventing its own civilians from leaving locations where Hamas posts are located, precisely with the intention of those civilians being killed in attacks from Israel. Another criminal tactic that Israel does not use.”	Ronald Plasterk	2023

 

Known Participants

All 5 of the participants already have pages here:

Participant	Description
Ansarallah	Islamist political and military organisation from Yemen.
Hezbollah	Political Islamic party, and army fighting many wars in the Middle East, linked to possible CIA drug trafficking.
Iran	Iran possesses the 4th largest oil reserves of any nation state.
Israel	Only country in the world to be founded, led and designated by and for Jewish people after the Holocaust. Zionists achieved this with forms of land grabbing, apartheid and murder of Palestinians, but saying that is apparently.... antisemitic...
Yemen	A war torn country in the Middle East

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:A Devastating Indictment of Israel’s War on Gaza	Article	11 January 2024	Mike Small Roshdi Sarraj
Document:Biden’s pier for Gaza is a hollow gesture that will change almost nothing	blog post	8 March 2024	Jonathan Cook	President Biden needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for. He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.
Document:Complaint filed alleging UK ministers' complicity in Israeli war crimes	Article	16 January 2024	Alex MacDonald Dania Akkad
Document:Dikgang Moseneke to join bench of judges in Israel-Hamas world court case	Article	5 January 2024	Kgaugelo Masweneng	Should presiding American Judge Joan Donoghue recuse herself when it comes to determining whether US staunch ally Israel has committed genocide in Gaza?
Document:Goliath's Revenge - Israel and Apartheid South Africa	Article	5 January 2024	Christopher Nicholson	"During the apartheid years I practised as a human rights lawyer and one of my colleagues defended a young boy, charged with assaulting a police officer. He had thrown a stone at the man, who was on board a tank-like military vehicle, but had arrogantly left his helmet off. A law in force with regard to firearms required a warning shot to be fired in certain circumstances. The prosecutor then demanded of the latter-day David: ‘Why did you not throw a warning stone?’"
Document:Meeting the Gaze of the Ghost in the Rubble	Article	28 February 2024	George Gunn	Meanwhile the ghost still looks out from the rubble of Gaza. Her stare searches across the ocean of our conscience like the beam of a lighthouse. The ghost in the rubble asks of us all: why can we not stop this madness and feed the people?
Document:On Gaza, Sunak's Tories and Starmer's Labour have merged into a single pro-war party	Article	22 January 2024	Peter Oborne	If the ICJ rules in South Africa’s favour then Rishi Sunak, as well as US President Joe Biden, will be wide open to the charge that they are aiding and abetting genocide. And so will Labour’s Keir Starmer.
Stop the Worsening Undercount of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza	Article	5 March 2024	Ralph Nader	From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.

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References

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