Would the Israeli vengeful retaliation finish off Hamas? How do you erase an idea?

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(SDN) October 24, 2023 — The October 7 “unprecedented” blitzkrieg through land, sea, and air the Palestinian militant group Hamas conducted was an absolute shock. It pierced Israel’s cloak of invincibility.

Of course, to Israel, the United States, and European Union, Hamas is a terrorist group. But a freedom fighter to Palestinians and others who know and believe they are fighting for their lands, for freedom and liberty, gain back the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), which Israel militarily controls for decades.

World leaders including organizations such as the United Nations have been pushing for a two-State solution in the Middle East. They are also calling for a ceasefire as the death toll and devastation in the Gaza Strip continue to increase.

Israeli leaders have vowed to finish Hamas to oblivion. But how do you erase an idea for, obviously, what has been fueling the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist Israelis is the idea of a free Palestine!

Opinions across the world noted how the Israelis were caught with their pants down, some say “a failure of intelligence”. What with Shin Bet and Mossad, two of the Jewish nation’s well-known, or some say “infamous”, domestic and international intelligence apparatuses.

The huge and deadly intelligence failure is emphasized when an Egyptian intelligence official said in news reports that Israel was told of “something big” afoot from Palestinian militants. Hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not surprisingly, denied the Egyptian official’s claim. One would not want to be embarrassed further, understandably, as death toll from the Hamas multi-pronged invasion inside Israel has reached over 1,400 people, reports said.

One would imagine that one’s political future would also be at stake in this magnitude of failure.

Granting for the sake of argument the unnamed Egyptian official really informed the Israeli government, would Netanyahu’s denial of it not raise serious questions.

If the Zionist state was told but denied timed and again by the Israeli leaders that “something big” was being cooked by Palestinian militants, why did it not act and prepare? At least as it appears now the Hamas successful invasion serves as excuse to pulverize the Gaza Strip and erase it from the map as Israeli military leaders are now saying. What about the over 1,400 lives lost in the Hamas incursions? And the over 5,000 Palestinian lives, many of them children and women, are they sacrificial lambs?

Especially, considering the United States intelligence community had warned in two assessments as CNN reported and provided to the Biden administration “of an increased risk of Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the weeks ahead of the Saturday’s seismic attack on southern Israel”.

Did the Biden administration share the assessments with Israel?

Whether the waves of attacks were a surprise, or not, as Israeli authorities still refuse to acknowledge the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) committed huge lapses in intelligence, the Hamas militants’ slaughter of innocents, the non-combatants, especially in the all-night music festival where 260 dead were collected near the Gaza Strip, is an abomination, a horrifying atrocity, from whichever side of the fence one sits. And condemnable to the strongest level.

The same strong condemnation equally applies to the Israeli government’s long decades-old history of atrocities — and described by others as “apartheid” — against the Palestinian people. Condemnation ought to be a two-way street. If you feel disgusted and horrified with one side’s despicable acts, you should be with the other, too. That’s normal humanity. (Attention: Filipinos who are blind supporter of Israel.)

Islam forbids the killing of civilians and/or non-combatants in times of war, even the killing of animals and felling of trees. Houses of worships are not to be destroyed or damaged.

The successor to the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), Abu Bakr, laid out the rules of war (per Council on American and Islamic Affairs or CAIR):

“O people! I charge you with ten rules…Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy’s flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”

So, how many more women and children have to be slaughtered before enough is enough?

“David” and “Goliath” with a twist

Problem is wars blur the distinction between civilians and combatants. Civilian casualties become mere collaterals on either side of a shooting war. In the commerce of war, morality and righteousness are scarce commodities. Observers said the Middle East has long been a laboratory for United States and European Union arms merchants to test their new killing machines.

Excuses and denials are easy to come by when civilians and other non-combatants are killed. Excuses come a centavo-a-dozen.

Observing the Israel-Palestine conflict, or Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the biblical David and Goliath saga comes to mind. But with a twist.

Remember in our studies in school the story of David who felled the Philistines’ Goliath with his deadly slingshot?

At least in magnitude and size, comparing Israel’s massive war machine, war materiel, including nuclear weapons, to the Palestinians during the Intifadah (Uprising) of 1987 and 2000, and until the present, Israel is the behemoth “Goliath” and Palestinians are the little “Davids”.

The Palestinians used slingshots (the weapon David used to fell Goliath), among other crude weapons in the Intifadah against IDF’s vastly superior weaponry: jet planes, precision bombs, tanks, artilleries, etc. American supplied and all.

So, does it not appear that today’s “David” are the Palestinians, and your “Goliath” is Israel!

If you don’t subscribe to it, just consider the might and power of Israel compared to what is available to Palestinians, especially during the two Intifadah when Palestinians opposed and protested the Zionist Israel government’s illegal expropriation of Palestinian lands and construction of settlements. The United Nations says those acts are illegal under international law.

Refer to history before 1948 when there was no Israeli State in the Middle East.

Here’s what the Britannica says of what launched the Palestinians’ slingshots against Israeli occupation of the OPT: the “intensified Israeli land expropriation and settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the electoral victory of the right-wing Likud party in 1977; increasing Israeli repression in response to heightened Palestinian protests following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982; the emergence of a new cadre of local Palestinian activists who challenged the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)”.

That’s just for the first Intifadah of the Palestinians powered by slingshots a la David, rocks, and Molotov cocktails. Your Goliath of today has tons of nuclear weapons.

Notably, not all Jews support the Zionist nation’s scorched-Earth policy against the Palestinians.

Look at what Rabbi Elhanan Beck says on X (Twitter, formerly) as slaughter and bloodletting continued in the Occupied Palestinian Territory of Gaza Strip (and West Bank) that netizens dubbed the biggest “open-air prison” for being blocked on land, sea, and air by the Israeli government.

Here’s the Rabbi Beck (@TorahJudaism):

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“There is only one solution for peace in the holy land. That is to go back to before 1948 and return all occupied lands from sea to land to the Palestinian society. The only society in the world that claims to be a victim by occupying other people’s lands is the Israeli society.”

Here’s a quote from The Nation, under Dispatch by Haggai Matar, himself a Jew:

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“But contrary to what many Israelis are saying, while the army was clearly caught completely off guard, this was not a ‘unilateral’ or ‘unprovoked’ attack. The terror Israelis feel right now — myself included — is a sliver of what Palestinians have been feeling on a daily basis under the decades-long military occupations of the West Bank and Gaza.”

In the equation of might and power, between Hamas and the IDF, who then is “David”, and who is “Goliath”.

Only idiots living under a stone may not know. (✓)

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Opinion, words, and statements expressed here are not necessarily of SDN.