Following the deadly 7th October terror attacks by Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in its response have eliminated several Hamas terrorists, struck terrorist targets and infrastructure, and hit approximately 300 targets including anti-tank missiles posts, rocket launch posts, and terrorist compounds inside underground tunnels.
Over the last day, during ground operations:
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 31, 2023
🔻Numerous Hamas terrorists have been eliminated.
🔻The IAF struck terrorist targets and infrastructure.
🔻IDF combat forces struck approximately 300 targets, including:
• Anti-tank missiles posts.
• Rocket launch posts.
•… pic.twitter.com/RymFDCFrw1
Israel’s all-out war on the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is a resolute retaliation to the 7th October attacks. More than 1,400 people, mostly Israelis, lost their lives and at least 220 were taken hostage by Hamas in Gaza after the brutal terrorist attack. The terrorist group had also launched 5,000 rockets on Israel and its terror attempts continue to this day.
Hamas continues to hoard resources to feed itself and its offensive on Israel while left-liberals and Islamists further the terrorist group’s narrative across the world by misusing images and videos of civilian casualties in Gaza to demonise Israel. Amidst all this, innocent civilians, who have historically been used as human shields by Hamas, are paying the price of Hamas’ terrors with their lives.
On 24th October, Hamas released two of the 220 Israeli hostages. The two women were identified as Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yochaved Lifshitz, 85. While narrating her ordeal, Lifshitz said that she was beaten, laid on a motorcycle, and carried through the fields towards Gaza. “They brought me to the tunnels; we walked kilometres underground. They beat me in the ribs, even with sticks,” she said.
The surprising part of the revelation was when she mentioned that the terrorists seemed prepared for the situation (hostage situation) as they had everything in the tunnels that men and women needed including shampoo. And yet, the two hostages were provided with only meal a day which barely included a cucumber and some cheese. Lifshitz said that she was also provided with medicines.
It is shocking, to say the least, that a Palestinian terrorist group – existing with the sole aim of eradicating Jews from the face of the earth – is living and operating in abundance when the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank barely have toilet water to survive. Demanding the release of its hostages, when Israel shut water, electricity and fuel supply to Gaza, the global Islamist ecosystem used the suffering of civilians to demonise Israel instead of holding Hamas accountable.
The “Gaza Metro”
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Under the rubble on Gaza’s surface exists a web of terrorist tunnels safeguarding Hamas. Referred to as the “Gaza Metro” by the Israeli Defense Forces, the terror tunnels form the biggest part of Hamas’ infrastructure.
“Imagine we are looking at the Gaza Strip and really think of the Gaza Strip as one layer for the civilians and another layer for Hamas. We are trying to get to that second layer that Hamas has built,” the IDF spokesperson said.
Listen in as an IDF Spokesperson @jconricus provides a situational update on all fronts, as the war against Hamas continues. https://t.co/jSkwACh3iN
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 12, 2023
These tunnels are used by Hamas to launch rockets in Israel and ensure the safe movement of terrorists across the city. This terror infrastructure right under the civilian infrastructure prompted the Israeli forces to ask civilians to evacuate areas where it was scheduled to conduct strikes.
A compilation of videos published by IDF on YouTube shows how the terrorists use the tunnels to smuggle, transport, and store ammunition. According to the IDF, some of these tunnels span under the border of Israel.
In fact, Hamas has openly admitted that the tunnels built inside Gaza are for the protection of its terrorists and not for civilians. This proud admission by the terrorist group was in response to a question that why Hamas wasn’t building bomb shelters within Gaza to save the residents from Israeli bombings.
Hamas terrorist Mousa Abu Marzouk said that it was the responsibility of the UN and Israel to protect civilians living in Gaza. “We have built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being targeted and killed. These tunnels are meant to protect us from aeroplanes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels,” the terrorist said.
Amid the ground operations, Israel is now targeting the roughly 300-mile (500 km) tunnel network under Gaza believed to run deeper than 200 feet.
Hamas headquarter under Gaza’s largest hospital
The Israeli forces are specifically targeting areas where a cluster of Hamas infrastructure is centred. Under Gaza’s largest hospital Al Shifa, lies the headquarter of Hamas. A video released by the IDF shows a compound that Hamas has built under the Al Shifa hospital which includes storage facilities for weapons, command and control facilities, offices and places for terrorists to hide in.
Operational Update with an IDF Spokesperson, @jconricus https://t.co/3rYeT2Nc2e
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 31, 2023
“This puts the people that are being treated in the hospital at risk. It should be condemned, it should be stopped,” Conricus said. The hospital’s neonatal unit sustained damages following the initial strikes by Israel targeting “Jihadi” infrastructure which surrounds the very hospital.
The Shifa Hospital is not only the largest hospital in Gaza but it also acts as the main headquarters for Hamas’ terrorist activity.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 27, 2023
Terrorism does not belong in a hospital and the IDF will operate to uncover any terrorist infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/Ybpln5xQb2
Yahya Sinwar, the Palestinian leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has taken refuge under the Al-Shifa Hospital and is using the patients at the hospital as a shield to protect himself. The Hamas terrorist had once mercilessly killed a person with a sink while he was in prison on the suspicion of collaborating with Israel.
The Washington Post in 2014 reported that Al Shifa Hopital had become the “de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders who can be seen in the hallways and offices”.
In 2014, when Israel and Palestine agreed to a ceasefire proposal brokered by Egypt, a protester from a mosque opposite to the Al Shifa hospital blared on a loudspeaker calling the then-Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his administration “traitors” and “collaborators”.
Crowds had gathered at the hospital in July 2014 throwing shoes and eggs at the health minister who was turned away before he reached the hospital. The Al Shifa hospital is just one among the several civilian structures that have regularly been used by Hamas to launch attacks at Israel.
According to a report by Tablet dated 2014, one of Hamas’ main command bunkers was located beneath Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The bunker was equipped with sophisticated communications equipment and housed a part of the Hamas leadership.
The report claimed that in 2006, PBS aired a documentary showing how gunmen roamed the halls of the Al Shifa Hospital, intimidated the staff, and denied them access to protected locations within the building where the camera crew was prohibited from filming.
Hamas uses civilians and civilian infrastructure as cover for its rocket launch sites
Mosques and UN facilities in close proximity to civilian infrastructure are also being used by Hamas to launch attacks. “Hamas terrorists operate inside and under civilian buildings, precisely because they know the IDF distinguishes between terrorists and civilians,” RAdm. Daniel Hagari of the IDF said on 29th October.
Beneath the hospitals, schools, mosques, and homes in Gaza lies a horrific underworld of Hamas terrorism. In order to dismantle Hamas, we must dismantle their underground tunnels. pic.twitter.com/pHBUPUqzQR
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 29, 2023
A bunch of images shared by the Israel Defense Forces on X, formerly Twitter, on 22nd October, showed that a Hamas rocket launch site is located right opposite the UN building in Gaza, another such terror launchpad is located exactly opposite a mosque.
A third image shows a Hamas rocket launchpad dangerously close to neighbouring schools in the area.
It is with the help of such launchpads that Hamas is still being able to launch rockets at Israel, 24 days after the deadly 7th October terrorist attacks.
In a video shared by the Israel War Room on X, a Hamas terrorist can be seen dressed in civilian clothes and launching a rocket at Israel. “He disguises himself as a civilian, while engaged in military activity, so that later they can claim that Israel is harming civilians,” a tweet by Israel War Room reads.
The military wing of Hamas publishes documentation of large mortars being fired at Israel.
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) October 24, 2023
Pay attention to an interesting detail: the operative of the military wing of Hamas is dressed in civilian clothes. He disguises himself as a civilian, while engaged in military activity,… pic.twitter.com/5qRMePlhls
In a video recently shared by Hamas, terrorists can be seen dressed in civilian clothes emerging out of a terror tunnel armed with rockets to attack an Israeli tank.
Another video published by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a terrorist group committed to the eradication of Israel and Jews, shows terrorists in civilian clothes launching rockets and chanting “Allah Hu Akbar”. “Just because mainstream media reports civilian deaths in Gaza doesn’t mean they are all really civilians,” the Israel War Room tweeted on X.
In this video published today by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), rocket-launching terrorists are dressed in civilian clothing.
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) November 1, 2023
Just because mainstream media reports civilian deaths in Gaza doesn't mean they're all really civilians. pic.twitter.com/wSjFBKsv1W
Coinciding with this, there was the recent incident wherein during a live broadcast on CNN, a supposed corpse of a civilian in Gaza was seen moving its head. The viral video on X was shared by Israel War Room with the caption, “Pallywood is racist and based on absolutely NO facts or truth, except for the occasional dead body moving its head while a Palestinian woman wails and screams for the camera.”
“Pallywood is racist and based on absolutely NO facts or truth,” except for the occasional dead body moving its head while a Palestinian woman wails and screams for the camera. https://t.co/HMIcU6N0nX pic.twitter.com/xdaEzrbWoM
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) October 30, 2023
Hamas is equipped with fuel reserves but deprives Gaza civilians of the same
Global media is rife with news reports of fuel and electricity shortages in hospitals in Gaza. However, according to IDF, Hamas has stored 500,000 litres of fuel that they refuse to provide to the people of Gaza. In a testimony, a Hamas terrorist captured by Israeli forces can be heard saying that the Hamas fill tanks full of fuel for themselves.
The IDF has also alleged that Hamas is also stealing fuel including 50,000 litres from a private vendor in northern Gaza and 24,000 litres of fuel from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
When you hear that people in Gaza don't have fuel, it's because Hamas took all of it. pic.twitter.com/i2MOjesZxw
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 29, 2023
A call between an IDF officer and a senior Gazan Energy official has revealed that Hamas has at least a million litres of fuel, and gas stations are full of fuel. “Underground, I am sure they have at least half a million litres. As you know, they need oxygen in the tunnels, and they need phones, and they need showers and lighting there,” the Gazan Energy official said.
Hamas’ terrorist headquarters under the Shifa hospital is draining the necessities—fuel, oxygen, water and electricity—from the Gazans and staff and using them for terrorism. pic.twitter.com/LKCu0WILvd
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 28, 2023
In a tweet on 24th October, the UNRWA said that if it does not get fuel urgently, it will be forced to halt operations in the Gaza Strip. In response to the same, the IDF shared an image of huge fuel reserves with Hamas and captioned it, “These fuel tanks are inside Gaza. They contain more than 500,000 litres of fuel. Ask Hamas if you can have some.”
The IDF has released another recording of a conversation between a Hamas terrorist and a Gazan citizen exposing how Hamas takes fuel from hospitals in the region. In the conversation, a Gazan citizen can be heard pleading for fuel in the course of the talk which reveals how Hamas has been stealing fuel from hospitals.
Listen for yourselves: pic.twitter.com/iABBnFe1PQ
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) November 2, 2023
A report by NBC claims that the terrorist group is maintaining a stockpile of more than 200,000 gallons of fuel for the rockets it fires into Israel and generators that provide clean air and electricity to its terror tunnels. Safe to say that Hamas is denying the ample amount of fuel it has in store to the Gaza civilians in order to be able to sponsor its terrorist ativities against Israel.
Hamas, Hezbollah, and an attempt to create more geographical fronts against Israel
In the 7th October attacks, Hamas was equipped with a barrage of rockets, paragliding equipment, machine guns, convoys, RPGs, and anti-tank missiles to name a few. According to the Alma Research and Education Centre, one of Israel’s weak points exploited by Hamas was the reluctance to deploy ground manoeuvring forces. What the world witnessed in the 7th October attacks was Hamas launching an attack on Israel from all fronts and “precise armament for the manoeuvring move into the invaded territory”.
“Such assistance can be in the form of a preliminary fire for the maneuver or through the activation of fire at the same time as the maneuver. Such activation requires a high level of coordination in the intelligence-attack combination due to the high dynamism of the maneuvering move. It seems that Hamas, in the current attack operation, has implemented this new concept,” the report says.
Notably, many of Hamas’ operations are inspired by Hezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist group also infamous for its anti-Israel activities.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah established dedicated forces (the Radwan force in Hezbollah and the Nukhba force in Hamas) to launch rockets into Israeli territory on a large scale. Like within Gaza, terror tunnels were dug on the border with Lebanon and on the border with the Gaza Strip, which, as established before, are used for infiltration of terrorists into Israeli territory.
Founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982, the Hezbollah have historically backed Hamas in its war against Israel. Shortly after the 7th October attacks by Hamas, Israel’s northern front came under firing and attack from Hezbollah although the situation was relatively contained. The IDF has said that Hezbollah is continuing its attack across the northern border.
“They have fired rockets, they have tried to infiltrate, they have fired dozens of anti-tank missiles at our civilians and at our military positions. They have fired rockets at our positions in Mount Dov and at our communities,” IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said. In retaliation, Israel has targeted Hezbollah infrastructure including weapons, posts and sites in Lebanon.
Operational Update with an IDF Spokesperson, @jconricus https://t.co/3rYeT2Nc2e
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 31, 2023
Moreover, a research report from 2021 exposed the scope of Hamas’ military activities in Lebanon with the objective to create an additional front against Israel. As per Alma Research and Education Centre, the terrorist group has a “Construction Bureau” based in Lebanon and Turkey, which shapes Hamas’s forces in all areas that it operates in including Gaza, West Bank, and Lebanon.
This Bureau of Hamas comprises “specialised departments, each responsible for different sets of activities, such as weapons manufacturing, military intelligence, combat training, communications, funding, planning, logistics, security, and foreign relations”. Moreover, Hamas’ two operational units in Lebanon – El Shimali and Khaled Ali develop and produce their own weapons including rockets, offensive drones, and small unmanned underwater vehicles. They also set up operational cells while preparing attack plans against Israel.
Between May and August 2021, there were five incidents of Grad rockets from Lebanon against Israel, reports suspect that Hamas was behind the attacks. According to a report by Alma Research and Education Centre, Iran’s terror capital is in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is armed with over 200,000 warheads including 70,000 rockets, 145,000 mortars, and precision-guided missiles, and thousands of terrorists trained to invade into Israel and execute a similar attack like Hamas’ attack on 7th October.
The scale of the terrorist attacks earlier this month and the specialised arms, logistics, and communication operations to back such attacks prove that unabated terrorism can legitimise its existence which is direct threat to Israel.
