Tag: corona in Israel

Behold, He who keeps Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

Psalm 121: 4

Let all the earth fear the Lord;
    let all the people of the world revere him…

The Lord foils the plans of the nations;
    he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
 But the plans of the Lord stand firm for ever,
    the purposes of his heart through all generations…

 We wait in hope for the Lord;
    he is our help and our shield.
 In him our hearts rejoice,
    for we trust in his holy name.
 May your unfailing love be with us, Lord,
    even as we put our hope in you.

Psalm 33: 8,10-12, 20-22

I came home from work Monday night (10th May) and plonked myself down in front of the TV, trying to decide if I had the energy to go for a swim or not. A sound began to penetrate my consciousness. The “Red Alert” (incoming missile) siren was sounding, barely audible in my home. I quickly relocated to my ‘safe room’, and immediately heard the booms, the last of which was very loud and rattled my windows. I later learned that the closest rocket landed just 1-2 km away. That was the opening volley of this week’s events.

Seven rockets had been fired towards Jerusalem from Gaza. Though the phrase ‘towards Jerusalem‘ is in the media, of course the Gazan terrorists do not aim at Jerusalem itself for fear of killing ‘good Muslims’ or damaging the Al Aqsa mosque. Instead they aim at the predominantly Jewish towns and villages on the western outskirts.

Since that evening we have had no further “Red Alerts” in my town and if it were not for the media, I would not know anything was happening. It must be one of the quietest spots in Israel right now. However one cannot live in a bubble and it is with a very heavy heart I have followed events.

It has been a terrible eleven days for Israel and also for the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have fired more than 4300 rockets and missiles into Israel since that first volley on Monday. The towns around the Gaza Strip, Ashkelon and Ashdod have been subjected to an almost continuous barrage of hundreds of rockets. The city of Ashkelon alone was targeted by around 960 rockets. Places further afield, including Beer Sheva , Tel Aviv and the region of Gush Dan (the central coastal plain), including the region around Ben Gurion Airport have also been attacked. Some of the rockets fell in open areas, and 90% of the others were shot down by the “Iron Dome” anti-missile defense system, nevertheless some penetrated our defenses killing 13 people, injuring around 350, and destroying a significant number of homes, cars and other property. Of the thirteen people killed, all except one were civilians, including an elderly woman and her Indian care-giver, two children, two Arabs, two Thai agricultural workers and two who died as a result of injuries sustained while running for cover. The only military casualty was a soldier on duty near the Gaza border.

Some of the rockets fired towards Israel, around 680 in number, failed to reach Israel, falling in the Gaza Strip and causing casualties there- of which at least some were blamed on Israel.

In response to the barrage of rocket fire from Gaza, Israel initiated what has been called “Operation Guardian of the Walls”. The IAF (Israeli Air Force) and artillery divisions pounded Hamas and Islamic Jihad military targets relentlessly for eleven days and destroyed much of their infrastructure, including 100 km of underground tunnels and bunkers, 10 Hamas government offices, 11 security offices, 5 banks that handled Hamas’ finances and the international media tower used as the center of communications and intelligence by Hamas ( and also housing the media offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera). The IAF carried out 570 airstrikes against rocket and mortar launchers. Some 25 senior Hamas commanders were also targeted and killed.

In spite of these heavy attacks only 232 people were killed in Gaza and 1600 injured, according to official Hamas figures. Most of the casualties, around were Hamas fighters. The relatively low loss of life is thanks to the extreme care that Israel takes to prevent civilian casualties. Not only do they telephone people individually warning them to vacate buildings about to be attacked, but they also send a warning ‘roof knock’ – a small explosive device – before dropping the main explosives. In the case of the international media tower, occupants were given an hour to vacate the building. There were also incidents when Israeli planes aborted attacks because children or other civilians were seen in the area. Since the last round of hostilities Israel, with the help of the USA, has developed much more precise weaponry which can take down one building or installation without harming those around it. There is no army in the world, or in the history of mankind, that takes as much care to avoid harming civilians.

It is for this reason it really hurts when Israel is criticized by the press and others for using ‘ excessive force ‘. This is war and we are fighting for our existence. Did the allies in WWII use ‘excessive force’ when they obliterated Dresden in Germany, or when the USA dropped the atomic bombs on Japan? How many innocent civilians have died in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan in more recent years? ( According to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission’s annual report last year, there were 8,500 civilian casualties in 2020, including 2,958 deaths (1)). How would the UK or USA or any other country respond if their neighbors began firing thousands of rockets into their major cities. Yet many in these Western countries hypocritically dare to criticize Israel when civilians get caught in the crossfire. No matter how careful the army is, accidents happen and civilians get killed.

I do not feel anyone has the moral right to accuse Israel of ‘excessive force’ until they themselves have been targeted by a barrage of rockets or have had to live for 20 years under the threat of incoming fire, as our southern communities have! In the area around Gaza, residents have only about 6-10 seconds to find cover. Here we have about 1.5 minutes. Would you like to live like that- always looking for places to run to whenever you are out and about, wondering if your children are safe every time the sirens blare? Most of the children in those areas have known no other life and many suffer from insomnia, bed-wetting, nightmares and other symptoms of PTSD.

Here is the latest (23 May) breakdown of the damage inflicted on Israel (did your newspapers report this?):

• In Ashkelon, 792 buildings and 267 vehicles were damaged.
• In Ashdod, 228 buildings and 130 cars were damaged.
• In Sderot, 228 buildings and 267 vehicles were damaged.
• In Tel Aviv, 77 buildings and 74 cars were damaged.
• In Ramat Gan, 254 claims were filed for damages,
• In Givataym – 157,
• In Petah Tikva – 231.
• In Lod and Ramla, 348 buildings and 229 vehicles were damaged.
• In Akko, claims were filed for damage to 16 buildings and 4 cars, in Haifa – 19 buildings and 26 cars, in Jerusalem – 4 buildings and 26 cars

And this was with the Iron Dome stopping some 90% of the incoming missiles. Imagine the carnage without that protection.

These figures also do not show the damage to the economy in terms of lost workdays or the expenditure of the army and air force. The IDF WhatsApp update on 16 May 2021, stated that “ It’s estimated that each Iron Dome interceptor cost approximately, 50,000 USD, which means 57 Million USD or 187 Million NIS was spent to defend and protect human life – not to mention all other costs….”. The figures also do not measure the human costs, in terms of anxiety, depression and other psychological effects. Schools were closed in a large part of the country – just after they had reopened following the Covid pandemic. I was shocked by images of high school students sitting their bagrut (matriculation) exams wearing masks and being interrupted by sirens and having to scramble for cover. How could they do well in their exams under such circumstances?

Hamas and Islamic Jihad make no secret of the fact they want to kill as many civilians as possible. They deliberately aim at large, densely populated population centers with the hope of killing as many Israelis as possible, while hiding their rocket launchers and other military installations beside homes, hospitals and schools. They cynically hope that Israel will kill as many of their ‘innocent civilians’, especially children, as possible. It makes for ‘good press’. They don’t care about their own people. If they did, they would not build tunnels under their homes and use them as human shields. If they did, they would not attack Israel in the first place and they would, as Israel has done, invest money in building safe rooms and an “Iron Dome’ system of their own. If they did, they would not spend millions, if not billions of dollars in aid money, building hundreds of miles of tunnels and bunkers under the cities of Gaza and on munitions and armaments intended solely for attacking Israel (Yahya Sinwar, the Head of the Military Wing of Hamas, recently boasted that they have 500 km of tunnels under Gaza that Israel did not demolish, and at least 10,000 more rockets!!!). Imagine how good a life the Gazan’s could have had that money been spent on building homes, hospitals, schools and infrastructure. They could all be living in mansions with the best standard of living in the world.

Now that the rockets have stopped falling and a ceasefire seems to be holding the real war is beginning – the war for your minds. As has happened so many times in the past, the media is focusing on the damage inflicted on Gaza by Israel, publishing inflated figures of the dead and wounded, clearly staged photos of the damaged buildings and failing to give the backstory behind these images. Here is a particularly one-sided article published by CNN today entitled ” Gaza Mourns its Dead as the Specter of an Endless Cycle of Conflict Looms” (1). What about Israel mourning its dead? What about the homes destroyed in Israel? Instead it shows heart wrenching images of destruction and injured people, but only those in Gaza. The picture of the stuffed toy in the rubble is clearly staged – if an explosion had indeed torn the head off this toy wouldn’t it show some dirt at least?

This article does attempt to give a little of the backstory but it comes well into the article and is sketchy to say the least. There is no mention of the fact that it was Hamas that fired the first rockets and started this war. It speaks about the endless cycle of violence, but does not explain that it is Hamas that is driving this cycle of violence, and has done ever since wresting power by force from the Palestinian Authority after it failed to win the last ‘democratic’ elections in Gaza in 2007. If Hamas had not fired first at Israel, there would have been no dead children, headless stuffed toys nor demolished houses in Gaza. It’s Hamas who is responsible for every civilian casualty in Gaza, not Israel!

Here is another example of biased reporting picked up from Reuters today,

Note the caption refers to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Who is occupying Gaza today? Certainly not Israel. Israel evacuated every last citizen and soldier from Gaza in 2005. Reuters – check your facts!! We hoped then that that would bring an end to the rocket attacks, but they have continued and since then we not only have had a steady rain of attacks but also several outbreaks of all-out war initiated in every case by Hamas. The only ones ‘occupying ‘ Gaza these days are Hamas terrorists and a great many reporters.

We now have a ‘ceasefire’ brokered by Egypt which seems to be holding for now. I put ‘ceasefire’ in brackets because what these usually mean is that Israel ceases and Hamas fires! For Hamas the concept of a ‘ceasefire’ is a little different from what it means to us from the West. For them it is hudna, more akin to a withdrawal for the purpose of rearming and regrouping. There is no intention of negotiating a lasting peace. The best we can hope for is a few years, or months, weeks or days of relative calm. For this reason polls indicate that 3/4 of Israelis feel that we entered the ‘ceasefire’ too soon and should have continued to strike Hamas until it was fatally crippled. International pressure, especially from the USA, however meant that Israel could not go on without serious repercussions.

This derives from the failure of the Western mind to understand the mentality of the Arab mind. The USA is already talking about reconstructing Gaza, sending humanitarian aid and boosting its economy. This comes from the mistaken idea that the attacks on Israel are being driven by economic despair. This is not the case. It is being driven by the Islamic concept of Jihad, in which it is every Muslim’s ultimate duty to conquer the world for Allah, and rid the world of the infidels (the Jews, Christians and everyone who is not a Muslim). The western world does not understand that the extreme Islamic nations, such as Iran for example, do not want peace and co-existence. They want war to destroy the “Big Satan”, the USA and the western world. Their first step in doing this is to destroy Israel, which they call the “Little Satan”. Like it or not, this is essentially a holy war, the war against the God of Israel, YHWH, and the god of Islam, Allah. There can be no negotiation in the context of such a world view.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” . 

Ephesians 6: 12

The Covenant upon which Hamas is founded states that,

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.” (Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant – a quote from the Muslim Hadith writings).

And,

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” ( from the Preamble of Hamas Covenant) (2).

For on the Hamas Covenant see the summary below.

As I write the Biden regime and many aid organizations are scrambling to amass aid for the ‘humanitarian’ needs of the Gaza people. A couple of days ago, Matthias Schmale, Gaza director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) admitted on i24 TV news that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza during the last round of fighting. When asked about the “humanitarian situation” in the Strip, Schmale said that though at least 1,000 residential units were destroyed, leaving “a couple of thousand people who don’t have a home they can go back to” he considers “the biggest damage [to be] psychological,” because “building and rebuilding buildings is easy, and easy to plan for.” He went on to say, “During the 11 days of war, we did not run out of food, water and supplies, [though] we would have if Kerem Shalom and the border would have stayed closed… So, from my point of view, there is no acute or serious shortage of medical supplies, food or water, as long as this now starts – continues – to come in.” When asked about his opinion on “claims by Israeli officials that the IDF bombardments were very precise.” Shockingly, Schmale replied: “I’m not a military expert, but I would not dispute that. I also have the impression that there is a huge sophistication in the way the Israeli military struck over the last 11 days. So, that’s not my issue. My issue is another one. I’ve had many colleagues describe to me that they feel that, in comparison to the 2014 war, this time the strikes felt much more vicious in terms of their impact. So, yes, they didn’t hit, with some exceptions, civilian targets, but the viciousness, the ferocity, of the strikes was heavily felt.”(3) Schmale was forced by Hamas to apologize for this statement the next day!!!

A few days before the ceasefire went in to effect, both Hamas and Israel called a 5 hour temporary ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid from Jordan to pass through Israel to Gaza. The ‘ceasefire’ came to an abrupt end when Hamas fired on the aid convoy at the border crossing wounding an Israeli soldier, a soldier who was helping to bring them food and medicines. That’s how badly they needed aid!!!

THE HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN GAZA?

Caught in the middle of all this are the people of Gaza who are being cynically used by Hamas as expendable human shields. Furthermore, instead of investing the millions of dollars already sent as aid to the Gaza Strip into building homes, hospitals, schools and much-needed infrastructure, the Hamas government has constructed hundreds of kilometers of tunnels and bunkers under the cities and towns of Gaza and purchased tens of thousands of rockets and other types of armaments. Iran has financed, trained and equipped the Hamas ‘army’. It is important to understand that Israel is not fighting the Palestinians of Gaza, but rather the terrorist organizations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad which are both proxies of Iran.

Here is a video of Yahya Sinwar (translated into English) in which he says. “We have our own funds… We don’t need any reconstruction funding. I want to thank Iran which has not stopped assisting Hamas & other factions with money, arms, experience & support.” Here is clear proof that Hamas is a proxy of Iran. It receives, money, arms, training and most likely its orders from Iran.

Now how is this for a bit of hypocrisy? The overall leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who remained safely in Qatar during the latest round of hostilities, has a niece who has been hospitalized in an Israeli hospital for over a month following a bone marrow transplant. Not only that but his grand-daughter was treated in an Israeli hospital in 2013, and his mother-in-law and his daughter were both treated in Israel in 2014 (4). Even during the latest fighting Israel brought several Gazans into Israel for urgent medical treatment. What other country in the world treats its enemies in this way?

IRAN, HEZBOLLAH AND ITS OTHER PROXIES

Another proxy of Iran is Hezbollah, based in Lebanon and Syria, which poses an even greater threat to Israel. You might be wondering why Hezbollah did not attack Israel at this time. My feeling is that Iran is holding them back for the ‘right moment’. This latest round of fighting with Hamas was just a trial run to test the waters for a larger attack on Israel from the north. Iran supplied Hamas with some of its latest technology , such as attack drones and unmanned submarines (which tried to attack Israel’s offshore natural gas platform), possibly as a trial run to see if Israel could counter them. They were probably surprised to find that Israel was a jump ahead with its defensive technology. Israel shot down all the drones and destroyed all the submarines and Gaza’s naval bases. Israel also shot down a barrage of rockets fired towards the industrial complex in Haifa from Hezbollah-held territory in Lebanon and an explosives-laden drone flown from Syria which crossed into the Jezreel Valley.

ANARCHY BREAKS OUT ALL OVER ISRAEL

During the 11-day war with Hamas, a series of much more disturbing events took place, and are still taking place. Riots involving mobs of Arabs are attacking Jewish shops, homes, vehicles and synagogues all over Israel, especially in the mixed towns of Lod, Jaffa, and Haifa. ‘Lynch’ mobs have hauled innocent passersby from their cars and beat them to a pulp. At least two men have been killed, one Jewish and one Arab. I am very sad to say that in response, some Jewish right wing activists have retaliated and joined the mindless violence.

פרעות בערים המעורבות: בתי כנסת הוצתו בלוד, מג"ב בדרך אל העיר > מהומות ברמלה, לוד, רהט pic.twitter.com/WrpMWbdTSx

— ידיעות אחרונות (@YediotAhronot) May 11, 2021

?A synagogue is burning in Lod

pic.twitter.com/Qk0smCbtow

— Gabriel Hébert-Røuillier (@Gab_H_R) May 11, 2021

Below is a video of a ‘lynching’ attack when two Jewish men, driving near the Old City, were attacked by a mob of stone throwing Arab youths. Trying to escape the driver drives back and forth and loses control of his car which mounted the pavement hitting one man, who runs off apparently unharmed. Eventually a police man arrives on the scene and fires into the air to disperse the rioters, and rescue the men from the car who were both injured.

CCTV footage shows the moment the Israeli driver was attacked by Palestinians throwing stones, as he rams his vehicle into them. pic.twitter.com/7S2aDSFrjH

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) May 10, 2021

Below is an excerpt from an article in The Jewish Press written on 13 May,

Anarchy has taken over the streets of integrated Israel, with Arab rioters targeting Jews and young Jewish thugs organizing to attack Arabs as well.

A police officer in Ramle was shot by rioting Arabs at a junction in the city of Ramle. A 19-year-old IDF soldier was also injured after having been attacked by rioting Arabs in Jaffa (Yafo), part of greater Tel Aviv.

Two Jewish men were wounded by gunfire by rioting Arabs in Lod, one in serious condition and the other less so. A third was injured by rocks hurled by Arabs. Three synagogues were burned to the ground.

In Akko, some 20 Jewish-owned bed & breakfasts were torched and burned to ashes.

In Haifa, violence returned Thursday as well. And by Thursday night, the violence had spread to the streets of coastal Ashkelon in the south.

Arab rioters from the nearby Bedouin villages managed to block the road, the only artery connecting Arad residents with Highway 6, Be’er Sheva and the rest of the country.

A woman living in Arad was the victim of a near-lynch earlier this week, with rioters pulling her out of her car at the Shoket Junction on Highway 31 and torching her vehicle.

“The truck traveling behind her was driven by an Arab, and he was the one who saved her,” a friend in Arad told JewishPress.com.

To make sure there were no further victims, police closed Highway 31 between Arad and Shoket Junction. On Thursday night some 30 Jewish activists demonstrated at the entrance to the city, waving Israeli flags. Due to rumors that young Arab hotheads were going to attempt to attack Jews in Arad, police forces were doubled and guarding the main entrance to the city; other entries were locked down” .

In the small northeastern city of Arad, where a significant number of the small businesses are owned by local Bedouin, residents said they have been in virtual “lockdown” for the past three days, unable to leave the city without the concern they might not make it more than a mile or two down the road on Highway 31 (6)

And this was just the run down for that one day.

Road 31, the main road to Arad was closed for several days because the local Bedouin had blocked it using rocks and burning tires and had collapsed all the tall lighting poles along the highway down across the road.

?A synagogue is burning in Lod

pic.twitter.com/Qk0smCbtow

— Gabriel Hébert-Røuillier (@Gab_H_R) May 11, 2021

Similar acts of vandalism and destruction have occurred all over Israel. Two days ago I saw a video of a young woman driving through the Wadi Ara road, one of the main northern routes to the Galilee from the center. She stopped at an intersection in Umm ql-Fahm where the traffic lights had earlier been destroyed by Arab mobs. A group of Arab youths smashed her car windows and pulled her out of the car, and then drove off in it. She was fortunate not to have been beaten up. All this was caught on CCTV but it appears to have been taken down off the web. At the same intersection an Arab woman was killed two days ago by a car accident caused by the lack of traffic lights.

What is happening now is hard to ascertain. The army has put a news blackout on the rioting in an attempt to calm things down.

The greatest tragedy of all this is not the loss of life nor the wanton destruction, as terrible as that is, but the undoing of years of co-existence and building up of trust. Can it ever be restored? Can Jewish Israelis ever live again in peace with the Arabs in our midst? The worst of the rioting has taken place in the mixed cities, long touted as examples proving that Jews and Arabs can live together in peace. Was that all an illusion? Twenty percent of Israel’s population is Arab. We live together, walk the same streets, eat at the same restaurants, use the same buses, are treated at the same hospitals, work together and play together (contrary to those who accuse Israel as being an apartheid state). But now, can I trust the Arab sitting beside me on the bus. Is he, or she, going to draw a knife or a gun and start killing? Can I trust the Arab plumber or gardener that comes to my home, or the doctor who treats me at the hospital? Yahya Sinwar boasted the other day that he has 10,000 ‘martyrs’ in Israel just waiting for the word to attack. This is a much more dangerous threat than the 10,000 or so rockets he claims to have.

THE FUTURE?

I have a sinking feeling that everything is coming to a head. This ‘ceasefire’ cannot last long. Iran is waiting for the right moment to unleash all its proxies and attack Israel. Biden is chasing butterflies, hoping to negotiate the un-negotiable with Iran, or to buy peace in Gaza with those who do not want peace. He is not in touch with reality. Israel cannot and will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear capability. There have been a whole series of mysterious fires and explosions in Iranian nuclear development facilities. They have fallen short of blaming Israel in so many words and Israel is not admitting to anything. Israel may have won this last round of fighting on the ground but Hamas is surely winning the war in cyberspace and the media. The UN is trying to charge Israel with ‘war crimes ‘ in the international court and few countries are voting against it. There is no mention of the war crimes perpetrated by Hamas! Antisemitism of a scale not seen since the Holocaust is raising its ugly head all over the world and Islam has infiltrated every Western country. The stage is set and the fuse is burning. When will it hit the powder keg? I don’t know but it could happen any minute or months or possibly at a stretch years from now, but it seems inevitable.

I do know however it will not happen until God so ordains. It is he who will gather all the nations of the world against Israel and lead them to judgement and their own destruction for what they have done against His people.

For behold, in those days and at that time,
When I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem,
 I will also gather all nations,
And bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat;
And I will enter into judgment with them there
On account of My people, My heritage Israel,
Whom they have scattered among the nations;
They have also divided up My land.
 They have cast lots for My people,
Have given a boy as payment for a harlot,
And sold a girl for wine, that they may drink.

“Indeed, what have you to do with Me,
O Tyre and Sidon, and all the coasts of Philistia?
Will you retaliate against Me?
But if you retaliate against Me,
Swiftly and speedily I will return your retaliation upon your own head.

Joel 3: 1-4

Yes, the LORD says this,

“If my people would only listen to me,
    if Israel would only follow my ways,
 how quickly I would subdue their enemies
    and turn my hand against their foes!”

Psalm 81: 13-14

CORONAVIRUS IN ISRAEL

And now the good news! Israel seems to have beaten the Covid-19 virus. With over 5.5 million of our population of 9 million now fully vaccinated there are only around 383 active cases and less than 20 new cases being reported in the last 24 hours. This is down from a peak of around 10,000 active cases on the 18 of January, just before the start of the vaccination program. As a result, from 2 June nearly all coronavirus restrictions are going to be dropped, except for the requirement to wear face masks in indoor public spaces. Movie theatres reopened last week and the first tourists entered for at least a year!! (6). Tourism is still limited to small groups of vaccinated individuals but all going well regulations will slowly be lifted over the coming months. That said, I wouldn’t book your tickets just yet.

If you wish to follow the unfolding of events here in Israel I can recommend the Twitter or WhatsApp group in the links below. The information is gleaned from the Hebrew press and the IDF website, summarized in English, and updated several times a day.

SHARE THE GROUP WITH A FRIEND —

— Read it on Telegram, send this link and have them click it — https://t.me/Israel_Defense_Upd_Eng

— Read it on WhatsApp, this link and click it — https://chat.whatsapp.com/KAM1lHfgtsy0C8vWwvC3vs

…..this is a private non-governmental effort using publicly available information. (Go away spies, we got nothin’ for you.)

THE MAIN POINTS OF THE HAMAS COVENANT

======================================= The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement was issued on August 18, 1988. The Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as the HAMAS, is an extremist fundamentalist Islamic organization operating in the territories under Israeli control. Its Covenant is a comprehensive manifesto comprised of 36 separate articles, all of which promote the basic HAMAS goal of destroying the State of Israel through Jihad (Islamic Holy War). The following are excerpts of the HAMAS Covenant: Goals of the HAMAS: ——————

‘The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.’ (Article 6) On the Destruction of Israel: —————————– ‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.’ (Preamble) The Exclusive Moslem Nature of the Area: —————————————- ‘The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Holy Possession] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon it or any part of it.’ (Article 11) ‘Palestine is an Islamic land… Since this is the case, the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Moslem wherever he may be.’ (Article 13) The Call to Jihad: —————— ‘The day the enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In the face of the Jews’ usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.’ (Article 15) ‘Ranks will close, fighters joining other fighters, and masses everywhere in the Islamic world will come forward in response to the call of duty, loudly proclaiming: ‘Hail to Jihad!’. This cry will reach the heavens and will go on being resounded until liberation is achieved, the invaders vanquished and Allah’s victory comes about.’ (Article 33) Rejection of a Negotiated Peace Settlement: ——————————————- ‘[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam… There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.’ (Article 13) Condemnation of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty: ———————————————- ‘Egypt was, to a great extent, removed from the circle of struggle [against Zionism] through the treacherous Camp David Agreement. The Zionists are trying to draw other Arab countries into similar agreements in order to bring them outside the circle of struggle. …Leaving the circle of struggle against Zionism is high treason, and cursed be he who perpetrates such an act.’ (Article 32) Anti-Semitic Incitement: ———————— ‘The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’ (Article 7) ‘The enemies have been scheming for a long time … and have accumulated huge and influential material wealth. With their money, they took control of the world media… With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the globe… They stood behind the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution and most of the revolutions we hear about… With their money they formed secret organizations – such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Lions – which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests… They stood behind World War I … and formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains… There is no war going on anywhere without them having their finger in it.’ (Article 22) ‘Zionism scheming has no end, and after Palestine, they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates River. When they have finished digesting the area on which they have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion. Their scheme has been laid out in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.’ (Article 32) ‘The HAMAS regards itself the spearhead and the vanguard of the circle of struggle against World Zionism… Islamic groups all over the Arab world should also do the same, since they are best equipped for their future role in the fight against the warmongering Jews.’ (Article 32) . ===================================================================== Information Division, Israel Foreign Ministry – Jerusalem Mail all Queries to ask@israel-info.gov.il URL: http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il gopher://israel-info.gov.il

REFERENCES

1. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/mortar-shell-hits-afghan-wedding–kills-at-least-six/46662504
2. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/22/middleeast/gaza-mourn-dead-intl-cmd/index.html.
3. https://www.jpost.com/opinion/did-unrwas-gaza-director-lose-the-plot-opinion-669433
4. https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-chiefs-niece-has-been-hospitalized-in-israel-for-over-a-month-report/
5. https://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818a.htm
6. https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/israeli-arabs/anarchy-ruling-the-streets-of-israels-jewish-arab-mixed-communities/2021/05/13/
7. https://www.ynetnews.com/travel/article/rkIfbLat00