One common refrain among pro-Hamas demonstrators in the U.S., who gleefully carry tiki torches in their hearts, is that Israel must immediately allow a ceasefire for the 2.3 million people inside the Gaza Strip because of a dire shortage of food, water, electricity and medical supplies. The United Nations, the immoral voice of an immoral world, insists that Israel must avoid collective punishment and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
According to the highly dubious and mendacious Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, the death toll in the Gaza Strip was 11,100 people (terrorists and civilians) from October 7 to November 10. If true, there has not been this amount of bloodshed in the Holy Land since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, adamantly stated on October 31, “Calls for a ceasefire or calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorists, surrender to barbarism, that will not happen.” Netanyahu was clearly talking about the “barbarism” or mass pogrom of October 7 when Hamas sadistically murdered, raped, kidnapped, beheaded, dismembered and mutilated 1,400 Israeli men, women and children (as well as non-Israeli civilians) along the Gazan-Israeli border.
As I stated in a previous column, October 7 was “proportional to approximately 48,300 dead Americans, 120,700 wounded and 6,900 kidnapped since the U.S. population of approximately 335.55 million people is about 34.5 times greater than the size of Israel’s population of approximately 9.73 million.”
Relatively speaking, what Israel experienced that dreadful day was far greater than America’s losses on September 11, 2001 and December 7, 1941 combined. 48,300 dead Americans would have been almost the same as the total number of dead military personnel during the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1973.
It is also important to note that the number of hostages taken would have been unprecedented in U.S. history. It would have been comparable to the Mexican Sinaloa cartel having kidnapped 6,900 Americans at the Arizona-Mexican border, and then being held in a northern Mexican maze of terror tunnels under the threat of torture and torment.
What Israel experienced that day was the worst killing of Jews since the Holocaust.
So far, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have conducted its war in the Gaza Strip with great humanitarian resolve. They have dropped “thousands of leaflets,” sent emails and text messages, left voicemails and conducted “roof knocking” warning civilians of an impending airstrike in order to minimize civilian casualties.
The IDF has allowed 100,000 people to flee northern Gaza during numerous four-hour humanitarian pauses since November 9. The IDF has also stated on November 11 that they would evacuate babies from the biggest hospital in the Gaza Strip, the Al-Shifa Hospital, before attacking the Hamas command and control center located under and around the hospital complex.
(Editor’s note: I don’t recall The U.S. and its allies ever doing such a thing prior to fire bombing / leveling German and Japanese cities and killing civilians by the hundreds of thousands – not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki. War is indeed Hell – and it is executed severely in our post WWI modern age, yet the IDF has gone to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties.)
In contrast to the IDF, Hamas has a long history of storing their weaponry and embedding themselves within the civilian population, and using them as human shields, which is a clear and barbarous war crime. This has occurred at Al-Shifa Hospital and Gaza’s other thirty-four hospitals, especially at Rantisi Hospital, along with such civilian areas as schools, community centers, residential neighborhoods, churches and mosques.
What is especially shameful is that the leaders of Hamas, who live in Doha, Qatar, have very little compassion for the suffering of the Palestinians. Their leadership is much more concerned about increasing their net worth as billionaires than showing any concern toward the impoverished welfare of the typical Gazan. It is estimated that Hamas’ “three top leaders alone are worth a staggering total of $11 billion” and “enjoy a life of luxury.”
Hamas, which originated in 1987 and is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, has fired tens of thousands of missiles and rockets into southern and central Israel since Israel’s voluntary withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in September 2005. Hamas broke all ceasefires in its four previous wars with Israel in 2008-09, 2012, 2014 and 2021, and continues to refuse to recognize Israel’s existence.
In 2014 Hamas broke nine truces with Israel while firing 18,000 rockets with a range of 160 kilometers (99.4 miles) at central and southern Israel from 2005 to 2021. That is because Hamas never had any intention of recognizing the Jewish state, which is true today.
A ceasefire to Hamas only means a lapse in fighting so that it can refill its coffers, recruit more fanatics, reestablish supply chains, rebuild its terror-tunnels and restock its missiles for its next attack against Israel.
Israel should be commended for establishing four-hour humanitarian pauses in northern Gaza on November 9 and offering to ship “portable battery-powered incubators” to supplement the ones at Al-Shifa hospital on November 14.
If Hamas wants a ceasefire, let it repudiate the second sentence of the Hamas Covenant of 1988, which calls for the obliteration of Israel.
If Hamas wants a ceasefire, let it repudiate its military alliance with both Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
If Hamas wants a ceasefire, let it release the 242 Israeli and non-Israeli hostages it seized on October 7.
Hamas must suffer the unconditional fate of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945 because of its moral depravity and diabolical hardened hatred of Israel.
Until then, Israel’s mantra must be Black September or Hamas delenda est.
- Robert Maronic
