Rafah incursion under way

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are finally moving into the last redoubt of the Gazan army, otherwise known as the Islamic Resistance Movement (Arabic Harakah al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, abbreviated HAMAS). With this incursion into the border city of Rafah, Israel hopes to bring the Fourth Arab-Israeli War to an end. From every pronouncement the Israeli War Cabinet is making, they seek the only possible honorable end: total victory. The Gentile world already is weeping and gnashing its collective teeth over “civilian” casualties. But in fact the only true civilians are the children – and these children are suffering from a mass paranoid personality disorder that their parents carefully taught them. One can only hope this will be the last chapter in the worst mass child-abuse case the human race has ever known.

Timeline to Rafah

On Sunday (May 5), HAMAS apparently launched rockets from Rafah into the Kerem Shalom crossing, according to Reuters. That crossing was then closed, though other crossings remained open. Three IDF soldiers died in that attack, of which HAMAS explicitly boasted. Reuters also said that cease-fire talks were taking place in Cairo at that time. In the article describing the rocket attack, Reuters spoke of “hopes dim[ming]” for a cease-fire. An immediate cease-fire has been the consistent demand of Gentile (and some Jewish) demonstrators in the United States and elsewhere, almost since the war began. Reuters estimated that more than a million Palestinians were “sheltering” in the city at time of writing.

Also on Sunday afternoon, according to Axios, the Biden administration cut off ammunition supplies to Israel. This evidently violates the Impoundment Control Act.

The intent had been to forestall any ground invasion of Rafah – and also to appease part of Biden’s base. In fact those protesting on college campuses against Israel’s actions – and indeed very existence – were already indicating that they would sit out the election. That goes for the bulk of the Muslim contingent in Minnesota, Michigan, and several other States. In fact, disdain for “Resident” Biden is the one thing that unites patriot and HAMAS sympathizer alike.

Sunday was also Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the occasion to make a stark pronouncement.

Distractions?

Also on Sunday, Leo Hohmann reported that thirty-five Republican U.S. Senators signed a letter of protest against another Biden administration idea – to allow hundreds of thousands of “Palestinians” to take “refuge” in the United States. These Senators raised the obvious concern about terrorist connections.

Also yesterday, Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit revealed that Bill Burns, Director of Central Intelligence, guaranteed to HAMAS that the administration would force Israel to accept any cease-fire. Caroline Glick actually accused Burns of that on Saturday.

Then came this piece of news that might in fact have been a distraction: HAMAS said they agreed to a cease-fire.

Apparently Egyptian and Qatari diplomats worked this out and got HAMAS to accept it. So said accounts at the time. But that agreement gave no guarantees whatsoever about the release of hostages. The best estimates have HAMAS still holding 100 or more living hostages from its October 7 attack. (This morning, HAMAS admitted that several of those hostages are now dead.)

Peace demonstrators in Israel itself marched to demand that Netanyahu accept the terms. Instead the War Cabinet, by unanimous vote, decided to continue its bombardment of Rafah.

In that message, Israel said it would send more mediators. But according to Politico, they already ordered all within a “Red Zone” to evacuate it immediately. About 100,000 people were still in that zone at the time.

Moving into Rafah

That last announcement had a “last edit” timestamp of 3:52 p.m. EDT, which would be 10:52 p.m. Israel Summer Time. In fact the IDF was already moving in.

These posts contain footage and dispatches from the front:

An announcement by American Family Radio host Tony Perkins of Washington Watch, aired beginning at 5:00 p.m. EDT, created confusion. He said the Israelis had accepted the cease-fire, when obviously they did not. The operation was already well under way when his program aired – but perhaps, as happens often, Perkins “taped” it earlier.

Politico estimates that 1.1 million people, half of them children, remained in Rafah when the ground incursion began. The IDF blared out specific instructions of where people could go to stay out of harm’s way.

At last report IDF elements had gained control of a crossing in East Rafah and were attacking specific spots where HAMAS elements were to be found. The report did not name the crossing but suggested this was the very staging area for Sunday’s rocket attack. Yet in the face of this, HAMAS has not suspended cease-fire talks. That, according to Tsionizm, is how it’s done in the Middle East.

This is an important fact. The military pressure serves the Israeli negotiator. Negotiations under fire. This is how negotiations are done in the Middle East. The importance here is also in visibility. Israel takes initiative and action and does not play into the hands of Hamas, in negotiations from a position of weakness.

What this means

Obviously Israel knows that the only way to win is to win totally. This was the way in the era of the Shoftim – the “Judges” – and this is the way today. Israel also knows that the rest of the world will never sympathize with them.

To suggest that the world is simply concerned with minimizing civilian casualties, is to overlook several key facts. First, ill-natured people will always find an excuse. Antisemitism has come out into the open since October 7, 2023. Sadly, even the conservative coalition has its share of antisemites, who insist that Israel is more trouble than it’s worth. They will seize on any “civilian casualty” figure, ignoring its source – which is the Gaza “Health Ministry,” which is to say, the HAMAS Medical Corps. Beyond that, this Jewish student at the University of Michigan starkly reminded a HAMAS sympathizer with just what she was sympathizing.

… I hope all your people know you’re supporting terrorists. You’re supporting the genocide of Jews. You’re supporting raping women. You’re supporting killing babies and putting them in ovens. You’re just like Hitler. I hope all of you know that.

Second, the concept civilian properly applies only to the children. Ninety-nine percent of adults not under arms in Gaza believe in all of HAMAS’ stated aims. Those aims include wiping every Jew from the face of this Earth. Many of these not-under-arms adults accompanied HAMAS elements into the Negev as irregulars on October 7.

Third, HAMAS controls the education system in Gaza, in addition to acting as its army. HAMAS schools – and apparently every parent – teach their children to hate Jews, and not even regard them as human.

Teaching children to hate

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear, / You’ve got to be taught from year to year, / It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear—You’ve got to be carefully taught!

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid / Of people whose eyes are oddly made, / And people whose skin is a different shade—You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, / Before you are six or seven or eight, / To hate all the people your relatives hate—You’ve got to be carefully taught!
Lt. John Cable USMC, in South Pacific

And as Rodgers and Hammerstein might have been aghast to observe, those Gazans have “carefully taught” their children to hate. That is how HAMAS can recruit one generation after another. That’s how they had so many spies even before October 7, many of whom took part as the second wave. And that’s how they maintained their hold though seven months of siege and invasion.

Israel seeks to destroy the ability of HAMAS to make war, or even to govern. But rehabilitating the adults might prove impossible. Only the children deserve any sympathy at all – and how to handle them, given the ideological poison their parents have absorbed, will prove the greatest challenge.

And once again, Israel can expect no help from the outside world – because that outside world, deep down where it counts, hates the Jews almost as badly as HAMAS does. The last of the prophets, especially Zechariah, warned of that very thing. We are seeing that warning fulfill itself today.