The IDF has been relentlessly killing Hamas’ top leaders and commanders with surgical strikes. On July 13, the long-sought military commander of Hamas in Gaza, Mohammed Deif, was assassinated. On July 31, the head of Hamas’ political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed when a bomb exploded in his room at a heavily-guarded guesthouse in Tehran. Another dozen Hamas commanders, just below the top level, have been killed during the Gaza campaign. Only Yahya Sinwar, the man mainly responsible for the October 7 attacks, has still managed to stay alive, slithering from tunnel to tunnel underneath Gaza, bringing with him Israeli hostages whose proximity, he assumes, will preserve him from an IDF attack.
Hamas fighters are being kept constantly on the run, defeated in one city after another, and forced to keep moving, if they can, from cities that the IDF has announced it has targeted to the “safe” areas it has warned civilians to move to. The pressure never ends. The IDF sometimes will clear an area, and then returns if it detects Hamas operatives have been regrouping there. Many of the Hamas operatives appear to be living in squalor in the tunnels underneath Gaza. The IDF can rotate out its troops for rest and recuperation, but the Hamas combatants don’t have that luxury. They must continue to fight, from their hideouts in civilian apartments, schools, and mosques, or emerging from the network of tunnels in attempts to ambush IDF soldiers. Their morale is low; after all, they have seen half of their original number killed, and an unknown number of wounded operatives are being treated in wretched conditions. Hundreds of the tunnels have been destroyed. Their weapons hideouts have been uncovered and are being systematically destroyed; every day they lose more weapons that are found and seized by the IDF. The IDF has also taken control the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land inside southern Gaza on the border with Egypt, and has ended all smuggling of weapons into Gaza both above ground and through the tunnels, now destroyed, that formerly snaked underground from Egypt into Gaza.
Of the 35,000 operatives Hamas had in Gaza before October 7, almost half — 17,000 — have been killed, and many (no one has publicly speculated as to how many, but ordinarily in wars the wounded far outnumber the dead) have been wounded and are now hors de combat. Hamas has seen hundreds of its tunnels blown up, along with the weapons hidden in them. And a great many of the weapons hidden by Hamas above ground, in schools, mosques, hospitals, and apartments, have either been blown up or seized. Every day brings fresh news of more weapons, being discovered, and seized or destroyed, by the IDF.
Hamas is on the ropes. Will the Bidenites, eager to see a ceasefire deal before November’s election that they can promote as a great diplomatic accomplishment, manage to pressure Israel into agreeing to a permanent ceasefire that will mean Hamas operatives can declare a victory because “we are still standing,” allowing the terrorists to regroup in Gaza, while also recruiting new members and training them to take the places of those who have been killed? Will Netanyahu agree to give up control of the Philadelphi Corridor, as Egypt so insistently demands, which would mean a reprise of the weapons smuggling from Egypt into Gaza? Or will Prime Minister Netanyahu hold fast, despite terrific pressure from Washington and from hostage families, and continue to insist on a limited, not a permanent ceasefire, of a month or two, so that Hamas hasn’t the time to reconstitute some military units? I’m betting on Netanyahu’s stubborn determination, that so infuriates the Bidenites, as when, despite Biden’s dire warnings not to, the IDF entered Rafah and killed thousands of Hamas operatives in the city.
Meanwhile, the Presidential election in the U.S., the anti-mass migration protests in the U.K. that the government has tried to crush by demonizing and arresting hundreds of protesters, the continuing governmental crisis in France, Ukraine’s surprising push into the Kursk region of Russia, and the 26 million people now facing famine in war-torn Sudan have all been taking attention away from the Gaza War, to the great dismay of Hamas. It’s hard to see how Hamas can make itself again, as it was for the first several months of the Gaza war, the cynosure of all eyes. The world’s media are on to other, much more riveting subjects. And there is nothing Yahya Sinwar can do about this, unless he turns himself in to the IDF, or is captured or killed, which should be good for a few days of stories. But not more.
Frank Anderson says
Islam aspired to conquer Constantinople from its very beginning about 623 until it succeeded in 1453. There is no time limit. ONLY by a determined and total commitment can Isarel survive and prevent another Holocaust.
JimJFox says
Too true, Frank.
cornelius says
I still don’t know why Israel doesn’t have the manpower to occupy the entire strip? Though heavily populated, it is a tiny geographic area. There should be no temporary havens for Hamas to regroup.
Wellington says
Hamas’ best hope right now, bar none I would argue, is Harris being elected President.
Can anyone posit a better hope that Hamas has at present?
And to the extent I am correct here, it says plenty respecting what has happened to the Democratic Party of the USA.
Frank Anderson says
W, I suggest that is a false hope if they entertain it. Israel will not submit to another Holocaust. They will use every weapon they have if the US stops selling them the weapons they need to prevent defeat. Always with great respect.
Wellington says
I actually agree, Frank. I think Harris as President (God forbid) would be Hamas’ best hope (and I did ask if anyone could name a better one) but a “best hope” doesn’t mean guaranteed success.
Frank Anderson says
W, if Islam waited and campaigned for approximately 830 years to TAKE Constantinople, we must all recognize and accept, starting with Israel, that peace with Islam is at best temporary and delusional. They live to die and conquer. We live to live and prosper. There is no compromise or negotiation possible. Israel will not go down without fighting. Will we?
I told this true story before and repeat it because some may need to hear it again. In law school I was impressed with a class on negotiation that I recorded mock negotiations for the professor. Instead of taking the class I bought 6 books on the subject and read them all. Regardless of author, they agreed that two basic requirements exist to start negotiation: A trustworthy counterpart and a negotiable issue. Islam by its own history and declaration that it is “final, perfect, complete and unchangeable” is not a trustworthy counterpart. The subjects of live or death, freedom or slavery, have nothing to compromise.
I always wish you well.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Frank
If Kamala wins, I hope Israel ends its decades long alliance w/ the US, and works to win over Russia from the likes of Iran and Turkey. It should pretty much end all cooperation w/ Israel, and just expel the Palis
Ideally, they should do something big in October as an October surprise, so that the Dems are even more split than they were this week on the streets of Chicago
Frank Anderson says
Infidel, the only way the Jews of Israel could win over Russia from the Muslims of Iran and Turkey is to commit suicide. Masada is a one-time lesson in history for Jews. When they say “NEVER AGAIN” they mean it. Muslims want Jews dead. US Jews, at least 75 percent of them, refuse to read a single book, any book, to find out for themselves how much they are hated by Muslims. The “delusion of reprieve” as described by Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning is rampant in the US Jewish community as I can attest from personal knowledge and experience. It gives me great sorrow to witness such self-destructive practice.
Frank Anderson says
[Additional thought] Because Islam is committed totally to world conquest, it aspires to victory or death. There is no peaceful existence for non-believers as long as Islam remains “final, perfect, complete and unchangeable”.
Luchtpint says
This is a matter of Israel’s survival. So you don’t talk with terrorists, you teach them a lesson they will never forget. Things are looking up at this stage, so Netanyahu should stick to his guns, no matter who’s in charge of the US.
Wellington says
I agree about Netanyahu sticking to his guns but that wasn’t my point. My point dealt with Hamas’ best hope but as I just wrote to Frank Anderson a best hope doesn’t mean success.
Walter Sieruk says
When it comes to this very important subject it can’t be reiterated too much, which is that when it comes to those brutal cruel vile heinous malicious and murderous jihadist savages of Hamas it’s “Either kill or be killed.”
Therefore, the Prime Minister Benjamin was not only right, for he also spoke the sensible thing to do when he declared, “No force in the world will stop us from elimination Hamas.”
So, Hamas needs to be hit long and hard and it should to hit with much military might and. struck great power repeatedly until it’s completely destroyed. As it had been also, rightly said “Half –measures is folly and madness.”
For jihadists of Hamas will not respond to reason or logic , in others words, they cannot and will not be reasoned with. The only language that are able to understand is that of being the receiving end of a power of a great military might. As Thomas Jefferson had ,rightly ,written “With every barbarous people…force is law.”
Even the leftist US President Franklin D. Roosevelt with all liberal socialist had very wisely declared, “No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been—there never can be—successful compromise between good and evil. Only total victory can reward the champions of tolerance, and decency, and freedom, and faith.”
Prime Minister Benjamin had revealed knowledge and wisdom by his statement about the need to about the very important and necessary need to engage in the “Elimination of Hamas.”
Spiro says
he’s right no force in the world will stop Israel
no force IN the world
Walter Sieruk says
It always should be remembered and never forgotten that the government authorities and officials of the State of Israel have a duty and responsibility to use pre-emptive strike against that belligerent and hostile vicious and murderous jihad entity Hamas to ensure the safety security and lives of the people who are citizens of that nation.
As the fifth President of the United States, James Monroe, rightly and wisely, in a speech had declared, “The right to self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.”
James Lincoln says
The IDF needs to keep pounding Hamas until either:
1. They are all dead.
2. They totally surrender.
maria says
Yes, the best is that they will be all dead
JustJim says
Correct! Keep doing the leadership, including the ones hiding in UAE, and Saudi A., until there is nobody left to sign any cease fire agreement.
OLD GUY says
Now we’re talking, take them out totally is the ONLY answer.
David Fahey says
Don’t stop! Keep hitting them until they are all dead, including the ones hiding in hotels in Qatar and Turkey. Give them no sanctuary until the Arabs realize they have lost the war and must recognize Israel’s right to exist and stop the constant attacks against Israel. Then, and maybe then, a negotiated peace can be found, but until then, Israel should consider itself to be in a state of total war against HAMAS and every other Islamic terror group that seeks Israel’s destruction.
Mike says
Absolutely!
FYI says
That picture:kinda looka like ..allah’s Stormtroopers
No wonder far lefties like antifa{fascist much?} are attracted to them
Zechariah chpt 12-14
this is “a message about Israel from the Lord” Zechariah 12 v 1
You can see God’s plan for Jerusalem
Zechariah 12 v 3,v9
You can see God’s plans for dealing with all the nations that make war on jerusalem
Zechariah 14 v 12
the enemies of Israel{..not just any land it is “MY LAND” Jeremiah 2:7} don’t see that.
It is like watching a train hijacked by the Shi’tes heading for a cliff.Old Zechariah frantically warns them but they just laugh as they go over the cliff shouting “allahu akbar!..but the bridge over the ravine had collapsed.Zechariiah says “I did warn you”.Moses,visiting Zechariah “you know,you never mess with the God Of Israel”
Brian says
Hamas must be COMPLETELY eliminated. Democrats have no long term vision. They never have. Democrats only care about getting votes. Islam, Cult of Death, is waging war with everyone on planet earth and they will never stop.
Mr. Netanyahu, PLEASE ELIMINATE THESE BLOODTHIRSTY SNAKES MASQUERADING AS HUMANS.
JustJim says
After reading all the comments on this article, I see all realize that there is only one way to secure a permanent peace for God’s chosen.
Frank Anderson says
JJ, there are TWO, surrender to a second Holocaust or fight for as long as Islam exists. Any thought of peace with Islam is hopeless. It is as simple as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s question in Terminator, “Do you want to live?” Then you must fight until the end of time or Islam, whichever comes first. Please read some books to see for yourself.
CalvinsLutheran says
All of we cowards rooting for Israel do so from the sidelines. If Hamas says ? BOO most of us will jump to the moon ? and stay there shivering ? with fear and trepidation. Have no fear The Almighty God of Israel will bring Armageddon to OUR DOORSTEP SHORTLY. The anti-American pestilence is comfortably ensconced deep into cowardly Western society still yet unsure whether or NOT Westerners are abysmally STUPID AS WE SEEM TO BE. That is a question we can’t even answer. But there is a word of comfort/advice from the Far Right: FAFO!!!
CalvinsLutheran says
BTW why have we yet to see the leaders of HamasI/slam rushing to their 72 virgins? Is that not enough proof to The Woke population that what we have here ”is a failure to communicate”
Nancy Albert says
I hate to say, but the entire population is totally brainwashed from toddlers on to be Hamas minions. Hamas is like the chamber bitter weeds in my yard. They will never be eliminated. Every fertile woman is kept pregnant to bear as many inbred children as possible and propagate like weeds. Unless the whole education/religious system is reformed, those children will grow up impoverished, resentful and continuously replenish Hamas.