Judging by some of the newscasts I’ve been hearing and watching — and not just Al Jazeera or the BBC — it seems that that those war-crazed Israelis are at it again. Not content with their “genocidal” operation in Gaza, they have been letting all hell break loose in the “occupied” West Bank. Absurd, of course. Apparently a good many people need to be reminded of just why the IDF has been conducting its recent pinpoint raids in Judea and Samaria. More on the “rest of the story,” as the late radio announcer Paul Harvey used to say, can be found here: “IDF West Bank Op Needed to ‘Remove Immediate Terror Threats,’” by Yaakov Lappin, JNS.org, September 1, 2024:
The Israel Defense Forces is engaged in significant counterterrorism operations in northern Samaria, targeting terrorist activities in areas like Jenin and Tulkarm. According to IDF International Spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, these operations are part of a broader effort to address the ongoing and escalating terror threats in Judea and Samaria.
“Speaking to journalists via video call on Wednesday, Shoshani emphasized the persistent nature of the threat, noting that “terror in Judea and Samaria is not something new, it is not a new threat.” He explained that even before Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, terror attacks had claimed the lives of over 30 Israelis in 2023 alone. The terror threat has only intensified since Oct. 7, with numerous deadly attacks being carried out against Israeli civilians and security forces.
The Arab terror attacks on Israelis never stop. Their numbers go up, and then go down, and then go up again, but they never end. Most of those attacks these days come from Hamas, but others are committed by members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. Individual Arabs, too, are inspired to murder “Jews” who have “stolen Palestinian land.” Some years hundreds of Israelis are murdered; in 2023, as we all know, the record was broken with 1240 Israelis killed, 1200 of them on October 7.
Shoshani highlighted two recent attacks as examples of the violence emanating from Judea and Samaria. One involved the murder of Gideon Peri, a 35-year-old Israeli civilian who was killed on Aug. 18 by a Palestinian worker in an industrial park that was supposed to foster Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, said Shoshani. The second attack saw the murder of 23-year-old Israeli civilian Yonatan Deutsch on Aug. 11 in a drive-by shooting in the Jordan Valley. These incidents are part of a broader pattern of Palestinian violence in recent months, he said.
The IDF has identified a systematic strategy by Iran to arm and support terrorist groups in seven fronts across the Middle East, including in Judea and Samaria, Shoshani stated. He pointed out that Iran has been actively smuggling weapons and explosives into the region to be used in terror attacks against Israeli civilians. This strategy, he said, is part of Iran’s broader goal to destabilize the region and support terrorist activities against Israel.
The terror attacks in Judea and Samaria constitute only one front in a seven-front war, with Iran supplying weapons, and in some cases money, to its proxies, who are united in their determination to destroy the Jewish state. These seven proxies include Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia in Iraq, Assad’s army in Syria, several terrorist groups — Hamas, PIJ, and the PFLP — in Judea and Samaria, and looming up behind them all, Iran.
In response to these threats, the IDF has been conducting targeted operations to remove immediate terror threats in real time. Shoshani noted that these operations are not new and have been ongoing for the past 11 months as part of Israel’s effort to ensure the stability of the area….
The world does not recognize that the terrorist threats and acts against Israel are continuous. They did not begin on October 7, and will not stop if and when the current war in Gaza ends. True, the latest operations in Judea and Samaria have been unusually robust and far-reaching. They were set off by a suicide bombing — the first in eight years —when an Arab blew himself up in Tel Aviv. This suicide bombing took place in the context of a steep rise in terrorist activity in Judea and Samaria. The IDF’s response was to simultaneously hit terrorists in Tulkarm, Jenin, Nablus, and the Al-Fara camp, in the largest such West Bank operation in twenty years.
The IDF’s West Bank incursion, named Operation Summer Camps, has as its goal the dismantling of terrorist battalions on the West Bank, destroying their infrastructure, including laboratories for explosive device production, seizing weapons, and apprehending wanted terrorists.
The IDF’s operations in Tulkarm have already resulted in the elimination of three armed terrorists who posed an immediate threat to security forces. In Jenin, two additional armed terrorists were eliminated, and five wanted suspects were apprehended. The IDF also confiscated weapons, including M16 rifles and ammunition, and dismantled explosives that had been planted under roads in the area….
The IDF killed the long-sought Hamas commander in Jenin, Wissam Khazem, as well as Abu Shujaa, the leader of the Tulkarm Battalion. Both of them were wanted for their involvement in violent attacks against Israelis.
The PA is no longer collaborating with Israel, as it is obligated to, in clamping down on terror threats to the Jewish state. This reflects both an absence of will and an absence of ability, as the PA, and especially Mahmoud Abbas, have become deeply unpopular in the West Bank. 80% of the Palestinians in the West Bank want Abbas to resign. The PA does not dare to help the IDF by supplying intelligence on terror suspects as it once did, much less arresting them.
The October 7 atrocities have taught the Israelis a painful lesson. They had allowed the threat from Hamas in Gaza to grow inexorably, unwilling to take the preemptive action necessary to uproot the menace root and branch. They are determined never to let that happen in the West Bank, which is why they unleashed the largest attack in 20 years on the various terror groups in that territory. So far, the IDF has managed to kill several dozen terrorists, but more importantly, it has located and seized large caches of weapons and destroyed weapons-and-explosives factories. And from now on, the IDF will continue to disrupt, more frequently and more devastatingly, terrorist operations in the West Bank. There will be no rest for the wicked. Preemption is now the IDF’s watchword. Or as it says in the Talmud, “if someone is planning to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”
Walter Sieruk says
The State of Israel should retake Gaza because that vicious vile brutal cruel malicious and murderous jihad entity that started this war on October 7th 2023 needs to be rooted out and eliminated from that land once and for all. It not it will later engage in further horrendous and deadly jihad attacks against Israel ,murdering her people Therefore, Israel is right and righteous and just a strike force in self-defense.
As the fifth President of the United States, James Monroe, wisely, had declared “The right to self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.”
As the fifth President of the United States, James Monroe, wisely, had declared “The right to self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.”
For 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.”
Walter Sieruk says
There is absolutely no limits to the vile, heinous horrifically evils that the jihadists of Hamas will commit because of because of their demonic and malice-filled religion that is Islam.
Therefore, Hamas, should be dealt with defeated and even destroyed by hitting it hard , hit it long and keep on hitting it with strong powerful forceful military strikes until it’s unable to raise up again with its ugly , vicious and deadly jihad Islamic head.
OLD GUY says
Totally agree, you don’t win a war by allowing the enemy to slip away and fight another day.
JS says
It’s true that Israel let this go on for too long and now we see the US allowing the build up of the same enemy in our college campuses. The US has also allowed blatant hate on the streets against Jews and the US, while calling for the destruction of both – and doing nothing about it. One would assume that the government sees what they’re saying in the mosques, because it’s everywhere. Let’s hope Trump gets elected and that he cleans up this mess before resemble the UK or worse.
StacyGirl says
Hostages taken by Muslims are almost always never seen again. Recall Israel exchanging live terrorist captives for the corpses of their loved ones. At this point in history it must be no holds barred. The above comment about taking Gaza back is appropriate; the paleos have forfeited their right to exist among civilized people. And it’s not their land.