This is clearly Hamas propaganda intended to help insulate them from responsibility for the mass murder they just carried out against unarmed civilians. So I’m not presenting this as anything which has any relationship to the truth. On the contrary, this is just evidence that Hamas is willing to pee on your leg and then tell you it’s raining. For one thing, Hamas is claiming this was a pre-emptive strike.
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Deputy Hamas leader, Sheikh Salah Al Arouri, said on Thursday that his Movement’s military assault on Israeli settlements and military bases near Gaza thwarted a planned Israeli attack on Gaza…
He stressed that Hamas had received intelligence indicating that the Israeli occupation intended to launch an assault on the organisation after the Sukkot holiday, so that Hamas carried out this “preemptive strike”.
The attack by Hamas was likely planned for many months so couldn’t be a response to any recent intel. But it was really what Al Arouri claimed next that is the most shocking. [emphasis added]
Hamas’s deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri says that Hamas does not target civilians “as a policy,” and that its Saturday attack only targeted the IDF’s Gaza Division stationed along the border — despite overwhelming evidence, footage and testimonies that its terrorists systematically targeted and massacred civilians.
The Israeli death toll is now estimated at at least 1,300 and of those 222 were soldiers. That leaves more than a 1,000 who were not soldiers. This is just a bald faced lie. More of what he claimed: [emphasis added]
1,200 members of the Al-Qassam Brigades entered the settlements and quickly took control of the Israeli military’s Gaza Brigade. We were surprised that the Gaza Brigade collapsed in less than three hours, faster than we expected.
The Hamas leadership’s instructions to the fighters were clear: not to kill children and women. It was not part of Al-Qassam’s plan to harm or kill civilians. Hamas cannot target civilians or prisoners, and we act in accordance with international laws of war.
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We know for a fact that Hamas went house to house killing civilians, including women and children. We know for a fact that Hamas surrounded and murdered 260 young people at an outdoor music festival full of young women. So if the fighters were told not to kill civilians and women and children they didn’t get the message.
But again, none of this is meant to have any connection to reality. It’s lies concocted after the fact to confuse weak-minded people who don’t want to believe what their own eyes are seeing. And it’s not the first time Hamas has made some of these claims. Here’s another Hamas spokesperson claiming they didn’t target Israeli civilians. This clip is from Monday.
Palestinian National Initiative’s @MustafaBarghou1: “Hamas mainly attacked military establishments, military installations. And most of the people they have arrested & taken as war prisoners are military people. I do not accept [they are] attacking any civilian.” pic.twitter.com/HYEOnDLGBU
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 9, 2023
So he doesn’t accept or want any civilian casualties and expects us to just forget about the 1,000 civilians Hamas just killed days earlier. The response to this is very simple: Go to hell. No one should fall for this propaganda about Hamas acting in accordance with international laws of war. Hamas is a terror group that intentionally murdered as many civilians, including women and children, as possible. That’s the reality and that’s who Israel is dealing with.
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