by Nadav Shragai, Israeli author and journalist, Yisrael Hayom newspaper, translated by Hillel Fendel.
With all the media talk of the suffering of "innocent Palestinians in Gaza," it is important to know that many or most of them are not all that innocent. Hamas and the general populace of Gaza are one and the same - in the elections that Hamas won handily, in their hearts, and in actually keeping secret and helping out in the preparations for the mass attack.
The media coverage of what is happening in Gaza invariably mentions that the Gazans currently under attack are mostly the "non-involved" – i.e., not involved in the horrific attack on Jewish families two weeks ago. Let us take a look how "non-involved" they actually were.
Twenty thousand of them used to leave Gaza every day, before the massacre, to work in Israel. They worked in the Jewish villages near the border, as well as in larger towns such as Sderot and Ofakim, in the fields and elsewhere. Some of them had an extra assignment as well – assigned by Hamas: They wrote down details of their Jewish employers, such as number and locations of houses in a village, the locations of the living rooms and safe rooms, how many people live in each house, whether they have a dog, where they park their cars, and more. Everything was documented, and everything was handed over to Hamas. This was part of the infrastructure of the barbaric atrocity – the contribution of the "un-involved."
Many thousands of "non-involved" held "demonstrations" in the days before the massacre alongside the fence, where they apparently planted explosive devices and marked its weak points. They took active part in the great camouflage operation that succeeded for Hamas beyond all its expectations.
Salah Arouri, a top Hamas leader who generally hides out in Gaza, attempted to speak up for his fighters and say that it wasn't they who carried out the massacre, but rather the residents of Gaza. He said that many of the latter entered through the border fence and fought with Jewish settlers, and "as a result, people were killed."
In addition, myriads of "non-involved" – the IDF says it was "hundreds of thousands" – have participated over the years in the "Marches of Return" along the fence. Over the course of these events, they threw explosives and Molotov cocktails over to our side, sent explosive balloons, and burned our fields. With their hearts filled with hatred, they know only their dreams of taking our place in Ashkelon, Lod, Acco and Ashdod. How do we know this? Because they say it outright – just like, incidentally, their brothers in Judea and Samaria and even some of them in Israel. Hopefully, many of us now will take them seriously and actually believe them.
It's true that our true friend in the White House, President Biden, is not yet convinced, but this will come as well – for the Palestinians have creative ways to explain themselves.
What else can we say about the "non-involved?" They danced with wild joy around the vans holding the kidnapped children, elderly, women and young boys. They chanted "Death to the Jews!" and helped Hamas hide them. They also helped Hamas move their rockets to hiding places. "Non-involved" mothers declared how proud they were to send their children to the campaign so that they would become martyrs, and "non-involved" teachers taught Gazan children that it is a religious duty to kill Jews.
In many funerals over the years of arch-terrorists that Israel managed to liquidate, hundreds of thousands of "non-involved" took part. For those who want to know exactly what happened there, Google and important tracking organizations such as MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch can supply the precise wording of the horrific chants heard at those funerals, which received hate-filled roars of approval from the masses.
And who voted Hamas into power in the first place? Hundreds of thousands of Gazans voted in 2006 for Hamas, the organization whose charter calls openly for the destruction of Israel and the Jews. Hamas thus received 18 out of the 24 seats on the legislative council in Gaza. While Fatah received only 33% of the vote at the time, Hamas received 43%. It also won in eastern Jerusalem, and did well in Shechem (Nablus), Hevron, and elsewhere. Uncommonly for the PA, these were actually democratic elections, run according to law; the 250 EU observers who were on hand confirmed this. Thus, the results mirrored precisely the preferences of the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Today, 17 years later, all indications are that support for Hamas has grown, not weakened.
In short: Hamas and Gazan residents are one – in elections, in heart, and in deed. Many of them knew of the preparations for the massacre, helped facilitate it, and certainly did not reveal it. The IDF is a moral army and does not purposely target civilians – but in case civilians are hurt, we need to know who they are and what they stand for.