GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 178

Stop Teaching Hate

IDF Didn’t Cause Aid Disaster

In a report from i24news.tv the humanitarian aid deaths on February 29th blamed on the Israel Defense Force (IDF) as Hamas claims were not true:

Sources have exclusively told i24NEWS that Israel's security establishment has obtained Hamas members' testimonies in which operatives admit that Palestinians who lost their lives in the Gaza aid trucks disaster at the end of February were killed by overcrowding and not by IDF gunfire as claimed by the terrorist group.

Officials in Israel have yet to decide on whether to publish the correspondence.

According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, at least 118 Palestinians were killed in the humanitarian aid disaster on February 29, 2024, and about 760 were injured.

The IDF responded to the accusations days later, but Hamas still says Israel was at fault:

An IDF investigation published about a week after the incident found that the deaths of most of the dead were caused by a large crowd, when a stampede and mob attacked aid trucks on Rashid Street in Gaza.

The Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip defined the incident as a massacre, and the incident is known among the Palestinians as the "Flour Massacre" or "Rashid Massacre."

The IDF report said things happened this way:

In the IDF investigation submitted by Southern Command Commander Major General Yaron Finkelman to Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, it is stated that "while the trucks were traveling towards the distribution centers, a violent gathering of approximately 12,000 Gazans developed around them, looting the equipment they were transporting.

During the looting events, incidents of injury were observed "significantly in crowded citizens and being run over by trucks."

As we see over and over again, the Hamas PR machine rarely if ever takes responsibility and always blames Israel. We saw it early on in the war when a rocket they shot accidentally hit the parking lot of a hospital and Hamas said Israel targeted the place. The international press ran with the Hamas account and later had to back away from it when Israel produced evidence proving what actually happened. The United States military also confirmed what really transpired, but people to this day only believe the account Hamas gave. I call this willful ignorance.

Another One Bites The Dust

In an article from The Times Of Israel we read about a high ranking Iranian military leader who was killed in Syria by the IDF:

The Israeli Air Force allegedly carried out an airstrike on a building next to Iran’s embassy in Damascus on Monday, reportedly killing seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including the top Iranian commander in Syria.

The strike in the Damascus-area municipality of Mezzeh hit a building adjacent to the Iranian embassy, footage showed.

A Reuters report said a building in the embassy compund was “flattened,” in what it said was “a startling apparent escalation of conflict in the Middle East that would pit Israel against Iran and its allies.” Iran’s SSN news website said the targeted building was Iran’s consulate and ambassador’s residence.

Iran confirmed the death:

The IRGC in a statement carried by Iranian media announced the deaths of seven members, including its senior-most official in Syria, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, and his deputy Mohammad Haj Rahimi.

Zahedi was a top commander in IRGC’s Quds Force, a US-designated terrorist organization.

He was reportedly responsible for the unit’s operations in Syria and Lebanon, for Iranian militias there, and for ties with Hezbollah, and thus the most senior commander of Iranian forces in the two countries. Israel’s Army Radio said Zahedi oversaw all Iranian terrorist operations against Israel from Syria, Lebanon “and the Palestinian sphere.”

This was no low level assassination

His death was the most significant killing of an IRGC leader since the US assassinated Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad in January, 2020.

The IRGC also listed officers Hossein Aminullah, Seyyed Mahdi Jalalati, Mohsen Sadaqat, Ali Agha Babaei, and Seyyed Ali Salehi Rouzbahani among the dead.

As we expected, Iran vows to avenge his death:

Reuters quoted Iran’s ambassador in Syria warning that Iran’s response to the strike would be harsh.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, meanwhile, said in a call with his Syrian counterpart that Tehran holds Israel responsible for the consequences of the attack, Iran’s state media reported.

The strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus is “a breach of all international conventions,” Amirabdollahian added.

Israel doesn’t usually comment on strikes like this one but the report noted that there has been an increase of attacks by the IDF once the war started:

Faced with ongoing attacks by the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group and Shiite militias throughout the Middle East in the wake of Hamas’s brutal October 7 massacre, which sparked the war in Gaza, Israel has escalated its strikes on Iran-linked terror targets in Syria, killing numerous IRGC operatives, as well as members of Hezbollah and other Iranian proxy groups.

At some point all sides may have to take stronger actions if not start a regional war to finally put an end to the tensions being felt now.

Israel Should Reoccupy Gaza

During an interview in The Jerusalem Post a Nobel prize winner from Israel suggested that Israel needs to reoccupy the Gaza Strip after they rid it of Hamas:

Israel must reoccupy the Gaza Strip and consider rebuilding Jewish communities in the coastal terror enclave if the country wants to prevent another Oct. 7, Prof. Yisrael (Robert) Aumann says matter-of-factly.

Conversing over cups of slow-brewed, fresh filtered coffee, the 93-year-old Nobel Prize winner is confident that not only must Israel “actually remove Hamas from Gaza” but also learn from its mistake of withdrawing in the first place.

Aumann explained his logic this way:

“The event that led to the current situation was the Disengagement,” Aumann says of Israel’s 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza that uprooted 9,000 Jews from their homes – many of whom were once again uprooted after the Hamas massacre. “Let’s draw conclusions from that. It would be wrong to make a repeated mistake. Certainly, we should not do that in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria – whatever term you prefer – and we should not do it again in Gaza.”

He went on to say that Israel do what it is currently doing in the West Bank now:

Aumann, who won the Nobel Prize alongside Thomas Schelling for their work on conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis, suggests that Israel establish a military presence in Gaza and explore the possibility of resettling citizens there, similar to what it has done in the West Bank.

“There are people who call what we are doing in the West Bank ‘occupation,’ and it is,” he says. Aumann’s voice is sweet and calm; and the creases near his eyes appear smiling, no matter the subject.

“We’ve been [in the West Bank] for 57 years and still have not annexed it,” he says, stroking his long white beard. “It’s not good. We should at least declare our legitimacy. But at least we are there physically. It is more difficult for us to pull out because of those people [living there].

“That’s game theory,” he continues. “We’re giving ourselves an incentive to stay [in the West Bank]. One of the most important principles of game theory is the principle of incentives.”

Hostage Families Aren’t Helping

Aumann also thinks that the families of the hostages are helping Hamas by their constant pushing for their release:

Aumann believes that the intense campaign for the kidnapped is essential, but he worries it may inadvertently strengthen Hamas by showing them the extent of public concern. This could lead to Hamas making unacceptable demands, ultimately harming our war efforts.

He explains why like this:

The families “are making it clear to Hamas that this is very, very, very important for us, and they are making it clear that it is even more important than it is, and as a result of that, Hamas demands an end to the war. They’re still in power in Gaza, which is something which we cannot possibly agree to,” Aumann says.

“If you want to buy a home at a reasonable price, and you visit the apartment and the real estate agent is there, and the owner is there, you do not go to the porch and say, ‘What a beautiful, grand view.’ That is also game theory; you are giving an incentive to the other side to charge more,” he says. “The families of the kidnapped are doing this. They are shooting themselves in the foot. They’re shooting us in the foot.

“I want the kidnapped returned, but not at the cost of losing the war.”

He laments the lack of unity in Israel:

Aumann admits that “The world is against us.” But he believes that “a bigger problem is that we are against ourselves. We say, ‘Beyachad nenazeach’ [Together we will win]. But we are not beyachad.”

He puts game theory in terms we can understand: A game can involve any number of players, even up to a million, but it has to have at least two, Aumann says. Each player influences others to varying degrees while pursuing different, sometimes opposing, goals. The theory can be applied in various scenarios, from sports like soccer (where teams represent players) to geopolitical conflicts, like the “game” between Israel and Hamas.

Aumann remains an optimist about world peace:

Despite the Gaza war, Aumann says he still believes that peace is possible.

“I am tired of the fighting,” he says. “We’ve been fighting for more than 100 years, and the world has been fighting for thousands of years.

“War has been the one cost of human history. It is terrible,” he continues. “There is enough room for them and us in this country.”

He says that one of the provisions of the Oslo agreement was education: that Israel educate its children to get along with the Arabs and vice versa. But Israel never insisted on this, and “it was a big mistake on our part.”

“In this conflict, both sides promote their goals to the best of their ability, but what are the goals? Our goal is certainly not to destroy the Arabs. Their goal is, but ‘they’ are not necessarily one entity.

“Their children are taught to hate us, they are taught to want to drive us out,” he concludes. “That is what we should change.”

I think we can all agree on that.