“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: may they prosper who love you.” Psalm 122: 6
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Hamas Combat Manual Explains Benefits of Using Human Shields
This is one of the many positive things to come out of Operation Protective Edge. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has found a Hamas combat manual explaining the importance of using human shields. Below is an excerpt from the IDF report:
IDF forces in the Gaza Strip found a Hamas manual on “Urban Warfare,” which belonged to the Shuja’iya Brigade of Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades. The manual explains how the civilian population can be used against IDF forces and reveals that Hamas knows the IDF is committed to minimizing harm to civilians.
Throughout Operation Protective Edge, Hamas has continuously used the civilian population of Gaza as human shields. The discovery of a Hamas “urban warfare” manual by IDF forces reveals that Hamas’ callous use of the Gazan population was intentional and preplanned.
This Hamas urban warfare manual exposes two truths: (1) The terror group knows full well that the IDF will do what it can to limit civilian casualties. (2) The terror group exploits these efforts by using civilians as human shields against advancing IDF forces.
In a portion entitled “Limiting the Use of Weapons,” the manual explains that:
The soldiers and commanders (of the IDF) must limit their use of weapons and tactics that lead to the harm and unnecessary loss of people and [destruction of] civilian facilities. It is difficult for them to get the most use out of their firearms, especially of supporting fire [e.g. artillery].
Clearly Hamas knows the IDF will limit its use of weapons in order to avoid harming civilians, including refraining from using larger firepower to support for infantry.
The manual goes on to explain that the “presence of civilians are pockets of resistance” that cause three major problems for advancing troops:
(1) Problems with opening fire
(2) Problems in controlling the civilian population during operations and afterward
(3) Assurance of supplying medical care to civilians who need itLastly, the manual discusses the benefits for Hamas when civilian homes are destroyed:
The destruction of civilian homes: This increases the hatred of the citizens towards the attackers [the IDF] and increases their gathering [support] around the city defenders (resistance forces [i.e. Hamas]).
It is clear that Hamas actually desires the destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, knowing it will increase hatred for the IDF and support their fighters.
I’m ashamed that the IDF felt the need to report it because it should be patently obvious to everyone by now. An imbecile should know it especially since we have video footage of Hamas firing rockets from hospitals, mosques, and schools, and we know that they stored weapons in U.N. schools.
Physical evidence is not enough for a large number of people who are either brain-dead morons or anti-Semites to the core. I’m afraid that masses of people live by this principle: I’ve made up my mind and facts don’t matter. I just wish they understood that they are complicit in Hamas’ actions since their support is an important reason why Hamas uses human shields. If the public reacted negatively, they would stop it.
So rest easy tonight Hamas supporters, if you can. If I were complicit in murder it would trouble me greatly.
This SnyderTalk editorial first appeared in American Thinker.
SnyderTalk Comment: Hamas used human shields with U.N. and media complicity. You can deny it all you want, but the facts tell the tale.
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SnyderTalk Comment: Islamists aren’t just terrorists. They are criminals who are getting away with murder. You can’t say “I didn’t know” and you shouldn’t say “it can’t happen here”. Here’s a question for you: Does 9/11 ring a bell?
I have a hunch that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Why? There are 2 reasons: 1) too many people are still in denial and 2) the media and our president won’t tell the truth. They can’t say they don’t know, either. They simply won’t tell the truth.
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Asaf Zilberfarb: Do You Understand the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?—I wonder how many of those citing the blockade on Gaza as the reason for the increasing violence ever realized that rocket attacks began years before the blockade was ever imposed. How many people know that more than 30 terror tunnels were unearthed in Gaza by Israel in just a couple of days; tunnels over a mile long, leading to Israeli dining rooms and kindergartens. How many of the people who so vigorously justify rocket attacks on my home, who dare undermine my suffering because such rockets are “just fireworks” and I am “lucky” to have a shelter, would have agreed to be as “lucky” as me, to take my place, and have rockets fired at their homes. I wonder how many of them realize that they are legitimizing and defending an al-Qaeda-like organization, whose leaders praised Osama Bin Laden as a “holy warrior?”
Ilene Prusher: Israel Seeks to Gain Advantage by Reversing Course in Gaza—Israel pulled most of its troops out of Gaza and decided to take a completely different tack in its war with Hamas. After four attempts at a humanitarian cease-fire over the past few weeks, including a much vaunted one Friday that collapsed after two hours, Israel decided that it was no longer pursuing a truce with Hamas. Instead, it opted for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, except for a new buffer zone along the border, in the belief that there was more to be gained from walking away from a merry-go-round of failed cease-fires. The move also deprives Hamas of the victory it has sought. “We neutralize their main strategic forces, and leave them alone, without any achievement, without any demand, in their devastated place called Gaza,” Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin, director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said Sunday. Previous negotiated cease-fires, like the one in November 2012, served to “hamper” the IDF by limiting how it could respond. By unilaterally pulling troops out of Gaza, Israel believes it has gained the freedom to act as it sees fit.
Griff Witte: Israelis Regard Soldier Deaths in Gaza as a Price that Must Be Paid—”The nightmare of every parent in Israel is three officers knocking on your door,” said Yaron Shor, who heard the knock last Monday and learned that his first-born son, Barkai – handsome, generous and eager to serve his country – was a casualty of the conflict in Gaza. The grim ritual has been repeated 63 more times across Israel in recent weeks. But despite a casualty count that is high by modern Israeli warfare standards, the toll has provoked little of the second-guessing that has marked past Israeli conflicts. Instead, the public has remained broadly united in viewing the deaths as the price that must be paid for confronting Hamas. Amotz Asa-El, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, said the public’s willingness to stomach casualties has to do with the nature of the threat. Hamas rockets and tunnels “represent a direct hit at our society….We are personally targeted – each and every one of us – in our homes.” Yaron Shor said Barkai: “died protecting the civilians behind him. We are very sorry for his death. But we can’t say he died for nothing. He died for the right cause.”
Paul Farhi: Reporting the Gaza Death Toll—How many people have been killed in Gaza since the conflict began in early July? And who are the dead? Supporters of Israel say the raw casualty numbers coming from Gaza are suspect, both in size and in composition. They assert that the Hamas-controlled health ministry and pro-Palestinian NGOs inflate and distort the figures to poison world opinion about Israel. Unlike conflicts in Libya, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, Israel’s military campaign is taking place amid intense Western media coverage. As of Monday, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said that 1,888 Palestinians had died in Gaza since July 8. But how many of those killed are Hamas fighters? And how many people have died from errant rocket fire from within Gaza by Hamas itself. An Israeli government official said about half of those killed have been Hamas combatants, and the number could rise once Israeli intelligence sources vet all the names of those killed. This is consistent with what Israeli officials found in investigations after Israel’s operations in Gaza in 2008-2009 and 2012.
Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror: Redeployment Serves Israel Well— Israel has pulled back a large number of troops from inside the Gaza Strip. Once the remaining few tunnels are destroyed, the Israel Defense Forces will only leave a residual force along the border. The order of battle will shrink to the level that preceded the ground operation. The troops will assume a better defensive posture that would not require any direct engagement with the Gaza Strip’s urban environment. They will essentially control the area in between the tunnels’ entry point inside Gaza Strip and the border fence on its perimeter.
Lahav Harkov: Hamas Has Committed Six Types of War Crimes—Bar-Ilan University law professor Avi Bell, an expert on international law, told a conference in the Knesset Wednesday that Hamas has committed six types of war crimes according to International Criminal Court (ICC) regulations. The first is that they attacked soldiers and civilians indiscriminately and any attack on civilians is a war crime. Second, they used weapons that cannot be aimed at a specific target, namely rockets, which is a crime even if there are no victims. The third war crime is using human shields. The fourth offense was the camouflaging of terrorist activities via protected symbols, such as the transport of Hamas fighters and weapons in Red Crescent ambulances. The use of children aged 15 and under as fighters, which is expressly prohibited, is the fifth war crime. The sixth is attempting to take hostages.
Raghida Dergham: Is Iran Behind Hamas Launching Rockets at Israel?—All this anger directed at Israel has not exempted Hamas from the responsibility of hiding rockets among Palestinian civilians, launching rockets on Israelis, and building tunnels to receive sophisticated weapons from Iran. All this occurred while Hamas was joining a government led by the Palestinian Authority, which is committed to peaceful negotiations rather than armed struggle. Who was behind the abduction and murder of three young Israelis? Who is pushing Hamas to launch rockets and reject the Egyptian initiative for a cease-fire? I believe it is Iran whose name is linked in more than one forum to the incitement to ignite a confrontation with Israel. Iran wants to tell the Obama administration that it possesses the keys not only to the Middle East, but also to Israel’s backyard. It can either stop the flow of rockets or double the number of rockets sent to Hamas. Tehran believes it can drag the U.S. to give Iran what it wants – the nuclear deal and pledging not to attempt to overthrow its regime.
Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi: The Hamas Threat to the West Is No Different from the Islamic State—Hamas’ modes of warfare in the current conflict reveal the ideological and operational likeness between Hamas and the Islamic State (IS). From the start, Hamas directed its massive and ongoing missile offensive at civilian targets. Hamas hardly appears different from IS, which decrees a policy of the genocide of infidels without any moral constraints. Hamas in Gaza provides a comfortable haven to all the Palestinian terror organizations and allows al-Qaeda and IS groups to operate freely so long as they do not defy its rule. On the ideological level, there is no difference between how Hamas and IS view the West and the worldwide Islamic revolution. Hamas, too, calls for the founding of the Islamic caliphate with its capital in Jerusalem.
Gregory Rose: How Gaza Became One Big Suicide Bomb—Gaza is a suicide bomb. It is rigged by its leaders to explode. This is not a metaphor. It is a war crime. It makes the calculus of proportionality in the use of armed force by the Israel Defense Forces complex and uncertain. The Hamas use of suicide bombings is well-developed. A decade ago, it involved the leadership preparing vulnerable Arab individuals to end their lives by blowing up Jews in Israeli cities. The use of Hamas towns and local populations in their entirety as huge suicide bombs to kill Israeli soldiers drawn into them by repeated Hamas provocations is an innovation. There is clear and abundant evidence of this in the use of civilian shields, booby traps, and lack of civilian protections. Hamas rocket and mortar fire from the shelter of local schools, hospitals and markets has been photographed. About 5% of Hamas rockets misfire and land on Gazan targets, such as one in a hospital and another in a market last week.
David Horovitz: An Unavoidable War, Unfinished—We can begin to draw some interim conclusions from the Israel-Hamas war. Hamas fired more rockets, further into Israel, than in the two previous rounds of conflict. It has further battered the traumatized south, where a generation has grown up knowing that it might have to dash for shelter any second. And it has brought Tel Aviv and places even further north into the line of fire. And it’s still firing. Its leadership has survived intact, hidden safely away in underground bunkers deep in the heart of Gaza. Most of its thousands of death-cult fighters have survived too. Much of their weaponry is intact. However, Israel can claim significant achievements of its own.
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Rocket sirens heard in South prove to be false alarms as tenuous cease-fire holds
Gantz: Residents of the Gaza-border region can return to their homes
Israel focuses on demilitarizing Gaza at Cairo cease-fire talks
Displaced kibbutzniks wary of returning home
Bennett: If Israel leaves West Bank, we’ll have terror tunnels leading into our heartland
Supreme Court orders retrial of Olmert in Talansky affair
Israelis get creative with solutions to Gaza conflict, videos go viral
Father of murdered Arab teen: Suspect should be burned to death like my son was
PA to send medical team to Gaza to ‘document war crimes’
Netanyahu and Kerry haven’t spoken since phone disconnect, State Department says
SnyderTalk Comment: I wish they hadn’t spoken since “the disconnect”. That happened in 2008.
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Report: Netanyahu-Kerry Phone Call Wasn’t Cut Off
IDF Discharges 30,000 Reserve Soldiers
Iranian Official: Hamas Should Use Tunnels to Protect Civilians
Gantz: Gaza ‘Devastation’ on Hamas’s Hands
London’s Times Rejects Ad by Eli Wiesel Condemning Hamas
Hamas Harassed Foreign Reporters, GPO Announces
IDF Releases More Video of Hamas Human Shield Use
Turkish Hackers Deface Arutz Sheva Hebrew Site
Watch: Mapping Hamas’s Deadly Rocket Arsenal
MK Mofaz: Now, Look for Hezbollah’s Tunnels
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We Will Pay a Terrible Price for Supporting Hamas
UK Supermarket Chain Forced to Close Stores after Pro-Palestine Demonstrations
54% of Americans Sympathize with Israel
Netanyahu: Link Rehabilitation of Gaza to Its Demilitarization
View Photos: Gaza Rocket Hits Arab Home near Bethlehem
IDF: Gaza Operation May Improve Security in the South
IDF: Gaza 2014 Is Worse Off than Lebanon 2006
Iran Revolutionary Guards Fight Islamic State in Iraq
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Email Distribution List:
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Genesis 24: 15-21
15 Before he had finished speaking, behold, Rebekah who was born to Bethuel the son of Milcah, the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor, came out with her jar on her shoulder. 16 The girl was very beautiful, a virgin, and no man had had relations with her; and she went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up. 17 Then the servant ran to meet her, and said, “Please let me drink a little water from your jar.” 18 She said, “Drink, my lord”; and she quickly lowered her jar to her hand, and gave him a drink. 19 Now when she had finished giving him a drink, she said, “I will draw also for your camels until they have finished drinking.” 20 So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough, and ran back to the well to draw, and she drew for all his camels. 21 Meanwhile, the man was gazing at her in silence, to know whether Yahweh had made his journey successful or not.
SnyderTalk Comment: Read His Name is Yahweh.
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His Name is Yahweh explains why the Name of God, Yahweh, is so important. It’s available in eBook format and in paperback. It’s also available for free in PDF format.
- God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This [Yahweh] is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.” (Exodus 3: 15)
- “Therefore behold, I am going to make them know—this time I will make them know My power and My might; and they shall know that My name is Yahweh.” (Jeremiah 16: 21)
- “Behold, the days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is His name by which He will be called, ‘Yahweh our righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 23: 5-6)
- Yeshua said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” (John 8: 58)
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Peace in the Middle East: The Facts Tell an Interesting Story
Click here to download the entire audio presentation for free and with no strings attached. Share it as often as you want.
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Blessings in the Book of Revelation is a book that you need to read, especially now. There are blessings throughout the Scriptures but Revelation is the only book in the Bible actually containing a specific blessing for reading it. It’s repeated twice, once at the beginning and again at the end. This is the reason that I believe Revelation should be the first step toward studying biblical prophecy. Though not easy to do, Revelation can be broken down and understood by anyone, not just the academic elite. So, Revelation’s blessings are for everyone. Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
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Other Books by Neil Snyder
- Stand! is a suspense novel that exposes the lies, corruption, and greed underlying the theory that man-made CO2 emissions are responsible for global warming. Professor Wes Carlyle and Karen Sterling, his research collaborator, carefully scan the audience for their would-be attacker—a member of the enviro-gestapo who has been following them for days. Wes spots his man in the back of the room leaning against the wall. Suddenly, another man in the audience steps forward and moves toward Karen at a menacing pace. With a vicious stroke, he swings a billy club at her head. Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
- What Will You Do with the Rest of Your Life? deals with a question that every Christian has to consider: what should I do with my life? Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
- Falsely Accused is a true story about a young woman who was accused of committing a double homicide. It’s about a travesty of justice, and it reveals Yahweh intervening in the life of a believer to rescue her from danger in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Everyone will enjoy the book, but young people in particular need to read it because the mistakes made that led to the problem could have been avoided. They were the kinds of mistakes that young people are prone to make. As they say, forewarned is forearmed. Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
