LOS ANGELES.–All the national and worldwide pro-Palestine protests over Israel’s War in Gaza have been clarified by 74-year-old Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Hamas blindsided Israel Oct. 7, 2023 with the most gruesome attack on Jews since the Nazi Holocaust, raping, torturing and murdering 1,200 Israelis, many teenage girls at a Negev Desert music festival. From that day on, Netanyahu promised he would not rest until Hamas was eliminated from the Gaza Strip. Backed by Iran with cash-and-arms, Hamas is a U.S.-labeled terror organization that massacres civilians to achieve political aims. Hamas’s only aim since its founding by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1987 was to destroy the Jewish State. Hamas was used by Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] Chairman Yasser Arafat as his military wing to return the Holy Land back to Arab Bedouin tribes.
Arafat branded Bedouins living in the Holy Land for over 500 years of Ottoman Turk rule as Palestinians. So-called Palestinians never held any sovereign territory in the Holy Land, living, like everyone else, including Jews, under Ottoman Rule. Once the Ottoman Empire was broken up Aug. 10, 2020 in the Treaty of Sevres, Great Britain was give sovereignty over the Holy Land, except for Egypt given the Gaza Strip and Jordan getting the West Bank. Once Arafat orchestrated with six other Arab states the 1967 Six Day War, sold as a war of annihilation, Israel annexed the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights. Arafat never recovered from his colossal failure to eliminate Israel, living until his death Nov. 11, 2004 without realizing his dream of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu made clear today that Hamas must leave the Gaza Strip to end the war.
President Joe Biden, 81, has been under enormous pressure, domestically and worldwide, to pressure Netanyahu into a ceasefire to leave Hamas in power. Biden knows, without saying it, that Hamas cannot remain in Gaza because of its corruption, where former leaders have stolen billions over the last 18 years since seizing the Gaza Strip from the West Bank-based Palestine Authority in 2007. Hamas’s chief negotiator in Egypt for a ceasefire, 62-year-old Qatar-based Ismail Haniyeh is worth $4 billion. Since the war started, Hamas has published daily fake stats on war deaths, claiming Israel has now killed over 36,000 Palestinians, two-thirds women-and-children. Hamas’s Ministry of Health manufactures the fake data to apply global pressure on Israel to stop the war. Netanyahu knows Hamas’s PR game and says the war will end when Hamas leaves the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu said there would be no permanent ceasefire without dismantling Hamas’s military and leaving the Gaza Strip. Whatever the civilian casualties in Gaza, they’re all caused by the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre where 61-year-old Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar chose to slaughter Israeli citizens. “Israel’s condition for ending the war have not changed. The destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” Netanyahu said today. All the talk of a permanent ceasefire to leave Hamas in power is a non-starter to Israel. If the international community wants the collateral damage to end, it needs to pressure Hamas to get out of Gaza, where it’s plundered the Mediterranean colony since 2007. Oil rich Arab Gulf State donors want no part of Hamas, not trusting Gaza’s government with Hamas corruption. All countries that want the war to end must pressure Hamas to leave Gaza.
Hamas is first and foremost a terror organization, a group of gangsters-and-outlaws hiding behind the Islamic faith, like al-Qaeda and ISIS, to advance its terrorist agenda. Iran and Hamas are joined at the hip to further Iran’s ambition of sewing chaos in the Middle East with the intent of destroying Israel. So, when Biden talks about restricting arms shipments or sales to Israel, it infuriates anyone with any real knowledge of the situation. Palestinians living under Hamas rule are the ones suffering, not because they don’t live in Israel but because their government is consumed with its own corruption and fake agenda. Sinwar knows he can’t destroy the modern state of Israel, a technologically advanced Western democracy with the highest level’s of military, academia, science, medicine, arts and culture. Hamas had all the cash and resources to build the Gaza Strip into a functional society.
White House and State Department officials should stop playing games with various anti-Israel factions and support its No. 1 ally in the Mideast to finally eliminate Hamas from the Gaza Strip. Watching Hamas pillage-and-plunder Gaza over the last 18 years should remind all nations that Hamas cannot continue to rule Gaza or anywhere else. “Israel will continue to insist these conditions are met before a permanent ceasefire is put in place. The notion that Israel will agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are fulfilled is a non-starter,” Netanyahu said. Biden and other world leaders know that Hamas must be removed from Gaza for ordinary Palestinians to have a future. Hamas leaders plundered the Gaza Strip for their own selfish gains leaving the territory without adequate, food, water, electricity and sanitation. Hamas must leave Gaza to end the war.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
