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Israel’s Destruction of a Terror Tunnel Dealt a Harsh Blow to Hamas and Islamic Jihad

On Monday, the IDF demolished a tunnel, constructed by Islamic Jihad, that stretched from inside Gaza to an Israeli kibbutz. The IDF reportedly used new monitoring technology to detect and locate the subterranean passageway. Yoni Ben Menachem writes:

The tunnel-digging is a large-scale project that employs thousands of people and costs tens of millions of dollars. Hamas and Islamic Jihad receive financial and technological assistance from Iran for the project. A large portion of the financial resources also comes from tax revenues that are supposed to alleviate Gaza’s electricity, water, and employment shortages but are diverted to tunnel-building.

On October 24, 2017, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza who is also the commander of the organization’s military wing, boasted that [his forces] can now fire in 51 minutes the same number of rockets they fired at Israel during the 51 days of Operation Protective Edge [in 2014]. . . . Hamas and Islamic Jihad see the tunnels into Israeli territory as a “strategic weapon” that deters Israel.

They have adopted a tunnel-digging method taken from the Viet Cong playbook. The aim is to infiltrate Israel by surprise with large forces that will capture territories, attack communities and IDF bases near the Gaza border, and kidnap civilians and soldiers for bargaining purposes. . . . The . . . subterranean offensive [would] take place when Hamas and Islamic Jihad launch a ground and rocket offensive, surprising Israel and establishing a major military advantage in the initial stages of the fighting. . . .

Beyond the eight Palestinian operatives who were killed in the strike on the tunnel, including the commander of Islamic Jihad’s central-Gaza brigade and his deputy, the operation dealt a harsh operational and psychological blow to Islamic Jihad and Hamas. The organizations had portrayed the tunnels as a special weapon for which Israel had no solution.

Read more at Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

More about: Gaza, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Israel & Zionism, Israeli Security

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic