#sheikh ahmed yassin

[eretzyisrael]

by Ben Cohen

An Islamic chaplain at Toronto’s main pediatric hospital was under scrutiny on Thursday after video emerged of him encouraging parents to show their children a clip of the founder of Hamas predicting the eventual destruction of the State of Israel.

The video clip — unearthed by the Washington, DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) — showed imam Ayman Taher praising remarks made by the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, in a 1998 interview with the Qatari-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera.

“If you did not watch this, Google it and watch it, let your children watch it, because this is history that needs to be absorbed,” Taher — who serves as the Islamic chaplain of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and as imam of the Ibrahim Jame Mosque in Hamilton, Ontario — stated during a Dec. 18 speech at Palestine House in Toronto, the headquarters of a nonprofit organization that caters to the Palestinian community in Canada.

“When [Al Jazeera correspondent] Ahmed Mansour was asking Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, he said to him: ‘Sheikh…’ And the sheikh was barely out of Israeli jails, by the way. He said to him: ‘Do you believe that Israel will [be] finished?’ He [Yassin] said to him with confidence: ‘Yes.’ He [Mansour] said to him: ‘When do you think it will [be] finished?’ He [Yassin] said: ‘2027.’ And I said to myself: ‘How calm, how confident this man is.'”

Taher went on to eulogize Yassin, a wheelchair-bound cleric whom Israel held responsible for the deaths of several Israeli citizens and who was killed in a March 2004 Israeli strike on Gaza City.

“Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was handicapped,” Taher said. “The only thing that moved in him was his tongue. Allah gave him that faith to speak his mind and inspire the generations to come. In the most difficult time, when his own life was not safe, and we know how Allah has honored him.”

He said that when Yassin ���was in jail and after that when he was living in very difficult times, he never had doubt that Allah is going to give victory to his religion, we [also] should not, because he has inspired millions.”

He then added:  “I know I am getting myself in trouble now for speaking on social media. Who cares, because if [we] do not get ourselves into trouble, we will not be getting victory.”

A spokesperson for the Hospital for Sick Children said in a statement shared with The Algemeiner that Taher had been placed on paid leave as a result of the video.

“Concerns about comments made by a member of the Spiritual and Religious Care Department at SickKids related to the war in Israel and Gaza and shared on social media have been brought to our attention,” the statement noted. “We of course take this extremely seriously and are investigating as per SickKids’ Code of Conduct. The individual is on a paid leave while we investigate. For confidentiality reasons we are unable to share any additional information.”

The hospital added that “all who come to SickKids are entitled to be treated with respect, professionalism and feel safe.”

Reacting to the announcement of an investigation into Taher, one X/Twitter user responded indignantly, “What is there to investigate? It’s right there in black and white. SickKids that should have acted before now. Repugnant.”

[indizombie]

It is obvious that Israel does not learn from history. Hassan Nasrallah’s predecessor Abbas Musawi was also assassinated by Israel in 1992, along with his wife and child. In the following decades, Nasrallah transformed Hezbollah — which was amongst the numerous confessional militias that had emerged from the chaos of the Lebanese civil war — into one of the strongest armed non-state actors in the region, which, incidentally, helped end the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. Similarly, Hamas’s founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin — a wheelchair-bound cleric — was assassinated by Israel in 2004. His group is today a major political and armed force in the occupied Palestinian territories. The fact is that Israel’s policy of murder and subterfuge has been an abject failure, as the groups it has targeted have vowed to hit back stronger, and in many instances have succeeded in their pledges.

Abbas Nasir, ‘Nasrallah’s murder’, Dawn

[mariluphoto]

"What's important is that our morale does not fall and we do not surrender."

"To them, to surrender is to have peace."

"With this believing, struggling, sacrificing generation, we shall be victorious."

The spiritual head of Hamas and its founder, martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, emphasizes the importance of steadfastness and not giving into deceptive peace, "humiliating peace." Sheikh Yassin underscores the need for continued resistance and the belief in the path towards victory.

via. t.me/PalestineResist

[northgazaupdates]

10 October 2024

Resistance News Network translates and summarizes on Telegram the latest updates from journalist Anas Al-Sharif about the IOF's ongoing campaign against north Gaza:

🚨 Journalist Anas Al-Sharif:

—

Latest developments in the field situation in Jabalia Camp and its surroundings, as well as some northern areas on the sixth day of the aggression, and on the 370th day of the genocide war on the Gaza Strip:

- Journalists Fadi Al-Wahidi from northern Gaza and Ali Al-Attar from the southern part of the Gaza Strip were injured while covering the ongoing aggression. Their health condition is critical, and they urgently need treatment abroad. *We call on international organizations and press agencies to intervene and provide them with treatment and transportation to save their lives.*

- The three hospitals in northern Gaza are still operating at minimal capacity with limited medical services and continue to receive the injured, the martyrs, and patients.

- The number of martyrs from the ongoing aggression on northern Gaza has risen to over 220, with around 400 injured and others still missing.

- Fierce clashes between the resistance and the occupation forces are ongoing on the eastern and western battlefronts of Jabalia Camp, and the occupation has admitted to losing several soldiers and officers in a complex ambush east of Jabalia.

1) The occupation forces continue to impose a siege on northern Gaza for the sixth consecutive day, with heavy artillery and air strikes, and shooting at anyone moving on main or side streets in an attempt to forcibly displace tens of thousands of citizens holding on to their homes and shelter centers. Despite this, the people of the north have not complied with the demands to move south.

2) Continuous and intense airstrikes by occupation warplanes on Jabalia Camp, Beit Lahia Project, Beit Hanoun, the city of Beit Lahia, Jabalia Nazla, Al-Tawam, and Bir Al-Naaja, and Al-Saftawi.

3) Ongoing gunfire from occupation vehicles, drones (quadcopters), and helicopters (Apaches).

4) Extremely intense artillery shelling in all northern areas, targeting many homes, neighborhoods, and streets—even ambulances have not been spared from the shelling.

5) Occupation forces are intensifying the demolition of citizens' homes in Al-Tawam area west of Jabalia and Al-Zaytoun neighborhood in southern Gaza.

6) 8 martyrs in the targeting of civilians near Abu Shurukh roundabout west of Jabalia Camp in northern Gaza.

7) Occupation aircraft targeted the Da’our Tower behind Jabalia Camp Police Station.

8) Martyrs and injured in the targeting of the Rimal Clinic west of Gaza.

9) 3 martyrs and injuries in the targeting of a group of civilians near the Al-Jalaa Rocket Intersection.

10) 5 martyrs and several injuries in the shelling of a gathering of civilians near the Ghazali Intersection in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.

11) Drones are flying at very low altitudes in all areas.

12) Intense airstrikes by occupation warplanes targeted several homes and agricultural lands in Al-Tawam area, Bir Al-Naaja, and Ahmed Yassin Street in Al-Saftawi neighborhood.

13) A number of martyrs remain on the roads and in the neighborhoods of the north, and medical crews have been unable to rescue them due to being fired upon by occupation forces.

14) Occupation vehicles are present in the eastern areas along the camp's front and the western side of Jabalia, extending along the coastal line with Beit Lahia, with intermittent gunfire from time to time.

[asexualannoyance]

“[...] Like other movements within political Islam, the movement [Hamas] reflected a complex local reaction to the harsh realities of occupation, and a response to the disorientated paths offered by secular and socialist Palestinian forces in the past. Those with a more engaged analysis of this situation were well prepared for the Hamas triumph in the 2006 elections, unlike the Israeli, American, and European governments. It is ironic that it was the pundits and orientalists, not to mention Israeli politicians and chiefs of intelligence, who were taken by surprise by the election results more than anyone else. What particularly dumbfounded the great experts on Islam in Israel was the democratic nature of the victory. In their collective reading, fanatical Muslims were meant to be neither democratic nor popular. These same experts displayed a similar misunderstanding of the past. Ever since the rise of political Islam in Iran and in the Arab world, the community of experts in Israel had behaved as if the impossible was unfolding in front of their eyes. [...]

In 2009, Avner Cohen, who served in the Gaza Strip around the time Hamas began to gain power in the late 1980s, and was responsible for religious affairs in the occupied territories, told the Wall Street Journal, “the Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” Cohen explains how Israel helped the charity al-Mujama al-Islamiya (the “Islamic Society”), founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1979, to become a powerful political movement, out of which the Hamas movement emerged in 1987. Sheikh Yassin, a crippled, semi-blind Islamic cleric, founded Hamas and was its spiritual leader until his assassination in 2004. He was originally approached by Israel with an offer of help and the promise of a license to expand. The Israelis hoped that, through his charity and educational work, this charismatic leader would counterbalance the power of the secular Fatah in the Gaza Strip and beyond. [...]

In 1993, Hamas became the main opposition to the Oslo Accord. While there was still support for Oslo, it saw a drop in its popularity; however, as Israel began to renege on almost all the pledges it had made during the negotiations, support for Hamas once again received a boost. Particularly important was Israel’s settlement policy and its excessive use of force against the civilian population in the territories. [...]

It also captured the hearts and minds of many Muslims (who make up the majority in the occupied territories) due [to] the failure of secular modernity to find solutions to the daily hardships of life under occupation. [...]

The new Israeli methods of oppression introduced during the Second Intifada—particularly the building of the wall, the roadblocks, and the targeted assassinations—further diminished the support for the Palestinian Authority and increased the popularity and prestige of Hamas. It would be fair to conclude, then, that successive Israeli governments did all they could to leave the Palestinians with no option but to trust, and vote for, the one group prepared to resist an occupation described by the renowned American author Michael Chabon as “the most grievous injustice I have seen in my life.” [...]

The obvious failure of the Palestinian groups and individuals who had come to prominence on the promise of negotiations with Israel clearly made it seem as if there were very few alternatives. In this situation the apparent success of the Islamic militant groups in driving the Israelis out of the Gaza Strip offered some hope. However, there is more to it than this. Hamas is now deeply embedded in Palestinian society thanks to its genuine attempts to alleviate the suffering of ordinary people by providing schooling, medicine, and welfare. No less important, Hamas’s position on the 1948 refugees’ right of return, unlike the PA’s stance, was clear and unambiguous. Hamas openly endorsed this right, while the PA sent out ambiguous messages, including a speech by Abu Mazen in which he rescinded his own right to return to his hometown of Safad. [...]”

—Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappé, Chapter 9: “The Gaza Mythologies”, the section titled “Hamas Is a Terrorist Organization”

[anarchblr]

Hamas was originally supported by the Israeli State to undermine the more secular Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). It has its origins in Mujama al-Islamiya which was founded by the Palestinian cleric Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, seen as an organisation involved in charity and welfare work for the Palestinian community of Gaza. The Israeli state regarded it as preferable to the PLO, as was its successor Hamas. Hamas was always right wing, Islamist and nationalist, with hostile attitudes towards women and LGBQT people and to the Palestinian working class. However, this changed when Hamas killed two Israeli military personnel in Gaza in 1988. In a situation similar to that of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, supported by the USA and its allies, against Russia and the Afghan regime it supported, where the Taliban evolved to become a greater danger to US imperialism, the Israeli regime began to regret its initial support. [..] Various Israeli officials went on record to express their regrets about support for Hamas. Avner Cohen, who had been an official in Gaza during direct Israeli occupation admitted that “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” He went on to say that “instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas.” [..] Hamas gained control of Gaza from the PLO. It imposed sharia laws, forcing women to wear the hijab and imposing an alcohol ban, although both of these have been hard to enforce. Armed clashes broke out between Hamas and the PLO. This suited the Israeli state which felt that fighting between the Islamist Hamas and the secular PLO would divert them from attacking Israel.

[..] Resistance against the Israeli settlement policy is necessary and justified, but this can often be accompanied by anti-Semitic resentment and attacks on the non-combatant population. We must reject this. Similarly, in other countries, sympathy for the plight of ordinary Palestinians and opposition to the Israeli State’s attacks on them can sometimes attract anti-Semitic fellow travellers, or slogans such as ‘We are all Hamas.’ These elements must be shunned. We reject the Two State solution, backed even by some socialists, where there would be an Israeli and a Palestinian state co-existing. This would mean a few shabby Palestinian enclaves, with those Palestinians still living in Israel living as at the best second class citizens, and those living in Jordan, Lebanon and other Middle East countries abandoned altogether. Neither do we support a One State solution, which would threaten Jews within a united Palestinian state. For us, all nation states should be rejected. As our comrades of the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group have written: “The liberation of the Palestinian people, without merely reversing the terms of oppression, can only come about through a workers’ revolution to abolish capitalism completely, to make the land and all social resources the common property of all, abolishing inequality and all forms of oppression. Given the present situation in Israel/Palestine, this is not on the immediate agenda, but it does not deny the necessity of the solution. In practical circumstances, the initiative will have to come from the outside, through workers’ revolution in the surrounding Arab countries, most importantly Egypt, which has a large working class already. It is essential, however, for those workers’ revolutions to transcend the nationalism of the countries in which they occur, since it is only internationalism which will allow the workers to defeat their own capitalist rulers; it is only internationalism which will allow Arab workers to reach out in friendship to the workers of Israel; and only internationalism which can break the Israeli working class from its Zionist rulers. The task before the workers of Palestine and Israel is thus no different from the task here. It is only to be conducted in more difficult circumstances. We must build a working class movement, based on liberty, equality and solidarity, and fight for a revolution which will re-make society on the same principles. We must abolish capitalism and its State, and we must recognise the folly of building another State in its wake. We must build Libertarian Communism.”

[hassanatforusmk]

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[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

One of the last tweets from Islamic University of Gaza:

It was sent at 6:55 AM on October 7 Gaza time - only 25 minutes after the initial rocket barrage and way before any Israeli response which began around 8:30 AM.

It could be because they anticipated a response that would target the university. But this announcement was particularly fast and early in the morning.

It's almost as if they knew ahead of time....or wanted their students to take part in the massacre.

The IUG has been a hotbed of terrorism for a long time. One of its founders was also a founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.  In 2006, Jameela El Shanty, a professor there, said that "Hamas built this institution. The university presents the philosophy of Hamas. If you want to know what Hamas is, you can know it from the university." 

Kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was held in captivity at the university for months.

Israel struck it early in the war because of its use as a Hamas stronghold.

[justforbooks]

Yahya Sinwar

Hamas leader who plotted the 7 October attack on Israel that triggered war in the Middle East

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who has been killed by an Israeli patrol in the Gaza Strip at the age of 61, was the principal architect of the attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that killed 1,200 Israelis, kidnapped 251 hostages, and propelled the Middle East into its greatest peril since the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

The overall leader of Hamas after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in July 2024, he was its key strategist before and after 7 October, Israel’s most wanted man and the ultimately pivotal Hamas figure during ceasefire negotiations. Though presumed to have been hiding for most of the year within Gaza’s vast tunnel network, he was killed alone in a ruined apartment in Rafah, according to the Israeli military.

Despite repeated vows by Israeli leaders to assassinate him during their devastating retaliation for the 7 October attack, and after what Israel announced was the killing of his close collaborator Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, in July 2024, Sinwar was the last survivor of the three Hamas leaders against whom the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, sought arrest warrants for suspected war crimes.

Sinwar first came to prominence in 1985 when Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the organisation that would become Hamas in 1987, put him in joint charge of an armed internal enforcement agency known as al-Majd.

He missed direct participation in the momentous Palestinian events of this century’s first decade, including Hamas’s election victory in 2006, the subsequent imposition of an international boycott, and its armed seizure of full control in Gaza in 2007, because he was in jail. In 1989 he received four life sentences for orchestrating the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the execution of four Palestinians suspected of cooperating with Israel. According to his interrogators, Sinwar admitted without remorse to personally strangling one victim with his bare hands.

By a historical irony, he was among the 1,027 prisoners released in 2011 by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to free a kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. The exchange reinforced Sinwar’s belief that such abductions were needed to release Palestinian prisoners. During his 22-year incarceration he assumed a commanding role among Palestinian inmates and tried at least twice to escape. Jail, he later said, had been turned by militants into “sanctuaries of worship” and “academies”. He learned fluent Hebrew, studied Israeli politics and society, and by his own account became “a specialist in the Jewish people’s history”.

Sinwar was born in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. His father, Ibrahim, and his mother had been forced to flee Majdal, now Ashkelon, as refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. He would tell fellow inmates in prison, said one, Esmat Mansour, that he had been heavily influenced by conditions in the impoverished refugee camp, with its daily humiliation of queueing for food. He was four when Israel overcame Egypt in the six-day war of 1967 and took control of the Strip. He attended Khan Yunis senior school for boys and then the Islamic University, graduating in Arabic language. Sinwar was active in student organisations fusing Islamism with Palestinian nationalism after the perceived failures of the secular PLO. He was briefly detained in 1982 and again in 1988 after Israel’s discovery of al-Majd weapons.

An autobiographical novel he completed in prison in 2004, called Thorns and Carnations, describes the protagonist Ahmed sheltering with his family during the 1967 war, only to find their dreams of Palestinian liberation shattered by Israel’s victory; Ahmed becomes an Islamist after a cousin convinces him of the religious concept of the waqf – the God-given Muslim land from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. Infatuated with a young woman, Ahmed ends the relationship – chaste in accordance with strict Muslim custom – because in “this bitter story” there was “only room for one love”: for Palestine.

Also in 2004, Sinwar had a brain tumour removed by Israeli surgeons, detected by a quick-thinking Israeli prison dentist (and later intelligence officer), Yuval Bitton, who had Sinwar rushed to hospital. Over multiple conversations in jail before and after this life-saving episode, for which Bitton was warmly thanked by Sinwar, he recalled the prisoner telling him: “Now you’re strong, you have 200 atomic warheads. But we’ll see, maybe in another 10 to 20 years you’ll weaken, and I’ll attack.”

After his release, Sinwar was elected to Hamas’ political bureau in 2012 and, in what was seen as a shift towards its militarist tendency, to the faction’s Gaza leadership in 2017, replacing Haniyeh, who subsequently succeeded Khaled Mashal as political bureau chief. Hamas was losing popularity after two wars with Israel, in 2008-09 and 2014, and Gaza’s deep impoverishment by the blockade imposed by Israel (and Egypt) since 2007.

Sinwar seemed at times to adopt a relatively pragmatic approach. No ally of Mashal, he worked to restore relations with Iran that Mashal had ruptured by opposing Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in his repression of a popular revolt. But he did not demur when Mashal published a (for Hamas) innovative 2017 document which, without recognising Israel, or abandoning its aspiration for the whole land, indicated it would meanwhile accept a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders – comprising the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

In 2018 Sinwar conspicuously appeared at the Great March of Return, a series of unarmed mass protests at the border barrier. Increasingly organised by Hamas, to the chagrin of some civil activists who had devised them, the protests seemed briefly to offer some alternative to armed insurgency, despite the lethal gunfire against them by Israeli troops. Sinwar even wrote (in Hebrew) to Netanyahu, proposing a long-term truce.

But a turning point came in 2021, when Sinwar and Deif are thought to have begun planning for what became the 7 October attack. By then, the 2020-21 Abraham accords between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain had reversed the Gulf countries’ refusal to recognise Israel unless the Palestinians secured a state. How far this – and the fear in 2023 that Saudi Arabia might imminently follow suit – dominated Sinwar’s thinking is unclear. But in his 7 October speech praising Sinwar and Deif for the attack, Haniyeh excoriated the Arab states for seeking “normalisation” with Israel.

Sinwar reacted defiantly during Ramadan in May 2021 when police raided the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, after clashes in the city between Palestinians and rightwing Israelis. When police did not leave the compound by a Hamas-set deadline, Gaza militants fired 150 rockets, Israel responded with airstrikes, and there was a short but intense 11-day war. Sinwar warned that Hamas, whose rockets had reached deeper into Israel than before, had enacted a “general rehearsal” for what would happen “if Israel tries to harm al-Aqsa again”.

Less conditionally, in December 2022 Sinwar addressed Israel at a Gaza rally: “We will come to you, God willing, in a roaring flood. We will come to you with endless rockets, we will come to you in a limitless flood of soldiers.” Hamas would name the 7 October attack the “al-Aqsa flood”.

So secretive was its planning that Sinwar kept its timing and scale – though apparently not that something was being prepared – from most of the Hamas external leadership. Western intelligence agencies also believe he did not confide his intentions in advance to Iran or its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

According to a June 2024 Wall Street Journal report, Sinwar described the huge Palestinian losses in a wartime message to Hamas leaders in Qatar as “necessary sacrifices”. In another, on the seizure of women and children as hostages, but without clarifying whether he was referring to Hamas fighters or others who joined the attack and its accompanying atrocities, he said: “Things went out of control … People got caught up in this, and that should not have happened.”

Though he told hostages he met in the tunnels that they would be protected and exchanged in a prisoner release, one 85-year-old peace activist, Yocheved Lifshitz, freed in the week-long ceasefire in November, said she had challenged Sinwar on whether he was “not ashamed to do such a thing to people who have supported peace all these years. He didn’t answer. He was silent.”

In 2011 he married Samar Abu Zamar, and they had three children, the fate of all of whom is unknown. Sinwar’s brother (and close ally), Mohammed, is still being hunted by Israeli forces.

🔔 Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, politician, born 29 October 1962; died 16 October 2024

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[athena5898]

🚨 For 17 consecutive days, the IOF continues to besiegetens of thousands in their homes in the northern Gaza Strip and prevent food and water from reaching them.

Since this morning, 41 martyrs ascended due to zionist raids on the Gaza Strip, 33 of them in the northern Gaza Strip.

Jabalia remains under fire as IOF vehicles continue to launch bullets and shells. Belts of fire targeted the Saftawi area of Jabalia, and airstrikes have not ceased.

Residents in Jabalia have stated:

Food is almost cut off, and the water is undrinkable.

There is no milk for children. Mothers mix starch and flour with water and sugar, if available.

The occupation is enforcing the siege on citizens and targeting anyone who moves.

We live in previously bombed houses.

We use tent fabric and some wood from furniture due to the lack of firewood.

The situation is very difficult and dangerous.

Hospitals are also overwhelmed, with the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north declaring the situation catastrophic. He added did the hospital was completely depleted of its stock of medicines and medical consumables. Healthcare staff are exhausted, working 24/7 under relentless conditions. The hospital urgently called for blood donations and stressed the need to open humanitarian corridors.

Several airstrikes led to significant casualties, including on shelters housing the displaced:

A drone bombed a tent in Khan Younis in the southern Strip, resulting in martyrs and wounded.

Seven martyrs ascended and others wounded as a result of the IOF bombing displaced people taking refuge in a UNRWA school near Birkat Abu Rashid in the northern #Gaza Strip.

Three martyrs and several wounded as a result of the IOF bombing Al-Shawa School in Beit Hanoun, which was serving as a shelter for displaced families.

Airstrikes on residential buildings in Sheikh Radwan resulted in several martyrs and wounded.

Four martyrs near Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital in the northern Strip.

Eight martyrs in Jabalia Al-Balad and Al-Nazla bombed while filling water on residential streets.

Ten martyrs in Sheikh Radwan area.

9 martyrs ascended as a result of the IOF bombing the Maqata family home east of Gaza City.

6 martyrs in Halabi Street in Jabalia Al-Nazla.

2 martyrs in Ahmed Yassin Street North of Gaza City.

A martyr and a number of wounded as a result of the IOF bombing residents in Jabalia Al-Balad.

640 martyrs have ascended in the besieged areas of the north since the siege began two weeks ago.

[jloisse]

On the night of Eid Al-Fitr, a banner is hung outside of a local mosque in the village of Qibya, Ramallah, with the images of the martyr Sheikh Saleh Al-Arouri and martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

"Following their path, the flood marches on."

Glory to the martyrs.

[houseclouds]

Drone footage of the destruction of a portion of the Islamic University of Palestine.

The facility was founded in 1978, and one of its cofounders of note was future Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The facility was widely considered by intelligence experts (in both the west and Arab world) as a bastion for Hamas fighters and recruitment, and considered it a ‘terror training ground.’

The Hamas links to the university were confirmed by professors who taught at the facility:

In 2006, Jameela El Shanty, a professor at the university, said that "Hamas built this institution. The university presents the philosophy of Hamas. If you want to know what Hamas is, you can know it from the university."

Samar Sabih, the first female bomb maker and suicide vest maker of Hamas, was also recruited and trained at the university before being sent to the West Bank to train others in bomb and suicide vest making in the mid 2000’s.

[gregor-samsung]

" Hamas divenne un attore significativo sul campo anche grazie alla politica israeliana di appoggio alla costruzione di un’infrastruttura educativa islamica a Gaza, che intendeva bilanciare la presa del movimento laico Fatah sulla popolazione locale. Nel 2009 Avner Cohen, che aveva prestato servizio nella Striscia di Gaza nel periodo in cui, alla fine degli anni ’80, Hamas iniziò a prendere il potere, ed era responsabile degli affari religiosi nei Territori occupati, dichiarò al «Wall Street Journal»: «Hamas, con mio grande rammarico, è una creazione di Israele». Cohen spiega come Israele abbia aiutato l’organizzazione benefica al-Mujama al-Islamiya (il «Centro islamico»), fondato da Sheikh Ahmed Yassin nel 1979, a diventare un potente movimento politico, da cui emerse Hamas nel 1987. Sheikh Yassin, un religioso islamico disabile e semi-cieco, fondò Hamas e ne fu il leader spirituale fino al suo assassinio nel 2004. Originariamente venne avvicinato da Israele con un’offerta di aiuto e la promessa del benestare governativo all’espansione della sua organizzazione. Gli israeliani speravano che, attraverso la sua opera di beneficenza e le sue attività educative, questo leader carismatico avrebbe fatto da contrappeso al potere di Fatah nella Striscia di Gaza e altrove. È interessante notare che alla fine degli anni ’70 Israele, gli Stati Uniti e la Gran Bretagna vedevano nei movimenti nazionali laici (di cui oggi lamentano l’assenza) il peggior nemico dell’Occidente.

Nel suo libro To Know the Hamas, il giornalista israeliano Shlomi Eldar racconta una storia affine sui forti legami tra Yassin e Israele. Con la benedizione e il sostegno di Israele il Centro islamico aprì un’università nel 1979, un sistema scolastico indipendente e una rete di circoli e moschee. Nel 2014 il «Washington Post» trasse conclusioni molto simili sulla stretta relazione tra Israele e il Centro islamico fino alla nascita di Hamas nel 1988. Nel 1993 Hamas divenne il principale oppositore degli accordi di Oslo. Mentre c’era ancora chi appoggiava Oslo la sua popolarità diminuì, ma non appena Israele cominciò a rinnegare quasi tutti gli impegni assunti durante i negoziati il supporto verso Hamas crebbe, dando nuova linfa vitale al movimento. La politica di insediamento di Israele e il suo uso eccessivo della forza contro la popolazione civile nei Territori giocarono sicuramente un ruolo importante. La popolarità di Hamas tra i palestinesi non dipendeva però unicamente dal successo o dal fallimento degli accordi di Oslo, ma anche dal fatto che l’organizzazione avesse effettivamente conquistato i cuori e le menti di molti musulmani (che sono la maggioranza nei Territori occupati) per via dell’incapacità dei movimenti laici nel trovare soluzioni all’occupazione. Come per altri gruppi politici islamici in tutto il mondo arabo, il fallimento dei movimenti laici nel creare posti di lavoro e nel garantire benessere economico e sicurezza sociale spinse molte persone a tornare alla religione, che offriva conforto e reti stabili di supporto e solidarietà. Nell’intero Medio Oriente, come nel mondo in generale, la modernizzazione e la secolarizzazione hanno giovato a pochi e hanno lasciato molti infelici, poveri e amareggiati. La religione sembrava una panacea, oltre che un’opzione politica. "

Ilan Pappé, Dieci miti su Israele, traduzione di Federica Stagni, postfazione di Chiara Cruciati, Tamu editore, 2022. [Libro elettronico]

[Edizione originale: Ten Myths About Israel, New York: Verso, 2017]

[dizzymoods]

Hamas statement on the martyr Yahya Sinwar

The martyr leader Yahya Sinwar lived as a mujahid and made his way in the Hamas movement since he was a young man involved in its jihadist activities, then during the 23 years of captivity, he defeated the Zionist jailer. After he was released from prison in the Wafa al-Ahrar deal, he continued his giving, planning and jihad until his eyes were filled with joy on October 7, 2023 AD; the day of the great flood that shook the depths of the entity and exposed the fragility of its alleged security and what followed of epics of legendary steadfastness of our people and the heroism of our victorious resistance, until he attained the most honorable position and the highest medal and ascended to be with his Lord as a martyred witness satisfied with what he had offered in jihad and giving. The martyr leader Yahya Sinwar was a continuation of the caravan of great martyr leaders, following in the footsteps of the martyr founder Sheikh Mujahid Ahmed Yassin, Dr. Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi, al-Muqaddamah, Abu Shanab, Jamal Mansour, Jamal Salim, the martyr leader Ismail Haniyeh and his deputy Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri, and the caravan of martyrs from all the leaders and sons of our people and our nation. We affirm that this blood will continue to light the way for us and constitute an incentive for more steadfastness and perseverance, and that the Hamas movement is continuing with the covenant of the founding leaders and martyrs until the aspirations of our people are achieved for comprehensive liberation, return, and the establishment of the Palestinian state on all Palestinian national soil with Jerusalem as its capital, God willing, and it will turn into a curse on the invading occupiers who invade this land. [...] We are continuing with the approach of Hamas and the spirit of the Al-Aqsa Flood. Its embers will remain burning brightly, pulsing with life in the souls of our people. We are committed to your covenant, Abu Ibrahim, and your banner will not fall, but will remain fluttering high.

PFLP statement

The great leader "Abu Ibrahim" was a model of a national, unifying, and resisting leader—one who would never compromise and who stood at the forefront of the confrontation. Despite the deep sorrow over the loss of this great leader, who never ceased his resistance, we affirm that this loss will only increase our determination and steadfastness to continue along the path of the martyrs in struggle and combat until the last drop of blood is shed for the complete liberation and expulsion of the occupation from all our national Palestinian soil. We will reclaim all the rights stolen from our people and recover the occupied Arab lands in Lebanon and Syria, avenging the blood of our martyrs and leaders.

[40ouncesandamule]

https://web.archive.org/web/20150722184851/https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847

How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas

By Andrew Higgins Updated Jan. 24, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET

Moshav Tekuma, Israel

Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor's bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile's trajectory back to an "enormous, stupid mistake" made 30 years ago.

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.

Last Saturday, after 22 days of war, Israel announced a halt to the offensive. The assault was aimed at stopping Hamas rockets from falling on Israel. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hailed a "determined and successful military operation." More than 1,200 Palestinians had died. Thirteen Israelis were also killed.

Hamas responded the next day by lobbing five rockets towards the Israeli town of Sderot, a few miles down the road from Moshav Tekuma, the farming village where Mr. Cohen lives. Hamas then announced its own cease-fire.

Since then, Hamas leaders have emerged from hiding and reasserted their control over Gaza. Egyptian-mediated talks aimed at a more durable truce are expected to start this weekend. President Barack Obama said this week that lasting calm "requires more than a long cease-fire" and depends on Israel and a future Palestinian state "living side by side in peace and security."

A look at Israel's decades-long dealings with Palestinian radicals -- including some little-known attempts to cooperate with the Islamists -- reveals a catalog of unintended and often perilous consequences. Time and again, Israel's efforts to find a pliant Palestinian partner that is both credible with Palestinians and willing to eschew violence, have backfired. Would-be partners have turned into foes or lost the support of their people.

Israel's experience echoes that of the U.S., which, during the Cold War, looked to Islamists as a useful ally against communism. Anti-Soviet forces backed by America after Moscow's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan later mutated into al Qaeda.

At stake is the future of what used to be the British Mandate of Palestine, the biblical lands now comprising Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Since 1948, when the state of Israel was established, Israelis and Palestinians have each asserted claims over the same territory.

The Palestinian cause was for decades led by the PLO, which Israel regarded as a terrorist outfit and sought to crush until the 1990s, when the PLO dropped its vow to destroy the Jewish state. The PLO's Palestinian rival, Hamas, led by Islamist militants, refused to recognize Israel and vowed to continue "resistance." Hamas now controls Gaza, a crowded, impoverished sliver of land on the Mediterranean from which Israel pulled out troops and settlers in 2005.

When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank.

"When I look back at the chain of events I think we made a mistake," says David Hacham, who worked in Gaza in the late 1980s and early '90s as an Arab-affairs expert in the Israeli military. "But at the time nobody thought about the possible results."

Israeli officials who served in Gaza disagree on how much their own actions may have contributed to the rise of Hamas. They blame the group's recent ascent on outsiders, primarily Iran. This view is shared by the Israeli government. "Hamas in Gaza was built by Iran as a foundation for power, and is backed through funding, through training and through the provision of advanced weapons," Mr. Olmert said last Saturday. Hamas has denied receiving military assistance from Iran.

Arieh Spitzen, the former head of the Israeli military's Department of Palestinian Affairs, says that even if Israel had tried to stop the Islamists sooner, he doubts it could have done much to curb political Islam, a movement that was spreading across the Muslim world. He says attempts to stop it are akin to trying to change the internal rhythms of nature: "It is like saying: 'I will kill all the mosquitoes.' But then you get even worse insects that will kill you...You break the balance. You kill Hamas you might get al Qaeda."

When it became clear in the early 1990s that Gaza's Islamists had mutated from a religious group into a fighting force aimed at Israel -- particularly after they turned to suicide bombings in 1994 -- Israel cracked down with ferocious force. But each military assault only increased Hamas's appeal to ordinary Palestinians. The group ultimately trounced secular rivals, notably Fatah, in a 2006 election supported by Israel's main ally, the U.S.

Now, one big fear in Israel and elsewhere is that while Hamas has been hammered hard, the war might have boosted the group's popular appeal. Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in Gaza, came out of hiding last Sunday to declare that "God has granted us a great victory."

Most damaged from the war, say many Palestinians, is Fatah, now Israel's principal negotiating partner. "Everyone is praising the resistance and thinks that Fatah is not part of it," says Baker Abu-Baker, a longtime Fatah supporter and author of a book on Hamas.

A Lack of Devotion

Hamas traces its roots back to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group set up in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood believed that the woes of the Arab world spring from a lack of Islamic devotion. Its slogan: "Islam is the solution. The Quran is our constitution." Its philosophy today underpins modern, and often militantly intolerant, political Islam from Algeria to Indonesia.

After the 1948 establishment of Israel, the Brotherhood recruited a few followers in Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza and elsewhere, but secular activists came to dominate the Palestinian nationalist movement.

At the time, Gaza was ruled by Egypt. The country's then-president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a secular nationalist who brutally repressed the Brotherhood. In 1967, Nasser suffered a crushing defeat when Israel triumphed in the six-day war. Israel took control of Gaza and also the West Bank.

"We were all stunned," says Palestinian writer and Hamas supporter Azzam Tamimi. He was at school at the time in Kuwait and says he became close to a classmate named Khaled Mashaal, now Hamas's Damascus-based political chief. "The Arab defeat provided the Brotherhood with a big opportunity," says Mr. Tamimi.

In Gaza, Israel hunted down members of Fatah and other secular PLO factions, but it dropped harsh restrictions imposed on Islamic activists by the territory's previous Egyptian rulers. Fatah, set up in 1964, was the backbone of the PLO, which was responsible for hijackings, bombings and other violence against Israel. Arab states in 1974 declared the PLO the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people world-wide.

The Muslim Brotherhood, led in Gaza by Sheikh Yassin, was free to spread its message openly. In addition to launching various charity projects, Sheikh Yassin collected money to reprint the writings of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian member of the Brotherhood who, before his execution by President Nasser, advocated global jihad. He is now seen as one of the founding ideologues of militant political Islam.

Mr. Cohen, who worked at the time for the Israeli government's religious affairs department in Gaza, says he began to hear disturbing reports in the mid-1970s about Sheikh Yassin from traditional Islamic clerics. He says they warned that the sheikh had no formal Islamic training and was ultimately more interested in politics than faith. "They said, 'Keep away from Yassin. He is a big danger,'" recalls Mr. Cohen.

Instead, Israel's military-led administration in Gaza looked favorably on the paraplegic cleric, who set up a wide network of schools, clinics, a library and kindergartens. Sheikh Yassin formed the Islamist group Mujama al-Islamiya, which was officially recognized by Israel as a charity and then, in 1979, as an association. Israel also endorsed the establishment of the Islamic University of Gaza, which it now regards as a hotbed of militancy. The university was one of the first targets hit by Israeli warplanes in the recent war.

Brig. General Yosef Kastel, Gaza's Israeli governor at the time, is too ill to comment, says his wife. But Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who took over as governor in Gaza in late 1979, says he had no illusions about Sheikh Yassin's long-term intentions or the perils of political Islam. As Israel's former military attache in Iran, he'd watched Islamic fervor topple the Shah. However, in Gaza, says Mr. Segev, "our main enemy was Fatah," and the cleric "was still 100% peaceful" towards Israel. Former officials say Israel was also at the time wary of being viewed as an enemy of Islam.

Mr. Segev says he had regular contact with Sheikh Yassin, in part to keep an eye on him. He visited his mosque and met the cleric around a dozen times. It was illegal at the time for Israelis to meet anyone from the PLO. Mr. Segev later arranged for the cleric to be taken to Israel for hospital treatment. "We had no problems with him," he says.

In fact, the cleric and Israel had a shared enemy: secular Palestinian activists. After a failed attempt in Gaza to oust secularists from leadership of the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross, Mujama staged a violent demonstration, storming the Red Crescent building. Islamists also attacked shops selling liquor and cinemas. The Israeli military mostly stood on the sidelines.

Mr. Segev says the army didn't want to get involved in Palestinian quarrels but did send soldiers to prevent Islamists from burning down the house of the Red Crescent's secular chief, a socialist who supported the PLO.

'An Alternative to the PLO'

Clashes between Islamists and secular nationalists spread to the West Bank and escalated during the early 1980s, convulsing college campuses, particularly Birzeit University, a center of political activism.

As the fighting between rival student factions at Birzeit grew more violent, Brig. Gen. Shalom Harari, then a military intelligence officer in Gaza, says he received a call from Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint on the road out of Gaza. They had stopped a bus carrying Islamic activists who wanted to join the battle against Fatah at Birzeit. "I said: 'If they want to burn each other let them go,'" recalls Mr. Harari.

A leader of Birzeit's Islamist faction at the time was Mahmoud Musleh, now a pro-Hamas member of a Palestinian legislature elected in 2006. He recalls how usually aggressive Israeli security forces stood back and let conflagration develop. He denies any collusion between his own camp and the Israelis, but says "they hoped we would become an alternative to the PLO."

A year later, in 1984, the Israeli military received a tip-off from Fatah supporters that Sheikh Yassin's Gaza Islamists were collecting arms, according to Israeli officials in Gaza at the time. Israeli troops raided a mosque and found a cache of weapons. Sheikh Yassin was jailed. He told Israeli interrogators the weapons were for use against rival Palestinians, not Israel, according to Mr. Hacham, the military affairs expert who says he spoke frequently with jailed Islamists. The cleric was released after a year and continued to expand Mujama's reach across Gaza.

Around the time of Sheikh Yassin's arrest, Mr. Cohen, the religious affairs official, sent a report to senior Israeli military and civilian officials in Gaza. Describing the cleric as a "diabolical" figure, he warned that Israel's policy towards the Islamists was allowing Mujama to develop into a dangerous force.

"I believe that by continuing to turn away our eyes, our lenient approach to Mujama will in the future harm us. I therefore suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face," Mr. Cohen wrote.

Mr. Harari, the military intelligence officer, says this and other warnings were ignored. But, he says, the reason for this was neglect, not a desire to fortify the Islamists: "Israel never financed Hamas. Israel never armed Hamas."

Roni Shaked, a former officer of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, and author of a book on Hamas, says Sheikh Yassin and his followers had a long-term perspective whose dangers were not understood at the time. "They worked slowly, slowly, step by step according to the Muslim Brotherhood plan."

Declaring Jihad

In 1987, several Palestinians were killed in a traffic accident involving an Israeli driver, triggering a wave of protests that became known as the first Intifada, Mr. Yassin and six other Mujama Islamists launched Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas's charter, released a year later, is studded with anti-Semitism and declares "jihad its path and death for the cause of Allah its most sublime belief."

Israeli officials, still focused on Fatah and initially unaware of the Hamas charter, continued to maintain contacts with the Gaza Islamists. Mr. Hacham, the military Arab affairs expert, remembers taking one of Hamas's founders, Mahmoud Zahar, to meet Israel's then defense minister, Yitzhak Rabin, as part of regular consultations between Israeli officials and Palestinians not linked to the PLO. Mr. Zahar, the only Hamas founder known to be alive today, is now the group's senior political leader in Gaza.

In 1989, Hamas carried out its first attack on Israel, abducting and killing two soldiers. Israel arrested Sheikh Yassin and sentenced him to life. It later rounded up more than 400 suspected Hamas activists, including Mr. Zahar, and deported them to southern Lebanon. There, they hooked up with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed A-Team of anti-Israeli militancy.

Many of the deportees later returned to Gaza. Hamas built up its arsenal and escalated its attacks, while all along maintaining the social network that underpinned its support in Gaza.

Meanwhile, its enemy, the PLO, dropped its commitment to Israel's destruction and started negotiating a two-state settlement. Hamas accused it of treachery. This accusation found increasing resonance as Israel kept developing settlements on occupied Palestinian land, particularly the West Bank. Though the West Bank had passed to the nominal control of a new Palestinian Authority, it was still dotted with Israeli military checkpoints and a growing number of Israeli settlers.

Unable to uproot a now entrenched Islamist network that had suddenly replaced the PLO as its main foe, Israel tried to decapitate it. It started targeting Hamas leaders. This, too, made no dent in Hamas's support, and sometimes even helped the group. In 1997, for example, Israel's Mossad spy agency tried to poison Hamas's exiled political leader Mr. Mashaal, who was then living in Jordan.

The agents got caught and, to get them out of a Jordanian jail, Israel agreed to release Sheikh Yassin. The cleric set off on a tour of the Islamic world to raise support and money. He returned to Gaza to a hero's welcome.

Efraim Halevy, a veteran Mossad officer who negotiated the deal that released Sheikh Yassin, says the cleric's freedom was hard to swallow, but Israel had no choice. After the fiasco in Jordan, Mr. Halevy was named director of Mossad, a position he held until 2002. Two years later, Sheikh Yassin was killed by an Israeli air strike.

Mr. Halevy has in recent years urged Israel to negotiate with Hamas. He says that "Hamas can be crushed," but he believes that "the price of crushing Hamas is a price that Israel would prefer not to pay." When Israel's authoritarian secular neighbor, Syria, launched a campaign to wipe out Muslim Brotherhood militants in the early 1980s it killed more than 20,000 people, many of them civilians.

In its recent war in Gaza, Israel didn't set the destruction of Hamas as its goal. It limited its stated objectives to halting the Islamists' rocket fire and battering their overall military capacity. At the start of the Israeli operation in December, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told parliament that the goal was "to deal Hamas a severe blow, a blow that will cause it to stop its hostile actions from Gaza at Israeli citizens and soldiers."

Walking back to his house from the rubble of his neighbor's home, Mr. Cohen, the former religious affairs official in Gaza, curses Hamas and also what he sees as missteps that allowed Islamists to put down deep roots in Gaza.

He recalls a 1970s meeting with a traditional Islamic cleric who wanted Israel to stop cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood followers of Sheikh Yassin: "He told me: 'You are going to have big regrets in 20 or 30 years.' He was right."

[workersolidarity]

[The ruins of the Yafa Mosque in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, which was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes two nights ago.]

🇵🇸🇮🇱 🚨 ISRAELI OCCUPATION DESTROYS 192 MOSQUES IN ITS AGGRESSION ON GAZA

Israeli and Palestinian media are reporting the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has destroyed a total of 192 mosques since its aggression on Gaza began on October 7th.

Occupation Forces carried on the historic al-Omari Mosque, built more than 1'400 years ago in the Old City of Gaza two days ago, damaging large parts of it.

The mosque was one of the largest and oldest structures in Gaza and the third largest mosque in Palestine.

Israeli Occupation Forces also destroyed another mosque in the New Nusseirat Camp in central Gaza.

Some of the most prominent mosques destroyed by Israeli air strikes and shelling in the Gaza Strip include the Imad Aql Mosque in northern Gaza, Al-Furqan Mosque in the Bureij camp in central Gaza, Al-Nuseirat Mosque, al-Yarmouk Mosque, the Abbas Mosque, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin Mosque in the Al-Shati camp, Tawbah Mosque in the Jabaliya camp, in addition to three other mosques in Khan Younis, including the al-Amin Mosque.

Occupation Forces have also targeted several Christian churches in addition to the destruction of mosques, with one notable massacre occurring at the Church of St. Porphyrius on October 20th where Christian and Muslim civilians were sheltering in place from occupation bombing.

Similarly, the Baptist Church was also damaged from Israeli bombing and shelling of the Baptist Hospital on October 17th.

#source

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews