WARNING: MATERIAL BELOW MAY BE DISTURBING. Although I’m not a big booster of trigger warnings, I think this one is appropriate, and if I still taught courses I’d give it to my class. I have not embedded the videos at the bottom but give URL links to them, for they are perhaps the most disturbing material in this post.
Tom Gross is a respected journalist whose bona fides from Wikipedia are these:
Tom Gross is a British-born journalist, international affairs commentator, and human rights campaigner specializing in the Middle East. Gross was formerly a foreign correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph and New York Daily News. He now works as an opinion journalist and has written for both Arab and Israeli newspapers, as well as European and American ones, both liberal and conservative. He also appears as a commentator on the BBC in English, BBC Arabic, and various Middle Eastern and other networks.
His politics are mixed. The German newspaper Die Welt described Gross as “A leftist in the fight against left-wing hypocrisy”. In a profile of Gross in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat in 2019, it was noted that he started as a non-political entertainment and feature journalist before becoming a political commentator. Long involved in discreet behind-the-scenes bridge-building meetings between officials and activists from Israel and nations throughout the Arab world, Gross was the first journalist sympathetic to Israel to be favorably profiled in a Saudi newspaper, at a time when Saudi outreach to Israel was in its infancy.
That’s just to show you that he’s not a one-sided cheerleader for Israel. Nevertheless, he sent out a newsletter to his supporters today that’s not online, but which contains some chilling photos and videos. I don’t think he’d mind if I reproduced all of them. But remember, some are disturbing. All the following is taken verbatim from Gross’s newsletter, which you can’t access online.
Israel’s 9/11
[Description of photo below]
THE HOSTAGES
[Notes by Tom Gross]
At least 130 Israeli civilians (as well as reportedly citizens of Nepal, the US, UK, France and Germany) are now being held hostage by the Islamist terror group Hamas in Gaza.
They include mothers, young children and elderly people, including a 97 year-old who is without her medicines. Some of the abductees have reportedly been raped and others murdered.
Among the hostages is this mother (in the photo above) who was seized at gunpoint from her home in southern Israel along with her terrified daughters, aged 5 and 3.
THE MURDERED
At least 700 Israelis – the vast majority of them civilians – were murdered by Hamas in this weekend’s terror attacks. Some were shot dead in their car, like this young woman in the photo above. Others were pensioners executed in the street, as in the photo below.
With many hundreds in critical condition fighting for their lives in hospital, the death toll is likely to rise considerably – an enormous blow for such a small country.
THE LAST PHOTO
Liora Ben Tsur, who is a friend of several friends of mine writes:
“My dear friends, Sorry to inform you that my mother was murdered just a day after I gave birth yesterday.
“My mum, Marcel Talia, was a sweet lady. She drove in the direction of Dor to give candy to children on the holiday of Simchat Torah when was murdered at Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha.
“She only did good in the world. She was the sweetest lady.
“The good news is that this, the last picture of her, is with her newly born granddaughter, the last fruit of her womb for all of us that she collected into her heart.” (Photo below.)
THE GREAT GRANDMOTHER
This 84-year old great Jewish grandmother was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Saturday, and is now being held hostage by terrorists in Gaza. There are other Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas who are even older.
THE HEROS AND HEROINES
[BELOW]: Eden Levi, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier, died trying to save children from being murdered on Saturday by Hamas terrorists.
THE VIDEOS:
Each of these videos are only a few seconds long:
Since several major western news outlets (notably the NY Times) are obscuring the truth about Hamas, here we are…
Even Isis didn’t do this: Hamas parade and humiliate murdered womanhttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/A3foDqgALaE
Hamas drag people from their cars and murder themhttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/4-TakdY04Oc
A clear war crime by Hamas as it fires a rocket directly into an ambulancehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAW3QPO6vHg
Horrific: Hamas kidnap and drag an Israeli woman by the hair into Gazahttps://youtu.be/0u1gK0AjVeQ
*********
WARNING: Viewer discetion advised
[JAC note: one reader in the comments says this video is beyond horrific, so don’t watch it if it’s going to make you ill. Still, I need to post these because without seeing these one cannot fully appreciate the horror of what’s happening.]
Heavily censored video but still horrific:
Hamas uses axe to murder Jewish man
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CKmEIGGVl-A
Some Western activists and journalists call them “fighters” but as you can see in the video above, these Hamas terrorists are just racist murderers. The version of the video I have posted above has been heavily censored. The raw footage of yesterday’s murder, filmed by Hamas and posted on Palestinian websites, is unbearable to watch.
— Tom Gross
Just remember that many of the demonstrators out in the streets are either implicitly or explicitly justifying things that are documented in this post. It is not a justification for perceiving that you’re “oppressed” or “living in an outdoor cage” to kill or kidnap civilians or kill grandmothers or chop up old men with axes. And remember, this kind of behavior, on a much lesser scale, has been going on for decades. Hamas and other terrorists see no problem with blowing up an Israeli restaurant full of civilian customers.
What’s the goal?! They’re not going to capture Israel. Just to get Israeli prisoners to swap for Hamas prisoners held by Israel?
I think the goal is to kill and terrorize and otherwise hurt as many as they can.
“What’s the goal?”
The Palestinians have been indoctrinated for generations to believe first that they are the only true people of the Levant.
Second, that the greatest virtue to which they can aspire is to kill every Jew in the world.
In this, they are patsies of the Iranians and other Arab hardliners, whose support is conditional on them maintaining that philosophy and acting on it.
History is full of examples of people whose beliefs have led them over the abyss into abject savagery, committing unspeakable atrocities that inevitably result in worsening their own condition.
We could debate human nature endlessly, but I am of the belief that it is much easier to convince people that they are so aggrieved that they must act as savages than it is to convince people to conform to the norms of civilization.
Iran and its activities in this outrage is hardly mentioned but it is obvious where all the munitions are coming from. The US and others clearly imo needs to radically change direction concerning Iran because if not there is a real risk that Israel will take its own action and I for one would not criticize them one iota.
I have doubts that the people of Iran are capable on their own of freeing themselves from this hideous theocracy .
The goal is long-term.
It is to de-legitimize Israel and its people as a nation and in essence, cancel the country so that no other nation stands with it, including the United States.
And consequently erase Israel as an entity along with its people.
One of the goals is probably to intimidate democracies into refusing to provide support for Israel: Do not link yourselves to defending Israel’s survival because if you do we will hate you like we hate Israel. It is in your self-interest to abandon Israel. This is a message they want to send.
A second goal, related to the goal I cited below, is probably to intimidate Israelis into leaving Israel. They want to make Israel a hellish place for anyone who dares to live there.
A third target audience is the Muslim world. That this is one of their motives is a 100%, no doubt about it, certainty: Hamas wants to convince other Muslims that Israel is vulnerable and defeatable so therefore it is worthwhile to participate in their campaign to fight and defeat Israel.
horrible
Axe video – I’d make the warning even stronger for this one. ‘Horrific’ barely begins to describe it. Despite being heavily blurred, I’d say do not watch unless you have not eaten in the last 8 hours, have a very strong stomach or have a bucket handy. This advice is coming from someone who has done 100+ necropsies on large mammals and never been nauseated.
Thanks for the warning…I get disturbed easily, and was close to clicking on the link, but decided against it. After reading your comment, I will definitely pass. Just imagining the horror of such a violent and brutal murder is enough. As it is, I’ll have trouble getting the murdered young woman and senior citizens out of my head…
And to actually celebrate this kind of shit? Goddamn, but humans are sick.
We are heart broken. Everybody I talk to knows somebody who was killed.
Depraved. Heartbreaking.
Thanks for posting Jerry. Everyone needs to see who Hamas really is.
The original version of “Call Out Culture” — physical, brutal, arrogant, savage, and especially so to women. “Someone did us wrong; we get to do this.” The Culture of Dignity & Restraint can’t feed the same lusts.
What’s the end goal? This is it. It’s only beyond belief if history is ignored.
Any fighting aged men in Gaza better had hide themselves if they wish to be alive in a few months. I don’t condone violence for violence’s sake, but I’m willing to bet the IDF is going to be… lenient on collateral damage for a while.
I think the videos should be widely distributed and censored only enough to conceal the identity of the victims.
Those who would benefit most from watching them are the idiot westerners who continue to support Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
The entire world needs to see these pictures and videos. These depraved atrocities cannot go unanswered. Anyone contributing to Hamas directly or indirectly and anyone expressing support for Hamas is personally complicit.
Terrorism is an ever growing business and way of life in this world. Attempting to discover the end result or reason is wasted on me. Some that we have personally been involved with and usually lost would be the Viet Cong, Al Queda, Taliban, ISIS and Hezbolla. Hamas is just another one. Religious or political they are all kind of the same. Violence and killing is what they do. They sometimes take over a weak or failed state. Sometimes they just move into the social culture of a people. They kill and pretend to rule. They are either physically eliminated or just die on the vine. I believe Hamas will have to be eliminated and that will be hard. They always have a support origin that is off limits. This was true of the Viet Cong and the Taliban. For Hamas it is Iran. We lost against the Viet Cong and the Taliban because of the off limits origin. If you are going to declare war and win you have to cut off or eliminate the origin.
+1
On twitter I’m seeing claims (by accounts I often agree with) that the attackers were individuals acting out their own personal biases, and not acting out of religious animus or acting on political motivations. This is delusional. The barbarians who raped, kidnapped, and murdered civilians in southern Israel are Hamas soldiers. Hamas is the elected government of Gaza. The attacks are not just terrorism, they are an act of war and constitute obvious war crimes. The government and army of Israel are fully justified in destroying as much of the Gaza infrastructure as necessary to destroy the Hamas military.
Also seeing Western academics proudly pointing out that the Hamas military attacks are a justified response to repression, and that this is how decolonizing was always meant to work. Not land acknowledgements, but ethnic cleansing.
My question is – why are you looking at X or twitter. The WP today has an article showing that Elon Musk is leading the way on that garbage site with lies and BS. My advice would be stop looking. Elon Musk is BS
I don’t follow Elon on twitter, and he’s not posting the content I’m interested in. I mainly follow a lot of gender-critical accounts for ideas about “trans” and genderist ideology. This weekend I’m seeing a lot of content including videos and images similar to those Jerry posted earlier that don’t show up anywhere else in the mainstream media. That makes twitter worthwhile reading. I couldn’t care less about Musk (or about your opinion of him).
An example wrt decolonizing etc.
A small twitter account comments on the hypocrisy of Hamas-related whataboutery by Gretchen Felker-Martin. Readers here will remember Gretchen as the “trans” horror author who wants to burn JK Rowling alive. Commenter notes that
“Parts of the American far left hold both the following views: If someone tries to settle on your land, rape/murder is justified in order to stop it [and] Borders are illegitimate.”
“[L]eftists basically favor blood-and-soil ethnonationalism for ‘oppressed’ societies [Gaza] and open borders for ‘oppressors.’ [USA southern border].”
I think that analysis is basically correct, and I’m glad to be able to find it on twitter (where Jerry’s own tweets and comments on them also have good insights).
Sorry for over-commenting.
“… that the attackers were individuals acting out their own personal biases, and not acting out of religious animus or acting on political motivations. “ A problem with that analysis is that Hamas leadership routinely promotes and endorses attacks against Israelis, and they link their animus to the Quran and Islam. It is not like Hamas disciplines anyone, or even criticizes anyone, who attacks Israelis. On the contrary, they openly incite and celebrate attacks against Israelis. Hamas armed and trained the attackers. It is untenable to say that these attacks are not a consequence of the Hamas government actively supporting and promoting such attacks and denying that Hamas links their political position with their religion is counter-factual. They definitely do that, they say that the land belongs to Islam and the Islamic people and to not fight to take it back is to shirk Islam.
Certainly decolonization is ethnic cleansing. How could it be anything but? It’s not a metaphor.
Only in one sense could the Hamas goons not be called terrorists: Once they are deemed to be acting under the centralized, organized control of a sovereign state they are not free-lance criminals anymore but become combatants. Combatants committing war crimes in the thousands, to be sure, and fighting in a manner that are, in lesser ways also, not legal under the laws of war: no uniforms to mark themselves out as distinct from civilians, no officers controlling them in the field.
These points are important to how the government of Israel will deal with any it captures alive. If they are state actors, they are prisoners of war, not common criminals the way terrorists are. They can be held in jails until the end of hostilities without the need for Israel’s criminal justice system to put them on trial, ever. Israel would be justified in considering them equivalent to fanatically devoted SS soldiers captured on the battlefield only because they had been seriously wounded, … or suddenly remorseful. They can’t be shot in cold blood or gratuitously mistreated but habeas corpus doesn’t apply to POWs. They can of course be charged individually with war crimes by military field courts under the war powers available to military commanders. Those ones wouldn’t be sent home when Gaza surrenders.
The other work that calling them state combatants instead of terrorists does is to remind the rest of Gaza that it is complicit. If all of Gaza’s movers and shakers, Jew-haters and rocket-makers are helping run this operation, then all of Gaza will have to suffer while Israel destroys its ability to make war against it. Israel can blockade the coast and the land crossings to the enclave — it already has, which is perfectly legal under a state of war — and let the residents go hungry (or, more quickly, get thirsty when the water is cut off) while they reconsider their political choices.
Mike “ On twitter I’m seeing claims (by accounts I often agree with) that the attackers were individuals acting out their own personal biases, and not acting out of religious animus or acting on political motivations. This is delusional. “
You and the accounts you agree with are wrong. Hamas is an acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement”. Note the word “Islamic”. They claim that fighting against and defeating Israel is an Islamic religious obligation.
Thank you Prof Coyne for not subjecting us to horrifically violent images/videos and simply linking them for us to decide what to view. Nothing burns my toast as much as news organizations broadcasting this stuff into peoples’ homes with barely a sentence of forewarning.
I remember the beheading video of Daniel Pearl which I refused to watch then (and still haven’t seen) and thinking why is everyone trying to view this? Having visited Dachau and seen enough war footage and hunting in my youth, I would advise most people not to view violence this extreme. Some things cannot be unseen and I do not think it is psychologically innocuous to view such horrors, nor necessary to satisfy one’s morbid curiosity by being exposed to this stuff. I would make an exception to visiting a concentration camp.
My heart weeps for the Israeli people going through this horror show of violence and to hell with Hamas and their gloating celebration of the murder and abduction of innocent civilians.
The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. The Palestinians who act in the name of Hamas are barbarians, savages, terrorists. That is obvious from the videos that Jerry posted. The media call them “militants,” a disgusting euphemism. They are terrorists.
The goal of this war is genocide against the state of Israel — to be clear, against Jews.
Hamas cannot defeat the state of Israel. So why did they start this war? My guess is that Hamas, along with Hezbollah in the north, and Iran controlling the whole endeavor — that coalition possibly could kill 7 million Jews (better than Hitler even!!) and destroy the state of Israel. I fear that it might not take much for the spark lit by Hamas to ignite a fire from the much stronger terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon. And then….?
Various journalists and news media promote a distorted, rose colored, mistaken description of what Hamas is about. Here is Ismail Haniya talking to an Arab audience: https://camera-uk.org/2020/07/31/hamas-leader-debunks-some-bbc-narratives/