While the virulence of the air strikes on the Gaza Strip continues – 320 targets hit in the last few hours – and the scenes in the Strip's hospitals are moving, Israel is trying to persuade Western public opinion that the barbarity of the Gaza attacks Hamas on October 7 legitimize this response.
Hamas plays this game with an asset that gives a lot of itself, gives to charity and cruelty (initially they threatened to execute them if Israel bombed Gaza): 222 hostages, of more than forty different nationalities. Last night, two women, of Israeli nationality, were released for “health problems” and “humanitarian reasons,” which would support the request for patience made by President Joe Biden to the Israeli Prime Minister.
The two released are Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, whose husband remains kidnapped, and Nurit Kooper, 83, kidnapped in the Nir Oz kibbutz. The intermediation was made by Qatar and Egypt, which have a card of prestige and influence in this field. A Hamas spokesman noted that they were going to be released on Friday given their "poor state of health" but "the enemy rejected it."
“We did not destroy B-52s like others in Iraq. And we have been trying for two weeks to get the Palestinian population to take refuge in the south to minimize the victims,” argues Adrian Wolff, author of A Chronology of Israel and very active in the protests against Netanyahu's judicial reform.
At the request of the United States, Israel is delaying the feared ground offensive in Gaza. The White House argues that it would harm the situation of the more than two hundred hostages (an argument that Hamas rewarded last night with the aforementioned release). The United States is also asking for time for more humanitarian aid to enter through the Rafah border crossing, as happened this Monday for the third consecutive day. Although the flow is ridiculous compared to the needs of the two million Gazans, the images of the trucks diminish the Palestinian and its allies' thesis of Palestinian "genocide", an expression that drives Israel's citizens crazy for basic reasons.
A third apparent reason for the caution imposed by Washington is its desire to delimit the war to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, before the ground offensive inflames tempers. Thus, the White House made it very clear this Monday that the United States “does not want to expand the conflict,” alluding to the verbal escalation and regional incidents with Iran in the last 48 hours.
The fight for the story marks these tense days prior to the ground offensive, which no one considers avoidable in Israel no matter how much the voices in Europe urging Israel to a truce increase. “We will attack when it suits us, not when they tell us,” said sources from the Israeli embassy at the United Nations, upset with the growing number of “advice” coming from many capitals and with the impression that the United States is talking to them. to the dictation.
Israel maintains without the slightest doubt that it will attack Gaza to eliminate Hamas members and destroy its infrastructure, so that it cannot reappear. What it has done is moderate the bellicose language and bring it back to two ideas: Hamas is equal to the Islamic State – which was fought without any kind of consideration in Syria and Iraq – and this war is a fight between civilization and barbarism, as the prime minister repeats to the procession of European leaders visiting Israel.
The Israeli army screened this Monday in a barracks on the outskirts of Tel Aviv a sort of 43-minute unedited documentary with images of executioners and victims on the bloody October 7. For those interested in paradoxes and allergic to progress, the atrocities were made evident by both those who killed and those who were going to die, as well as the fixed cameras. Mostly, PGO cameras that the terrorists wore on their heads. For the internal consumption of the dozens of journalists, chilling scenes such as that of the terrorist who throws a grenade at a father and his two children – which coincides with the story told to this journalist on Sunday by Tony, the owner of a cafe in Ashkelon –. The father, in his underwear, calms the detonation and dies instantly while the two children under ten years old cry desperately. One also says he cannot see because of the shrapnel. The terrorist opens the refrigerator, drinks a soft drink and leaves the two children there, helpless. And scenes of blood, mutilated bodies, the degrading treatment of terrified people - some expressions of young people reveal the panic of someone who knows that he is going to be executed as soon as they stop recording - and some conversations that make people cry, like that of the terrorist who phones to his parents to tell them that he has killed at least ten Jews with his bare hands. “I'm a hero!” He says, waiting for his parents to applaud the savagery. And the only thing they beg of him is for him to come home quickly.
The army officer who presented the shocking document admitted that there was debate about whether this seized material should be shown, courtesy of the murderers and victims. They did so this Monday, although without giving copies of the material or even allowing journalists to access it with their cell phones. However, some of these images are already circulating on the networks.
The importance of the story can handle everything, even the truth. This Monday, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, joined the thesis that the Gaza hospital that was bombed and in which more than 500 people died was caused by a missile launched from Gaza, based on expert analysis and evidence. made by the British themselves.
In this struggle to persuade, the Israeli Foreign Minister traveled to speak before the United Nations on Thursday in the company of relatives of several kidnapped people. Hamas has room to release some hostage at that same time, for, of course, humanitarian reasons.
