Remains of Hostage from 2014 In Exchange For 200 Terrorists Offer For Israel To Mull Over

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

The remains of IDF officer Lt. Hadar Goldin were returned to Israel by Hamas on Sunday. Goldin fell in battle and was abducted in 2014 during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. He was 23. Goldin was formally identified and will now be buried. He left behind parents, a sister, two brothers, and a fiancée.  Hamas's armed wing had said on Sunday that it would hand over Lt Goldin's body as part of a ceasefire deal.  Hamas has now returned all 20 living hostages, and 24 out of 28 deceased hostages under the first phase of the deal.

The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip governed by Hamas since 2007 and occupied by Israel since 1967.

By July 20, To date, 66 soldiers have been killed during Operation Protective Edge. Six civilians have also been killed. The operation, which began on July 8, gave way to an open-ended ceasefire on August 26, 2014.Its goal, as set by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was to attain sustain quiet for the citizens of Israel and undermine Hamas’s terrorist capacity. Netanyahu said on August 27 that he was confident the latter had been achieved but was “not certain” yet about the former. If Hamas restarted the conflict, he said, Israel would hit back “seven times as hard.”

• Triggering Event: The escalation followed the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers (Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah) in the West Bank by Hamas-affiliated militants.  The incident, known as the 2014 kidnapping and murders of Israeli teenagers, occurred on the evening of June 12, 2014. The three students were hitchhiking in the Gush Etzion area of the West Bank when they were abducted. Following a massive 18-day search operation by the Israel Defense Forces (dubbed "Operation Brother's Keeper"), their bodies were found in a shallow grave near the town of Halhul on June 30, 2014.  Israeli authorities identified two Hamas members from Hebron, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisha, as the primary perpetrators. They were killed in a standoff with Israeli security forces in September 2014. Another man, Hussam Qawasmeh, was arrested for orchestrating and financing the attack and was sentenced to three life terms in prison. 
  
                    Rocket fire from Gaza in Israel
• Rocket Fire: In the lead-up to the operation, Hamas and other militant groups intensified rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli cities and towns, reaching as far north as Haifa, placing millions of Israelis within range of fire and creating a constant threat to civilian life.
• Operation Protective Edge was a 50-day military operation launched by Israel in the Gaza Strip from July 8 to August 26, 2014. In Jewish and Israeli history, the operation is viewed as a defensive war to protect Israeli citizens from incessant rocket fire and to destroy a network of offensive cross-border tunnels built by the Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza. Defensive Justification: The Israeli government and the majority of the Jewish public perceived the operation as an act of self-defense, a necessary measure to restore security and stability for its citizens, a right they argue every sovereign nation possesses. IDF tried to stop what they are fighting against today.  

The return of Goldin comes as Hamas tries to obtain the release of around 200 of its terrorists trapped in tunnels in Rafah, on the Israeli side of the yellow line. Jared Kushner, representing the U.S., is reportedly pressuring Israel to provide the terrorists with safe passage instead of eliminating them. 

The return of Goldin gives Prime Minister Netanyahu some political room to accept a negotiated outcome of the situation. Turkey said yesterday that it is working to secure safe passage for 200 "civilians" (which are Hamas terrorists) trapped in Rafah, after being instrumental in orchestrating the release of Goldin. Hamas has said that its fighters will not surrender.

Understand this.  There are very few Jews in the whole world, about 14 million, with about 6 million making up Israel and 6 million in the USA and about 2 million throughout the rest of the world. Muslims make up approximately 24% to 26% of the world's population, with some estimates for 2025 being around 24.1% and others for 2020 being 25.6%. This figure represents over 2 billion people globally, making Islam the world's second-largest religion after Christianity. We know there is no end to terrorists popping up no matter how many of them died in battle with Israel, who does everything possible to keep their own soldiers safe, thus a smaller number usually killed in battle. Hamas actually seems to want a high number of their own killed in order to make Israel look bad !  Israel is fighting against a people wanting to destroy them and their country.  It's not going to happen. Israel's motto is LIFE, to Life, l'chaim !  If someone wants to kill them, they defend themselves.  The enemy of Israel shouldn't mess with them, or they will get themselves killed. 

Today is the USA's Veteran's Day.  Let's remember all these veterans who have fought for our Democracies in order to protect us.       

New Revealed Facts About Hamas and ISIS Plans Against Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

You'd think that the Palestinian Gazans would have heard or at least felt the vibrations of the electric jackhammers drilling 20 feet below the surface in creating their tunnels leading out to Israel for attacks.  Inside them were found thousands of weapons like Russian anti-tank missiles, explosive devices, tranquilizers, handcuffs, syringes and ropes.  One can only imagine what they would be used for once a terrorist popped up in Israel. 

 They were planning attacks for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur this year; September 24, 25, 26 and the 3rd and 4th of October.  One remembers that Yom Kippur was the date of the October 6, 1973 war.  This was when hoping to win back territory lost to Israel during the third Arab-Israeli war, in 1967, Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a coordinated attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.  This is our day of fasting for 25 hours, even to be without water, and ask G-d's forgiveness of our sins.  
                                                                             

Some tunnels were deep enough to hold vehicles.  They were reinforced with concrete made on site in workshops next to the tunnels.  They were command centers, armories filled with weapons, rocket-launcher hiding sites and  also acted as rooms to move and hid fighters during urban combat.

The tunnels were dug in parallel pairs with many shafts to the surface for many entry points.  In Gaza's center, the labyrinth allowed fighters to move unseen between homes and alleys.

Areas of Gazan cities were laced with hundreds of booby-traps.  Brigadier-General Mickey Edelstein, commander of the IDF Gaza Division, said that in a single street in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, the IDF found booby-traps in 19 out of 28 homes.

"On 1 August 2014, Hamas militants emerging from a tunnel attacked an Israeli patrol in Rafah killing 2 Israeli soldiers. Israel at first believed that the militants had abducted Lieutenant Hadar Goldin and were holding him, but Israel later determined that Goldin had also been killed."

Three IDF soldiers entered a building marked as a UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. When they entered they were killed by an explosive device.

Hamas's largest known military control center was in the basement of a hospital.  IDF had to engage in very limited ground combat because the whole area was booby-trapped with explosives, ambushes and civilians that were used as targets by Hamas.

The Palestinian terrorists planned these tunnels for years and wanted to use them to hold kidnapped IDF soldiers. said Brigadier-General Moti Almoz.  Hamas wanted strategic blows more than psychological ones from just kidnapping, though.  They were out for jihad.

Their budget spent 40% for war preparations. $10 million was spent on tunnels.  800 tons of concrete was used on them.   Hamas worked with Iran in this.  They worked towards a coordinated attack of about 15,000 Hamas terrorists trained in Gaza.  From 2012, they have doubled their rocket arsenal.  They had hundreds of missiles with the range to reach Jerusalem and Tel Aviv according to Brigadier-General Itai Brun.  In March, they had bigger missiles on their way coming from Iran and sourced in Syria.  Their ship was intercepted by the Israeli Navy special forces in the Red Sea.  Now do people understand why ships have to be searched by Israel?

A mass terror attack has been averted by Operation Protective Edge.  Though about 2,000 Palestinians were killed in the Operation, they were all warned to get out of the way before the actual Israeli attacks.  Due to their leadership, they died.  It was not the plan of Israel to have this happen.  One cannot begin to comprehend the extent of Hamas behavior.

"The tunnels into Israel were constructed using the expertise of the Rafah families who have specialized in digging tunnels into Egypt for commerce and smuggling."  

Now tunnels have been discovered in Judea and Samaria.  Some were stocked with bomb-making materials.  when John Kerry suggested last week that Israel must agree to a ceasefire including the end of the operation to find and destroy tunnels, it seemed to be a preposterous idea.  He was so far behind the known facts.

Israeli author Amos Oz is a famous pacifist in Israel.  Even he condemned Hamas for creating warfare in a civilian population of Gaza.  Naftali Bennett is the leader of the Jewish Home party and Israel's Economy Minister.  He said that "without the ground operation, we would have woken up one day to an Israeli 9/11."  Thank goodness for miracles like Operation Protective Edge which allowed Israel to discover the workings of Hamas.  

The Media is not helping the situation.  They cover anything that smacks of finding fault with Israel, no matter what is going on.  Since about 2,000 Palestinians died in the operation of which about 1,000 were Hamas people, Israel is blamed.  Especially hard on Israel has been the death of so many children.  People forget it was Hamas who made sure these Palestinians suffered death for this very reason, to blame Israel for attacking.  The media forgets all this and just blames Israel for defending itself, making out that they were the aggressors just to be aggressive for no reason.

"In 2013-2014, Egypt's military has destroyed most of the 1,200 smuggling tunnels which were used to smuggle food, weapons and other goods into Gaza."  Israel has known about these tunnels and the money the Palestinians were making from them, even becoming millionaires, but were taken by surprise at the immensity of their digs in using them in warfare against Israel.  .  Israel restricted the importation of construction materials into the strip, to prevent their use for military purposes by Hamas. As a result, concrete and other construction materials were some of the main goods smuggled through the tunnels "

Israel also seems to be the only country worth reporting about.. In people's minds, Jews can do no right, therefore anti-Semitism is running rampant.   No one wants to bring to light the Muslims killing Muslims in Iraq and Syria.  In Syria alone there have been 120,000 and 170,000 people killed including more than 11,000 children.  The violence has gone into Iraq with massacres of prisoners by jihadis from IS.  CNN finally showed a video of a long single line of Iraq soldiers who were prisoners of ISIS who were shot and killed, Nazi style, after the 50 days of war in Gaza.

Sydney, Australia had chants of demonstrators waving the black flag of ISIS chanting, "Palestine is Muslim land...Jew and Christian will not stand...From Lakemba to Gaza...You can never stop Islam.  Do those people realize that if one is not of the Salafist Muslims they can be killed?  Imams in Iraq who were Sunnis have been killed by ISIS.  The Iraqi soldiers were Sunnis.  Stop Islam?  Stop one group of Islam who are against all the rest.  Evidently they want a caliphate with very few people in it to rule.  They're killing just about everyone who crosses their paths.  How do the terrorists know they aren't next?  

Resource:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_tunnel_warfare_in_the_Gaza_Strip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip_smuggling_tunnels
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/180007/concrete-facts-about-hamas
http://heavy.com/news/2014/07/hamas-gaza-tunnels-israel-palestinians-rockets/
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/7/gaza-tunnels-hamasisraelidf.html
Unknown source through friends.