On June 8th, Israeli forces conducted a daring rescue of four hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. The terrorists hid their captives inside two homes smack in the middle of a civilian neighborhood inhabited by Palestinian families.

Firefights ensued as Hamas fighters shot at the rescuers and the rescued hostages. A leader of the rescue mission lost his life trying to save innocent Israeli civilians.

Scores of Gazans caught in the crossfire were killed but it is unknown how many were civilian bystanders as opposed to the terrorists trying to stop the rescue.

The Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry’s claim that at least 274 Palestinians died during the rescue operation exaggerates, as usual, the Palestinian death toll to score propaganda points meant to sway the international community and liberal media further against Israel.

From the United Nations to anti-Israel media outlets, Israel is blamed for the loss of Palestinian civilian lives during the rescue operation.

Israel’s critics claim that the deaths could have been avoided if the Jewish state had only stuck to negotiating with Hamas and made more concessions to secure the release of the hostages.

However, it was Hamas’ decision to seize the hostages in the first place and then imprison them in residential buildings and in tunnels constructed under civilian neighborhoods.

Some of the hostages were reported to have died in captivity. The four hostages who were rescued lived every day in captivity in fear for their lives.

Instead of allowing these four hostages (out of the more than one hundred hostages still in captivity) to go free unharmed, Hamas used heavy fire including rocket-propelled grenades to stop their escape.

Fortunately, the terrorists failed and the rescued hostages are reunited with their families and friends.

The terrorists acted with callous indifference to the lives of the Palestinian people residing in the civilian neighborhood from which the four hostages had to be rescued. Moreover, many Palestinian civilians themselves are not so innocent.

As Robert Spencer noted in his June 11th Frontpage article, “it is clear that a good many of those ‘civilians’ played an active role in the holding of the hostages.”

Indeed, one such “civilian” killed during the rescue operation was a so-called “journalist” for the Palestine Chronicle and Al Jazeera who supported Hamas and housed three of the rescued hostages.

It is preposterous to expect Israel to just rely on negotiating with the same terrorist group that has vowed to annihilate the Jewish state and kill as many Jews as possible.

The use of pinpointed military force to free some hostages while they are still alive is a reasonable option that is fully consistent with international law.

Hamas and their fellow terrorists are the genocidaires to whom protesters who are sincerely concerned about the mounting number of civilian deaths in Gaza should direct their anger.

All Hamas needs to do to end the war is to release all the remaining hostages and agree to the verifiable dismantling of its military capabilities that threaten the security of the Israeli people.

But Hamas’ military leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, wants to fight Israel to the finish instead if he does not get his way.

“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” Sinwar said in one of his messages to other Hamas leaders, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

In another message, Sinwar characterized Palestinian civilian deaths as “necessary sacrifices.” Sinwar views the war with Israel in apocalyptic terms, comparing it to a seventh-century battle in Karbala, Iraq in which the grandson of Muhammad was killed.

“We have to move forward on the same path we started,” Sinwar reportedly wrote. “Or let it be a new Karbala.”

Sinwar demands that Israel completely and unconditionally withdraw all its forces from Gaza.

He is counting on the rising number of civilian deaths in Gaza to increase the pressure on Israel from the Biden administration and the international community at large to end the war on Hamas’ terms.

Recall that Israel had unilaterally withdrawn all Israelis from Gaza back in 2005, only to face relentless attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israel’s citizens that culminated in the horrific massacres, rapes, and kidnappings on October 7th.

Israel would be committing national suicide if it agreed to leave Sinwar’s terrorist organization intact to conduct more genocidal attacks against Israeli civilians that will be worse than the horrors of October 7th.

The death of the Jewish state is precisely what the pro-Hamas agitators chanting “from the river to the sea” are demanding.

On June 8th, thousands of depraved pro-Hamas agitators encircled the White House, maliciously accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians civilians in Gaza with arms provided by the United States.

Banners were displayed calling for jihad and martyrdom. Some agitators threw objects at a National Park Service ranger and defaced statues on federal grounds. Mob participants suffered no consequences for their unlawful behavior.

Two days later, a mob of Hamas supporters chanting “intifada revolution” took to the streets in lower Manhattan waving a banner that proclaimed, “Long Live October 7.”

These cheerleaders for the ruthless terrorists, some carrying Hamas and Hezbollah flags, were targeting an exhibit honoring the defenseless young people attending a music festival for peace who were viciously attacked on October 7th. Some in the mob clashed with the police.

One of the virulently anti-Semitic agitators told Jews attending the exhibit that he wished “Hitler was still here – he woulda wiped you all out.”

The pro-Hamas mobs’ lust for Jewish blood is pure evil. They celebrate their terrorist ‘heroes’ for slaughtering innocent civilians in Israel, ranging from babies to the elderly. Hamas’ shills insist that the terrorists can do no wrong.

They view Israel and the United States as the oppressors, the Palestinians as the oppressed victims, and the terrorist murderers as brave “resistance” fighters.

Their blood libel includes the charge that the blood of the Palestinian civilians killed or injured during the war in Gaza that Hamas started is entirely on the hands of Israel and its supporters.

It makes no difference to these useful idiots that Hamas uses Palestinian civilians in Gaza as human shields and as pawns for the terrorists’ propaganda purposes.

The blood of the Palestinian civilians killed or wounded during the Gaza war and of the civilians the terrorists murdered in Israel on October 7th is on the hands of Yahya Sinwar and the terrorist killers he commands.

The pro-Hamas mobs who cheer on all this mayhem and make excuses for the terrorists are guilty as well for aiding and abetting the terrorists’ monstrous acts.

Image - Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90