Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted he doesn’t know if an Israeli bombing of a tent camp the Israeli military declared a “safe zone” killed Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s senior military commander.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the strike on the al-Mawasi camp killed at least 90 Palestinians, more than half of them being women and children. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had told Palestinian civilians evacuating from Rafah and Khan Younis to take shelter in the camp, which has come under multiple Israeli attacks.
Shaima Farwaneh, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl who witnessed the massacre, described the scene to Mondoweiss. “A leg hit me, and I saw dismembered bodies a few meters away,” she said. “I saw a young child screaming. He lost his lower limbs and was crawling on his hands and screaming. The bombs didn’t stop, and suddenly the boy disappeared. I saw how he vanished before me while we ran and lowered our eyes to the ground, unable to do anything but run.”
Israeli officials said the IDF dropped five 2,000-pound bombs on a “compound” in the camp. The IDF claimed it targeted Deif and Rafa’a Salameh, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade. Hamas has denied the claim, saying it was just an excuse to justify the massacre.
On Saturday night, Netanyahu said he wasn’t “absolutely certain” if Deif and Salameh were killed but said the bombing of the camp was good for Israel either way.
“Just the attempt to assassinate Hamas commanders delivers a message to the world, a message that Hamas’s days are numbered,” Netanyahu said. “And this is what I will be doing next week at the US Congress. I will deliver Israel’s message to the United States and the entire world.”
On Sunday, the IDF also said it wasn’t sure if Deif was killed. “It is still too early to summarize the results of the attack, which Hamas is trying to hide,” said IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi.
Deif is believed to be the architect of the October 7 attack on southern Israel. According to Reuters, he has survived seven previous Israeli assassination attempts, including a 2014 Israeli strike that killed his wife, his seven-month-old son, and his three-year-old daughter.
Because of the assassination attempts, it has long been believed that Deif had been living in the vast tunnel network under Gaza. The majority of the tunnels are still intact, according to US intelligence, giving Deif and Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar plenty of room to remain underground.
Where is the debate on Zionism? This malicious ideology must be outlawed. Ethnic cleansing by genocide is what Zionism is all about.
How does one outlaw an ideology?
Ask the Germans and Japanese
Zionism has completely ruined Jewish Identity.
“Just the attempt to assassinate Hamas commanders delivers a message to the world, a message that Hamas’s days are numbered,” Netanyahu said. “And this is what I will be doing next week at the US Congress. I will deliver Israel’s message to the United States and the entire world.”
Netanyahu talks as if there were 90 mosquitos killed. Actually, that would be an improvement since he didn't even mention that there was indeed 90 people killed. And unfortunately, when he admits to being a mass murderer before congress, he'll be roundly applauded.
Apropos Thomas Matthew Cook, Biden says "There's no place for such violence in this country."
… by which he apparently means it's perfectly fine in Palestine, Ukraine, Somalia, Sudan, ….
Wars, I notice a typo in the article. "Israeli officials said the IDF dropped five 2,000-pound bombs on a 'compound' in the camp." Somehow the word "refugee" fell out from in between "the" and "camp." Instead of saying "the refugee camp," I found the word "refugee" below in the dirt mixed in with Palestinian limbs and heads. It made me totally miss the (AMERICAN) "FIVE 2,000 POUND BOMBS."
"Just the attempt to assassinate Hamas commanders delivers a message to the world"
yeah a message that the "rules based international order" is a crock of ****.
And later this month he's going to deliver a message to the American people that their government works for him, not us.
“It is still too early to summarize the results of the attack, which Hamas is trying to hide,” said IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi.
Only utterly insane people could spew such…
Spot on!
Monster vs monster. Two monstrous evil savages, each with their own hate filled supremacist ideology.
"Deif is believed to be the architect of the October 7 attack on southern Israel."
I wonder why he would do such a thing?
"According to Reuters, he has survived seven previous Israeli assassination attempts, including a 2014 Israeli strike that killed his wife, his seven-month-old son, and his three-year-old daughter."
Liar, everyone knows the conflict started on October 7th! At least everyone who still believes the mainstream media
"I wonder why he would do such a thing?" Because he is a life long terrorists who does not even care about the risks he tock with his family.
Or, he took those risks for the protection and better future of his family.
Don't be so quick to ignore the humanity in all of us – and how it is fundamentally the same in all of us.
I Israel has been assassinating and killing Palestinians for decades but that has never stopped Palestinian resistance. Killing one, ten or all the leaders will not end the resistance.
Maybe not. But it does bring justice to Palestinians who murder citizens of Israel.
How do you define "justice" ?
Dead terrorists.
Ah. Who gets to define "terrorist" ? Whoever is stronger ? Whoever is the victim ?
In the latter case you have just justified the Hamassian attack against "terrorist Israelis" on Oct 7th…!
Caution, Timothy – "terrorist" is one of the most nebulous words in the English language.
Stealing other people's land
It has never brought justice. It brought vengeance and revenge . Israel murdered people who have never killed any Israeli citizen.
5 x2,000lb bombs kind of justice! How many of the victims killed in this insane attack, actually killed any citizens of israel? Maybe none, oh well, that's just zionist/American justice for you, casualties happen.
in the future though, I'll bet lots of survivors of this attack will be doing everything they can to kill Israelis. If you think this kind of justice actually works, then you are beyond any help and are without humanity. Why are you even on here? Isn't there some pro genocide place you can join. Pro genocide is not a antiwar.
Hamas leadership will be hunted down and killed. If Hamas has any concern about their people they would not hide in a crowd and put their people at risk. If you think that Israel can killed Hamas fighters and only Hamas fighters in an urban environment, than you have a lot to learn about combat. Or are you simply an Anti Israel person?
Not anti israeli, simply anti genocide. If they want to kill hamas leaders that’s fine. Its the idea that you would drop 5 2,000 lb bombs in a area designated a safe zone, to maybe kill 1 Hamas leader in a crowd of thousands…that’s not human shields, that is mass murder in the 1st degree. A war crime. The human shield excuse is garbage that only zionist extremists like you actually believe.
When People are tormented, persecuting, murdered, land stolen, rights non-existent, illegally imprisoned, ETC., the ILLEGAL Occupier should expect RESISTENCE. This war is decades old, because of broken promises, LIES, by Western States. Palestine should have been free of Occupation for decades, but the Western States continue to sponsor the arming of the ILLEGAL Occupiers, Genocidal Monsters of Israel.
Israel would achieve nothing by killing Hamas leaders. Another leader would be substituted immediately. They killed Iranian nuclear scientists and their program still up and running full force…!
It hardly matters if they got him or not.
Either way, they got their real goal, which was to kill lots of Palestinians and render the place even more unihabitable.
Either way, they will just keep on killing, without any letup for having killed him, and without any increase in their maximum effort to kill as they do now.
They are murderous monsters, and whether or not they got one particular man is just gaslighting for genocide, an intended and calculated genocide.
Exactly. It hurts my brain, that peope on here, or anywhere, would actually defend genocide. To see zionist claim the right to commit genocide, based on the history of jewish people and the holocaust has to be the epitome of evil.
"Deif has survived … including a 2014 Israeli strike that killed his wife, his seven-month-old son, and his three-year-old daughter."
Consider that statement. Consider what the ASI has created, and IS creating, every time they kill someone. The Hamassians, too – the several hundreds people they killed on Oct 7th…some of their relatives will become IDF zealots and trigger-happy revenge seekers.
Cascade effect. Kill one, create five more. How do you win ? Stop making other people lose.
The crime minister is cheating himself…! His days are numbered and his world is US congress…!
Hamas would stay forever…!
Just make sure you have enough jet fuel in your plane…!
Hamas never reveals their losses. So if he was taken out, only time will tell. Hamas will quickly tell you that 90 persons were killed, but they will not mention how many were Hamas fighters or operational personnel.
paragraph 2:
more than half of them being women and children.
So, you're good with more than half them being women and children? I guess as long as there is a needle buried in all of that hay, then it must be ok to blow it to smithereens with 2,000 lb. bombs. It just boggles the mind that nothing these terrorists do can make you waver from backing them.
"paragraph 2:
more than half of them being women and children." Are you saying the other half were Hamas fighters?
What boggles the mind is how you don't understand how urban combat happens. You simply can not accept that the fact that Hamas chose this battle space. Hamas is not stupid, they knew Israel counter strikes would kill a large number of civilians. Hamas counted on that and have been playing the "genocide" PR card from the very beginning. And you fell for it. As Sinwar said "necessity losses"
No, I'm not saying the other half was Hamas fighters. That's you assuming anyone other than women and children are Hamas fighters when there were only 30,000 amongst the 2.3 million people that were living in Gaza before Israel's slaughter. And your take on urban combat is ridiculous. Leveling entire city blocks, displacing the entire population (over and over) and creating a man-made famine is not urban combat in any sense. And whether Hamas knew Israel would attempt to make the strip uninhabitable and kill anything that moves doesn't justify Israel doing so. The only reason Hamas is able to play the genocide card is because it's an attempt at genocide. But somehow, in that thick head of yours, you think that justifies Israel's response. It doesn't.
So does Israel.
That is not true.
I feel so helpless and depressed that my tax dollars are being used to finance this horrible atrocity and ashamed that the mainstream press is treating it as just like another sport. There seems to be nothing I can do to stop it. I will vote for Jill Stein, but with the DNC and RNC running the show, it will only be a small protest. I write to congressional representatives but they apparently are owned by the AIPAC and so they keep on voting for more weapons and supporting of Israel.
If Trump wins, Tony Blinken is toast. That's reason enough to support him.
That would be good, but Trump may do enough damage to climate change policy to make the process irreversible. That would be really bad!
It was never about killing a HAMAS commander- it was all about killing more Gazan civilians and painting it as something different. Typical Israeli bait-and-switch shenanigans.
There's almost zero chance that any Hamas commander has emerged from the tunnels, so there's almost zero chance that any have been even injured, let alone killed.
This is like the US claiming it killed any number of "leaders of this or that" over the years only to have them turn up alive and well later – it's pure PR BS for the stupid masses.
But, boy, they killed a sh*t load of Palestinian women and children. Such a moral army. /s