Seven Hamas military members were killed on November 11, 2018, when they got in a firefight with Israeli commandos on an intelligence gathering operation deep in the Gaza strip. Among the Hamas dead was tunnel commander Nur Barake.
One Israeli commando was killed.
Based on what has been reported, it does not appear that this was a targeted assassination of Hamas operatives.
Hamas and other affiliated terrorist groups have responded by firing several hundred rockets at Israel, and also targeted a bus with a Russian-made guided anti-tank missile. Rockets were fired at a rate that exceeded even the rocket fire that cause the 2014 Gaza war.
Israel is retaliating for the rocket fire, including hitting Hamas intelligence headquarters, located next to a school:
It’s hard to say, as of this writing, if the fighting will escalate into a repeat of the 2014 war. It may not take much. The bus hit by the anti-tank missile was empty, except for the driver, but had carried 50 Israeli soldiers shortly before the attack. Had 50 Israelis been killed in that bus attack, the pressure on Netanyahu to “mow the lawn” (launch an intensive attack on Gaza) would have been unavoidable. Similarly, if any of the rockets causes significant Israeli civilian casualties, or if the rocket fire continues, we would be looking at a repeat of 2014.
One important aspect of the next Gaza war will be the anti-Israel propaganda campaign claiming Israel is causing excessive civilian harm. We see this in every Israeli-Arab conflict, including the 2006 Lebanon War.
It already has started.
The extremist “U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights” already has tweeted about Israel targeting civilian infrastructure:
Hamas TV is used for military communications purposes by Hamas, and weapons development facilities take place at Gaza universities. But those details will get lost in the media coverage.
We know from the 2014 Gaza War that Hamas threatens and intimidates reporters into not reporting Hamas use of civilian facilities, or location of Hamas military installations next to schools. So what you will hear in the media is distorted coverage.
Every now and then, there was real reporting, but the videos and reports usually are not released until the reporters left Gaza:
Since anti-Israel groups already are ramping up the propaganda campaign, it’s important to revisit the media bias in the 2014 Gaza war, something we covered extensively, including these posts:
Here are some of the things that were not reported, but leaked out:
That some information leaked out is the exception that proves the rule. Hamas is extremely effective at intimidating reporters on the ground, and international media coverage is almost uniformly hostile to Israel.
This 2014 Branco cartoon summed it up perfectly:
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