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Hamas Tag

[WAJ Note: Joe Truzman has become for me a must-follow on Twitter and through his GroundBrief newsletter for events happening in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. I wanted to introduce him to readers, so I asked him to write a post about who he is and how he does what he does.] I am fascinated with the Middle East – particularly the security of the State of Israel in relation to its neighboring countries. There is always something happening of interest, whether it’s the militant groups in Gaza and West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iranian proxy militias in Syria or the Islamic State in northern Egypt. Israel is surrounded by enemies putting it in a unique situation where security-related events are constant. This is where I provide material and analysis that you don’t see covered by international news organizations and most news related sources.

Rouzan al-Najjar was a female Palestinian medic who died of a bullet wound during violent protests near the Gaza-Israel border. As we have documented dozens of times, those protests are organized and manipulated by Hamas and other terror groups, who plant their military members in the crowds under cover of burning tires. Dozens of Hamas and other terror members have been killed in the attempts to breach the border with the intent to attack Israeli soldiers and civilians.

The ethnic cleansing of Christians in areas of the Middle East controlled by Islamists continues. The Gaza strip, under the control of Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups like Islamic Jihad, has seen its Christian population dwindle under relentless discrimination. We wrote about the plight of Gaza Christians in August 2014, Gaza ethnic cleansing of Christians:

When news first broke that Nur Barake, a senior Hamas operative responsible for attack tunnel construction, was killed in an Israeli commando operation in Gaza, it was assumed that the operative was the target. In the ensuing firefight, six more Hamas operatives were killed, as well as an Israeli special forces soldier. That soldier, along with a wounded comrade and others in the raid, were extracted from Gaza in a rescue mission under heavy Israeli air cover.

The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned an illicit Iranian-Russian network supplying oil to the Syrian regime. The elaborate oil scheme was used to finance the Islamic terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, a department press release said Tuesday. The covert shipment of Iranian oil was run by the aid of the Russian state-owned company Promsyrioimport. The network delivered millions of barrels of oil to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's regime and hundreds of millions of dollars to Islamic terrorist groups, the Treasury Department disclosed.

This is breaking news, and will be updated as more becomes known. Israeli commandos apparently infiltrated the Gaza strip and assassinated Nur Barakah, a Hamas al-Qassam brigade senior commander in charge of attack tunnels. The attack was confirmed by al-Qassam in a tweet:

Hamas Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades member Daoud Rezeq Eid Jneid is the latest victim of a Palestinian "work accident". A “work accident” is a commonly used term to refer to Palestinian terrorists who die by their own hand when explosives or explosive devices they are handling detonate prematurely. We have covered many such incidents.

While Palestinians in Gaza cry poverty, Hamas devotes enormous resources to building complex and sophisticated attack tunnels. International assistance including Cement, steel, wood and other materials that could be used to build and repair homes, are diverted to military purposes. Each such tunnel uses approximately $3 million in resources.

We have covered several instances where Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist commanders and bomb experts have blown themselves up or otherwise killed themselves in what euphemistically are called "work accidents." Sometimes it clearly was an accident, sometimes there is suspicion that Israel was behind it:

We have covered numerous examples of Palestinian terrorists blowing themselves up during what are called "work accidents." In some of the cases it's clear that it was a self-inflicted martyrdom, in others it's suspicious that perhaps the Israelis had a hand:

Pallywood is the industry of anti-Israel activists who spread fake images, stories and so on meant to portray Israelis in the worst possible light. Often the fakery is by western activists — you don’t have to be Palestinian to engage in Pallywood. In all the dozens of Pallywood instances we have documented, I don’t think any has been as cruel as the claim that dominated headlines recently that a 8-month-old Palestinian infant, Laila Anwar al-Ghandour, was killed by Israeli tear gas during “protests” at the Gaza-Israel border.

We have covered the destruction of numerous Hamas and other terror group attack tunnels leading from the Gaza strip into Israel. Our April 15, 2018, post summarized the history of terror tunnel building, which consumes enormous resources that otherwise could go to improving the lives of Gazans, Israel destroys “longest and deepest” Hamas cross-border Gaza attack tunnel.