Yossi Schwartz ISL( RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 28.12.2025
Recently, Hamas published an account of the war in Gaza. It states, among others:
“The battle of the Palestinian people against occupation and colonialism did not start on Oct. 7, but started 105 years ago, including 30 years of British colonialism and 75 years of Zionist occupation. In 1918, Palestinians owned 98.5% of the land in Palestine and accounted for 92% of the population. While the Jews, who were brought to Palestine in mass immigration campaigns in coordination between the British colonial authorities and the Zionist Movement, managed to seize control of not more than 6% of the land in Palestine and to be 31% of the population before 1948.”
[…] “According to official figures, in the period between January 2000 and September 2023, the Israeli occupation killed 11,299 Palestinians and injured 156,768 others, the great majority of them civilians.“
“On Oct. 29, 2021, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan insulted the UN system by tearing up a report for the UN Human Rights Council during an address at the General Assembly, and threw it in a dustbin before leaving the podium. Yet, he was appointed in the following year, 2022, to the post of vice-president of the UN General Assembly.”
“Despite the fact that the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) stipulated the establishment of a Palestinian independent state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; “Israel” systematically destroyed every possibility to establish the Palestinian state through a wide campaign of settlements’ construction and Judaization of the Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. The backers of the peace process after 30 years realized that they had reached an impasse and that such a process had catastrophic results on the Palestinian people.”
[…] “The practices of the extremist and right-wing Israeli government, which are practically taking steps towards annexing the entire West Bank and Jerusalem into the so-called “Israel’s sovereignty” amid plans on the Israeli official table to expel Palestinians from their homes and areas.
♦ The thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails who are experiencing deprivation of their fundamental rights as well as assaults and humiliations under the direct supervision of the Israeli fascist minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
♦ The unjust air, sea, and land blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip for over 17 years.
♦ The expansion of the Israeli settlements across the West Bank is at an unprecedented level, as well as the daily violence perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians and their properties.
♦ The seven million Palestinians living in extreme conditions in refugee camps and other areas who wish to return to their lands, and who were expelled 75 years ago.
♦ The failure of the international community and the complicity of superpowers to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
What was expected from the Palestinian people after all of that? To keep waiting and to keep counting on the helpless UN! Or to take the initiative in defending the Palestinian people, lands, rights, and sanctities; knowing that the defense act is a right enshrined in international laws, norms, and conventions.”
This document also tells what really happened on October 7, 2023:
” 1. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 targeted the Israeli military sites, and sought to arrest the enemy’s soldiers to pressure the Israeli authorities to release the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails through a prisoner exchange deal. Therefore, the operation focused on destroying the Israeli army’s Gaza Division, the Israeli military sites stationed near the Israeli settlements around Gaza.”
2. “Avoiding harm to civilians, especially children, women, and elderly people, is a religious and moral commitment by all the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters. We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people. In the meantime, the Palestinian fighters were keen to avoid harming civilians, even though the resistance did not possess precise weapons. In addition, if there was any case of targeting civilians, it happened accidentally and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces”.
“ Maybe some faults happened during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza.
As attested by many, the Hamas Movement dealt positively and kindly with all civilians who had been held in Gaza. It sought from the earliest days of the aggression to release them, and that’s what happened during the week-long humanitarian truce, where those civilians were released in exchange for releasing Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails. 4. What the Israeli occupation promoted of allegations that the Al-Qassam Brigades on Oct. 7 were targeting Israeli civilians are nothing but complete lies and fabrications. The source of these allegations is the Israeli official narrative, and no independent source has proved any of them. It is a well-known fact that the Israeli official narrative has always sought to demonize the Palestinian resistance, while also legitimizing its brutal aggression on Gaza.
Here are some details that go against the Israeli allegations:
♦ Video clips taken on that day – Oct. 7 – along with the testimonies by Israelis themselves that were released later, showed that the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters didn’t target civilians, and the Israeli army and police killed many Israelis due to their confusion.
♦ It has also been firmly refuted that the lie of the “40 beheaded babies” by the Palestinian fighters, and even Israeli sources denied this lie. Many Western media outlets, unfortunately, adopted this allegation and promoted it.
♦ The suggestion that the Palestinian fighters committed rape against Israeli women was entirely denied, including by the Hamas Movement. A report by the Mondoweiss news website on Dec. 1, 2023, among others, said there is a lack of any evidence of “mass rape” allegedly perpetrated by Hamas members on Oct. 7 and that Israel used such allegation “to fuel the genocide in Gaza.”
♦ According to two reports by the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Oct. 10 and the Haaretz newspaper on Nov. 18, many Israeli civilians were killed by an Israeli military helicopter, especially those who were in the Nova music festival near Gaza, where 364 Israeli civilians were killed. The two reports said the Hamas fighters reached the area of the festival without any prior knowledge of the festival, where the Israeli helicopter opened fire on both the Hamas fighters and the participants in the festival. The Yedioth Ahronoth also said the Israeli army, to prevent further infiltrations from Gaza and to prevent any Israelis from being arrested by the Palestinian fighters, struck over 300 targets in areas surrounding the Gaza Strip.
♦ Other Israeli testimonies confirmed that the Israeli army raids and soldiers’ operations killed many Israeli captives and their captors. The Israeli occupation army bombed the houses in the Israeli settlements where Palestinian fighters and Israelis were inside in a straightforward application of the Israeli army’s notorious “Hannibal Directive,” which clearly says that “better a dead civilian hostage or soldier than taken alive” to avoid engaging in a prisoner swap with the Palestinian resistance.
♦ Furthermore, the occupation authorities revised the number of their killed soldiers and civilians from 1,400 to 1,200, after finding that 200 burnt corpses had belonged to the Palestinian fighters who were killed and mixed with Israeli corpses. This means that the one who killed the fighters is the one who killed the Israelis, knowing that only the Israeli army possesses military planes that killed, burned, and destroyed Israeli areas on Oct. 7.
♦ The Israeli heavy aerial raids across Gaza that led to the death of nearly 60 Israeli captives also prove that the Israeli occupation does not care about the life of their captives in Gaza.
We do not doubt that this is an accurate report, but it is also possible that the masses who broke from Gaza, full of anger, killed some civilians and also raped some women. This happens in all struggles for freedom.
Amira Hess, a well-known liberal journalist in Israel, wrote an article accusing Hamas of genocide and the destruction Israel has carried out in Gaza. She wrote[i]:
“Conversations between friends and family, even loyal Hamas supporters in Gaza, raise questions and questions about the attack and the considerations and calculations behind it. And even they don’t get answers to their questions. Those who are not supporters of Hamas in Gaza, and who demand that he do some soul-searching, will not find even a hint of it in the text. They will find in it “a disregard for their blood and suffering […] A blatant disregard for reality, an attempt to convince people that the greatest disaster in the modern history of Palestine and Gaza was a ‘national necessity’ and a historic achievement,” wrote one Gaza resident who remained there.
The residents of Gaza do not forget for a moment that it was Israel that chose, out of policy, to kill their relatives and friends and neighbors and to destroy their homes and the entire Gaza Strip. But at the same time, they also demand that Hamas be held accountable and take responsibility, not just for their own laurels for what Hamas has described in the text as the “glorious crossing” (of the border), and for the 20 “most prominent achievements” (i.e., in his view, there is more) of the October 7 attack. Eight of the documents. Among the achievements are Israel’s isolation, its internal disintegration, and the thwarting of the normalization process.”
This is an old-fashioned Zionist argument that the Palestinians are to blame for what Israel is doing to them. According to this reasoning, the Palestinians rejected the partition plan, and the expulsion was a necessary step for Israel to establish the state. The Palestinians are the ones who terrorize the citizens of the State of Israel, who are innocent of any crime. However, this argument is nothing more than a set of lies.
In 1947, at the time of the Partition Plan, the number of Jews living in the Land of Israel was 600,000, and the number of Palestinians was 1,200,000. The Zionists controlled 6% of the land of Palestine. Despite this, according to the plan, the Zionists received 55% of Palestine. Ben-Gurion did say that he recognized partition, but he prepared the Israelis for occupation and the prevention of a Palestinian state. In this, he received the support of Stalin, who sent heavy weapons and volunteers to Israel.
Unlike Gaza, there was no uprising in the West Bank against the occupation; has that prevented Israel from carrying out horrific terrorism?
Before October 7, 2023, the issue of Palestine was largely ignored. The courageous resistance of Hamas fighters and the atrocities committed by Israel have led to a massive movement of support for the Palestinian people, and to Israel’s growing isolation in the world. The resistance to the Zionist army, which is armed with enormous destructive tools, has been greatly appreciated, since to this day Israel has not succeeded in defeating Hamas and disarming it. Besides the destruction and killing, Israel has not been able to achieve any of its declared goals. Today, Israel is a country in disintegration, and even the support of the American Republican Party is not assured. The only thing that Amira Hess proves is that no Israeli liberal should be trusted.
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2025-12-26/ty-article/.premium/0000019b-5734-df6b-a7db-f737ddc60000