Hamas flees question about killing non-combatants

 Daily Beast:

A senior Hamas official fled an interview on Thursday after a BBC correspondent asked him how the terrorist organization could justify killing Israeli civilians in their sleep.

“I want to stop this interview,” Hamas political bureau member Ghazi Hamad muttered before storming off.

Sitting down with BBC Middle East correspondent Hugo Bachega, Hamad was repeatedly pressed on the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks that resulted in over 1,400 Israeli deaths, most of which were civilians. This also included Hamas militants paragliding over the border, surrounding a music festival, and murdering over 250 concertgoers.

According to Hamad, though, the hundreds of Israeli residents killed by Hamas gunmen was unintentional and merely the result of the group attacking military targets. Bachega, however, wasn’t buying the Hamas spokesperson’s spin.

“You say this was a military operation but the result of it was that hundreds of civilians were killed,” the BBC journalist pushed back.

“Yes, because that area is very wide and there are many people there, and there was clashes and confrontation,” Hamad insisted.

“It’s not confrontation, you invaded houses,” Bachega retorted.

“I don’t have details [of] what happened inside,” Hamad replied. “But I can tell you we didn’t have any intention or decision to kill civilians.”

Regardless of Hamad’s objections, overwhelming evidence has emerged that Hamas instructed its militants to deliberately murder civilians and take others captive, including young children. Earlier this week, the Israeli government showed 200 members of the foreign press a 43-minute presentation that included scenes of decapitation and torture, gathered from Hamas terrorists’ bodycam feeds.

“How do you justify killing people as they sleep? You know, families? How do you justify killing hundreds of people in—,” Bachega wondered before Hamad interjected, deciding it was time to leave.

“I want to stop this interview. I want to stop this interview,” the Hamas official meekly stated before ripping off his mic.
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I think the answer is that he cannot justify the murder and hostage-taking of non-combatants.  It was done to terrorize Israelis and use the hostages as bargain chips against retaliation.  I think they also did it because they also feared combat with Israeli troops.  

See, also:

Hamas official calls for stronger intervention by regional allies in its war with Israel

A senior Hamas official told The Associated Press on Thursday that the Palestinian militant group had expected stronger intervention from Hezbollah in its war with Israel, in a rare public appeal to its allies in the region.

Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas' decision-making political bureau, said in an interview that “we need more” from allies, including Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, in light of an Israeli air campaign that Palestinian health officials say has killed more than 7,000 people, mostly civilians, in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The relentless Israeli bombardment of Gaza came in response to a brutal Oct. 7 surprise attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel, many of them civilians. More than 200 people were dragged back to Gaza as hostages.
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He criticized what he said was hypocrisy of the international community, which has widely condemned the killing of Israeli civilians and atrocities committed in the initial Hamas attack but, in Hamad's view, had given Israel a “license to kill” civilians in Gaza in response.
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There is a huge difference between targeting non-combatants and those killed as collateral damage because they failed to leave the war zone when warned.  While some civilians did flee after the Israeli warning of the counterattack some either chose to stay are were not allowed to leave by Hamas.

And:

The New York Times can’t stop lying about Israel

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Today, no editor has taken the fall for the Times’ shoddy reporting around the explosion at Gaza’ al-Ahli Hospital on October 17th – and there appears little indication that anyone will. The allegation, which was quickly cast into doubt, has since been discredited by everyone from Pres. Biden to the Times itself.
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This week, however, the Times’ offered no such conditions or stridency when explaining their failings in Gaza – a situation that truly was “life-or-death” in importance, caused Pres. Biden to miss a crucial summit with King Abdullah of Jordan and resulted in an explosion of mob violence across the Islamic world, much of it focused toward American embassies.

“Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation,” they wrote earlier this week. Neither do they say what steps are being taken to ensure similar blunders are prevented – particularly if and when Israel’s ground assault into Gaza commences and accurate reporting becomes far more difficult, yet far more essential. Unlike Conde Nast, the Times, which tallied an 11 per cent increase in revenue last year, can certainly afford it. The problem, most likely, is whether their woke staffers will allow it.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal – whose parent company owns the New York Post where I am employed as an editor – produced a comprehensive video package detailing the true story behind the horrific blast which clearly came from within Gaza.

There is little doubt that truth, ethics, veracity and integrity are still standard at The New York Times and other premium legacy media brands – their overall output confirms it. But the standards demonstrated during the Israel-Gaza conflict display the byproducts of a decade of decadence that has allowed simmering antisemitism to boil over into outright journalistic misconduct.
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And:

 Eliminating Hamas is a legitimate Israeli war aim backed by international law

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A sovereign state has a right to self-defence as a matter of international law. In circumstances where Hamas has performed, and continues to pursue, a campaign of genocidal intent, it is unquestionable that it is a legitimate war aim of Israel to eliminate them. Hostilities did not cease when the terrorist incursion ended with the last perpetrator on Israeli soil captured or killed. Hamas continues to fire hundreds of rockets into Israel daily.

Hamas’s continuing aim and objective is the elimination of Israel and Jews. It is not just on October 7 when Hamas decided this. It is a terrorist organisation whose own Covenant commits it to the genocide of Jews and the obliteration of Israel. How many of Israel’s critics have actually read it? The text is explicit. Even the Met Police, with their most benevolent interpretations of chants on the streets of London, would struggle to find an alternative intent.

Israel accordingly has every right to consider that meaningful self-defence comprises the destruction of Hamas. But the next armchair lawyers’ objection is always proportionality. The difficulty is that this is a concept often invoked by people who do not understand it. Proportionality neither means acting leniently; or taking actions which are equivalent to the actions which they are taken against. Any notion that Israel should do back to Hamas what Hamas has done to Israelis is plainly not something any democracy could countenance. What it means is that a state can use force that fits its defensive objectives. Force that is strictly proportionate to its ends is force specifically to prevent further attacks from Hamas, whilst minimising any other harms not commensurate with this objective.

That is why we see Israel messaging the civilian population of Gaza telling them to flee south. That is why Israel use precision drones to target terrorists. Whereas Hamas aims to maximise the death of innocents (like Islamic State), the IDF, for all its superior capabilities, seeks to minimise civilian casualties. That is not to say the IDF does not kill innocents. Of course it does. But there is no moral or legal equivalence between deaths of civilians as part of lawful and proportionate operations to prevent genocide and the acts of those who seek to inflict it.
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