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Human Rights Voices
While the UN devotes its human rights operations to the demonization of the democratic state of Israel above all others and condemns the United States more often than the vast majority of non-democracies around the world, the voices of real victims around the world must be heard.
U.N. Obsession with Condemning
Israel Instead
Flowers on fresh graves of Israeli soldiers killed in fighting with Gaza terror groups, at Mt Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem. October 12, 2023 (Chaim Goldberg/FLASH90)
Palestinian Authority/Gaza, October 12, 2023
Israel girds for long war as death toll since Hamas terror onslaught passes 1,300
Original source
The Israel Defense forces stepped up preparations Thursday for a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip to destroy the terror group as the death toll from Hamas’s massive onslaught passed 1,300. The military also said there were signs that Hamas was preparing for an extended conflict with Israel.
Israel is six days into a war with Hamas following the Palestinian terror group’s shock assault on Israeli communities in an early morning raid on Saturday. Over 1,300 people — most of them civilians — were killed, according to the latest toll, more than 3,300 injured, and an estimated 200 were captured and taken to the Gaza Strip. Their fate is not yet known.
As the slow, tortuous process of identifying bodies continues, funeral after funeral is being held across Israel for soldiers and civilians as the country reels from the mass infiltration and massacres of men, women, children, elderly people and hundreds of young partygoers at a music festival.
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters Thursday that forces “are preparing for a ground maneuver, if decided,” but that the political leadership has not yet ordered one.
Meanwhile, the chief of the military’s Home Front Command said that the relatively slow rate of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip over the past day indicated that the Hamas terror group was preparing itself for an extended fight.
“We have identified the behavior of Hamas, which realizes that it is entering a long war,” said Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo in a call with reporters Thursday morning, amid a 10-hour lull in rocket attacks.
Moments later, sirens sounded near the coastal city of Netanya and several West Bank settlements, with rockets being intercepted and others landing in open areas, causing no damage.
“Hamas is managing the fire in a way that is meant for weeks [of fighting], and they dropped to a rate of fire of around 200-400 rockets per day, to allow themselves a very long fight,” he said. In Hamas’s initial attack, the terror group launched thousands of rockets into Israel within a few hours.
Milo said Hamas was targeting central Israel once or twice a day to keep many Israelis under the threat of rocket fire.
Also Thursday, Energy Minister Israel Katz vowed that there would be no letup in Israel’s siege of Gaza, including the supply of electricity and water, until those abducted during Hamas’s shock onslaught are returned home.
“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water pump will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Humanitarianism for humanitarianism. And no one can preach morality to us,” he wrote...
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