The Gazans chose Hamas. Some were, and still are, members of the organization, active participants, or collaborators. Many there earned their livelihood from it. Numerous Gaza civilians, as revealed in detail by Itai Ilnai and Filipp Piatov's research in Israel Hayom and Bild, actively participated in the Hamas massacre in a manner reminiscent of Nazi practices for exterminating European Jews. This mirrors the use of Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi police and intelligence task forces that advanced behind the German army during its invasion of Eastern Europe, participating in the planned and systematic annihilation of Jews.
Hamas's recruitment and intelligence operations continue to this day in Gaza's "civilian" spaces – in mosques, schools, and hospitals.
The inconceivable directive from the Military Advocate General, which permits the elimination of Hamas terrorists who kidnapped and murdered but forbids targeting Gazans who kidnapped and murdered if they are not officially affiliated with Hamas' or Islamic Jihad's military wings, is part of this civilian-military separation.
According to this directive (as reported by Israeli journalist Amit Segal), it is forbidden to target armed Palestinian police officers or Hamas district chiefs, who, along with their counterparts, form part of Hamas' governmental infrastructure – the very infrastructure the government has tasked the IDF with dismantling and eliminating.
The State Attorney's request to the Attorney General to open a criminal investigation against National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, on suspicion of incitement to violence against Gazans, belongs to this absurd category. Not to mention the ongoing supply of fuel and food, courtesy of the progressive administration in Washington, which Israel is compelled to transfer to Gaza and which still reaches Hamas.
It seems necessary to reiterate: The "civilians" who are not formal members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad were part of the Hamas apparatus, that held all seven hostages rescued by the IDF so far, including Noa Argamani, in "civilian" apartments.
Before the massacre, 20,000 workers from Gaza, "uninvolved civilians," entered Israel daily for months. They were employed in the area surrounding Gaza. Some of them prepared for the massacre and provided detailed information to the new Nazis from Hamas, allowing them to precisely target their attacks and carry out their acts of murder and atrocity.
Part of the pogrom infrastructure
This was part of the pogrom infrastructure – the Gaza civilians' contribution to the atrocity. The civilians didn't stop at intelligence work; some arrived in flip-flops during the second and third waves of the Oct. 7 infiltration to continue slaughtering residents of Israeli communities near Gaza, looting them, and burning their homes.
Gaza "civilians" cheered the Nukhba force – Hamas' special forces unit – on their motorcycles en route to Kerem Shalom and danced frenetically around pickup trucks carrying kidnapped children, women, elderly, and young men, shouting "Death to Jews."
The current population of Gaza is Hamas' breeding ground, not the other way around. It has been so for many years, certainly since the "March of Return" protests at the Gaza border fence, where "civilians" threw explosive devices and Molotov cocktails toward the Israeli side and launched incendiary balloons that burned the fields of nearby Israeli communities.
This truth necessitates erasing, carefully but decisively, the separation between "military" and "civilian" in Gaza, and establishing a long-term and continuous Israeli military and governmental presence in the area. If we fail to do so, Gaza will continue to haunt us for many years to come.
