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An Al-Qassam Brigades image reading in Hebrew: \u201cThey eat what we eat, and drink what we drink.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
An Al-Qassam Brigades image reading in Hebrew: \u201cThey eat what we eat, and drink what we drink.\u201d<\/p>\n
By Max Blumenthal \/ The Grayzone<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n In June 2024, after Israel\u2019s army slaughtered over 200 civilians in Gaza\u2019s Nuseirat Refugee Camp, including several execution style killings to extricate a hostage, Noa Argamani, the Al-Qassam Brigades announced a\u00a0new policy<\/a>: if Israel soldiers came too close to areas where captives were held, the prisoners would lose their lives. Israel\u2019s refusal to heed this policy led to the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five others just over two months later.<\/p>\n Now, in a fit of desperation, after failing to force the hand of Hamas through imposed famine and\u00a0previous campaigns<\/a>\u00a0of military pressure, Israel\u2019s security cabinet has approved plans to ethnically cleanse the whole of Gaza City and occupy urban areas where captives might be located. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli army chief of staff, has\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0Israel\u2019s security cabinet that the full conquest of Gaza would place the captives\u2019 lives in peril. \u201cThe deeper we go into sensitive areas, the greater the risk to the hostages,\u201d he acknowledged, while still offering support for the escalation.<\/p>\n The Hostages and Missing Families Forum that advocates for the captives went even further,\u00a0proclaiming<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe Israeli government sentenced the living hostages to death and the fallen hostages to disappearance\u201d by announcing a takeover of Gaza.<\/p>\n Hamas, too, has cautioned that the maximalist Israeli plan will place the ten or so remaining captives in mortal danger. \u201cNetanyahu\u2019s plans to expand the aggression confirm beyond any doubt that he seeks to get rid of his captives and sacrifice them,\u201d the Palestinian resistance group\u00a0declared<\/a>.<\/p>\n For the most influential members of Israel\u2019s messianic-fascist government, the captives present a final obstacle to the \u201ctotal victory\u201d agenda, which can only be fulfilled with the defeat of Hamas, the annexation of northern Gaza and the expulsion of much of Gaza\u2019s population. Bezalel Smotrich, the fanatical Finance Minister who forms the linchpin of Netanyahu\u2019s coalition, has openly\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0that returning the captives through negotiations was \u201cnot the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s Channel 13\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0this August 7 that Smotrich sabotaged a hostage deal backed by Israel\u2019s military-intelligence apparatus, joining with Netanyahu to unleash carnage across Gaza in flagrant violation of a US-brokered ceasefire. Now, with the full conquest of Gaza on the horizon, he and his allies are presented with the tantalizing opportunity to wipe out the remaining Israeli captives in Gaza. In their view, this would fully deprive Hamas of its negotiating leverage, and clear the way to triumph.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s military first demonstrated its willingness to kill large numbers of its own citizens when it implemented the\u00a0\u201cmass Hannibal\u201d<\/a>\u00a0directive on October 7, 2023. The purpose of the\u00a0free fire orders<\/a>, which led to the destruction of scores of vehicles containing Jewish Israeli captives heading toward Gaza, and the killing of possibly hundreds of Israeli citizens, was to limit the enemy\u2019s ability to extract political concessions through a hostage deal. In the months that followed, Israeli strikes\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0at least 20 captives inside Gaza and wounded or threatened over 50 others, according to an investigation by Haaretz. The Israeli paper neglected to include the wife and young children of Yarden Bibas, a former captive who\u00a0acknowledged<\/a>\u00a0while in captivity that his family had been killed by an Israeli airstrike.<\/p>\n For Israel\u2019s government, the handful of captives remaining inside Gaza are an inconvenient political obstacle to \u201ctotal victory.\u201d The mass Hannibal Directive that began on October 7 may soon be completed.<\/p>\n Please share this story and help us grow our network!<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s Note<\/strong>: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our\u00a0independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can\u2019t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.<\/p>\n You can also make a donation to our\u00a0PayPal<\/a>\u00a0or subscribe to our\u00a0Patreon<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Max Blumenthal<\/p>\n The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling\u00a0Republican Gomorrah<\/a>,\u00a0Goliath<\/a>,\u00a0The Fifty One Day War<\/a>, and\u00a0The Management of Savagery<\/a>. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including\u00a0Killing Gaza<\/a>. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America\u2019s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.<\/p>\n
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An Al-Qassam Brigades image reading in Hebrew: \u201cThey eat what we eat, and drink what we drink.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":134318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[99,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-134317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-israel","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115004457800570757","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GZ-headshot.jpg\")
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