A public opinion poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Survey Research reveals that a significant majority of Palestinians support the October 7 attack against Israel and believe Hamas will return to power in the Gaza Strip after the war.
According to the poll, 66% of respondents expressed support for the October 7 attack, while 73% believed Hamas made the right decision in launching the attack. A staggering 79% of respondents believe Hamas will win the war, the highest rate since the beginning of the conflict.
Furthermore, 96% of respondents denied the massacre in the Gaza envelope, claiming that Hamas terrorists did not commit atrocities against Israeli civilians on October 7.
The poll also indicated that if elections for the Palestinian Authority were held, Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is currently imprisoned for the murder of Jews, would win the majority. In a hypothetical election between Barghouti and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Haniyeh would win around 60% of the votes.
Andrew Fox was an officer in the British Army from 2005-21, retiring with the rank of Major. He completed three tours in Afghanistan, including one attached to U.S. Army Special Forces. He is a lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Here, in an essay for Tablet magazine, reprinted with permission by The Post, he explains what US officials don’t understand about Israel’s strategy in Gaza.
As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducts another assault in the north of Gaza, they face significant criticism from Western officials and analysts who are asking why the IDF is repeatedly going into areas they have already cleared and conducting further operations.
Critics claim this behavior reflects a flaw in operational design or is even proof that Israel’s campaign against Hamas has failed.
The flaw, however, lies in their own assumptions.
These critics are looking at IDF tactics through the lens of Western counterinsurgency (COIN), the doctrine that US and European militaries applied in the failed campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the “global war on terror,” Western tactics were to seize a chunk of territory and clear it of enemies through military force.
The plan was then to hold the territory through forward operating bases (or FOBs) and try to conduct alternative governance in those areas while providing security.
The system of FOBs meant that our enemies, embedded in the local civilian population, always knew where we were and what routes we were likely to use. They could mortar, rocket, and IED us at will.
It was a recipe for endless violence and huge numbers of casualties.
The suspected Queens jihadistbusted with an arsenal of weaponsin his SUV was ordered held without bail on Thursday – as disturbing new details of the case emerged in court.
Judd Sanson, 29, was just blocks from La Guardia International Airport when he was stopped by alert cops early Wednesday morning – and nervously reached under the seat of his SUV during the first few tense moments of the encounter with the officers, prosecutors revealed.
They later found a loaded 9mm Glock pistol under the driver’s seat.
“Sorry, there is a lot of drunk people nowadays,” Sanson allegedly told the cops after they stopped him for having obscured license plates on the vehicle. “I live in Jamaica. I was visiting my uncle.”
But police had already spotted a knife strapped to Sanson’s leg, along with an MTA reflective vest and “a makeshift axe hanging from the ceiling” and a “makeshift sword” inside the vehicle, Queens Assistant District Attorney Dylan Nesturrick said in Queens Criminal Court.
In all, the prosecutor said nearly a dozen weapons, an NYPD bullet-proof vest and 179 rounds of ammunition were found inside the black Ford Explorer.
He also said investigators found a “disturbing photo” on Sanson’s Facebook page but did not elaborate.
“This car stop averted what could have been a disaster for the citizens of Queens, New York City and potentially even the country,” Nesturrick said.
Sanson stood before Judge Julieta Lozano with his mane of long hair flowing over a black t-shirt that read, “Dreamer: Into reality” and had a rose next to it.
Prosecutors said he has addresses in Tennessee and Maryland, but lives with his father in the Hollis section of Queens and has a 1-year-old daughter.
His lawyer said Sanson works as a “self-employed mechanic” and supports his young daughter.
Thomas Montella of Queens Defenders asked Lozano to set reasonable bail for his client.
“This is, at the end of the day, a gun case,” Montella said.
But the judge sided with prosecutors, who asked that he be held at Rikers Island without bail pending a return court appearance on Monday.
“It is concerning that he was a few blocks way from the airport,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said after the arraignment. “You got to ask about the intent.”
Sanson was arrested around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, and was questioned at the 110th Precinct stationhouse until he was led out in handcuffs earlier on Thursday for his date in court.
He smiled as he was peppered with questions by reporters – and broke into a wide grin when one asked if he had purchased his weapons arsenal on Amazon.
Meanwhile, cops executed a search warrant at his father’s apartment and were in and out of the Jamaica Avenue building on Thursday, with prosecutors saying they found a Glock holding case inside.
In a move which he dubbed “historic justice”, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday directed the seizure of Palestinian Authority tax funds and their transfer to families of victims of terror, according to a Yisrael Hayom report.
Smotrich ordered the Tax Authority to deduct an amount of NIS 130 million ($35 million) from the Palestinian Authority’s tax money, and transfer it to 28 families of terror victims, according to the report.
The Finance Minister had instructed Tax Authority Director Eran Ya’akov this past January to transfer NIS 138.8 million from the funds frozen under the “Law of Freezing of Funds Paid by the Palestinian Authority in Linkage with Terror from the Funds Transferred to it by the Israeli Government, 5778 – 2018.”
The move came as the implementation of a judicial verdict stating that the Palestinian Authority should pay the families of terror victims NIS 130 million.
The Palestinian Authority has refused for decades to pay compensation to the families of terror victims, despite Israeli court orders directing the Ramallah government to do so. Instead, the PA routinely pays salaries to terrorists and their families in a widely criticized “pay-for-slay” policy. The United States Congress has passed two laws mandating the cessation of foreign aid funds to the PA until the Ramallah government stops paying its citizens to kill their neighbors, but the Biden Administration has consistently sought and found ways to circumvent the law.
In recent years, a number of laws have been enacted in Israel that opened a legal door to the confiscation of PA funds, but their implementation was opposed by security establishment for fear of harming the financial stability of the Palestinian Authority.
Smotrich decided that the funds to be transferred to the families should come from the frozen Palestinian Authority tax funds. The State of Israel collects taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and then transfers those funds to the Ramallah government. Under the 2018 law, however, a portion of those funds equaling the amount paid monthly by the Palestinian Authority to convicted terrorists are withheld.
.“There is no greater justice than recompensing out of the funds of the Palestinian Authority that endeavored to support terrorism and transferring them to the families of the victims of terrorism,” Smotrich said in January.
“The Israeli government is changing its policy and today we are starting to rectify it. There is no consolation here for the families of those that were murdered, but justice is implemented by this. I am pleased that I had the privilege of leading this rectifying process as one of my first actions as Minister of Finance.”
Herzl Hajaj, father of the late IDF Lieutenant Shir Hajaj who was murdered in a PA-orchestrated terrorist attack on January 8, 2017 in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv, noted that the families of the terror victims set themselves the goals of preventing further attacks and seizing the funds used by the PA to pay the terrorists.
“This is how we create deterrence; this is how we prevent the next family from bereavement. We ask all the ministers to act to deter the next terrorist,” Hajaj said.
The decision to expropriate the PA tax funds could set a new precedent, as there are hundreds of lawsuits by families of terror victims against the PA which are still in legal proceedings in Israeli courts. The Finance Ministry says that Smotrich’s decision gives the green light for further expropriations which will lead to many more lawsuits as victims of terror realize that they could gain from suing the PA.
Smotrich has taken other steps against the PA, including refusing to transfer payments to PA officials in Gaza out of fear that they will wind up in the hands of Hamas. He has also started to defray a 2 billion NIS debt which the PA has to Israel for providing electricity, a debt which hasn’t been paid for many years.
הביטו היטב בתיעוד הבלתי נתפס הזה. לאחר שהם הציתו בהצלחה חנות סלולר בבית שמש, התפנו הסוטים לדבר האמיתי: השחתת פאות. כך בשבוע שעבר, בלילה שבין חמישי לשישי הגיע האדון הזה, חשוף פנים לחנות פאות בהר חוצבים בירושלים, חמוש בפטיש, ספריי ומספרים והצליח לחולל וונדליזם בלתי נתפס הנאמד… pic.twitter.com/xUOTr4YPdY
— יוסי ריינר | Yossi rainer 𝕏 (@yossi_rainer) May 28, 2024
Jerusalem prosecutors indicted a 43-year-old resident of the capital after he was caught on camera three weeks ago breaking in to a wig store and destroying some 80 wigs, causing an estimated 1 million NIS of damage.
Police had arrested the suspect in the wake of the attack which took place on May 24 and was filmed on surveillance cameras. The suspect smashed the glass entrance of the Dini Wigs store in the Har Chotzvim industrial zone and then proceeded to chop the long wigs one by one, causing irreparable damage.
In a video shared by Kassy Dillon on X, formerly Twitter, shop assistant Ayalla said: “Someone came in overnight. He just came in to destroy and damage the wigs. They don’t know exactly why. But he chopped up wigs and sprayed all over the wigs with graffiti spray.”
Ready to wear wigs from Dini cost between £1,500 and £5,000, but Ayalla said, “It is not only money, it is a destruction of handwork.” The wigs are handmade from real human hair.
Ayalla added, “There is a group of people that don’t want people to wear natural wigs. They want people to cover the hair with fabric and not with hair.”
The suspect was interrogated and an indictment has been issued as well as a request from the court to remand him in custody until the end of legal proceedings.
Police superintendent Lior Ben-Shalom said that “The accused acted out of ideological motives which he believed in, that wigs may not be used by women in the charedi sector, and he perpetrated criminal acts by entering a store and causing substantial damage. Detectives from the Lev Habirah station arrested the suspect and investigators succeeded in building proof of the actions committed, leading to an indictment.
In recent weeks opponents of wigs (which are worn by many charedi women but eschewed by other communities) placed ads on Jerusalem buses with the caption “Custom wigs? Transparent lace wigs? Laugh at someone else, not at Hashem”.
At the beginning of the current war, there were also tens of clips on social media of women who had allegedly “joined the trend” and burned their wigs to “Strengthen their Tzniyus” for the sake of Israel’s security.
The most important of my mother’s Yiddish sayings was: “A rakhman oyf gazlonim iz a gazlen oyf rakhmonim.” It roughly translates to “kindness to the cruel is cruelty to the kind.”
Gazlen ranges from an armed robber to a murderer, while rakhman is someone compassionate and merciful. This form of inversion reveals how bad outcomes can flow from good intentions. Living as I do among Jews and academics, I know we need reminding that the liberal who shows compassion to evildoers ends up doing evil to the merciful and good.
Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, spent 22 years in Israeli prisons for planning the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. He vowed to having strangled at least one of them bare-handed. While in prison he was diagnosed with and treated for a brain tumor. He was released in the 2011 exchange of 1,027 Palestinian criminals for one Israeli hostage.
After Oct. 7, the former prison dentist whose diagnosis saved Mr. Sinwar’s life, and whose nephew Hamas had murdered, told German media that, having gotten to know Mr. Sinwar as a patient, he had opposed his release. “I know how cruel he is.” Israelis knew that many of the convicted terrorists they free in hostage exchanges leave with an understanding of their captors’ vulnerabilities and re-engage in terrorism. Many of the Israelis slaughtered on Oct. 7 had welcomed Gazans into their communities and homes.
