Poor, poor #Hamas terrorists, trapped in their own tunnels I can't put into words just how sorry I feel for them!

Last Sunday, The First Street Journal reported on the approximately 100 to 200 Hamas terrorists trapped in one of the organization’s tunnels. And, unless there has been a breakthrough too recently to have been reported, they’re still trapped down there. As was said then, these aren’t holdout Japanese troops isolated on some Pacific island, who didn’t know the war was over, and were determined to fight on for their Emperor, but simply trying to stay alive in the jungles. Rather, these are Hamas fanatics, who can, and will, and already have tried to continue the war. From The Jerusalem Post:

Hamas terrorists intentionally stayed in IDF zone, security expert claims

National Security researcher Kobi Michael: ‘Hamas is trying to insert a new deal into an existing deal, and this is something Israel must reject.’

By Giorgia Valente | Friday, November 14, 2025 | 4:26 EST

As negotiators argue over maps and timelines, one of the most sensitive tests of Gaza’s US-brokered ceasefire is unfolding out of sight, deep under Rafah.

Israeli and foreign officials estimate that around 100 to 200 Hamas terrorists are holed up in a tunnel network on the Israeli-controlled side of the so-called “Yellow Line” in southern Gaza, unable to move back into Hamas-run territory without surfacing into areas patrolled by the Israel Defense Forces. For Washington, what happens to those men is more than a tactical problem; for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, it has become a political red line.

At stake is not only the fate of a few hundred fighters but the credibility of a broader ceasefire architecture that is supposed to end large-scale fighting in Gaza and gradually strip Hamas of its weapons, even as violence spirals in the West Bank.

There’s much more at the original.

President Trump has been pushing Israel hard, as have Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt, all the supposed guarantors of the cease-fire agreement, but when last we heard, Hamas have said that the trapped fighters would not surrender, even though their only way out is an entrance that the Israel Defense Force control. We don’t know how much food and water they have down there, but eventually they’ll run out.

The article notes Media Line’s claim that the Hamas fighters intentionally remained in the tunnels in the Israeli controlled areas, ostensibly to be behind IDF lines and able to pop out and fight again. But, if true, it’s like so many Hamas operations, not particularly well thought out. I’m not certain that the fighters get their 72 bacha bazi boys for being martyrs if they die of starvation.

Me? I think back to Judges 1:4-7, somewhere around 1,400-1,200 BC, in which Adoni-Bezek states that he defeated 70 kings, and had their thumbs and big toes cut off — a fate he suffers himself after being defeated — to prevent them from ever acting as warriors again. A lot of Israelis do not want these fighters to ever be released, believing that they were part of the October 7 massacre, but at the very least, they should be rendered unable to fight again.

Poor, poor #Hamas terrorists, trapped in their own tunnels I can't put into words just how sorry I feel for them!

These aren’t holdout Japanese troops isolated on some Pacific island, who didn’t know the war was over, and were determined to fight on for their Emperor, but simply trying to stay alive in the jungles. Rather, these are Hamas fanatics, who can, and will, and already have tried to continue the war. From The Wall Street Journal:

Hundreds of Hamas Fighters Are Stuck in Tunnels in Israeli-Controlled Gaza

The presence of the militants, who have killed three Israeli troops, is threatening to unravel the cease-fire

By Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv, and Summer Said in Dubai | Thursday, November 6, 2025 | 5:43 AM EST

A detachment of Israeli engineering troops was demolishing tunnels behind the withdrawal line in Gaza last month when Hamas militants sprang from a hidden shaft, fired an antitank missile toward their excavator and killed two soldiers.

A little over a week earlier, Israel and Hamas had agreed to a cease-fire. Israel responded to the deadly encounter with a round of airstrikes on Gaza that killed dozens of people.

The early test of the fragile truce pointed to a bigger problem: Hundreds of armed Hamas fighters are trapped in tunnels under the Israeli-controlled side of Gaza, and willing to take shots at Israel.

The situation is the result of Israeli efforts that began in May to flush out militants and destroy Hamas’s extensive tunnel system where the group has hidden fighters, hostages and weapons throughout the conflict. The strategy was to cut off sections of the underground web from one another. But Israel’s partial withdrawal under the U.S.-brokered cease-fire last month has left militants who remain behind the line trapped underground with no means of escape and dwindling supplies.

Don’t read that last sentence wrong. It does not mean that the Hamas fighters cannot get out of the tunnels; it means that they have no means of leaving and escaping capture by the Israel defense Force.

While Arab and Israeli guesstimates put the number of trapped Hamas fighters at between 200 to 300, Hamas negotiators claim that the number is closer to 100, and Hamas want the IDF to grant the fighters safe passage to ‘Palestinian’ controlled areas. Israel, on the other hand, wants them to surrender and be disarmed, or to kill them. But Israel doesn’t really have to do anything; if the terrorists don’t come out and surrender, they’ll eventually die of thirst or starvation. The IDF could simply seal them in, or flood the tunnels with sea water, but it’s simpler to just wait them out and let the Lord decide their fate.

According to the Kenya Times early Sunday morning, the IDF have already “eliminated dozens of Hamas terrorists and dismantled hundreds of the group’s infrastructure sites in the Khan Yunis area of Gaza over the past two months.”

The IDF also said the operatives are commanded by a Hamas deputy battalion commander from Rafah and that mediating countries have been able to communicate with the Hamas operatives, according to the military.

In recent days, IDF troops killed several Hamas terrorists attempting to cross the Yellow Line, the boundary separating ceasefire zones between Hamas- and IDF-controlled areas.

It’s simple: with the last remaining living hostages released, Hamas have no leverage at all. By any Western civilization logic, the trapped terrorists should surrender, surrender their weapons, and have a realistic hope that they’ll be allowed to rejoin their comrades on the other side of the ‘Yellow line.’ If they’re determined to keep killing Jews, they can at least hope that they could get back to that in a few years.

But Hamas’ logic, if we can stretch the meaning of the word, is that it’s better to hold out, and the trapped terrorists starve to death. I would guess that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is just fine with that. I just can’t seem to put into words just how sorry I feel for them.

My response to the Trump Peace Plan

I, for one, will wait and see if this deal is fully implemented. That the hostage release is the first step should mean, if there’s any rationality left in Hamas, that they intend to follow through with the rest, because the hostages are Hamas’ only point of leverage.

But whether this deal is completed or not, I don’t foresee any lasting peace. Looking at the timeline, we see Arab attacks against the Jews in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, just the cycle for the 10- and 12- and 14-year-old boys, too young for the previous war, to get old enough to try to do what their candy-assed fathers couldn’t. Raised on resentment and hate, but not having gotten beaten themselves, they grew up thinking they could be the generation which succeeds.

This time has been different, however, as Israel unleashed so much Hell on Gaza that perhaps the growing generation of boys will be so terrorized that they won’t try it, but eventually children will grow up without memories of what happened to Gaza, and they’ll rise up and try again.

And let’s not kid ourselves: Israel won this war due to Benjamin Netanyahu, who was strong-willed and smart enough not to give the Arabs a cease-fire until they were thoroughly, thoroughly beaten. The wars in 1967 and 1973 were ended too soon, leaving too much of the Arab armies intact and alive and able to rearm. Fortunately, the Arab nations still learned the lesson, and the Arab nations never again attacked Israel, but the various terrorist groups kept at it. Hamas had hoped, perhaps even believed, that if they started the way, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia would mobilize and join them. The Arab national leaders were at least smart enough to say thanks but no thanks, in no small part because none of the other Arab leaders like or trust the Palestinians.

The only ones who joined the fight were Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis in Yemen. Iran is a thousand miles away from Israel, and the Houthis several hundred miles away, so they knew they wouldn’t get invaded by IDF troops, but they f(ornicated) around and found out anyway. Hezbollah sort-of tried to intervene, albeit a bit half-heartedly, but found out themselves as well, as their eyes and fingers and balls left their bodies.

You don’t get into martyr heaven without your balls! No 72 bacha bazi boys for them!

And Donald Trump deserves a lot of credit as well. Had Kamala Emhoff been President [shudder!] she’d have been pressing Mr Netanyahu to ease off all along, but President Trump recognizes enemies of Western civilization in ways our past DEI Vice President never did, and while he wanted this deal, and potential past deals, he also let Israel know that the US would support them if they went all out to destroy Hamas.

Still, with the Arabs allowed to stay in Gaza, there is eventually little way I can see this working out in the long run. Had Israel done what they should have done in 1967, and expelled every last Arab from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, giving the country shortened, more defensible borders, and not having a Arabs under the thumb of occupation, we would not have seen this mess today.

Hamas have not yet accepted the Trump Peace Plan they supposedly had “no choice” but to accept.

Hamas keep dithering, unsurprisingly, on the Trump Peace Plan, and Gazan ‘civilians’ keep being sent to Jahannam because of it. But perhaps, just perhaps, the people of Gaza are finally getting fed up with their terrorist masters. From The New York Times:

‘Enough Is Enough’: Many Palestinians Say Hamas Must Accept Cease-Fire Plan

Interviews in Gaza suggest wide support for a proposal that calls for an immediate end to a war that has brought immense civilian suffering.

by Liam Stack | Thursday, October 2, 2025 | 5:04 AM EDT

Tel Aviv — Palestinians in Gaza have spent almost two years longing for an end to the war that has destroyed their communities and killed tens of thousands of their neighbors. Many say their best hope yet is the latest cease-fire plan proposed by the United States — if only Hamas would accept it.

“Hamas must say yes to this offer — we have been through hell already,” said Mahmoud Bolbol, 43, a construction worker who has remained in Gaza City with his six children in the battered shell of their home throughout the war.

President Trump unveiled the proposal while meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Monday. Mr. Trump said that if Hamas did not accept its terms, then he would give Israel the green light to “finish the job” of destroying the armed group.

Hamas has not yet given its response to the proposal, but interviews with Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday suggested widespread public support for the plan. It calls for an immediate end to a war that has brought immense civilian suffering.

Hamas, of course, don’t care about “immense civilian suffering,” but the well-being of their own leadership, a leadership which lead not from Gaza, but Doha, Qatar. We reported, on Monday, how the Qatari government (reportedly) told the Trump Administration that they could convince Hamas to disarm and accept the plan, and French President Emmanuel Macron stated on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏, the worst rebranding in history — that Hamas have “no choice but to immediately release all hostages and follow this path.”

Yet, it seems that Hamas believe they have a choice, and, at least at publication time, have not accepted the plan. It took two atomic bombs, and that after half a year of relentless explosive and firebombing, to get Emperor Hirohito to force the militarist government to surrender. There’s no particular reason to think Hamas are any less pigheaded.

For the past two days, Mr. Bolbol said, his neighbors have talked about almost nothing but the cease-fire proposal. If Hamas rejects it, he said, his family would finally leave Gaza City and head for what he hoped would be the relative safety of the enclave’s south.

“Hamas needs to understand: Enough is enough,” Mr. Bolbol said. Most Gazans are not members of the group, he added, “so why drag us into this?”

We do not know how Mr Bolbol reacted personally to the October 7th attack, but we do know that most of the denizens of Gaza erupted in a cheering frenzy as hostages, both living and dead, were paraded back in Gaza, tied up, thrown in the back of the ubiquitous white Toyota trucks, celebrating an attack that anyone with an IQ above room temperature — room temperature in Celsius! — should have known would lead to a strong lethal and destructive response from Israel.

Some, including some from Hamas, have said that they didn’t think that Israel would have destroyed Gaza to the extent that they have. In the mindset of the ‘Palestinians,’ I suppose that they accepted that there’d be some martyrdom, but perhaps not this much martyrdom.

But the proposal contains several elements that Hamas has said are unacceptable.

Those include a ban on the group exercising future power in Gaza, a requirement that it disarm and the establishment of a transitional government overseen by foreign officials, including Mr. Trump and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister.

The proposal unveiled on Monday sent a rare flash of hope through Gaza, people said in interviews. But others are less hopeful.

Some people said the terms of the proposal made them doubt that Hamas would agree. Others said their doubts grew from something more basic and bitter: They simply did not believe that Hamas would put the interests of the Palestinian people above the interests of the organization.

Also see: William Teach, “Surprise: Hamas Likely To Reject Peace Plan

Well, who can know? Perhaps Hamas leaders and fighters really believe that their interests and those of the ‘Palestinian’ people in general are the same, but attempting to read the minds of people who are in no way part of Western civilization by those of us who are civilized is often an exercise in futility. In the “mirror universe” episode of Star Trek, Mr Spock told Captain Kirk, once they were returned to their regular dimensions, that it was easier for them, as civilized men, to play the part of barbarians than it was for their opposites, as barbarians, to play the roles of civilized men.

So, we have the specter of civilized Westerners trying to bring aid and comfort to the people of Gaza, something the Israeli Navy has now stopped, all to aid people who have nothing in common with Western civilization, and who would happily assault or even kill many of the “Global Sumud Flotilla” if they actually lived in Gaza, or anyplace else in the world where Islamic fundamentalism has taken hold.

Perhaps Hamas will, in the end, accept or negotiate an amendment to the Trump plan, but one thing is certain: if Hamas do accept disarmament, it will only be until they can covertly — and perhaps not so covertly — rearm.

World War III Watch: Do the left really hate Mr Trump so much that they’d rather see more and more blood flowing than the President get some credit for stopping a war? The left would rather see the killing continue than President Trump achieve a diplomatic victory and peace

Our good friends on the left — and I include the recent neoconservatives, who are not really conservative in very much among the left — are up in arms that the wicked, evil, hated President Donald Trump is trying to get at least a ceasefire, and possibly a lasting peace agreement, between Russia and Ukraine, claiming that such would lock-in Russia’s conquests of roughly 20% of Ukraine. The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer, about which I would have written yesterday but was afraid of sounding like a broken record, was simply the latest.

The left are just deathly afraid that Mr Trump might win the Nobel Peace Prize, said to be one of his heartfelt desires, as though promoting peace is somehow a bad thing. But the President said that he just loved stopping wars! Continue reading

The one tool Hamas have

Every once in a while, a ‘Palestinian’ ‘leader’ will do something really radical and tell the truth. It’s a very different thing, because, to paraphrase Mary McCarthy, “Every word they utter is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” But sometimes the truth is so in-you-face obvious that it cannot be denied.

‘We have to reconsider our tools’: Terror chief Zubeidi laments that all Palestinian strategies have failed

Continue reading

For the people of Gaza to receive any aid, they must repudiate Hamas and surrender Hamas leadership don't care about the people, because they're living in luxury in Qatar

The current ‘Palestinian’ sympathizer meme on Twitter — as always, I refuse to call it 𝕏, the absolute worst rebranding in history — is that the poor, poor Palestinian children, children! are starving. A gentleman calling himself Dr Mohammed al Najjar tweeted:

Doctors in Gaza collapse in operating rooms from hunger.
Ambulance drivers can’t drive, their stomachs empty.
A hungry doctor treats a hungry patient brought by a hungry driver.
To the free people of the world: Say ENOUGH to this starvation

It’s not just Dr Najjar — assuming he’s a real person and not just another pro-terrorist bot — but many others appearing in my feeds. Continue reading

Why should #Hamas surrender? The 'leadership' live in a well-fed, cushy exile while their people in Gaza can do nothing

Taher al Nunu, the new Hamas spokesfool, does not look as though he has been plagued by food insecurity.

When the Allies occupied Germany following World War II, and the United States occupied Japan, we insisted on, and forced, the de-Nazification of Germany, and the removal of the militarists who led Japan into the war. We required a cultural change which would lead to peaceful governments, governments which would not start wars of conquest.

And it has worked! Neither Germany nor Japan has tried to conquer anyone, at least not through war, though their economic power has expanded far beyond their borders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is insisting on the same thing when it comes to Gaza:

Netanyahu, leaving for DC: We’re working for Gaza deal on our terms, Hamas won’t be there; chance to greatly expand peace accords

By Lazar Berman | Sunday, July 6, 2025

Before boarding his flight to Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel has an opportunity “to expand the circle of peace far beyond what we could have imagined.” Continue reading

What did they think would happen?

Let’s tell the truth here: Western liberals are, collectively, as dumb as a box of rocks. Images of the border wall between Gaza and Egypt are all over the internet, and anyone who can use Teh Google could have looked up the fact that the Egyptian government see Hamas as just another facet of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group outlawed in Egypt. Egypt has been ‘helping’ with negotiations between Hamas and Israel, because Egypt still dislikes Western civilization — other than Western nations’ money that is! — but sees political Islam as a real threat. That border wall, built by Egypt, not Israel, certainly more of an impediment than the big, beautiful wall President Trump has been building between the United States and Mexico, was meant to keep ‘Palestinians’ from getting into Egypt, because Egypt sees them for what they are: nothing but radical malcontents who have caused trouble everywhere the’ve gone.

Knowing all of that, why would the #GlobalMarchToGaza think that the Egyptian government would go along with their plans? Continue reading