TEL AVIV – Israel won’t stop its military advance against the Hamas stronghold of Rafah, says a former senior ranking Israeli military commander – whether the United States and Western allies approve or not.

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no choice, says retired Israeli Brigadier General Amir Avivi , who spoke to Postmedia the morning after news broke that Hamas is now prepared to sign a ceasefire deal.

Quoting what his close friend and Caesarea neighbor Netanyahu has told him, Avivi said: “Nothing will stop us now from going into Rafah.”

That even includes the Biden administration, says Avivi, who has founded and leads a powerful political and cultural force in Israeli society: the Israel Defence and Security Forum, which is made up of more than 30,000 former IDF soldiers and officers.

“Israel set very clear goals for this war,” said Avivi. “The complete destruction of Hamas as a governmental and military entity; bringing back all the hostages; and making sure that there will be never never again be a terror army in Gaza.”

Those goals simply have not been achieved yet, says Avivi, who has significant contacts within the Netanyahu coalition, and is regularly consulted with by key government ministers.  Says Avivi: “To achieve these goals, you basically need to conquer the whole Gaza Strip – and there is no way to destroy Hamas without taking over the whole Gaza Strip.”

But that’s not what President Joe Biden, Canada and other Israeli allies want. They’ve repeatedly said they strongly oppose any Israeli military action on Rafah, where a million Palestinians have congregated to escape the fighting.

When the news about Hamas’ decision to accept a ceasefire deal broke here late last night, it was immediately greeted with muted hostility in Jerusalem. Israel hadn’t even seen the terms of the deal, Netanyahu government sources said.

Notwithstanding that seeming opposition to a ceasefire deal, Israel announced that it was still willing to send a team to Egypt to look at the details and possibly negotiate. Asked about that apparent contradiction – keep fighting but also re-start negotiations – Avivi said:

“Israel is saying nothing will stop us from going to Rafah – even if the US is against it. Even if the whole world is against it.  In one of their meetings, [Netanyahu] said to Biden that, ‘If we have to conquer Gaza with our fingernails, we are going to do it.’ We’re going to do it even if you don’t give us ammunition, even if you don’t give us weapons – we’re going in and we’re not going to lose the war.”

Participating in the negotiations in Egypt doesn’t change that imperative, says Avivi.

“Israel is saying, if we have a chance to release the women hostages, the elderly hostages, in a deal that will be a ceasefire of a month or 40 days? Fine,” he adds, with a shrug. “And, following that, we will renew the attack on Rafah.”

The U.S., Canada and Europe may get their desired ceasefire, Avivi concludes. But nothing will stop Israel’s coalition government and war cabinet from also finishing the job of wiping out Hamas, he says.

“We have no choice.”

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KIBBUTZ NIR OZ AND SDEROT – On this, Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024, the image that is difficult to forget is found on a bed at Nir Oz.

It is of a child’s clothing, fresh out of the laundry: a stack of tiny, carefully-folded underwear, toddler-sized, placed on the corner of a bed. The child’s clothing is covered in ash and dust and dirt, frozen in time. There’s a Cookie Monster shirt, and what looks like some little dresses. All unused, all untouched since October 7.

The room that it is in resembles the inside of a long-unattended pizza oven – blackened and blistered from the Hamas attack. Bits and pieces of a former life are seen everywhere: broken dishes, a melted television, charred children’s toys.

No shell casings or bodies can be seen – those are long gone. But thirty people were slaughtered in Nir Oz, some still in their beds. Children, too. In the abandoned homes of the 400 people who once lived there, we wonder if the shadows on the walls and the floors are bloodstains.

The room is surveyed by resident Rita Lifshitz, who looked after the seniors at this kibbutz, but is showing some Canadians a massive crime scene on this day. She finally speaks: “It’s like a holocaust.”

As artillery shells explode a few kilometres away, Lifshitz takes us to the rooftop of a mamad (a shelter) that is closest to the fence that separates the kibbutz from Gaza. We can see a small vineyard alongside the fence. An elderly man, Amitai Ben Zvi, used to sit here, watching the sunsets over Gaza, looking West over the Negev. He was one of the first to be killed by Hamas.

From where we stand, Gaza is just a kilometer or so away. It looks quite lovely, from here. Certainly not an “open-air prison.”

Rita points towards Rafa in the South, and Khan Younis to the North. Just an hour or so earlier, about five kilometers South of us in Kfar Aza, three young IDF soldiers were killed by a Hamas rocket barrage. And, right around the same time, Hamas was at a negotiating table in Egypt, claiming to be seeking a ceasefire.

Back at the kibbutz, Rita sounds wistful. “We are still standing,” she says, waving an arm in the direction of the ghosts of Nir Oz. “We will rebuild.” She pauses. “We hope to live in peace with the Palestinians. We want to live in peace. We don’t want terror.”

All of that is no doubt heartfelt, but when you walk through Nir Oz it feels like you are trampling on an fresh grave. It feels like war tourism and a transgression. But every Israeli you meet wants you here, to bear witness. Over and over, they mention the protests and the campus occupations in Canada and elsewhere.

“We don’t understand what the students are talking about,” says Rita. “They need to see what happened here.” She regards the gaggle of Canadian journalists She points at us. “You need to tell the world the real story about Hamas.” Some of us nod and say that we will. We will try.

Sderot isn’t a kibbutz – it isn’t a farm community, but it’s also in the Negev desert – the population is about 33,000. In Sderot, the images to remember are not a child’s underclothing, covered in ash. The images are found in different places.

One is found on the South edge of town, where Greisha Yakubovich now stands.

Yakubovich was born in the former Soviet Union, and came to Israel as a child. He served in the IDF as an officer, and has worked for thirty years to provide Gaza – where he was long stationed – with food, water and power. He points at a row of tall concrete barricades.

Put in place a few weeks ago, the barricades were required to prevent Hanna’s rockets from hitting two of Sderot’s newest kindergartens, Meitar and Tzlil. Hamas has outposts within eyeshot, within range of artillery, to the West.

Says Greisha, pointing at the kindergartens: “Until October 7, nobody imagined it could happen here. Nobody expected a kindergarten would become a target.”

But Hamas targeted and targets kindergartens.

Greisha goes to speak again, and then stops as a loud siren is heard. It isn’t a warning to head to a bomb shelter – it is precisely 10 a.m. on May 6, the time when everyone and everything stops in Israel to remember the six million victims of the Holocaust.

But not everything stops. As the siren rings out, a barrage of gunfire is heard. Is it Hamas?

It isn’t. It is the IDF. Hamas knows that all of Israel would come to a halt at ten o’clock. So the IDF commenced firing artillery to deter them – to literally provide cover fire for ten million people.

That reality of this place has necessitated other unsettling changes to everyone’s lives, including those of children. At the Good Wishes Park for example – in the shadow of the Chabad Center of Sderot – bomb shelters have been painted to look like play structures for children.

Greisha looks at them, and wonders aloud: “Why can’t Hamas do the same thing? Why don’t they create shelters for the children in Gaza?” He pauses. “But they don’t.”

They don’t. They haven’t. And they never will.

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HOSTAGE SQUARE, TEL AVIV –
They haven’t missed it. They’ve seen what’s happening on our campuses.

They’ve seen and read the news reports – reports showing over-privileged white Gen Z and Millennial types in keffiyahs, demanding if the visitors to their campus encampments, their “Little Gazas,” are Jews. They’ve seen the chanted tributes to Hamas and Iran and the horrors of October 7. They’ve seen all that.

And they’re disgusted. They’re shocked. They’re appalled. They’re absolutely baffled why young Canadians – and young Americans, and young Europeans – are openly expressing so much contempt towards the Jewish state.

In other circumstances, at other times, Israelis are used to seeing protests against them in Canada and the United States and Europe. Those protests have been happening, more or less continuously, since Israel was founded in 1948. They’re not new.

But the anti-Israel encampments at places of higher learning in North America – the pro-Hamas, pro-Iran, pro-terror encampments, in too many cases? That, they can’t believe. That is new.

At a table selling T-shirts and bracelets to raise funds for the families of the 128 October 7thhostages, Judy Goldman shakes her head. Goldman is a former Montrealer, and still has family in Toronto and the Vancouver area.

She’s present this day with a dark-haired friend, whose son, 23-year-old Yosef Haim Ohana, is still being held hostage by Hamas. Her friend doesn’t want to talk about politics, she says. But Judy does. She has a few things to get off her mind.

“I am shocked by what I have seen at these campuses,” she says. “Shocked. It is pure anti-Semitism.

“Anti-Semitism is always there. It bubbles underneath the surface. Any excuse can bring it out. But I’m very surprised to see what young Canadians, at universities in places like Toronto, are doing.” She shakes her head again.

She continues: “It’s shocking, because universities are supposed to be places where morality is taught. And what’s happening in those places is just outlandish. It shouldn’t be happening! At places like McGill, too, which I know well.”

It’s normal for young people to be preoccupied with issues like climate change or the future, says Judy. But to praise Hamas, who slaughtered 1,200 men, women, children and babies on October 7, 2023? “It is absolutely beyond words,” says Judy.

A few feet away, at a booth that has been set up for the hostages taken from the kibbutz Nahal Oz, Iris Shellhav Nahal is talking to whoever will listen. She’s wearing a T-shirt bearing the images of some of her neighbours who were killed or kidnapped on October 7.

“It’s terrible,” she says of the encampments and protests.  “What I have seen? It’s not good. Where did [the students] get these terrible ideas? They’re ignorant. They don’t know history – they don’t know what Hamas means to us!”

Iris softens a bit and leans back in her chair. “Some of the students, I’m sure they’re not bad people,” she says, pausing. “But how can they say we are so terrible when we are the ones who were attacked first? It’s just terrible.”

Next door, there is a booth to promote the memory of the victims of the Re’im Music Festival on the 7th. There’s an older man sitting there, but he doesn’t speak English. Two women who are present, Liora and Aziza – they speak a little English, but not so well, they say – won’t give their last names. “It makes me mad,” says Liora of the encampments. Says Aziza: “We know kids who were killed at the music festival. Why don’t these kids in Canada and America understand? They look like our kids.”

Asked why they think young people in Western universities have embraced the hateful rhetoric of Hamas and its ilk, all of  the women have theories about that, too. They speculate that there are many anti-Israel Muslims or Arabs at North American universities who have manipulated the protests they see in TV. They also wonder if the ones camped out have been brainwashed by their professors.

At the same booth where Judy Goldman volunteers, a lovely woman from Manchester is working. Her name is Sara Omer and she still has a thick Manchurian accent.

Sara explains she has three sons in the Israel Defence Force, one stationed this day in the South of Gaza. He’s been sleeping under the stars, she says, and he’s excited that some toilets and showers have finally been shipped in. She smiles when she talks about him.

Sara’s husband was killed in military action a few years back, and she works with the hostage families, she says, because she understands what it means to lose someone to the fight for Israel.

She doesn’t, however, understand how any North American young person can raise their voice in support of a racist, hateful death cult like Hamas.

“I read the New York Times every day, ” Sara says.  “I read over the weekend was that in Columbia University 60 per cent at the encampments are just outsiders. They’re not students. They’re outsiders and they’re coming and they’re firing up the others.

She goes on: “And some of the students who were interviewed –  they don’t even know what they’re protesting. They don’t understand.”

“It makes my blood boil.”

Two things to conclude with: everyone here – everyone this writer spoke to – is here because they want to be. Not only do they not work for the Netanyahu government – they’re furious with the Netanyahu government. They want the hostages home, now, and feel the Israeli Prime Minister has botched the job.

The other thing: everyone here is carefully watching what is happening in North America, at supposed places of higher education. They haven’t missed it.

And they don’t understand it. At all.

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It was happy and sad. Happy, because I fulfilled the promise I made to my Dad 20 years ago. Sad, because we all love them so much.

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The anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protestors are getting paid to protest.

Not all of them. But enough of them – enough to raise concerns about the “reality” of what we are seeing on our TV and computer screens, says the evidence and experts.

This newspaper first revealed in January that Israel-hating protesters were getting paid to show up. We detailed how a group called the Plenty Collective in Victoria, B.C. was paying out $20,000 a month to people to attend carefully stage-managed anti-Israel protests in and around that city. The “protesters” were actors, in effect, and were being given food, drink and professionally-produced signs and banners.

We also reported that it was happening in bigger cities like Montreal, as well. There, the city has been divided up into precincts by paid organizers, each acting as a “captain” responsible for quickly putting together protests in select neighborhoods. Sources there told us protestors were getting $150 per event.

Then, in the past week, other media published similar reports. The New York Post revealed that anti-Israel “fellows” at three U.S. colleges were getting paid via the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights – in some cases getting as much as $5,000 (Can.) a week in exchange for just eight hours of agitating.

That revelation was followed by the Daily Mail detailing a report authored by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). That report showed that the main group behind the occupation of Columbia University and other campuses had received more than $3 million (U.S.) a year from charities linked to Hamas.

In the 73-page report, ISGAP revealed that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) – with chapters in Canada and the United States – had been funnelled millions via myriad non-profits like the Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC), Tides, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), its parent organization Americans for Justice in Palestine (AJP), and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

In their report, ISGAP said: “It is clear that individuals who previously worked for Hamas-linked charities are now a driving force behind [campus protests]. The Department of Education (DoE) should carry out an immediate investigation into which universities are funding and/or supporting SJP activities and instruct those universities to cease such funding and/or support…ISGAP calls for SJP (and its affiliated organizations) to be banned and for Jewish students to be protected.”

As this newspaper reported in January, groups like B.C.’s Plenty Collective were using their non-profit status to financially assist other anti-Israel “partners” in that province. After this newspaper published our report, the Plenty Collective hurriedly returned thousands to one of its largest donors.

And, now, an expert who runs a Beverly Hills firm that openly acknowledges it pays for protests, called Crowds on Demand, says he has no doubt that the practice of paying people to show up at protests is much more widespread than anyone knows.

Adam Swart, who operates his firm in Canada as well as the U.S., has been providing paid-for crowds for everything from red carpet events to audiences at speeches since 2012. And, in an interview with the Toronto Sun, Swart said “extremely lucrative offers” have been made to Crowds on Demand to provide bodies. So far, he’s declined, he says, but he generally defends the practice.

Swart says there is no doubt the anti-Israel side has lots of money, too. Says he: “There’s obviously money in these protests. In my business, I know that some of the professional banners that these people have – those are $200 and $300, and the signs can be up to 100 bucks. Someone’s paying for that, here in the United States. So, you have essentially an unlimited amount of money coming in to potentially violent organizations that are tax exempt nonprofits here, and are social advocacy groups in Canada.”

The Canada Revenue Agency, which oversees such groups, was asked by the Toronto Sun whether they have any active investigations into funded protests in Canada.

At press time, they had not replied.

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