On Israel-Gaza War – frank Ofili

Aljazeera appears to be giving a more comprehensive and balanced coverage of the Israel-Gaza war than western media.

Both sides have committed war crimes, but BBC, CNN, and the like are accusing only Hamas. Which brings me to what Israel’s Prime Benjamin Netanyahu said three days ago.

Netanyahu stated that Israel will ensure that the war with Hamas will for ever alter the Middle East. Coming from someone who himself is fighting for his political survival at home, this is a very ominous statement.

Somebody commented on a post on my Facebook timeline earlier that it was not possible that Israel’s Mossad did not have fore-knowledge of the Hamas attack. He believes that Netanyahu knew of the coming attack but refrained from ordering a pre-emptive strike to enable him have the perfect pretext to level and destroy Hamas once and for all. Given Netanyahu’s statement in his address to the Knesset on Thursday 12 October, that Hamas should be treated like ISIS, I tend to believe my friend who made that assertion.

Whatever the case may be, Hamas has declared that there would be no negotiation on the release of the 150 Israeli hostages until Israel stops bombarding Gaza. The Israel I know will not negotiate with a non-state actor, much less a terrorist one. If she did not do so in 1972, I doubt she will do so today.

In September 1972 Munich Olympics, a Palestinian militant group known as the Black September launched an attack on Israeli Olympic team members. It resulted in the massacre of 11 Israeli team members. Black September’s mission was to hold Israeli athletes hostage and demand the release of 236 prisoners – 234 Palestines held in Israel and two leaders of the then West German Baader-Meinhof terrorist group.

The mission failed. Nevertheless, it resulted in the death of 11 Israeli athletes.

Not long afterwards, Prime Minister Golda Meir constituted an ultra secret assassination squad and ordered Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to go after everyone directly or indirectly linked with Black September wherever they were around the world. The operation lasted over 20 years. In the end, all the orchestrators of the Munich Olympics massacre were eliminated, including Ali Hassan Salameh, the chief of operations for Black September and founder of Force 17. He was assassinated in January 1979 by Mossad.