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Gaza War Diary: 31 MARCH 2024

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Israel Today reported that Israeli soldiers operating at Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza found terrorists inside the maternity ward. After eliminating the terrorists, the soldiers found their weapons hidden throughout the maternity ward.

Those killed in the Shifa Hospital battle include these high level terrorist murderers:

  • Fadi Dewik, freed in the Shalit deal with the blood of 4 Israelis on his hands, who continued to direct terrorist attacks in Israel from Gaza.
  • Zakariya Najeeb, released in the Shalit deal, a senior officer in the West Bank terrorist attack headquarters from Gaza.
  • Mahmoud Ziqzouq, deputy head of the police department in Gaza City.

As in the past, it is clear that those released in the Shalit deal are at the heart of the terrorist activity against Israel. Much blood of Israelis are on their hands, which is why any continuation of this kind of murderer release in exchange for kidnapped Israelis is absolutely impossible because of the untold number of Israeli dead that will result. While we can and do sympathize with the families of the kidnapped, those who only care about their own loved ones cannot be allowed to make public policy and ignore how such an act endangers the lives of everyone else.

Many of those involved in the violent anti-government protests have nothing at all to do with the hostages. It’s an election campaign on the backs of our soldiers. Those who insist we give into Hamas demands and pretend that the hostages continue to suffer because of our Prime Minister’s “intransigence” are just spouting propaganda, lying or are truly delusional.

We cannot give into Hamas demands to open our jails or allow the unfettered return of Gazans to Israeli-conquered Gazan territory where they can continue terrorist activities against us. It’s spitting on the sacrifices made to stop these barbarians from rising again to threaten us, as they vowed. Those who claim it is Bibi standing in the way, are idiots. It is all of us who care about our country standing up and refusing to knuckle under.

The mother of Ron Goili who was murdered on 7/10 and whose body was taken to Gaza had this to say about Saturday night’s protest in which violent crowds chanted: Burn down the country!: “It felt as if once more they are spitting on my son.” Israeli actor and rabbi Hagay Lober, whose son fell in combat in Gaza, wrote the following on Twitter: “My son was killed in Gaza. He went there to protect and free your children and was killed. He left everything behind – a pregnant wife and a nine-month-old baby, and was killed. He will never return, even as part of some deal. So I say to you [anti-government protesters]: Stop dismantling the country! Stop calling for people to refuse to [to serve]. To the Kaplan Force and Brothers in Arms [the two main anti-government protest groups], I say: Stop hitching a ride on the suffering of our families. Get a grip.”

Muhammad Sadia, the terrorist who opened fire on a school bus just north of Jericho last week, wounding 3 Israelis, turned himself in to Israeli security forces this morning. I guess he doesn’t want to go to Allah just yet. Another terror attack took place in Beersheba this morning. Israeli Police reported two slightly injured in a stabbing attack. The terrorist was identified by Arab media as Naji Abu Abu Farih, a retired resident of Rahat. I guess you are never too young and never too old to be a Palestinian murderer.

Perhaps Biden’s bark is worse than his bite. America has delivered the following weapons to Israel: 25 F-35 fighter jets, 1,800 one-ton MK-84 bombs, and 500 MK-82 quarter-ton bombs. Maybe there is some deal that Israel can use the weapons in Lebanon? Or maybe it’s all just been chatter without substance?

I just saw a video released by CNN in which a Gazan on October 7 goes from dead Israeli to dead Israeli cutting off their heads. Things like that make this one of the most difficult conflicts we Israelis have ever had to face. That and the endless lies, the non-stop undeserved criticism, the universal causeless Jew-hatred. But there is also something else, something people rarely discuss.

Israelis, more than any other people in the world, love life. They are constantly inventing new medicines and medical techniques to cure disease and ease pain and save lives. They are the first to send mobile hospital units to their enemies to dig out earthquake victims. Even today, certain hospitals are treating Gazans and have refused court orders to kick them out of the country. And even in the midst of war, the IDF constantly warns the enemy to evacuate before it bombs.

Israelis wanted so much to spread their love of life to the Palestinians, to inspire them and show them how to work and earn a living; how to build communities and reach out in friendship. We hired them. Took them to heal in our hospitals. Handed over businesses, and an entire country for them to live in, build in, raise and educate their families in. Videos of Gaza before October 7 show how wonderful it was for many of them.

But nothing worked to change their mindset. Despite their schools and universities and villas and fancy seafront hotels, they continued to love death. They spent their money on terror tunnels, weapons and educating their kids to hate and kill.

But so loath were we to give up on our dreams for them, that for decades, we ignored their lobbing bombs at our innocent civilians in Sderot and Ashdod and Ashkelon. But now, finally, by the sheer depth of their barbarism, they have forced us to kill them, to see them go homeless and hungry. And worst of all, they have forced upon us the understanding of what it is to hate someone so much you can smile and rejoice when they die.

We will probably never sink to their level where we are giving out candy and holding parties at the destruction of their families and their homes. But we aren’t sad either. We just don’t care.

I personally have come to the point where I sincerely wish every, single one in the world who supports October 7 or participated, to rot in hell along with their families. I wish them death, poverty, hunger, homelessness. But most of all, I wish them the knowledge of how it feels to have people rejoice over the corpses of their loved ones, their destroyed communities, their shattered lives.

And that is the next to worst thing that our enemies have done to us, we who were the kindest, most generous and life-loving people in the world.

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16 comments on “Gaza War Diary: 31 MARCH 2024”

  1. דליה מבורך

    Dear Naomi,
    Your words remind me of the famous quote by Golda Meir ,( Israeli prime minister 17 March 1969 to 3 June 1974) –

    When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.

  2. Isabel Ringer

    Our synagogue is attempting to remain BALANCED and not going “overboard” in supporting Israel. I gnash my teeth and keep worshipping HaShem.

  3. Machteld Meirav Peters

    Dear Naomi, although your sharp writings are often true and to the point I do not support you in what you wrote about your wish for people “to rot in hell along with their families and to wish them death, poverty, hunger, homelessness.” This is not the Jewish way. No one would wish this on anyone. Time will come when they will experience all of that in their due time. There is no need to to wish this on anyone.
    If this is the next to worst thing that our enemies have done to us as you wrote, you have allowed yourself to trespass to a level that doesn’t honer you. We are the kindest, most generous and life-loving people in the world. Let’s keep it this way.

  4. Brenda Matsumura

    I have been awaiting your words on the shocking alliance of hostage families with anti- Government protesters. I’ve been offering words of support everyday to Bring Them Home Now hostage website, until yesterday. I left comment that as IDF fight and die and hunt relentlessly for the abducted yet I did not hear a single person say what THEY would do differently. The representative for the families was on your Tel Aviv news saying he “heard” this and that, but he did know if any of it was TRUE! I felt HAMAS now has no reason to accept any deals as the people of Israel turns on its self and soldiers. How demoralized these soldiers must be. I unfollowed the hostage site as I was stunned to see these hostile attempts. I wondered, do they want to open the prison doors and die by more Oct 7 attacks every single day??? This also helps Biden Propaganda Machine in US. I continue, of course, to hope and pray all of the abducted are seen again, and my one opinion won’t matter, but I deeply care and fear for Israel.

    • Daveed Shachar

      No, Brenda, this is not the Jewish way. The Jewish way is to go gently into that dark night. The Jewish way is to commit mass suicide at Masada and probably Gamla. The Jewish way is to flee one country after another, especially Spain, Portugal and England. The Jewish way is to be led into captivity by the Babylonians. The Jewish way is to accept the slow curtailing of its rights, over many years, culminating in the Holocaust. The Jewish way is to convert to Catholicism at the behest of the Inquisition. The Jewish way is to walk around all over the world with no outwardly Jewish accoutrements while the Muslims proudly identify as Muslim.
      Israel has changed all that. Israel is a 1st world country with advanced weaponry including the atomic weapons it has blackmailed the U.S. with at least twice (1973 and 2023) into supplying weapons to Israel.
      The Israeli way was to agree to a curtailed entity in 1948 and then defend that tiny piece of land with 1% of its population against five Arab armies supported by the West, including America, which refused to supply Israel with any weapons at all, at any price.
      The Israeli way is to turn its teenagers into fighting machines, putting their lives on complete hold for at least three years in order to stop the enemy at its gates.
      The Israeli way is to protect its freedoms.
      The Israeli way is to tell the Nazi Einsatzgruppen on Oct 7 that if they insist on burning babies alive and ripping live fetuses out of their mothers’ uteruses and then stabbing first the fetus and only then the mother, so that she would be forced to watch, then they, and their followers will rot in hell with their families while we wish them death, poverty, hunger, and homelessness. We tried peace we tried giving up most of Israel, we tried letting them live inside Israel through marriage, and we tried treating them in our hospitals. So been there, done that, nothing but violence works against an enemy that embraces its own deaths eagerly.
      The Galut Jew, hiding and fleeing from his enemies, is no more. The proud Israeli Jew will fight with all the modern weapons in existence.
      If you do not understand this, you are probably no supporter of Israel at all. So you go wish goodwill toward men to your own murderers and rapists, while the rest of us die in an attempt to protect you. And that, Brenda, is the new Jewish way.

  5. Jack Rosenthal

    I find it increasingly unbelievable that the good doctors and administrators of Shifa have no knowledge of what’s happening under their noses. Perhaps the patients welcome the guns and bombs so that their children can enter martyrdom.

  6. Gig Berkowitz

    Naomi, once again you’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head. I, too, sympathize with the families of the hostages but I cannot condone the tactics of the fanatics who wish to remove Bibi from continuing the fight. It is a fight! We must win! Whatever it takes! What is wrong with them for trying to exploit their own grief on the nation.
    As someone said, many years ago, you never change horses in mid-stream. The Israeli cabinet seems to have everything under control on the war front. But, they’re losing on the propaganda that is being spread by those who are on the sidelines. It would be nice to see the hostages released but not to the detriment of those who have walked the walk and talked the talk. As the previous Rabbi noted, his son is NEVER COMING HOME! How hard is this to understand.
    From the founders of the USA, we either hang together or we hang alone. Easy choice.

  7. Dalya Horowitz

    You hit the nail on the head! Totally what I’m thinking. Thank you so much for your insight, your clarity and your courage to put it out there.

  8. golda u

    we never seem to learn our lesson, and that is why perhaps, for millennium’s we have been hunted,
    attacked, our children, elderly, and corpses raped, dismembered, vilified.
    all terrorists captured should be KILL, after they have been interrogated and CASTRATED.
    then there would be no prisoners to exchange for hostages.
    and we need to develop the mindset that we are dealing with barbarians, with no sense of morality.
    their humanity nonexistent, their religion perversed, their social justice defying any semblance
    of decency.
    the enemy cannot and should not be treated as humans.
    they all need to be destroyed, and expelled from Israel, Judea and Samaria.
    no muslim should have Israeli citizenship, no vote, no representation in the Knesset.
    even the so called moderate muslims , deep down in their hearts, want a Jew free country!
    what does it take for Israel to see this.

  9. C W Joiner

    Thanks again, Naomi, for just being here where the world needs your input.

  10. Sid Levine

    Well written and so timely.
    It is clear that those behind last night’s demonstrations “Burn down the Country” are the Kaplan, Crime Ministers, Brothers in Arms and feign supporters of democracy will do everything to bring the country to its knees and COMMIT NATIONAL SUICIDE by agreeing to release terrorists in prison in Israel for multiple murders of Israeli Jews for some kidnapped on 7 October, never mind the consequences.
    This touches a raw nerve – as one who saw the Shalit family tent demonstrate daily outside Rechov Balfour for over a year, it was only when the PM wife visited them that she persuaded he husband to release over 1000 terrorists and murderers (who in cold blood of innocent Jews) for their son who actually surrendered to Hamas! Now we have the same mentality of the hostage families.
    If we should learn a lesson from this – it is that the PM’s wife , who was not elected, should keep out of the political arena

  11. KD

    There are sections set apart in graveyards throughout the United Kingdom, which are maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I have visited several of these, and I have seen the resting places of young men from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as from GB. Quite often, groups of these young men all died on the same day. (Crews from aeroplanes.) Not far from my hometown, in a graveyard overlooking the school I went to, there are 16 of these gravestones. These young men, from all over the Commonwealth, went to war and never made it home.

    It’s heartbreaking to visit these CWGC sites, and see what it cost to fight that war. War is a brutal, deadly business. As I argue in my book (a whole book laying out my argument in support of the conclusion, which is stated in the final sentence) – there are no good wars!

    It’s terrible to think of the relatives of those hostages just now. I would be losing my mind, if I was in that position. But I think my hatred for the enemy would override everything – they’ve got to go, and that’s all there is about it. I have to say too that if I was one of those hostages, I’d rather get blown up suddenly by an Israeli bomb & have my torture cut short, than live on amongst those savages. If I was in the position where I had the choice of throwing a switch that would blow the entire tunnels system to hell and beyond, and me along with it, then I’d do it in a heartbeat.

    But that’s all the perspective of civilians. Politicians, who have to consider the fate of a whole country, must be able to do what is “not good” in order to maintain their state – Machiavelli laid this out very clearly. The key to this whole affair comes from Chapter 15 of “The Prince.”

    Onde è necessario ad un principe, volendosi mantenere, imparare a potere essere non buono, ed usarlo e non usarlo seconda la necessità. (Niccolo Machiavelli)

    Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that “a man who wants to profess goodness in all parts of his life will bring about his own ruin among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince who wants to maintain his position to learn how not to be good, and to use that whenever he needs to.” This is what is known in philosophy as the dirty hands problem. A political leader may find themselves in a situation where they must choose between acting in a way that is considered “not good,” when that will avoid a disastrous outcome, and acting in a way that will let them maintain their sense of moral integrity, when that will help to bring that disaster about.

    Duthie, Kenneth. The Road to Gomorrah: Britain’s War 1939-1943 (p. 39). Kenneth Duthie. Kindle Edition.

    • KD

      Machiavelli believed that fortune is the arbiter of much of human affairs, although we can still exercise some control over our lives. According to Machiavelli, fortune is like a river that can break its banks and flood the area, forcing everyone in its path to flee. However, it is possible to build defences and barriers when everything is peaceful so that when the water rises again, it can be controlled and the risk of damage can be minimised.27 In the years prior to the outbreak of hostilities in the west, a fighter force had been created in Britain to defend the country against a German air attack. Since achieving air superiority was a necessary condition of the enemy being able to cross the English Channel, the success of the British fighters in the summer of 1940 meant that a German invasion was no longer possible.

      The RAF may have minimised the likelihood of the people of Britain ever being exposed to an invasion, but the country was still at risk. Britain had no allies at that time, so the prospect of ever being able to implement the last phase of the long war foreseen by the Chiefs of Staff in 1937 could only be a long-term goal. Machiavelli argued that a leader with virtue would be able to adapt their “way of proceeding”28 to suit whatever circumstances obtained after each turn of fortune’s wheel. When Churchill accepted the challenge of leading his country, he was faced with a military disaster in France and a possible invasion by the enemy, but he was still able to act effectively. When he ordered the attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir, that not only prevented those ships from falling into German hands, it also convinced Roosevelt that the British should be provided with American materiel. When Churchill sent PQ16 out on the Murmansk run, that helped keep the Soviets onside until the Anglo-Soviet Treaty was signed on 26th May 1942. Whenever Churchill gave an order to have something done that was “not good” it served an important purpose, and it was done out of necessity. Churchill’s predecessor had shown that he did not have it in him to be a war leader, and the only other candidate for the job had turned it down. Only someone with Churchill’s strength of character could have done what was necessary to keep on fighting against Germany. The use of Britain’s industrial resources to create a fleet of heavy bombers, and the use of these heavy bombers to engage in an area bombing campaign that intentionally targeted the “morale” of the German people by de-housing them or burning them to death, was for years the only way that Britain could take the war to the enemy. When Churchill flew out to Moscow in August 1942, he promised Stalin that Bomber Command would be used to attack Germany and “if need be, as the war went on, we hoped to shatter almost every dwelling in almost every German city.”29 The bombing attack on the coastal port of Hamburg in July 1943 was an exemplary use of a weapon that had been created to ensure “the proper application of overwhelming force.”30

      The second world war is sometimes seen as a fundamentally moral conflict, where the forces of good prevailed over the forces of darkness in the world. When Chamberlain issued his war guarantee to Poland, it is possible that he was trying to forestall German territorial expansion. However, the British government’s promise to give “all the support and assistance in its power”31 to a country in Eastern Europe inevitably affected how the leaders of that country acted towards their neighbours. The Poles refused to negotiate a deal with Germany over which flag should fly over the city of Danzig, or whether a road to East Prussia should be built. Without that guarantee, the Polish leaders would have had no option but to reach an arrangement with Germany over these “minor matters,”32 and if Germany had wanted to attack the Soviet Union to secure Lebensraum in the east at some point in the future, then the Poles would have had to choose a side in that conflict. That could have been Hitler’s only war. Instead of sitting back and watching as Germany and the Soviet Union fought against one another, Chamberlain had involved Britain in what became a global war that lasted for five and a half years, which his country could only participate in as a junior partner of the United States of America and the Soviet Union. The British membership in what Churchill called the “Grand Alliance”33 may have allowed the claim to be made after the war that Great Britain had helped to defeat the Nazis, but it could just as easily be argued that the second world war helped transform the Soviet Union into a superpower. Stalin always intended to lay claim to more territory in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, and when the war finally came to an end in 1945, millions of people were trapped behind the “iron curtain”34 with no possibility of escape. These people would remain under Soviet control for more than four decades. If one disregards the intentions of the politicians who involved Britain in the war, and one sets aside everything that has been said about it and considers what really happened, both during the war and after it ended, then the second world war cannot be said to have been a good war. It was a war just like any other – and in the final analysis, there are no good wars.

      Duthie, Kenneth. The Road to Gomorrah: Britain’s War 1939-1943 (pp. 184-186). Kenneth Duthie. Kindle Edition.

  12. Paula Dubrow

    I agree with everything you write but today’s blog said it like it is and exactly how I feel.
    I pass on most of your blogs to friends and relatives and hope I have changed some of their viewpoints.
    Keep up the good work.

  13. Elizabeth Behrman

    Alas. And here in the diaspora, the nest-to-worst is the (to me at least) really, really shocking volume of support for Hamas from regular people, even people I thought were good. What is WRONG with the world ?!?!

  14. דוב קרבי dov kravi

    Dear Naomi, thank you for this news.
    The French press, for the most part, only rehashes the conventional propagandist mantras.
    I am referring your articles to my many friends so that they are aware of what is really going on.
    ביחד ננצח

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