Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the “great majority of Israel’s citizens” are not falling for the psychological warfare tactics of Hamas, which aim at dividing the country, and were revealed in the past week.
Netanyahu spoke in the wake of a terror attack that killed three Israelis at the Allenby Bridge crossing into Jordan.
The night before, tens of thousands of Israelis protested against Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and called for him to agree to Hamas’s terms for a hostage deal. Such protests continue, though they failed last week to bring the country to a halt.
As Breitbart News reported, Netanyahu showed reporters a document seized from Hamas by Israeli soldiers in which the terrorist group laid out a plan to divide and pressure Israel using propaganda tactics based on the hostages.
The German newspaper Bild published the plan in greater detail, as the Jewish News Syndicate reported Sunday:
The secret document highlights several key aspects that the terror group intends to consider in managing ceasefire negotiations. For example, it emphasizes the need to maintain “Hamas’s ability to act against Israel,” to “exhaust” Israel’s political and military apparatus, and to erode Israel through international pressure.
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According to the document, Hamas has no intention of seeking a swift end to the war. On the contrary, it explicitly states that “important conditions in the agreement need to be improved, even if this means negotiations will take longer.” Although Hamas admits that “its military capabilities have been weakened,” in its view, there is no need to strive for an immediate cessation of hostilities, despite the suffering of the Gaza population.
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The document also reveals how the terror group intends to exploit the hostages it captured on Oct. 7 during negotiations. The essence of the matter is embodied in an instruction that appears explicitly in the document: “Psychological pressure on the families of the prisoners must continue to be applied, both now and during the first phase [of hostage release as part of a deal and ceasefire] so that public pressure on the enemy government will increase.”
In a statement to the Cabinet (released in full translation via the Government Press Office), Netanyahu said:
This is a difficult day. An abhorrent terrorist murdered three of our citizens in cold blood at the Allenby Bridge. On behalf of the Government and myself, I send condolences to the families of those who were murdered.
We are surrounded by a murderous ideology led by Iran’s axis of evil. In recent days, abhorrent terrorists murdered six of our hostages and three Israel Police officers in cold blood. The murderers do not differentiate between us. They want to murder us all, right and left, secular and religious, Jews and non-Jews, until the last one.
What prevents the destruction of our people, as in previous times, is the strength of the State of Israel and the power of the IDF: Our soldiers’ spirit of heroism, the police officers, the men and women of our security forces, the supreme sacrifice of our fallen heroes and the stamina of our people – these make all the difference. When we stand together, our enemies cannot overcome us; therefore, their main objective is to divide us and to sow discord among us.
Last weekend, the German newspaper Bild published an official Hamas document that revealed its action plan: To sow discord among us, to use psychological warfare on the hostages’ families, to apply internal and external political pressure on the Government of Israel, to tear us part from within, and to continue the war until further notice, until Israel is defeated.
The great majority of Israel’s citizens are not falling into this Hamas trap. They know that we are fully committed to achieving the objectives of the war: To eliminate Hamas, to return all of our hostages, to ensure that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel and to return our residents in the north and south securely to their homes.
We will stand together. We will wield the sword of David together and with G-d’s help, we will win.
One more word. There are those who ask – ‘Shall the sword devour forever?’ [II Samuel 2:26]. In the Middle East, without the sword, there is no ‘forever’.
Many Israelis are concerned that the Biden administration is allowing itself to be manipulated as part of Hamas’s campaign, and some feel a Kamala Harris administration would continue and expand that practice. Last week, an interview with Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Harris’s running mate, revealed that the Democratic ticket intends to increase the pressure on Israel and use U.S. “leverage” on Netanyahu; he failed to mention anything about Hamas.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.