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Until now, we have believed that on October 7, 3,000 members of Hamas, accompanied by a few hundred ordinary Gazans eager to join in the murderous fun, smashed into Israel and proceeded to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israelis and to kidnap 251 more, who were dragged back to Gaza on the back of lorries, in cars, and on motorbikes. Now the IDF has revised that figure upward, suggesting that the total number of Gazans who took part was 6,000, double what was previously believed. Of those, not 3,000, but 3,800 were Hamas members, and not a “few hundred,” but rather, 2,200 Gazans who were not members of Hamas enthusiastically joined in the rapes, tortures, and murders of Israelis that were committed that day. 1,000 others were involved in firing rockets from Gaza into Israel. More on this revision upward can be found here: “Report: New IDF assessment shows some 6,000 Gazans invaded Israel on Oct. 7,” Times of Israel, August 31, 2024:
New assessments indicate twice as many Gazans breached the border into Israel on October 7 than previously believed, Channel 12 reported Saturday, citing data compiled by the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division.
Some 3,800 terrorists from the Hamas terror group’s elite Nukhba forces smashed through the border fence, the report said, among a total of 6,000 Gazans who crossed into Israel that day.
Hitherto, figures made public indicated that some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists participated in the invasion, massacre and hostage-taking that day. That number did not take into account Gazans who crossed the fence and participated in the atrocities but were not Hamas members, nor did it differentiate between Nukhba terrorists and other Hamas terrorists.
It was unclear from the report what the status was of the 2,200 other Gazans who infiltrated Israel on October 7. Presumably, many were civilians, as extensive footage of the onslaught showed many enter to loot and take part in the assault, while others were likely members of other Hamas units or other terrorist organizations such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The TV report also said that the border was breached in 119 spots — again, about double the previously widely cited figure of 60 breaches in the Gaza-Israel fence.
The IDF now has calculated there were twice the number of Gazan killers than previously believed, as well as twice the number of places where those killers smashed through the border into Israel. A much larger operation, in other words, than previously believed.
Additionally, 1,000 terrorists inside Gaza were involved in firing rockets at Israel that day, the report said, meaning that a total of some 7,000 Gazans took part in the onslaught….
5,000 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel within a few hours on the morning of October 7,, designed to divert the IDF’s attention, and that of Israeli civilians, too, from the surprise ground invasion taking place in southern Israel to the rocket barrage in the skies above.
What does this upward revision, both in the numbers of Hamas members who entered Israel that day, and of ordinary Gazans eager to indulge their bloodlust against the hated Jews, mean? It means that Hamas’ crack troops, who are known as the Nukhba (Hamas’ elite commando unit; “Nukhba” means “elite” in Arabic) has even more operatives than the IDF had estimated. The IDF is still not sure of the Nukhba’s total force, nor of the total number of Hamas operatives in Gaza, though the figure of 35,000 has often been mentioned, with the IDF claiming to have killed 17,000, or almost half of the Hamas operatives in Gaza.
Of more ghastly interest is the news about the far greater number of “ordinary Gazans” who eagerly took part in the atrocities of October 7. Until now, the IDF has said that “a few hundred Gazans” were believed to have accompanied Hamas when it smashed into Israel. Now the IDF believes that close to ten times that many — 2,200 — of these non-Hamas Gazans took part in the atrocities. It says something about just how widespread is the bloodlust and murderousness toward “the Jews” among ordinary Gazans. And these are the people with whom Israel is expected to “make peace.” These new figures should give pause to Kamala Harris, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell, and all the international bienpensants and buttinskys from Pope France to Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. Perhaps they will now have the decency to be less free with their advice to the Jewish state on what it “must do” when it is dealing not just with Hamas, but with the terror group’s willing homicidal collaborators in the general population. No, just kidding. Of course they won’t.
Don’t hold your breath!