An unnamed senior IDF General Staff officer warned that “Israel’s response to the kidnapping of another soldier into the Gaza Strip,” following Cpl Gilad Shalit’s more than 4 years in captivity by the Hamas terrorist group, “will be no less severe than Operation Cast lead.”



The statement was made on the eve of resumed negotiations over Shalit’s return, through a German mediator, between Israel and Hamas, and following IDF assessments that the terror group could be planning more attempts to kidnap additional Israeli soliders

Yehudit Barsky, has an excellent monograph on the Hamas terrorist group.

Barsky is the Director of the Division on Middle East and International Terrorism at the American Jewish Committee.

You can read Barsky’s work on Hamas here:

Hamas – The Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine – Yehudit Barsky

Israel hit Hamas targets in Gaza on Sunday, including some of the terrorist group’s security caravans in the central Gaza village of al-Mughraqa (see map below):

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According to Haaretz, the caravans served as Hamas’ security headquarters.


The IDF says that the attack on Hamas was a response to “the barrage of Qassam rockets and mortar shells fired at Israel today, which wounded an Israeli civilian and two IDF soldiers.”

Also hit were Hamas smuggling tunnels coming from Egypt into Gaza. Last year, Hamas reportedly took in $20 million U.S. dollars per month from Gaza tunnel smuggling operations.

A Japanese reporter and his cameraman shot this video of a Gaza smuggling tunnel operation between Rafah and Egypt:

Khaled Meshal, the Hamas terror chief whom Syria has a given safe haven for years, boasted that Hamas would have “a second, third, and fourth Gilad Shalit” if the Israeli Defense Forces sent ground forces into Gaza.

According to al Jazeera Meshal met with other terror supporters and figureheads in Damascus yesterday, including Saeed Jalili, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary-General and Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, head of the Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

As this blogger has repeatedly stressed, Iran continues to train, arm, and fund Hamas terror operations. “Iran is our mother,” a senior Hamas guerilla commander told The Sunday Times in March 2008, bragging that “300 of the group’s ‘best brains’ had been secretly sent to Tehran.”