The Eyes on Rafah are Clearly Broken

Here's Some Clarity

“Children are dying! There’s no justification for killing children.”

This platitude is meant to imply that anyone who doesn’t parrot the Free Palestine talking points is a murder apologist. It’s a prime example of oversimplification and appealing to emotions in order to appear correct. It’s been happening for years, and it’s happening now with Rafah.

There are probably some wackadoos out there who are justifying the murder of innocent children. By and large however, nobody is justifying this. We are simply calling out those actually responsible for the children’s death. We are simply screaming at the top of our lungs to call attention to the ones who not only keep their children in harm’s way, but threaten to kill those children themselves if they try to evade the war. 

As a father, let’s say I decided to start a gun fight with my neighbors across the street from me. Whatever my reasons are for starting this fight, my children are playing outside in between our two houses. Regardless, I start shooting. My neighbor, who has a wife and kids of his own, pulls out his gun to protect himself and his family, and one of his bullets hits one of my children. Is the death of my child his fault for shooting my kids, or is it my fault for starting the shootout in the first place? 

Let me help you. It would be my fault. 

Now, imagine if you decided to call me out for starting a gunfight with my children in the crossfire, and my response to you was, “who cares how it happened! Children are dying! My son is dead! Why are you justifying this?!”

I’m pretty sure my response would daze and confuse you.

11 days after October 7th, 2023, I penned a short article called “Hamas Controls the Messaging That Comes From Gaza.” I penned it because they do. They’ve created an environment where, unless you work for them, you are poor; and if you speak out against them, you will be tortured and killed. About 10 days after writing that article, I wrote another called “7 Truths to Help Those Advocating for the People of Gaza” wherein I outline the plight of the Gazan people that is rarely even mentioned. We sometimes get videos that surface of Gazans or risking their lives to protest or speak out, like the brave women in this video here. 

I wrote those two articles to give more context as to who Hamas is. But here’s the thing: Let’s forget about all of that just for a moment. Let’s say Hamas did and does not do any of those horrendous things, and their atrocities only started on October 7th, 2023, where they invaded another country, murdered over 1300 people, took over 200 hostages that they refuse to return, and fired thousands upon thousands of missiles at said other country from then to now. The fact would still remain that they are in effect, killing their own children. That entity who declared war is killing their people. Just like the death of my family would be on me, the death of each and every one of the people they govern is on them. Period.

To ignore this and continue to shout “children are dying!” is irresponsible, enables evil to continue, and shows how unserious we are about ending suffering in Gaza.

To go back to the analogy, if I truly needed to battle my neighbor, I would send my wife and kids away, and be prepared to potentially lose my life. A real father would not risk his own children getting killed just to one-up his opponent. Real freedom fighters would not kick off a war, and then fly off to their air conditioned luxury villas in other countries while their men on the ground slug it out.

All that said, it is such a massive tragedy how irresponsible the journalism has been around this entire war. At this point, it should be common knowledge that the Gaza Health Ministry is simply Hamas.

• When Hamas said that Israel bombed a hospital, mainstream news ran with it full throttle for several days. Then the evidence came out that the missile actually hit the parking lot of the hospital, and was not even fired by Israel, but Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It was a rogue missile that was fired from Gaza.

• When Hamas said that Israel destroyed a historic church in Gaza, mainstream news ran with it full throttle for several days. Then the evidence came out that the church reported on was still standing.

• And now, in Rafah, Hamas is saying that Israel is indiscriminately bombing children in Rafah, and once again, mainstream news is running with it full throttle. Most sources ignored the initial rockets flying into Israel from Rafah, and no one took time to investigate before amplifying the Hamas narrative once again. As I type this, more reports are coming out that Israel targeted the rocket launchers and two senior Hamas officials, and a secondary explosion was triggered by weapons stored in the area.

To that third point, one can read it and immediately choose not to believe the Israel Defense Force, and that would be their prerogative. That’s not the job of a journalist, however. Journalistic integrity dictates a real investigation on claims. Journalistic integrity dictates looking at everything with scrutiny, taking into account how truthful (or untruthful) a particular source has been in the past, and doing due diligence.

So you, reader, can choose to dismiss an Israeli source because it’s Israeli and you don’t trust Israel. Your job is not to give information to the rest of the world. Moreover, I’ve always found it so incredibly odd that a journalist would blindly take a report from the organization who started the war in the first place, insert it in the news cycle, let the damage ensue, and in some cases, publish retractions after people have stopped caring.

This reminds me immediately of the 2018-2019 riots at the Gaza border. For those who followed the events, Hamas canceled school for Gazan children, and brought them and their parents out to the border with Israel to rush it. Some were Hamas operatives with weapons, wearing civilian clothing, and others were truly unarmed civilians. In this riot, the IDF killed at least 112 people. The reports from Hamas was that the IDF killed innocent civilians, and the international news community ran with that story. Later, an extensive analysis was done on the casualties of that riot which included examining each dead body. As it turned out, at least 80% of the people killed at the border were Hamas operatives in civilian clothing.

A quote from the analysis below says:

After an extensive professional analysis of the identities of those Palestinians killed during the protests, including a comparison of lists of fatalities with the obituaries published by Hamas and the Gaza Health Ministry, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) published several detailed reports which place considerable doubt as to the reliability and credibility of the information detailed by the commission in its report:

According to the findings of examinations carried out by the ITIC, at least 112 Palestinians were killed during the “Great Return March.” In an examination of the names of the fatalities on an individual basis, 93 were identified as terrorist operatives or affiliated with the terrorist organizations, i.e., about 83 percent of those killed in the “return marches.” Most of the fatalities (63) are from Hamas (about 56 percent of the total killed in all the marches)…. The organizational affiliation of 19 of the fatalities is unknown to the ITIC. It may be assumed that these are Hamas operatives or civilians who do not belong to any organization.

The findings of the examination of the identity of the fatalities carried out by the ITIC, and statements of senior Hamas officials, clearly demonstrate the central role played by Hamas in organizing the “return marches” and orchestrating them. The “return marches” were not “popular,” “peaceful” events, as falsely presented by Palestinian propaganda, but rather a Hamas strategic move accompanied by preplanned violence.… Furthermore, the findings of the examination of the identity of the fatalities and reports from the ground demonstrate that IDF soldiers did not shoot indiscriminately at innocent residents but instead hit terrorist operatives. These operatives were the dominant factor among those in the front line who tried to break into Israeli territory.7

A further examination by ITIC of the list of fatalities in the “return marches” confirms that most of them are operatives of terrorist organizations, about half of whom affiliated with Hamas:

The events of the “return marches” in the Gaza Strip have continued for 42 weeks. In most cases, these events are characterized by a high level of violence, resulting in casualties among the rioters, mainly among those in the front line confronting the IDF troops. According to the ITIC’s examination, based on reports of the Gaza Strip Ministry of Health in combination with other sources, since the beginning of the “return marches” on March 30, 2018, a total of 187 Palestinians were killed in those events. As for the identity of the fatalities (updated to January 16, 2019), 150 of them were found to be affiliated with Hamas or with other terrorist organizations (about 80 percent). Prominent among the fatalities are those belonging to Hamas or affiliated with it (96 fatalities, about 51 percent of the total number of fatalities). A total of 45 fatalities are operatives of the Hamas military wing (about 24 percent of the total number of fatalities, about 47 percent of the total of the Hamas fatalities)8

As reported by the Times of Israel, in the most recent March 2019 outbreak of violence along the fence, some 30,000 Palestinians took part in demonstrations, threw rocks and firebombs at Israeli troops on the other side of the fence, burned tires and scrap wood, sought to breach and damage the security fence, and in one case opened fire at Israeli soldiers.

Hamas publicly acknowledged that five members of its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, were among the fatalities. Most could be independently verified with photographic evidence of the operatives wearing uniforms or receiving a military-style funeral from the terror group in question.

The problem with these things is that by the time the whole truth comes out, too much time has passed, and the subterfuge has already been accomplished. People have reacted, and even though their brains may not remember the exact details of the lies, their hearts definitely do. Plus, the truth is often extensive and complex and tedious. It’s not sexy. It can’t be made into a simple meme, and it certainly can’t be sufficiently summed up in a 12 second TikTok video.

And that’s what the propagandists have on their side. Succinct, sexy, memeable lies. Hamas can literally make up a story out of thin air in 5 seconds, the news cycles that story around for 5 days, and it seems like people who desire the truth spend the next 5 months unraveling and sifting.

I know it’s incredibly overwhelming. I know I’m just a guy on Substack vs. multi million/billion dollar companies whose job it is to give you information. But my suggestion to those who may be trying to figure this all out, or even those who have made up their minds to believe what they hear, is to take a step back and just observe. Look closely. Go past the headlines, and consider the source. When you hear words like ‘Gaza Health Ministry’ or ‘Palestinian officials,’ what is meant is Hamas, the same people who refuse to give back hostages, including an almost one and a half year old baby, girls they’ve repeatedly raped, and many more. Consider proverbs 18:17 when it says, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”

One last thing about propaganda; its rallying cry tends to be the exact opposite of what is actually happening. What I’m noticing already from the “all eyes on Rafah” slogan that has gone viral is that those eyes didn’t seem to be on Rafah at all when Hamas set up camp inside another civilian area to shoot rockets into Tel Aviv. Those eyes did not seem to be on Rafah at all when Israel warned the civilians about Hamas being in their area and gave them escape routes to evacuate; and if there were some eyes on Rafah at that point, it was to accuse Israel of “ethnic cleansing.” Those same eyes were not on Rafah at all when Hamas and other Gazan people dragged Israeli civilian men, women, and children into Rafah. No eyes seemed to be on Rafah when some of those hostages were slaughtered there. And none of those eyes seem to be on Rafah as recently as 11 days ago when Shani Louk (an Israeli peace activist who believed in unity with and compassion for Gaza) and two other Israeli hostages were found dead there.

No, those eyes must have been blinking at lightning speed when all of those things were taking place in Rafah. “All eyes on Rafah” is meant to project an illusion that somehow, we all collectively are so intrinsically connected to the people of Gaza, that we feel what is going on, and we know what’s true, regardless of what anybody says. It is meant to create a sense of relatedness – perhaps a spiritual bond – to what is happening thousands of miles away. It alleviates one of feeling the burden of actually researching, and gives them an out. “All eyes on Rafah” is a false sense of security and awareness. The eyes the slogan is referring to could not be more impaired. There is no clear vision. Only a nefarious agenda; the same agenda that is being carried out in South Sudan, Libya, and Nigeria. What is happening now is an attempt at global domination by people who have been playing the same game since the 7th century.

Pan-Africanism is alive and well, and despite what you may have heard, it mixes with Islamism as much as oil mixes with water. Some people see it, and some do not. This will be another article fleshing that out soon from

Africa-Israel Weekly

. That deserves its own attention.

We have to wrestle with these things if we say we care for what is going on with the war between Israel and Hamas. We must. It does not matter what all of our favorite news channels say, or what our favorite social media personalities post on their feeds and stories. We do nobody justice with these empty platitudes. If anything, we are contributing to the boldness felt by Jew-haters all over the world. 

So yes, children are dying. Shining the light on those truly responsible is not justification.

It is telling the truth.