Hamas fighters surrender in droves, and their photos tell an interesting story

Since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended, Israel has been pushing forward relentlessly to destroy every Hamas stronghold, whether above or below ground. In Khan Younis, one of Hamas’s last redoubts, the Hamas fighters finally decided against martyrdom and surrendered en masse. There are a few notable things about the surrendering Hamas troops, and they destroy some of the propaganda we’ve heard so much about.

First, here are the stills and video of the surrendered Hamas men:

What you should immediately notice is that they’re not being slaughtered or tortured. In this regard, the Israeli approach is very different from what happens when Arabs get their hands on enemy soldiers that they don’t intend to keep alive as hostages for bartering. In 2000, when West Bankians got hold of two Israeli soldiers, they ripped them apart and showed their blood-stained hands to the cheering crowd. In warfare, the Arabs are indistinguishable from stone-aged tribes.

The Hamas prisoners have been stripped down to their undies, which is the most obvious way to protect against any of them having concealed weapons or explosives. Their semi-nudity allows one to see the other notable thing, which Bonchie pointed out at Red State:

The war against Hamas is now two months old, with the initial attack from the terrorists coming on October 7th. During that time, we’ve been assured that everyone is starving in Gaza due to the evil siege being carried out by Israel. In that picture, though, I see a whole lot of man boobs and beer guts. What does that tell you? It tells you that Hamas has been stealing aid and keeping its fighters well-fed as they cower underground.

Yes, they’re fat. That being the case, you can recognize the lie behind the claim coming from Hamas and its fellow travelers that the men detained are civilians:

If these fat men are civilians, the claimed food shortages have been greatly exaggerated. Alternatively, if they are, indeed, Hamas fighters, then Gaza operates on the North Korean principle, which is that you feed the soldiers and starve the citizens. Either way, it’s not a good look for Hamas.

There’s one more thing to keep in mind, which gives me the opportunity to show you a Twitter thread I’ve been hanging onto about the claimed casualties in Gaza, which ascend daily in ways that only credulous supporters (including the world’s media) could accept. As Aizenberg points out, it’s not just that the numbers are crazy. It’s also that the women and children are doing all the dying. If these people are, in fact, civilians, while the women and children are starving and dying, their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons have been living high on the hog. (And yes, I used the “hog” expression on purpose.)

 

 

 

 

 

As someone else pointed out regarding the casualty figures coming out of Gaza, even though we’re told that the whole system is in collapse, Hamas also seems remarkably competent at counting the dead:

Here’s the truth: Gazans wholeheartedly support Hamas. Most of the military-aged men in Gaza participate in Hamas in one way or another, with a large number of them serving as fighters. They shelter their men and weapons in and under civilian enclaves to optimize deaths among women and children for propaganda purposes. What food there is goes to the men first. It’s unclear how much is left for those women and children.

Finally, and typically, when they are ascendant, the Arabs fight with sadistic ferocity. Meanwhile, when things aren’t going well, they’ll quickly give in. As the British used to say of the hierarchical Germans during WWI, the Hun is either at your throat or at your feet. Or as bin Laden, who knew his culture well, said, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse”—or, in this case, they’ll surrender to the strong horse.