Article published by Ynetnews.com,  18 December 2023. © Richard Kemp

I can’t envisage a more terrible military tragedy in this situation than the killing of Israeli hostages by IDF soldiers last week in Shijaiyah. It is of course unimaginably heartbreaking for the three men’s families and friends, but also for the soldiers that pulled the trigger. Now all of them will have to live with this nightmare for the rest of their lives.

And, sickeningly, the usual suspects in the media have gleefully rushed to judgment, wheeling out so-called experts to say how this tragedy shows just how trigger-happy, ill-disciplined and gung-ho the IDF is. That’s because they don’t understand the situation in Gaza, have limited understanding of hard fighting on the ground and only too often want the IDF to be the bad guys.

As for myself, I am always surprised that disasters like this don’t happen more often when you think about the confusion, danger, fear, speed and unpredictability of events as well as the sheer number of sometimes uncontrollable moving parts that make up ground combat. Indeed, I was involved in a blue-on-blue some years ago when my troops and I opened fire on some of our own soldiers. As with the hostages in Gaza we had misidentified them as terrorists.

Like Hamas, the terrorists we faced were fighting on their own turf and adept at sophisticated deception to drag us into their killing zones. In Gaza, the hostages were waving a makeshift white flag and calling out in Hebrew. One escaped into a building and then re-emerged before running back. Each of these actions could easily have been read as a dangerous terrorist ploy and presumably were by the soldiers on the ground.

There is every reason for that. Hamas has previously feigned surrender and then tried to kill IDF troops moving to capture them. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 14 December 2023. © Richard Kemp

Speaking in the Dail yesterday, Leo Varadkar confirmed Father Christmas has been given permission to enter Irish air space from December 24 to 25 this year. Perhaps he thinks that will make amends for past misdemeanours, including his admission of pulling Santa’s beard off in a supermarket when he was five.

Although Varadkar thanked the Irish Department of Agriculture and Revenue Commissioners for allowing the necessary exemptions, if we assume the toy-laden sleigh will first touch down in Britain and Northern Ireland before flying on to the Republic, how can this be made to square with the Windsor Framework? In any case, the North Pole is not in the European Union, so the sweetmeats on board will presumably have to be labelled ‘not for EU’. I am sure we will not be witnessing any double standards from the Irish capital.

Even more seriously, I hope Varadkar has been coordinating the arrival of Santa with the RAF. After all, without an air force, Ireland is unable to monitor its own skies, far less police them. Under a once-secret defence pact between our countries that has been in place since the 1950s, the job of defending Ireland falls on the UK. British jets frequently have to get airborne to intercept Russian planes entering Irish airspace. The last thing we need is for the RAF to have to scramble on Christmas Eve to deal with an unidentified flying object over Dublin.

Our aerial assistance comes without any price tag despite Ireland being the second richest country in the EU by GDP per capita. Perhaps as a Christmas goodwill gesture, Varadkar could offer at least some reimbursement for the services of the boys in blue. But maybe that’s expecting too much from such a Scrooge-like figure, who once famously pronounced A Christmas Carol to be his least favourite seasonal movie, saying that Tiny Tim ‘should get a job’.

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 13 December 2023. © Richard Kemp

I was inside the Gaza Strip yesterday and witnessed two terrorist tunnels being destroyed with explosives by IDF engineers in Shejaiya. In the same area of Gaza City a short time later, the IDF suffered one of its deadliest single skirmishes since the ground offensive began, with nine soldiers of the Golani Brigade killed in a gun and explosives battle with terrorists.

Heavy fighting continues in the north and south of Gaza, both above ground and in Hamas’s extensive tunnel network, which – to give you a sense of scale – is assessed to be even more extensive than the London Underground’s 250 miles. The tunnels bring yet another incredibly formidable dimension to urban combat, which is itself among the most challenging of battle environments, characterised by particularly high casualty rates, especially among attacking forces.

I’ve been into those tunnels: they are heavily fortified, concrete lined and with lighting, electric power and air supply. Over two decades they have been constructed using vast sums of money, including international aid that should have been spent on civilian infrastructure, and costing the lives of many Gazans including dozens of children sent underground to work on them.

The IDF’s inexorable advance through Gaza both above and below ground has seen rocket launches into Israel dramatically reduced as terrorist freedom of action is choked off. That said, when I was in Shejaiya a volley was launched from further south, but it was knocked down by Israel’s Iron Dome before it could leave the sky over Gaza.

The terrorist command structure, too, is beginning to break down as senior leaders are killed, though the head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, and his henchmen probably remain underground somewhere in the south, no doubt with an eventual exit planned through tunnels beneath the border with Egypt. An increasing number of terrorists have been surrendering, which is an encouraging sign of plunging morale. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 27 November 2023. © Richard Kemp

Joe Biden is no friend of Israel. His constant appeasement of Tehran and blatant distancing from Jerusalem – even refusing to invite Netanyahu to the White House – as well as his feeble responses to Iranian-sponsored attacks against US forces in the region, have only weakened the Israeli government’s hand in fighting terrorism.

His dispatch of two carrier strike groups to the region to deter Iran was recognition that these blunders had brought the Middle East towards a much wider conflict. It was also an effort to restrain Israel from taking the law into its own hands against Iran and its proxies by trying to give the impression that the US was ready to do the dirty work if needed. Some hope of that!

After his visit to Jerusalem at the start of the war, Biden said: ‘My administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.’ It wasn’t long before his actions proved his duplicitousness. While saying publicly that Hamas had to be defeated, he began coercing Israel behind the scenes to stop short of achieving that goal. US collusion with Qatar, which has long harboured Hamas leaders, forced the Israeli war cabinet to agree a ceasefire in return for release of a few hostages.

Now the four day truce is expiring, Biden is pushing for an extension while still claiming to believe that eliminating Hamas remains a legitimate mission for Israel. He knows that the longer Israel’s attack on Hamas is paused for hostage release, the greater the likelihood that it will not be resumed. Hamas is reeling from six weeks of IDF assaults in the air and on the ground and all that can save them now is a permanent halt to Israeli operations.

They will continue to use their only two effective weapons to attempt to bring that about. The first is the hostages, and Hamas will try to drip feed further releases to buy themselves more time. The second is the civilian population of Gaza. If Israel does return to the fight, Hamas will ensure as many civilians as possible die to intensify international pressure on Israel. In that Biden is also their willing Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 20 November 2023. © Richard Kemp

Hamas uses hospitals and other protected places like schools and mosques for terrorist purposes. Since 2006, when the terror group took over the Gaza Strip, we have seen report after report showing just that.

Back then, an American Public Broadcasting Service documentary showed Hamas gunmen prowling the corridors of Al-Shifa Hospital, intimidating staff and denying access to protected areas. In 2014, a Washington Post journalist reported that the hospital ‘has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders’. In 2015, Amnesty International said that Hamas interrogated and tortured prisoners in Al-Shifa.

Yet since Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza, this has suddenly come into question. IDF explanations for raids into civilian buildings, especially hospitals, have been treated with disbelief and even hostility. This is despite CCTV images of hostages being rushed around the Al-Shifa hospital, and evidence of a tunnel leading underground from within the complex. Captured Hamas terrorists have confirmed the use of hospitals for their terrorist cause and even Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, admitted in a speech in 2021 that the group used civilian infrastructure for military purposes.

Chief among those questioning what ought to be clear facts, inevitably, has been the BBC and its international editor, Jeremy Bowen. After the IDF displayed weapons seized at Al-Shifa, he gave an on-air diatribe implying that this was not convincing evidence that Hamas had a base in the hospital. He even suggested the pile of weapons could belong to the ‘security department’. Perhaps it is a coincidence that Bowen’s claim directly echoed the words of a senior Hamas terrorist on Al Jazeera two days earlier.

US intelligence confirms Al-Shifa has been used as a military headquarters. But terminology used by the White House national security spokesman, John Kirby, that it housed a command ‘node’ rather than a command centre as the Israelis described it, suggests a desire to underplay its significance. It’s hard to understand such Continue reading →

Article published by Ynetnews.com,  23 November 2023. © Richard Kemp

I’ve never before heard such an outrageous question asked on British mainstream media in any context. On Thursday Sky News presenter Kay Burley put it to Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy that the planned release of 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for just 50 hostages shows that ‘Israel does not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives’. She claimed that an unnamed ‘hostage negotiator’ had suggested that to her.

Hearing this rubbish reminded me immediately of an account by Israeli writer and former soldier Hen Mazzig, who in 2013 was monstrously told by a female university professor in America: ‘You IDF soldiers don’t rape Palestinians because Israelis are so racist and disgusted by them that you won’t touch them.’

Even if Burley’s hostage negotiator actually exists, why on earth would she repeat such a demented proposition live on national TV? There can only be one explanation and that is a desire to humiliate Levy and sow the seeds of Israeli racism into the minds of her viewers. That would be true to form for this channel, whose reports about the Gaza war have been constantly skewed against Israel.

Examples are too numerous to recount here, but just from memory (and I watch as little of Sky News as I can), earlier this month Burley blatantly misquoted Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions in an attempt to persuade viewers that Israel was guilty of war crimes. And another interviewer categorically denied that some anti-Israel protest organizers in the UK had connections with Hamas despite the fact that such links have been definitively proven.

Sky is of course not alone; Israel derangement syndrome is a common sickness among much of the British media. After an explosion occurred in the parking lot of the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza last month, without evidence the BBC immediately accused Israel of bombing it. Their correspondent in Israel, John Donnison, said he couldn’t think of any other possible cause than ‘an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes’. Continue reading →