The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the discovery on Wednesday of an Islamic State flag carried by a presumed Hamas terrorist who participated in the wave of massacres in the country this weekend.
Members of Hamas, a genocidal Sunni jihadist organization whose stronghold is in the Palestinian-controlled Gaza area, stormed residential communities and other civilian areas in Israel on Saturday in an attempt to kill, abduct, torture, or otherwise brutalize as many Israelis as possible, which the terrorists branded the “al-Aqsa flood.” As of Thursday, Israeli authorities have confirmed the deaths of 1,300 people, many of them infants and elderly civilians. At least 97 people remain under Hamas’s control and scores of others are missing at press time.
The Palestinian terror attack happened on the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret, the final day of the annual High Holy Day cycle.
The government of Israel declared an official state of war on Sunday following the attacks and has begun organizing plans to eradicate the Hamas threat. Israeli soldiers have spent much of the week clearing the areas attacked and assessing the destruction. Soldiers have found evidence of outrageous atrocities including civilians burned alive, the dead bodies of babies missing their heads, and dead children with knives left dangling out of them.
Online, Hamas terrorists stole the phones of their victims to upload photos of their dead bodies to their social media profiles, resulting in family members finding out about their loved ones’ fates through public posts on the internet.
At a music festival, Hamas terrorists opened fire on attendees, dragged victims onto their vehicles, and are believed to have beaten some to death. Jihadists filmed themselves desecrating corpses and published the images online. Israeli authorities found at least 260 bodies at the site of the festival.
The macabre scenes have repeatedly elicited comparisons to the Islamic State, a similar Sunni jihadist group that established a “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq from 2014 to 2017, when efforts by the U.S. military and Kurdish allies liberated the caliphate’s “capital,” Raqqa, Syria. Prior to its demise, the Islamic State regularly published slickly produced videos featuring its members committing unspeakable horrors, often against women and children.
Beheadings, burning “infidels” alive, and forcing “Caliphate Cub” children to participate – in some cases by playing “soccer” with the heads of their victims – were not uncommon scenes in Islamic State propaganda.
At Kibbutz Sufa, an Israeli community near the border with Gaza, soldiers confirmed the discovery of an Islamic State flag on the body of a terrorist who died in attacking the civilians there. An account on the Telegram social media application named South First Responders published images of the flag, citing soldiers in Kibbutz Sufa addressing the aftermath of the Hamas attack there.
“We spoke to soldiers who took part in the initial defense of the adjacent military post, who pulled this flag from the vests of one of the Hamas fighters. It seems as though the terrorists planned to raise the flag at the military post in the event that they succeeded to capture it,” the account explained.
Islamic State flag found in Kibbutz attacked by Hamas, October 7, 2023. (South First Responders/Telegram)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared Hamas to the Islamic State in remarks on Monday vowing a forceful response to the carnage, and American President Joe Biden soon followed.
“We always knew who Hamas was. Now the whole world knows,” Netanyahu said in his remarks on Monday. “Hamas is Daesh, and we will treat it exactly as the civilized world treated Daesh.”
Daesh is an Arabic term for the Islamic State, often used by its opponents because its jihadists are said to dislike it.
“Infants in their mothers’ arms, grandparents in wheelchairs, Holocaust survivors abducted and held hostage,” Biden similarly narrated in remarks on Tuesday. “Hostages whom Hamas has now threatened to execute in violation of every code of human morality. It’s abhorrent. The brutality of Hamas — this bloodthirstiness — brings to mind the worst — the worst rampages of ISIS.”
Hamas has long been suspected of ties to the Islamic State, though the latter group’s rift from al-Qaeda, an older jihadist terror group that the Islamic State was once a branch of, caused some discord between ISIS and associated groups (al-Qaeda has also had its disputes with Hamas, though both support the same goals of massacring Americans and Jewish people). The Islamic State boasted in 2016 that it had recruited Hamas members, publishing a video showing alleged training of jihadists in Egypt. The “trainees” appeared wearing Hamas uniforms. At the time, the government of Israel had accused Hamas of training Egyptian ISIS recruits as part of a cooperation agreement to help bring weapons into Gaza.
A year later, the Saudi news organization al-Arabiya reported that Bedouin tribes in the Sinai peninsula had documented evidence of Hamas jihadists aiding ISIS fighters.
“From the moment IS fighters flee from Egyptian army soldiers and tribal warriors, they get a safe hiding place, and are offered medical care and military training,” a Bedouin leader said at the time, accusing Hamas of offering the support.