Day: October 27, 2023

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The man suspected of killing 18 people and wounding 13 in a shooting rampage in Lewiston, Maine, was found dead of a likely self-inflicted gunshot wound on Friday, ending a 48-hour manhunt that followed the most lethal episode of gun violence in the state’s history.

The body of Robert R. Card, 40, was discovered in the woods near the neighboring town of Lisbon Falls, near where police found his abandoned vehicle shortly after the shooting spree on Wednesday night.

“He is dead,” Maine Governor Janet Mills told a news conference, thanking the hundreds of officers from various agencies involved in the search.

“Like many people, I am breathing a sigh of relief tonight, knowing that Robert Card is no longer a threat to anyone … Now is the time to heal,” Mills said.

Card died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Mike Sauschuck, Maine’s Department of Public Safety commissioner.

Officials said the U.S. Army reservist opened fire on his victims Wednesday night, first at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, and minutes later at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant, which was hosting cornhole beanbag-throwing games.

Officials have not revealed any suspected motive.

The shootings and prolonged manhunt convulsed the normally bustling but serene community of Lewiston, a former textile hub and the second-most populous city in Maine.

Earlier on Friday, Maine State Police lifted an order that had kept tens of thousands of people in their homes while the manhunt continued.

The town lies on the banks of the Androscoggin River about 35 miles (56 km) north of the state’s largest city, Portland, and nearly as far southwest of Maine’s capital, Augusta.

Card, an Army Reserve sergeant from the nearby town of Bowdoin, has been described by authorities as a trained firearms instructor who served as a petroleum supply specialist when on duty at the military reserve base in Saco, Maine.

Law enforcement officials also said he had a history of mental illness and was committed to a psychiatric facility for two weeks during the summer of 2023, after which he was released.

Within hours of Wednesday night’s bloodshed, police circulated surveillance camera photos from one of the crime scenes of a bearded man wearing a brown, hooded sweatshirt and jeans and carrying what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle.

The initial trail of clues led to Lisbon town, about 7 miles (11 km) to the southeast of Lewiston, where Maine State Police found a white SUV they believed Card used to make his getaway and parked at a boat launch on the river. Public records showed he owned at least one vessel made by Sea-Doo, a company known for its jet ski-style personal watercraft.

Lisbon Falls, where the body was found, is the next town, still along the river.

As part of their search for Card, police trawled the waters of the Androscoggin River with divers and sonar on Friday, and sent teams of officers door-to-door in neighborhood canvasses seeking additional clues and possible eyewitnesses.

Authorities also officially released the names and ages of the victims for the first time, revealing that a cross section of Lewiston people had been killed, including deaf people playing in the beanbag-throwing tournament, a father-and-son pair of bowlers, and a couple aged 76 and 73.

Four of those killed belonged to the deaf community, Sauschuck said, asking television cameras to include the American sign language interpreter at a press conference in their frames. Nine deaf people were playing in a weekly tournament at Schemengees, the sister of one of the victims told the Lewiston Sun Journal.

Among them was Joshua Seal, 36, the director of interpreting services for the Pine Tree Society, a non-profit organization aiding people with disabilities, the Sun Journal reported, citing Noel Sullivan, the group’s president. Seal provided vital interpreting services for people isolated during the coronavirus pandemic, Sullivan said.

Stephen Vozella, 45, was a postal worker and active member of New England Deaf Cornhole, the group said on its Facebook page, adding that a moment of silence would be held at an upcoming tournament.

Bryan MacFarlane, 41, an avid motorcyclist, was also part of the cornhole tournament at Schemengees, his sister Keri Brooks told the Sun Journal.

Bill Young, 44, and his 14-year-old son Aaron were shot and killed while bowling together, Bill’s brother Rob Young told Reuters.

Husband and wife Bob Violette, 76, and Lucille Violette, 73, were also bowling together in a couples league when they were killed, the Sun Journal reported, citing his daughter-in-law, Cassandra Violette.

Tricia Asselin, 53, was a part-time worker at the bowling alley who was trying to call 911 when shot. Joseph Walker, 57, was a manager at Schemengees who stayed on the scene to help even though he could have escaped through a door near his office, his father, Leroy Walker, told Reuters on Friday.

“We were told that he picked up a butcher knife from the bar area where he was a lot of the time standing and went to attack the shooter,” Leroy Walker said of his son, who he called Joey. The gunman then shot Joey, killing him instantly.

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Looting ravaged the Mexican city of Acapulco after the iconic beach resort was hammered this week by Hurricane Otis, a record-breaking storm that killed at least 27 people and left thousands of residents struggling to get food and water.

Otis pounded Acapulco with winds of 165 miles per hour (266 km per hour) early on Wednesday, flooding the city, tearing roofs from homes, stores and hotels, submerging vehicles, and severing communications as well as road and air connections.

The cost of devastation left by the Category 5 storm was estimated at billions of dollars, and over 8,000 armed forces members were sent to help the stricken port recover.

“Right now, money’s no use to us because there’s nothing to buy, everything’s been looted,” 57-year-old Acapulco resident Rodolfo Villagomez said after Otis tore through the city. “It was total chaos. You could hear it here hissing like a bull.”

On Thursday evening, people carried off goods including food, water and toilet paper from stores. “We came to get food, because we don’t have any,” a woman told Reuters.

Reuters video showed people carrying boxes from a wrecked supermarket and loading up cars. Inside, shelves were bare.

“There were acts of looting in some places because there was an emergency,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday, urging residents not to take advantage of the situation.

Elsewhere, household detritus was littered among ruined deck chairs and jumbles of mangled trees outside wrecked homes.

Speaking at a regular press conference, Lopez Obrador said the government would help people in the city of nearly 900,000 in the southern state of Guerrero, one of Mexico’s poorest.

But many residents said the aid was insufficient.

“All the stores are closed or destroyed,” said Raul Busto Ramirez, 76, an engineer who works at Acapulco’s airport. He blamed looting on shortages and said ATM machines were out of action, leaving people with no cash.

The government has released little information about dead and injured, saying only that four people are also missing. Some officials privately express concern the death toll will rise.

Letitia Murphy said she began to worry when she lost contact with her ex-husband and father of her two children, 59-year-old Briton Neil Marshall, who was in Acapulco when Otis hit.

Murphy said she found out on social media he had died after residents discovered his body close to where he was staying.

“We can’t even get information about him,” she told Reuters by phone. “It’s horrible that we don’t know what to do.”

The Mexican and British governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Another weather front that could produce more heavy rain is expected to gain strength off Central America in the coming days, again moving toward southern Mexico.

Mexican authorities said Otis was the most powerful storm ever to strike Mexico’s Pacific coast. It caught forecasters by surprise, gathering strength with unexpected speed before it came ashore, and surpassed initial predictions.

Still, Lopez Obrador said: “We were lucky.”

“Nature, the creator protected us, even with the fury of the hurricane,” he added. “There’s a lot of material damage but luckily we’re not registering too many deaths.”

To evacuate tourists, an air bridge between Acapulco and Mexico City was being set up on Friday after authorities got the city’s battered airport back up and running.

The government has yet to estimate the cost of Otis, but Enki Research, which tracks tropical storms and models the cost of their damage, saw it likely “approaching $15 billion.” Lopez Obrador urged insurance companies to speed up payouts.

Governments sent messages of solidarity to Mexico, and Pope Francis expressed his condolences on Friday.

U.S. President Joe Biden expressed his condolences for the hurricane’s victims in a brief statement on Friday evening, pledging “full support” to Mexico’s government as well as help ensuring U.S. citizens in the area are safe.

State power utility CFE said on Friday it had restored 50% of the electricity service in Guerrero and Mexican telecommunications company America Movil had re-established nearly 60% of cell service.

Jeff, a 65-year-old Canadian in Acapulco, said he was stuck in the city and worried how he would survive the coming days because “all the stores have been pillaged.”

“The disaster here is unbelievable,” he said. “We don’t see nothing happening except people trying to scavenge everything they can to survive for the next couple of weeks or months.”

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The man suspected of killing 18 people and wounding 13 in a shooting rampage in Lewiston, Maine, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Friday, ending a 48-hour manhunt that followed the most lethal episode of gun violence in the state’s history.

The body of Robert R. Card, 40, was discovered in the woods near the neighboring town of Lisbon Falls, near where police found his abandoned vehicle shortly after the shooting spree on Wednesday night.

“He is dead,” Maine Governor Janet Mills told a news conference, thanking the hundreds of officers from various agencies involved in the search.

“Like many people, I am breathing a sign of relief tonight, knowing that Robert Card is no longer a threat to anyone … Now is the time to heal,” Mills said.

Card died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Mike Sauschuck, Maine’s Department of Public Safety commissioner.

Officials said the U.S. Army reservist opened fire in a bowling alley and then a bar minutes later on Wednesday night.

The shootings and prolonged manhunt convulsed the normally bustling but serene community of Lewiston, a former textile hub and the second-most populous city in Maine.

The town lies on the banks of the Androscoggin River about 35 miles (56 km) north of the state’s largest city, Portland, and nearly as far southwest of Maine’s capital, Augusta.

Card, an Army Reserve sergeant from the nearby town of Bowdoin, has been described by authorities as a trained firearms instructor who served as a petroleum supply specialist when on duty at the military reserve base in Saco, Maine.

Law enforcement officials also said he had a history of mental illness and was committed to a psychiatric facility for two weeks during the summer of 2023, after which he was released.

Within hours of Wednesday night’s bloodshed, police circulated surveillance camera photos from one of the crime scenes of a bearded man wearing a brown, hooded sweatshirt and jeans and carrying what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle.

Meanwhile, hundreds of officers from an array of agencies ranging from local police and sheriff’s deputies to the FBI and U.S. Coast Guard joined the search. Canadian authorities, including its border officers, were on alert.

The initial trail of clues led to Lisbon, about 7 miles (11 km) to the southeast of Lewiston, where Maine State Police found a white SUV they believed Card used to make his getaway and parked at a boat launch on the river. Public records showed he owned at least one vessel made by Sea-Doo, a company known for its jet ski-style personal watercraft.

As part of their search for Card, police trawled the waters of the Androscoggin River with divers and sonar on Friday, and sent teams of officers door-to-door in neighborhood canvasses seeking additional clues and possible eyewitnesses.

Earlier on Friday, Maine State Police lifted an order that had kept tens of thousands of people in their homes while the manhunt continued.

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(New York Jewish Week) –  A ban on corporal punishment in private schools, proposed in the wake of an extensive New York Times investigation alleging that the practice is prevalent in Hasidic yeshivas, is now law in the State of New York. 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the law on Wednesday after it was unanimously approved by the state legislature, making New York one of just four states — the others being New Jersey, Iowa and Maryland — where the practice is banned in private schools. Corporal punishment has been banned at New York’s public schools since 1985.

“Corporal punishment is unacceptable,” Hochul said in a statement. “This new law will ensure students in every New York school are protected from mistreatment.”

Allegations of corporal punishment were included in the Times series, published last September, that also delved into public funding for private Jewish schools that fell short in teaching secular studies.

“The attitude was constantly that you could get hit,” Ari Hershkowitz, an alumnus of United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg told the New York Times at the time. “We were constantly under threat of that.”

Richard Bamberger, a spokesman for some Hasidic yeshivas, told the New York Times this week that leaders of the schools had no issue with the new law.

“What they do oppose is the inaccurate suggestion that the legislation arose because of an abuse problem in yeshivas, which the Senate sponsor publicly stated is false,” he said. 

Bamberger was referring to State Senator Julia Salazar, a Democrat whose district includes Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn. She introduced the bill the day after the Times published its article, although she later tweeted that she did not have any evidence of  a pattern of corporal punishment in yeshivas. 

Hasidic leaders and their allies have pushed back on the notion that corporal punishment is common at yeshivas. 

“As a yeshiva parent/former student, I’m not familiar with the use of corporal punishment at yeshivas, nor would I tolerate it,” Simcha Eichenstein, a New York State Assembly member representing Borough Park, posted on X in March, when the legislation was proposed. 

Charles Lavine, a Jewish Democrat who represents parts of Nassau County in Long Island, sponsored the bill in the Assembly. It defines corporal punishment as “the use of physical force to cause pain or harm to someone accused of breaking a law or rule” and includes “spanking or slapping, hitting with weapons such as paddles, rulers, or belts, and forcing students to perform physically painful activities such as crawling over rough terrain or excessive running.”

“Physical punishment in educational settings is abhorrent and I am pleased that New York is protecting our children by outlawing its use. Students must learn in a safe environment. The message to any abusive adults is very simple, keep your hands off our kids,” Lavine said in a statement.

Yaffed, a Jewish nonprofit that has urged government scrutiny of secular education at Hasidic yeshivas, welcomed the legislation in a post on X, formerly Twitter. 

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post New York State adopts ban on corporal punishment proposed in wake of yeshiva probe appeared first on The Forward.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — On the fifth anniversary of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, President Joe Biden drew a straight line between the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history and Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 invasion of Israel.

“A gunman opened fire on Sabbath worshippers as they prayed, murdering 11 precious souls, wounding many more – including first responders,” Biden said Friday in his statement marking Oct. 27.

“Deepening the wound, today’s remembrance comes on the heels of the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Biden said. “On October 7th, a sacred Jewish holiday, the terrorist group Hamas unleashed pure evil against the people of Israel, slaughtering 1,400 Jews and taking hostage hundreds more.” Oct. 7 was the Jewish festival of Shemini Atzeret-Simchat Torah in Israel.

Biden’s weaving the two attacks, one committed by white nationalists, the other by radical Islamist terrorists, into the same cloth, marks a sharp shift from the launch of his campaign and the beginning of his presidency, when he identified the threat of antisemitism as coming principally from the far right. The gunman in Pittsburgh, who was sentenced to death this summer, was influenced by a proliferation of far-right content on social media.

Biden rolled out a strategy to counter antisemitism last May, the first by any presidential administration in U.S. history. A number of U.S. Jewish groups who advised on the strategy urged Biden to take into account the threat of anti-Jewish hatred from the left and other sources as well as the far-right, particularly on campuses, where some Jewish students say they face intimidation from the pro-Palestinian left.

“Under my presidency, we will continue to condemn antisemitism at every turn,” Biden said in his statement. “We are implementing the first-ever national strategy to counter Antisemitism. Because hate never goes away, it only hides until it is given just a little oxygen. And as a nation, we must ensure hate is never given any oxygen.”

A White House spokesman on Thursday specifically called out some campus pro-Palestinian protests as veering into antisemitism.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Biden on 5th anniversary of Pittsburgh synagogue shooting: Hamas invasion is ‘deepening the wound’ of antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.

Russia loses brigade’s worth of troops in push for Avdiivka, says Zelenskiy; heavy shelling hits Kherson; Macron condemns Orbán’s meeting with Putin

• See all our Ukraine war coverage

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, claimed that Russian forces have lost at least a brigade’s worth of troops attempting to advance on Ukraine’s eastern town of Avdiivka. Russia began a renewed push to encircle the embattled town in mid-October, trying to overwhelm Ukrainian positions with constant barrages of artillery and waves of troops and fighting vehicles, according to reports.

Russian forces have heavily shelled the centre of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, injuring a number of people and damaging at least 10 buildings, a senior local official and emergency workers said.

The European Council has outlined plans to seize the profits from frozen Russian assets and direct billions of euros to support Ukraine. In a set of formal public conclusions after the culmination of the EU leaders summit, it said “extraordinary revenues held by private entities stemming directly from Russia’s immobilised assets” could be directed to support Ukraine and its recovery.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has condemned the Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán’s recent meeting and handshake with Vladimir Putin. In the situation we are in with Russia, we should not use these bilateral contacts to negotiate things about ourselves that would weaken our unity [on Ukraine],” Macron said after a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels.

Russia’s top investigative body has said it had opened a criminal inquiry into the attempted murder of former Ukrainian lawmaker Oleg Tsaryov, a pro-Russian figure who was reported to have been lined up by Moscow to lead a puppet administration in Kyiv after Russia’s invasion. He is in intensive care after being shot, a Russian official said.

The wives and family of enlisted Ukrainian soldiers have gathered at Independence Square in Kyiv to call for the right to voluntarily demobilise after 18 months. “Our servicemen are strong, but they are not robots,” protesters shouted during the rally.

The new Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, has told other EU leaders that €50bn in EU aid to Ukraine should include guarantees that the funds would not be misappropriated, his office said. “Ukraine is among the most corrupt countries in the world,” he claimed.

Continue reading…

The Gaza Ministry of Health has calculated that more than 7,000 Palestinians have been killed, including nearly 3,000 children, by the latest Israeli bombing on Gaza. Those living in Gaza are under the constant threat of airstrikes, with little food, water, or access to medical care. This week on Deconstructed, Maram Al-Dada, an aviation engineer based in Florida, joins Ryan Grim; Al-Dada’s family is in Gaza, where he grew up. By the time of the interview, a shocking 46 members of Al-Dada’s family had been killed by Israeli attacks, with the rest wondering when their moment will come. Al-Dada talks about his childhood in Gaza, the escalating restrictions placed on Palestinians, and his family’s experience during these past few weeks.

Note: This episode was recorded on Thursday evening (October 26), before the Friday evening escalation by Israel and before Gaza lost cellular and internet service.

Transcript coming soon.

The post Inside a Gaza Village: “All of Us Will Die, but We Don’t Know When” appeared first on The Intercept.

There has been no mystery about what comes next in Gaza. The only questions, it seems, have been how much force and for how long.

Multiple times in recent days, Israeli tanks and armored vehicles penetrated the Gaza Strip, engaged Hamas militants and hit select targets in preparation for an inevitable, full-scale ground invasion.

“We are preparing,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, ominously hinting at what is to come.  “I will not elaborate.”

Israel’s ally, the United States, has appeared steadfast in supporting Israel’s decision.

“They have a right and a responsibility to go after Hamas after what happened on October 7,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Thursday, noting the Hamas terror attacks that massacred 1,400 people, the vast majority civilians. 

The view is shared by multiple counterterrorism, intelligence and security officials, as well as by some experts, who argue there is a compelling case for Israel to take more drastic action to curtail the threat from Hamas — a U.S.-designated terror organization thought to command between 20,000 and 25,000 fighters as well as thousands more from other, smaller extremist groups in Gaza. 

These former officials, however, cautioned that even though a ground operation may be justified, it comes with significant risks — to Israel, to Israeli forces and especially to Palestinian civilians living under Hamas rule in Gaza. And some also note, while Israel appears set on this course, it is not the only option.

Israel’s air campaign 

The starting point for some of these former officials is Israel’s now three-week-old air campaign, in some cases carrying out as many as 250 airstrikes in a 24-hour period, against purported Hamas targets in Gaza.

The images of the aftermath of these strikes, including flattened neighborhoods, dead or wounded children and grieving families, are admittedly heart-wrenching, they say. But they also point out the Israeli air campaign has yet to stop Hamas from repeatedly launching rockets into Israel.

“You can see why they’re reluctant to leave it to airstrikes,” a former Western counterterrorism official told VOA, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding the conflict.

“The airstrikes are insufficiently surgical,” the official added, arguing that from a counterterrorism viewpoint, the argument for Israel to agree to a cease-fire after airstrikes alone is weak.

“What you’re doing really is just inviting a return to the status quo and you may not do a great deal of damage to Hamas infrastructure because of a lot of it is hidden, a lot of it is underground,” the official said. 

“Have you inflicted enough pain to make it less likely that that same thing will happen again?” the official asked. “Airstrikes have not done the job in the past.” 

Daniel Hoffman, a retired U.S. clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the CIA, agreed.

“Israel tried that. They tried to degrade Hamas with an air campaign and deter Hamas, but deterrence failed,” he told VOA. 

“Israel’s concluded that they cannot allow Hamas to enjoy ungoverned space in Gaza to plot terrorist attacks, because they’ll do it,” Hoffman added. “So, Israel has to go and take the fight to the enemy, so to speak.”

Alternatives to ground incursion 

A former Israeli security official who spoke to VOA said that at one point, Israel could have considered other options.

One would have been to secure the country following the initial Hamas attack and then use the military to create a buffer zone inside Gaza. This option, the former official said, would have pushed Hamas fighters farther back from the border with Israel and given Israel time to seek the release of the approximately 200 hostages taken by Hamas militants.

Israel then could have taken its time, methodically hunting down Hamas leaders and commanders.

But the former Israeli official cautioned that the brutality of the Hamas attack could have made that approach politically untenable.

“Hamas doesn’t view this as another round … Hamas decided to go all in,” the former official said. “This is the ultimate attack that Hamas can do.”

“We have to get rid of Hamas,” the former official said. “If we don’t do it now, when will we?”

As for eliminating Hamas from the air alone, “we cannot just do this from bombing from the air unless we inflict much more civilian casualties,” the former official added.

Bloody battle

Already, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has blamed Israeli airstrikes for killing more than 7,000 people, including at least 2,900 children and 1,500 women. 

U.S. and Israeli officials have publicly challenged those numbers, with Israeli defense officials contending they are targeting only Hamas fighters, weapon stockpiles, infrastructure and military capabilities. No one, however, disputes that the overall civilian death toll among Palestinians in Gaza is likely in the thousands.

Even the former Israeli security official who said a ground incursion would allow Israeli forces to be more surgical in targeting Hamas than an even heavier bombing campaign admitted a ground operation would see the civilian death toll rise.

“Of course, it will be bloody. War is bloody,” the former official said, describing Hamas as “very disciplined.”

“They have built up their defenses very well and very deep,” the former Israeli official said. “They mastered the ability to put a lot of their infrastructure in places where they know there are civilians.”

The Israeli military has sought to back up those claims, sharing intelligence alleging to show how Hamas uses hospitals, including Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, as command-and-control centers for its attack on Israel.

Current and former Israeli officials say those command-and-control centers are connected to bunkers, built underneath schools and mosques, connected by hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, with entrances to the tunnel system placed in civilian homes.

The former Israeli security official said Israel, in the past, has tried to destroy some of the tunnels using so-called bunker buster bombs. But he said the impact was limited.

Not everyone accepts the Israeli claims about Hamas’ widespread use of civilians as human shields. 

“It’s preposterous,” said Tahani Mustafa, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Palestine.

“That has been debunked numerous times through numerous conflicts,” she told VOA in an interview shortly after Israel responded to the Hamas terror attack with the start of its air campaign. 

“They’re targeting everything, even buildings that host reputable media offices. They’re targeting UNWRA [U.N. Relief and Works Agency] facilities,” she said. “To claim that Hamas is using human shields, that’s implying that UNWRA was complicit in allowing Hamas to use its facilities.”

Israel’s claims, however, have been backed by the White House. 

And according to Hoffman, the former CIA official, high civilian death tolls will be a near certainty.

“That is going to be part of the war, because Hamas deliberately engages in military activity, whether it’s launching missiles or hiding themselves, in residential areas,” he said. “So, if you want to strike them, you’re going to run the risk of civilian casualties.”

Several of the former officials who spoke to VOA compared a ground incursion into Gaza to the nine-month-long battle by Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition forces to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State terror group that culminated in July 2017.

An Associated Press investigation found between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians were killed during that campaign, with at least one-third of the deaths caused by Iraqi or coalition forces.

Long-term impact 

And, in counterterrorism terms, high civilian death tolls come with other significant risks.

“Going house to house may be the only way to eliminate armed resistance to Israel,” said Katherine Zimmerman, a counterterrorism expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

“But the question the Israelis must answer before any decision to conduct a ground operation is whether achieving certain conditions today — the elimination of Hamas —worsens conditions for the future whereby Israeli actions trigger radicalization within a next generation,” she told VOA.

Additionally, there are questions about whether Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas as an entity capable of governing Gaza and waging war is even feasible.

“You talk about annihilation or whatever it is because it’s a good soundbite,” the former Western counterterrorism official told VOA. “But you can’t eliminate Hamas because Hamas is far too deeply ingrained.”

Other former officials told VOA that because Hamas is as much an idea as it is a terror group, a ground campaign against Hamas has to be just the start of Israeli efforts.

“You’ve got to drive a wedge between the irreconcilable Hamas terrorists and the regular folk,” said Hoffman. “This is going to be a counterinsurgency for a really long time.”