Page 13 - TORCH Magazine #23 - July 2023

t the beginning of May 2023, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out ‘Operation Shield and Arrow’. The name of the operation itself demonstrates
how Israel defended itself from attack before using precision strikes to take out the enemy’s leadership.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is a Palestinian militant group that operates primarily from the Gaza Strip. PIJ is controlled and funded by the Iranian regime. They have no interest in the politics of Gaza and no care for the people of the Gaza Strip. Their only goal is to wipe Israel off the map and replace it with an Islamic Palestinian state; something that will never happen.
PIJ is an outlawed terror group in much of the Western world. It is illegal
to support PIJ in the United Kingdom, European Union, United States and many other countries. However, if you were to look at some media reports about the conflict between Israel and PIJ, you may be surprised to see British commentators and journalists downplaying the terrorism unleashed against Israel, or even worse, seemingly taking their side. In this article we hope to explain the truth of the conflict and counter the anti-Israel bias you may have heard.
The most recent conflict between Israel and PIJ was sparked with the death of one of the terror group’s leaders
in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Khader Adnan, whilst he was in Israeli custody.
Khader Adnan was a Palestinian terrorist. He had been arrested by Israel previously and each time he would carry out a hunger strike and be released by Israel unharmed. This time, however, Israel refused to play his game. This time, Khader Adnan’s hunger strike lasted 87
days, during which time Israel offered him food and medical assistance, but
he refused both. Eventually, Adnan was admitted to hospital but continued to refuse food and medical treatment. After 87 days from beginning his hunger strike, Khader Adnan died of starvation.
Khader Adnan was not an innocent man. He was a self-confessed terrorist leader of an outlawed terror group who incited violence against Israelis and
was responsible for inciting attacks on civilians. To understand the hatred he had for Israel, we need only to look at a video clip of him rallying young men to fight against Israel. In his speech, he praises the Palestinian suicide bomber Hasan Abu Zeid, who murdered five Israeli civilians. Adnan then asks the men gathered which one of them will be the next ‘Abu Zeid’.
“Who among you is the next suicide bomber? Who among you will carry the next explosive belt? Who among you will fire the next bullets? Who among you will have his body parts blown all over?” Khader Adnan asks in the video.
Adnan’s praise for suicide bombings, and his desire for more, is because Palestinian Islamic Jihad is known for
its deadly terror attacks. Their first bombing was in 1989, when a 25-year-
old PIJ terrorist boarded an Israeli bus, detonated his suicide belt and killed sixteen civilians, including two Canadians and an American, and wounded dozens more. This tactic has been used repeatedly by PIJ throughout the years, but now the group’s tactics have evolved into terror shootings, car rammings and cross-border rocket attacks.
Khader Adnan was a terrorist leader who incited terror attacks against civilians and deliberately chose to go on hunger strike and refuse all medical treatment. He knew that if he died it would incite terror against Israel. His radical ideology convinced him that this was more important than living.
Unsurprisingly, his death sparked attacks from PIJ terrorists who launched over 100 rockets at Israeli civilians the
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