Micaela Burrow
Daily Caller News Foundation
Israel is planning a years-long assassination campaign against Hamas terrorist leaders linked to the Oct. 7 attacks, when Hamas militants brutally murdered 1,200 Israelis and took roughly 240 people hostage, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Mossad and other intelligence agencies to hunt down and kill Hamas leaders in Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar in the coming years once the current war in Gaza tapers off, the WSJ reported, citing Israeli officials. In the past, Israel has avoided targeting members of the Palestinian-based group in other countries to preclude diplomatic crises.
“I have instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are,” Netanyahu said in a televised address on Nov. 22, according to the WSJ.
Qatar has allowed Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, to run a political office from the capital of Doha for years, according to the WSJ. Qatar, Lebanon, Iran, Russia and Turkey have at times harbored Hamas terrorists.
And Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the leaders are living on “borrowed time,” the WSJ reported. “They are marked for death. The struggle is worldwide, both the terrorists in Gaza and those who fly in expensive planes.”
Israel is already carrying out operations to kill Hamas terrorist leaders living in Gaza while the war goes on, according to the WSJ. Plans on how to target leaders elsewhere around the globe initiated shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks, with Israel’s stated intention to prevent Hamas from ever staging a repeat.
However, some Israeli officials want to keep the plan a secret, according to the WSJ. They also debated whether to begin the assassinations immediately, but refrained from taking out Hamas militants in Qatar for fear it would close a door for the emirate to mediate hostage releases with Hamas.
Mossad head David Barnea met with CIA Director William Burns in Doha on Tuesday for discussions on a ceasefire extension and the freeing of additional hostages.
Some assassinations can at times violate international law, although that has not stopped many countries from carrying out targeted killings and weathering the international consternation that follows, according to the WSJ.
Israel’s intelligence forces have a storied history of clandestine operations to eliminate human targets for decades.
Netanyahu oversaw a botched assassination attempt against Hamas head Khaled Meshaal in Jordan that resulted in the release of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the group’s spiritual leader.
An Israeli government spokesperson did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. The Mossad could not be reached for comment.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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IMPORTANT NOTE TO WND READERS: Shortly after Hamas terrorists fired over 5,000 rockets from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7 and then proceeded to attack the Jewish state by land, sea and air – torturing, burning, beheading and murdering well over a thousand people, including women, children and infants, and wounding and abducting hundreds more – world reaction was, in its own way, almost equally shocking.
For after the biggest one-day mass slaughter of Jews since the Nazi Holocaust, what followed was an outpouring of celebratory demonstrations, unbridled Jew-hatred, deliriously gleeful support for Hamas and bitter condemnation of the nation of Israel. Not just in the Arab-Muslim world, but throughout the Western world as well, including all across America.
Why? What is behind the explosion of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, pro-terror sentiment in the United States, where Israel has long been one of America’s closest friends and allies? Why are hordes of young “woke” LGBT demonstrators marching in support of Hamas – when Hamas wouldn’t think twice about binding and blindfolding them and throwing them off the roof of a tall building – as they routinely do in the Muslim world?
It turns out there’s one area of agreement that is so powerful, deep-seated and all-consuming that the vast differences between the deranged left and the murderous jihadists melt away into Kumbaya harmony.
All of this and much more is completely exposed in November’s issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled ISRAEL VS. GLOBAL JIHAD: How Jew-hatred, radical Islam and Leftism are pushing us toward World War III. Beyond a deeply insightful dive into why leftists are surging toward radical Islam – which hates and dreams of raping and butchering them – this Whistleblower issue includes fantastic articles by everyone from top Israeli analyst (and former Israel Defense Forces officer) Caroline Glick to Harvest Christian Fellowship’s Pastor Greg Laurie on the current war in Israel and biblical prophecies regarding the End Times … which he says are now upon us.
WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
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