This next Sky News report is a must read, especially for those who do not view Hamas as a terrorist organization and Israel as anything but an apartheid state.
We had gone to Sderot looking for victims of Hamas. We did not expect what we found.
Sderot is a town two miles from Gaza, regularly rocketed. As we filmed the aftermath of one strike, a man said we should visit his neighbours.
“They lost a brother to Hamas,” he said. “But they are Arabs from Gaza.”
We knocked on their door. They emerged nervously before ushering us inside.
They are yet another family stricken with grief but this one is different: The Tanaburas may live in Israel but are Gazan Arabs.
On Saturday morning last week, they say their brother, Amir, went out to buy cigarettes.
Younes, 21, said it was the last time they saw him alive.
“Three terrorists chased him, but he was unable to escape. They murdered him like that, for nothing, a good man who saw an injured person and wanted to help,” he said.
They only found out what happened from a TikTok video passed on from a friend, showing him lying dead.
Amir was kind and generous, they say, the third-oldest brother.
“He had a heart of gold,” said 17-year-old Avraham.
“As they say, ‘God takes only the best’. Next month, he should have turned 21.”
Amir’s body was found with multiple gunshot wounds – yet another innocent victim of the Hamas attacks.
“There was no mercy,” Avraham told us. “They could have shot him once but no – they shot him several times, well after he died. He got a bullet, here, here, here.”
There are very few Gazans living in Israel; their father moved to Sderot three decades ago because he had worked for the Israelis.
All six brothers were born here. They speak only Hebrew but are also practising Muslims.
They still have family in Gaza but are in no doubt what Israel should do next.
“Hamas are murderers, they are terrorists. We should erase everybody, Gaza should be flattened. I have family in Gaza but I think Gaza should be flattened.”
Avraham told us they sneaked out when the attacks were still happening to bring their brother’s body home.
“I’m looking at the blood-stained mattress my brother was lying on and I am thinking to myself ‘was it really real?’,” he said.
Their brother’s body stayed in the house for hours before the ambulance took it away.
I was not surprised to read how they feel about Hamas and wanting Gaza flattened. I am surprised there were former Gazans living in Sderot.
But only because this is my first time hearing about it. I am not surprised my fellow Israelis and Jews would take in their family.
But back to my introduction to this post. Those who most need to read this report are unfortunately those least likely to be affected by it. Because in the overwhelming majority of cases, their Jew hatred leads them to believe the things they do, not truth, reason or logic.
