Media blackout after Hamas issues a statement about their motives for attack on Israel
Hamas on Saturday published a statement to their official website about their self-described “large scale military operation at the borderline of the Gaza Strip” – an event that kicked off a weekend of escalated violence and bloodshed in the region, leading to a formal declaration of war by Israel.
Attributed to Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas political bureau, the statement referred to the attack as “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” and called it “a response to the Israeli occupation’s crimes after several warnings.”
Here is the full text, for the public record:
Hamas chief: ‘Operation Aqsa Flood is a strategic track to respond to continued Israeli crimes’
Head of the Hamas political bureau Ismail Haniyeh said that the movement warned the Israeli occupation from continuing its crimes against the Palestinian people but it ignored the warnings.
In a press statement, the Hamas chief explained that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood came as a response to the Israeli occupation’s crimes after several warnings.
The Palestinian resistance announced a large-scale military operation at the borderline of the Gaza Strip to respond to the Israeli occupation’s crimes against Palestinians and its utter disregard for international laws.
Haniyeh explained that the Israeli occupation had repeatedly attacked several cities in the West Bank, continued to storm the Al-Aqsa mosque, and targeted Palestinian detainees held in Israeli jails.
The Hamas chief pointed out that the occupation continues to tighten its siege imposed for more than 17 years on the Gaza Strip.
Over the past few days, the Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tortured and insulted Palestinian detainees held in Israeli jails, Haniyeh continued.
When the situation became too aggravated, the Palestinian resistance was forced to take a strategic decision and continue the series of Palestinian uprisings and intifadas by launching Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
Decensored News was alerted to the existence of this statement by journalist
, who said he had come across it after simply deciding to check their website for himself.When Sam searched on X (formerly known as Twitter) to see who had already linked to it, he was surprised to find zero results:
Decensored News was likewise unable to find any prior links to the statement on the platform after conducting a similar search, which can be replicated here.
Over 24 hours later, searching for various phrases from the statement on Google yields only one result: a repost of the full statement on a site called Buletin Online, which appears to be based in Malaysia.
The same searches on DuckDuckGo yield zero results, suggesting that no media outlets have quoted from the statement at any length.
“Hamas is being discussed by so many,” Sam wrote on Substack late Saturday night. “Words don’t do justice to how perverse it is to not simply look at the stated justification by Hamas.”
The Hamas website went down during much of the evening on Sunday, making the statement inaccessible, although Decensored News had already published screenshots of it on X the night before:
The site came back online for a while late Sunday night, but appears to be down again as of Monday morning.
Palestine’s ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, appeared on the BBC on Sunday to discuss the conflict:
Originally published on the Decensored News website. For more reporting like this, please follow Decensored News on your favorite social media platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack. Thank you for your interest and support!