The pan-Arabist satellite news television channel Al Mayadeen overnight Wednesday reported the IDF bombed the home of the father of the mastermind of Hamas’s cruel massacre of 1,200 Israelis, Mohammad Deif, killing several members of his family.
The report specified that Deif’s brother, Abd al-Fattah Diab Deif, along with his son Midhat Deif, and his granddaughter Hala Deif. According to the report, the attack was carried out in a village in the southern Gaza Strip, and other family members are trapped under the rubble.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.
Israel tried several times to eliminate Deif, without success. In July 1998, while trying to cross the Philadelphi Corridor to Egypt, he escaped from a force from the Nahal 50th Battalion which was lying in ambush a few dozen meters away. On August 22, 2001, Israel tried for the first time to eliminate Deif, along with his deputies, but they managed to escape. On September 26, 2002, an IDF Apache helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at Deif’s car, after he visited mourners in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza. After several hours in which the security system received conflicting information about his fate, it became clear that Deif was not killed but seriously injured (he lost his eye and was left with a mutilated hand). About thirty Arabs who were around him were injured by the force of the explosion, including two of his bodyguards. Deif was not taken to the Shifa hospital for fear of another assassination attempt, but to a hiding place, where he was initially treated by Abdel-Aziz al-Rantisi, a senior Hamas official, who was a pediatrician by training. He then underwent orthopedic rehabilitation by Arab doctors who were smuggled from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, but his injury continued to cause him difficulties in speaking and moving his limbs.
Despite his injury, Deif returned to activity in early 2003. Another assassination attempt was carried out on September 3, 2003, when a report was received of the gathering of the Hamas military brass in an apartment in Gaza which included Ismail Haniyeh, and the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. An Israeli fighter jet bombed the apartment, but the senior Hamas officials who were on the lower floor of the building were unscathed.
Deif referred to the attempts to assassinate him in a telephone speech he gave at a conference marking the 15th anniversary of the founding of Hamas: “Allah wanted to upset the Jews, so he saved me. In any case, I believe that only what Allah wants will happen.”
We concur.
