Christine Toomey, a reporter for the Sunday Times, went to Gaza to ask competing Palestinian terrorist groups and clans an important question: where is kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit?


She didn’t receive any clear answers.

Three competing groups originally claimed responsibility for kidnapping the 19-year-old Israeli soldier from inside Israel and taking him back into Gaza:

• Hamas, via the terrorist group’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades;
• The Popular Resistance Committees, a loose amalgam of Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad terror factions, and;
• The Army of Islam, a previously unknown group claiming links to al Qaeda.

She met with Mahmoud Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas whom she called “a militant hardliner..the real power behind the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, and the one person who might be expected to deliver answers about Shalit.”

Zahar claims to know nothing about Shalit’s whereabouts. “Nobody from the political or military wing of Hamas knows where Shalit is,” he alleged, “only the small group who kidnapped him know. They are very secretive.”

Next on Toomey’s list is Ahmed Yousef (inset, right), a Hamas top political adviser. Swtiching from talking about his job as a consultant to Tom Clancy, Yousef spouts conspiracy theories that he claims make people refuse to talk about Shalit.  Israel “can smell what we’re eating,” he spins, “so nobody will talk about Shalit. It puts them in great danger if they do.”

Next Toomey goes to Gaza’s Doghmush clan, leaders of a sophisticated crime syndicate and strong-arm force that was “happy to brag about how well [Gilad] is being treated.”

51-year-old Abu Khatab Doghmush pointed the finder at Hamas, saying that “the only faction that controls his life now is the Qassam Brigades.” But for someone who claims to know nothing about Shalit’s whereabouts, Doghmush oddly claimed to know a lot, alleging “that Shalit is living in a paradise.”

To bolster this incredible allegation, Doghmush claims intimate knowledge of Shalit’s treatment: alleging that “every year a party is held to celebrate his birthday. Yes, there is a cake and candles, music, everything.”

Toomey then travels to Rafah, Gaza’s notoriously porous bordertown alongside Egypt, where she tries to talk with heavily armed members of Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, but they refer her back to Hamas leaders like Mahmoud Zahar.

Toomey speaks with 24-year-old Abu Mujahed, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, a group which claims to have coordinated kidnapping Gilad Shalit form inside Israel. But when asked where he is, and how he is being treated, the PRC hack “repeats the mantra that he is being treated well, “according to our religion”. Only a small group know where Shalit is held, he claims, and they communicate by means of dead letter drops, mobile phones being too easy to track.”

Talking with parents of two Gaza terrorist killed by IDF soldiers during the capture of Shalit don’t reveal anything about Shalit’s whereabouts.

Hisham al-Labadani, secretary to Hamas terrorist figurehead Khaled Meshal, was reported by a Syrian opposition group to have been assassinated after being dragged from his car in Syria’s city of Homs.


The Reform Party of Syria (RPS) reported today that al-Labadani “was dragged from his car and shot dead in daylight in the city of Homs.”

According to the RPS,

Operatives close to the event told RPS that al-Labadani’s murder is a signal some in the Assad regime were sending to Hamas [for its] continued cooperation with the IRGC of Iran. The group, led by Mohammad Nassif Kheir Bek, has been promoting rapprochement with the west against the entrenched supporters of the Iranian influence in Syria who have gained key positions lately.

Homs is less than 50 km from Lebanon’s mountainous Northeastern border with Syria (Inset):

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Iran’s long history of military, financial, and terror support for Hamas is well documented.

On March 9, 2008, the The Sunday Times reported that a senior Hamas commander boasted that 300 of the organization’s “best brains” were secretly sent to Iran for military training from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard:

“Iran is our mother,” the commander said. “She gives us information, military supplies and financial support.”

The Sunday Times report said that since 2005, at least seven (7) separate groups of Hamas fighters trained with Iranian instructors so that they could be snipers, make explosives out of everyday items, and make deadlier rockets to use in terrorist attacks against Israel.

Israel has long known about Iran’s role in equipping, financing, and training Hamas terrorists to carry out attacks against Israel. The New York Times reported last August that:

Hamas has sent hundreds of its fighters abroad for military training, most of them to Iran, the Israeli Army’s deputy chief of staff says, and Israel has the names of more than 100 of them

The head of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) military intelligence warned the country’s Knesset that Hamas continues to arm itself with Qassam rockets and other weapons capabilities that may threaten Israel’s home front.


Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz reportedly told Israeli legislators that “Hamas is also improving its defense capabilities in case of an Israeli operation (in Gaza)…”The Islamist group is turning Gaza into a bona fide state. Hamas is the clear and decisive ruler there.”

Baidatz also reported that Egypt is still unable to stop weapons and goods smuggling through Gaza’s illegal underground tunnels.

A new report from a Geneva-based Palestinian group of jurists maintains that roughly 30-percent of all people detained by Hamas and Fatah are tortured while in custody cialis online.

The report from al Haq asserts that its information is based on testimony from 150 people detained by Hamas and Fatah.