Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
Just as the Mossad managed to hunt down and kill almost everyone involved either in the planning or the execution of the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics held in 1972, so today, the IDF has been systematically killing senior commanders who either plotted, or took part in, the Hamas atrocities committed on October 7, 2023. Now the IDF has announced the killing of Ra’ad Sa’ad, believed to be one of the last of the commanders who planned the attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians that day. More on the IDF’s latest achievement in this line can be found here: “IDF kills senior Hamas terrorist Ra’ad Sa’ad in Gaza City strike,” Jerusalem Post, December 13, 2025:
The IDF on Saturday afternoon killed senior Hamas commander Ra’ad Sa’ad, one of the most senior terrorists within the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades, in a targeted strike, military intelligence sources confirmed.
The strike that the Israelis launched was of extraordinary precision, hitting only the car in which Ra’ad was riding in, and killing only him and two bodyguards. Though Ra’ad Sa’ad had long been in the IDF’s sights, the IDF was prompted to kill him at this point as a response to a recent Hamas attack, using an IED, on Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
The IDF said the targeted terrorist had recently been involved in attempts to restore and produce weapons for Hamas.
Sources within the Military Intelligence Directorate said the IDF strike on Sa’ad came in response to an attack on IDF soldiers in the Gaza Strip using an improvised explosive device. Two soldiers were lightly wounded in the attack and were transported to the hospital for medical treatment, the military confirmed.
Hamas’s initial reaction on Saturday did not mention Sa’ad, but on Sunday, the terror group confirmed that Sa’ad was killed in the strike.
According to Israeli estimates, Sa’ad had been operating for months within the vast tunnel system around Gaza City, in the northern Strip. Sources said he had left the tunnels in the past hour in a vehicle toward the eastern part of the city, where he was targeted in multiple strikes.
His security guards were most likely also harmed in the strike, sources noted….
Sa’ad is considered by Israeli security sources to be Hamas’s second-most senior official within the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades and, as the prime minister called him, not just a participant in, but “one of the main architects” of the Hamas attack on October 7.
As the second in command at the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades, Ra’ad was high up on the IDF’s list of prime targets. He was also judged to be an imminent danger because he had been put in charge of rearming Hamas, at the very moment when the terror group was supposed to be giving up its weapons as the initial part of Phase Two of the Trump peace plan.
Ra’ad Sa’ad is dead. As a result, Israel is a bit safer today. Who in Hamas will now step up to take his place, and in doing so, sign his own death warrant?
