Something strange is happening. On October 7, organized rape, kidnap and murder squads from Hamas invaded Israeli territory – following their organization’s genocidal charter – and committed the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust. Hamas declared war, with their allies – similarly genocidally minded Hezbollah, directed probably by Iran in happy cooperation with Russia and Yemen’s Huthi rebels, as it seems to be emerging more and more.
Hamas represents the Gaza strip. Since 2007 Hamas has held absolute power over Gaza, whose occupation by Israel had ended in 2005 voluntarily. Both Israel and Egypt still controlled Gaza’s borders, but the cause of this were Hamas’ continued genocidal practices against Israel. Judged by all the money and resources flowing into Gaza, the small area should have been one of the richest areas in the world. It could have become the next Monaco or Macao. Not so. Hamas exterminated all who did not bend to its will, stole all money and resources, and systematically turned Gaza into a Hamas terror camp with human shields. It is not Israel that turned Gaza into an “open-air prison”, it was Hamas.
Just when Israel had been ready to deepen relationships with Gaza, to ease restrictions on the movement of Gazans into Israel, Hamas decided to strike, guided by their mission to eradicate Israel and the Jews.
These are the facts, they are clear and incontrovertible.
Israel now had a choice: end this now, destroy Hamas, root it out, and create a new Gaza – with all the collateral damage that would sadly bring – or let Hamas continue. Sadly, the choice was clear, and no matter who would have been in the government in Israel, any leader would have had to make the decision to answer this declaration of war with a concerted effort to not just end this war, but to make it near impossible for Hamas to wage the next one.
That does not mean that Gazan lives would not matter. They do. But it is not Israel that declared war, it was Hamas; it is not Israel that decided to use civilians to shield terrorist infrastructure and acts, it was Hamas. In fact, Hamas deliberately set this up so that as many innocent Gazans would be killed. Every death is on Hamas, the attacker, and not on Israel, the defender.
And yet, here I return to the curiosity, some who claim to fight for social justice blame Israel – the victim of the October 7 attacks, the victim of Hamas genocidal ideology and practice. They highlight the collateral damage that Hamas has intended to occur as – wrongly – the responsibility of Israel, and they downplay or lie about the order of events. They turn the order of victim around, and by ignoring Hamas-led Gaza’s crime, they pretend that victimized Israel is the attacker. This is straight out of the playbook of Goebbels and Hitler – no surprise, as Hamas is an evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood, who were allied with Hitler in his quest to continue the “final solution” in the Levant. Egypt, by the way, knows this, so do all Arab nations. This is why Egypt ended the brief reign of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and why Egypt works together with Israel to suppress Hamas and Gaza.
Why do so many blame Israel and ignore the crimes and intentions of Hamas?
Antisemitism – sometimes masked as Antizionism – is probably the oldest genocidal story ever told. It has been promoted by Iran and recently Putin (he seems to have attacked Ukraine not in spite of but because of Zelenskyi’s Jewishness – using Nazi symbology and having built a fascist state in Russia). It is found on the Left and the Right. We know how it fits within the extreme right, but on the left, antisemitism arrives through a contorted view of post-colonial theory.
Now, in defense of postcolonial theory – which I myself teach and follow regularly – the theory itself is not antisemitic. But some have been misinformed about the history of Israel and Palestine, and see Israel – wrongly – as a colonizer and oppressor. The history of the area is much more complex than this.
The problem today is two-fold:
First, some are just seemingly giddy to let loose their antisemitic and antizionist bile, joint by a heavy dose of Anti-Americanism, pro-Putinism, anti-“woke”-ism, and strangely, sometimes Covid Denialism as part of an overall pattern of anti-Western and anti-Democracy sentiments. You can smell the Russian propaganda here from afar.
Second, some let their desire to be “with the victims” be influenced by the flood of images of wounded and killed children in Gaza, and their simplistic victim/perpetrator duality gets primed to ignore Oct 7 and Hamas (and its control of and support by Gazans) and treat what is happening now as somehow an unconnected act of Israeli cruelty, which then feeds into antizionism and antisemitism.
None of that is helpful.
Here is the truth:
Hamas is a bad actor who represents the worst of Palestinian society, and does not seem to know the least of Islam. It is a scourge on both Palestine and Israel. We need to understand it – together with Hezbollah, the Islamic State, the Islamic Jihad, the Huthis and Iran – as a separate actor whose interest is not the peaceful coexistence or togetherness of Israelis and Palestinians, but continued war and genocide against Israel and Jews – globally – until “from the river to the sea” the land will be “judenfrei” – free of Jews – which is Hamas’ definition of “freedom.”
Now: Что делать? What is to be done?
We need to fight terrorism – we need to fight Hamas, and keep Hezbollah, the Huthis, Iran, and Russia at bay (in fact, Russia has to be defeated – so that its global anti-democratic meddling can stop).
We need to support both Israel and Palestine.
We need to fight antisemitism/antizionism and islamophobia wherever they occur.
We need to work towards true peace and understanding.
The Abraham accords need to be implemented, expanded and deepened.
Postscript:
Like Europe was able to create peace after World War II through the European integration process – which led (following Immanuel Kant’s ideas for Perpetual Peace and Count Coudenhove-Kalergi’s call for Pan-Europa) to the biggest zone of peace and prosperity Europe has ever seen. The European Union has put an end (for now – but let’s hope, for good) to hundreds if not thousands of years of constant war over territory and dominion in Europe; seemingly child’s play to the middle east. We need to create and follow such a similar plan, so that no matter where you hail from – Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, wherever – you will be living in peace, with justice and human rights defended. We need to allow us to hope, to dream – now more than ever.
Erratic Attempts 