Many assume that Hamas is distinctly at war with the Israelis and not specifically with the Jews. However, while Hamas leaders commonly identify their enemy as being the Israelis, others explicitly refer to them as being Jews.
Of the latter group, in a frenzied outburst delivered July 12, 2019, on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV, Fathi Hammad, a senior Hamas official, declaimed: ‘There are Jews everywhere. We must attack every Jew on planet Earth. We must slaughter and kill them.’
The Hamas lust for slaughtering Jews was partially assuaged on October 7, 2023, when 3,000 armed terrorists invaded Israel killing 1,200 people as well as taking 251 others as hostages.
Apart from shooting, burning, or decapitating their victims, Hamas brutes also resorted to mutilating and torturing them. In a delirious state of mind, they gleefully filmed the scene and telephoned home to boast of their perceived wondrous accomplishments. Especial satisfaction was derived from combining raping with murdering. According to the Guardian, one eyewitness observed a woman being raped and then being passed onto another man who cut off her breast and then played with it.
As the orgy of violence progressed, the perpetrators diligently paid tribute to their God with intermittent exclamations of Allahu Akbar (Our God is the greatest) and herein lies the nub of the issue. As far as the invaders were concerned, they had infiltrated Israeli territory on a holy mission to advance their God-given cause. In their war against Israel, they were the saints whereas their Israeli enemies were the infidels that needed to be obliterated.
As news of their deeds reached the general Palestinian population, they glowed with pride. Sweets were handed out to all and sundry, while some freely spat on bleeding Israeli women hostages arriving in open jeeps.
If indeed there were any marauders fleetingly wondering whether or not they had committed a sin against God, statements forthcoming from their leaders would have put their minds at rest. Shortly after the massacre, Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hams official, stressed the raid’s vital importance in the struggle against Israel and added, ‘October 7 is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, until Israel is annihilated.’ Similarly, Khalil al-Hayya, another Hamas official, praised the October 7 massacre as ‘a major achievement that would be taught to future generations of Palestinians with pride’.
On planning their atrocity, the Hamas leadership were well aware that it would leave Israel with no alternative, other than to retaliate by embarking on a full-scale war. But that was exactly what they were counting on.
Given that Gaza’s population was intensely concentrated in urban areas, if Israel was to overwhelm Hamas, whose fighters frequently wore no uniforms and who fought from apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, and mosques, civilian casualties were inevitable. Such an outcome did not faze Hamas, for it correctly determined that a combination of its own propaganda, the anti-Zionist inclination of much of the Western media, plus the ready willingness of Western radicals to rally to its cause, would lead to a situation in which Israel would encounter widespread international opprobrium. In addition, Hamas anticipated that Israel’s armed forces would be somewhat constrained by the USA, as Palestinian casualty rates rapidly mounted. Furthermore, the holding of Israelis as hostages was correctly expected to lead to the fracturing of Israeli society, with a large number clamouring for their release at any price whatsoever, while others were far more hesitant.
As for Hamas’s standard propaganda, in essence, it maintained that the Jews are foreign interlopers with no rightful historic claim on any part of what the Romans had previously named Palaestina. In particular, Hamas insists that Jerusalem, named Al-Quds in Arabic, is a distinctly Muslim holy city that is profaned by the presence of even a single Jew. It is as if the Jewish builders of their Second Temple, on which its surviving mount now rests a mosque, never existed. The Hamas claim that Jews displaced the indigenous Arabs finds resonance among Western radicals subscribing to the theory of Settler Colonialism, whereby European colonial settlers deprived indigenous populations of their land. That being the case, Hamas and the Western radicals are at one in regarding Israel as being a pariah state that ought to be eliminated. Yet in reality, Jews lived in historic Palestine thousands of years before any Arabs settled there.
Before the current war, Hamas had consistently claimed that Gaza was an occupied state. It is a false claim, considering that in 2005, Israel unilaterally handed all of Gaza over to the Palestinians and not a single Israeli soldier or settler remained there. As either an alternative or supplement to the occupation libel, Gaza is frequently likened to one great prison, from which no Palestinian can freely leave. But just prior to October 7, 2023, some 18,000 Gazan residents held visas to work in Israel. A small number of them were actually employed by Kibbutz Be-eri, where Hamas terrorists killed 142 of its members. As it happened, that kibbutz was very sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians and it not only set aside a special fund to assist its Gazan employees but also transported the sick among them to a hospital in Southern Israel. In 2019, 17,144, Gazans received visas for hospital treatment in Israel.
Unfortunately whenever left-wing inclined westerners are presented with the conflicting narratives of the Palestinians and the Israelis, they often instinctively and without any serious perusal of the issue at hand, opt for the Palestinian one. To some extent, they are guided by an assumption, held by the radical left, that whenever an advanced country is at odds with a third world one, they could safely assume the advanced country to be the aggressor. This may partly explain the difficulties that Israel faces in presenting its case and why a person such as António Guterres, previously the Socialist Prime Minister of Portugal and now the UN Secretary-General, had stated that the Hamas massacre should been seen in the context of years of suffocating occupation.
On turning to the Western electronic media, it becomes apparent that a large section of it is hostile to Israel. Although some of their news dispatches may be reasonably impartial, that tends to be offset by anti-Israel diatribes pronounced both by in-house commentators and invited ‘experts’. This is true of the many television networks that regularly deploy disturbing images of war-torn Palestinians, accompanied by announcements of the latest death toll issued by the Hamas Ministry of Health, which makes no distinction between soldiers and civilians. Given the propensity of Hamas to lie to nonbelievers, there is no reason to accept its findings as being factual. The Washington Institute, after carefully studying and analyzing Hamas death rates, concluded that the data was ‘completely unreliable’. Also, of note, every now and then viewers are informed, courtesy of the Qatar-owned TV network, that the Gaza population is on the verge of starvation but on looking closely at pictures of current Gazans strutting about, one may well conclude that the only ones in the area encountering starvation diets are the Israeli hostages. All in all, the constant portrayal of the Israeli Army as a vicious force pounding away at innocent defenseless Palestinians is entirely misplaced. It leads to the brushing aside of the circumstances that compelled Israel to take up arms in the first place, as well as fueling anti-Semitism.
Another critical factor in the dissemination of anti-Israel propaganda, is the widespread appearance and growth of anti-Israel protest movements, almost all of which are inspired and to a large extent, orchestrated by Hamas. It is interesting to note that they all initiated anti-Israel demonstrations within a rather short period of time after the October 7 massacre. In Australia, over a thousand assembled at the Sydney Opera House on October 9, bearing Palestinian flags and uttering anti-Semitic slurs in keeping with those of Hamas. In Britain, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, (PSC) on midday of October 7, when Hamas was still engaged in its murderous spree, applied for permission to hold a mass rally to condemn Israel. Along with that application, the PSC released a bulletin that read: ‘The heroic offensive launched from Gaza today can only be understood in the context of Israel’s ongoing military occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land.’ Not content with the PSC’s statement, its Manchester branch released one of its own which in part declared, ‘It is our duty to express unconditional support for the resistance until Palestine is free.’ Finally, in the US, the leading anti-Israel protest movement, the student-led Justice for Peace in Palestine, referred to the October 7 massacre as a historic win for the Palestinian resistance and dearly hoped that Hamas would ultimately conquer all of Israel. Sadly, the stance of all the pro-Hamas protestors indicates that there is a serious moral deficiency within a large section of the Western population, which of course Hamas regards as an asset.
The cumulative effect of the spread of Hamas propaganda, primarily through the agencies of the electronic media and the anti-Israel protest movements, has brought about a situation in which Hamas can be rest assured that if ever it is once again is capable of initiating another devastating attack on Israeli citizens, it would enjoy the support of increasingly large numbers of overseas supporters, ready to galvanise their forces at a moment’s notice. This could have adverse effects on the Israeli army’s fighting capacity, for already, Britain curtailed its arms sales to Israel to pacify its anti-Israel lobby, while the Biden administration, for similar reasons, had ceased supplying Israel with high-powered bombs.
In addition, it would seem that the holding of Israeli hostages has aided Hamas in its war effort. In the first insistence, on mounting attacks on suspected Hamas positions, the Israeli Defense Force, (IDF) frequently has had to take into account the possibility of hostages being held in targeted areas. As a result, in certain battles, the IDF engaged the enemy with lesser force than it would normally have applied. Secondly, with a full appreciation of Hamas being the very incarnation of evil, a large proportion of the Israeli population vigorously and continuously pressured the government to negotiate for the hostages’ release, no matter how high the price. All the while, Hamas looked on believing that ultimately Israel would meet its outrageous demands. And so it was. As this article is being written, Israel agreed to a temporary truce during which it freed thousands of hard-core Palestinian terrorists, many of whom have Jewish blood on their hands. No doubt a large proportion will join the ranks of Hamas fighters, while at the same time, the standing of Hamas amongst the Gazan community, has risen.
On the other hand, the release of Israeli-held hostages has certainly been a godsend but many have died in captivity and among the survivors, many are now scarred for life. A full picture of the treatment of the Israelis held by Hamas is still to emerge but recently released male hostages have let it be known that they personally experienced being chained, burned with a searing hot object, hung by their feet and starved. What one might learn from all this, is that unless Hamas is eliminated or completely neutralised, a repetition of the events October 7, is all but certain.
