Almost 20 years ago Israel carried out one of the most thorough acts of ethnic cleansing ever seen and, using the UN’s definition of genocide as ‘causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group’ and ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’, Israel was also guilty of genocide.
This ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Jewish State led to comparisons of Israel with National Socialist Germany and led directly to the current war in Gaza and the death of thousands of people. I refer, of course, to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza in 2005, when Israel handed it over to the Palestinian Authority.
Over 8,000 Jews were removed, many forcibly, and some wearing yellow Stars of David in protest. Their settlements, 21 of them, were bulldozed along with every synagogue in Gaza. When Israel was done, not a single Jew remained. And we all know what happened next.
Israel left an economy with some potential, with large commercial greenhouses and other infrastructure on which thriving agricultural and tourist industries could have been built. Jews around the world gave generously to the new Arab state, for that is what, in effect, it was. An organisation of Jewish Americans, for example, paid $14 million to buy over 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers and then gave them to the Palestinian Authority. The greenhouses were promptly looted and the whole industry had collapsed by 2006.
After the withdrawal from Gaza, PM Ariel Sharon told the UN General Assembly that “the end of Israeli control over and responsibility for the Gaza Strip allows the Palestinians, if they so wish, to develop their economy and build a peace-seeking society, which is developed, free, law-abiding, and transparent and which adheres to democratic principles.” But they did not so wish, and exactly the opposite occurred.
The elections held in 2006 were won by a terrorist organisation dedicated to the eradication of the State of Israel and expelling, or killing, its Jewish inhabitants. Hamas’s main aim has never been to build a viable Palestinian state, but instead the total destruction of the Jewish state.
The barbarism and savagery of Hamas’s attack on innocent Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, shocking though it was, should not have come as any surprise. Islamist Hamas has demonstrated its savagery many times. Immediately after taking power in 2006, it embarked on a vicious program of savagery against its own people, murdering anyone who opposed it. This resulted in a little-reported civil war between Hamas and Fatah in 2007, in which hundreds were killed.
From then on Hamas has ruled Gaza in the same way that the National Socialists ruled Germany, with any sign of opposition put down with extreme brutality. Even pro-Palestinian Amnesty International condemned it, reporting in 2015 that “Hamas forces carried out a brutal campaign of abductions, torture and unlawful killings against Palestinians” and saying that Hamas had “abducted, tortured or attacked members and supporters of Fatah, their main rival political organization within Gaza, including former members of the Palestinian Authority security forces.”
This is the Hamas that many in the West now support, the people chanting ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ either not understanding, or approving, of the fact that this would necessarily mean the termination of the Jewish State and the lives of any Jew who couldn’t get out in time.
On the other side of the argument, much is made of Israel’s right to survive. But there is no such thing. No nation has a right to survive. A nation will survive if it is strong enough, has a strong national identity, the will and, if it comes it, the guts to fight for survival. And Israel, a nation of about eleven million, of whom about 30% are Muslim Arabs, has the will and guts. Up to now.
It didn’t want this fight. Nobody can deny that it is a tragedy that so many Gazan civilians have died. But the blame for their deaths lies squarely on the shoulders of Hamas’s top men, many of whom live a life of luxury abroad, mostly in Qatar, while they deliberately keep their own people in a state of poverty, siphoning off millions for themselves, buying arms and building expensive tunnels for their senior officers to hide in.
It must also be acknowledged that some of blame falls on the people of Gaza collectively, 70% of whom support the destruction of Israel. Fourteen thousand Gazan’s had permits to work in Israel before 7 October, with thousands crossing into Israel every day, greatly helping the otherwise moribund Gazan economy. But in the aftermath of the attack, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) found detail maps and information about kibbutzim, homes and people on Hamas terrorist, almost certainly provided Gazan workers. And who can forget the sickening site of Gazan civilians celebrating Hamas’s pogrom?
They are not celebrating now. In fact, many have turned against Hamas, correctly blaming it for their troubles. In March, a survey by the West Bank-based Institute for Social and Economic Progress asked Gazans how they felt about Hamas leaders. About three-quarters opposed both Yahya Sinwar, the group’s Gaza-based leader, and Ismail Haniyeh, the movement’s political leader in exile.
Gazans can see that Hamas spent months planning its savage attack, knowing that Israel was bound to retaliate violently, but doing nothing to build up food or medical reserves or take any steps to protect civilians from the onslaught it knew must follow. Gazans can see that Hamas wants perpetual war, wants as many civilians to die as possible, for its propaganda value, and they can see Hamas hiding in its tunnels while civilians are bombed. They know that Hamas deliberately fires rockets into Israel from residential areas and close to hospitals and schools, thus making them legitimate targets for Israeli response.
But where are we now, eleven months after the Hamas horror? On April 7, 2024, six months after Hamas’s surprise attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was only “a step away” from “total victory” and implied that the step would be the conquest of Rafah, attacked on May 6. The attack went better than most ‘experts’ had predicted. In two weeks, Israel had almost a million civilians evacuated, despite warnings from ‘experts’ that it would take months.
The United Nations cautioned that hundreds of thousands of people would be “at imminent risk of death” if Israel attacked, a prediction that failed to materialise. Over 550 terrorists were killed, and dozens of tunnels were found and neutralised. But the fighting continues, less intensely, but it continues nevertheless.
An Israeli Brigade commander said that the battle would be over within a month at about the same time in late June, that Air Force commander Tomer Bar said, “Hamas in Gaza will be defeated soon.” The IDF announced that Hamas had been ‘seriously damaged’ as a fighting organisation in the first week of July.
The fighting has died down now, but it has not ended. Mostly, it is now air strikes and quick commando-like raids. It can be reasonably said that Israel has won a tactical victory, but the stated strategic goal of eliminating Hamas has not been achieved.
So where are we now? Can Israel achieve its war aim? What is the risk of a general Middle East war? Can Israel survive its internal tensions? Can it survive betrayal by the West? Is there a solution to the Palestinian problem? The answer to all these questions are, in my view, open to doubt.
Hamas obviously still exists and exerts authority in Gaza and it is also likely that the escalating trouble in the West Bank, which recently required an incursion by a whole IDF division to quell, is an indication of increased Hamas influence there. Has Israel failed, therefore, in its primary war aim? If so, what are the consequences?
Will Hezbollah start an all-out war? There have been some serious artillery and missile exchanges in Northern Israel, and thousands of Israelis have been forced to flee. But there has been no really major outbreak of fighting, and no Israeli invasion of Lebanon, something that could trigger a regional war.
And while there has been exchanges of missiles, Iran has been relatively quiet and obviously does not want a major war. This, I think, is very significant. I don’t know why the Mullahs in Tehran have acted relatively responsibly. I’d like to think it is because they know that they have very little popular support in Iran.
Internally, Israel is pretty much divided. Those forced to flee their homes in Northern Israel are very unhappy, the Ultra-Orthodox are enraged at having to fight for their country, and the Left is doing its best to pin all the blame on Israel’s Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and is milking the unfortunate hostage situation for all it is worth. The Nationalists, some within Likud, accuse Netanyahu for not being aggressive enough. How will this end? It is a sign that Israeli’s are losing national cohesion? It is difficult to tell, especially as the Israeli MSM is broadly Leftist and anti-Netanyahu.
Although not as influential in the Middle East as it once was, the USA’s attitude is important. But it sends out conflicting messages. It states its full support for Israel, but has put pressure on it to agree to a ceasefire, despite this being a means to restrict, if not eliminate, Israel’s ability to fight the war it has to fight. Maybe this is a case of putting the Democrat’s election prospects before all else. Imposing a ceasefire on Israel is exactly what Hamas wants, as it would make it much more difficult for Israel to defend itself against them in the future.
But while the dying Biden regime is capable of any betrayal, Hamas has repeatedly rejected US peace proposals and is obviously stalling on peace talks and there are signs that the State Department has had enough of them, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “at some point in a negotiation…. you get to a point where if one side continues to change its demands, including making (further) demands …. for things that it already accepted, you have to question whether they’re proceeding in good faith or not.”
Quite how any rational person could think that Hamas would ever act in good faith is hard to see, but if the current talks fail it is likely that Washington’s patience will snap, possibly after the election. The US has recently issued arrest warrants for Hamas’s leaders, but it has also delayed, possibly embargoed, some arms shipments to Israel.
In European countries even more susceptible to Islamist and fellow-traveller pressure, including Britain, support for Israel has become much weaker, with the new far-Left British government, desperate for Muslim support, now limiting arms shipments and indulging in pro-Palestinian rhetoric. It is just as bad in the EU, and worse in the UN, where anti-Israeli posturing is standard practice.
The Arab world is also confused and confusing. According to The Wall Street Journal, Egypt and Qatar threatened Hamas’s leaders with sanctions, including the freezing of their assets, expulsion from the Qatari capital and arrests. But their participation in the Abraham Accords is doubtful, to say the least.
And still outsiders talk platitudes about a two-state solution, despite all the evidence that Hamas does not want one, and indeed the historical evidence of the broader Palestinian movement having rejected that ‘solution’ time and time again.
And is a two-state solution acceptable to Israel? It has offered the Palestinians everything they say they want in the past, except of the ‘right of return’ of allegedly exiled Palestinians back to Israel, for obvious reasons. It has, instead, offered financial compensation. But the Palestinian leadership has always rejected any offer, and then unleashed a wave of violence from the areas under Palestinian control.
My limited contacts in Israel, not necessarily reflective of majority opinion there, tell me that the idea of a two-state solution is now dead and that the majority of Israeli’s, from all political persuasions, are wholly opposed to it. And who can blame them? Unless there is an unexpected and completely hidden body of Palestinian opinion opposed to further violence, future attacks on Israel from a Palestinian state are an absolute certainty.
My own solution would be to give Israel all the land ‘from the river to the sea’ and pay Arab countries like Jordan and Syria to house the ‘Palestinians’, but it is very unlikely that Arab counties would want them.
So where is Israel now? What is its way forward and how can it secure itself and create a lasting peace? It would take a cleverer correspondent than me to give any answers. I have always supported Israel and always will, but it now needs to take a long hard look at itself and, perhaps, make radical changes. Such changes might be forced on it if Harris wins, or Trump is made to lose. One thing is clear, it will get precious little real support from the woke globalists running Europe and Britain.
Debates on Israel tend to become heated, often abusive. If you have something to say, please do so politely and respectfully. It is perfectly alright to disagree with everything I have said here, and we should avoid accusing critics of Israel of being anti-Jewish. Likewise, those opposed to Israel or its actions in this war should also accept that reasonable, moral and intelligent people do support it.