You can’t appease the murderous Hamas

You can’t appease the murderous Hamas

Yesterday we went to watch a movie ‘One life’. The film is based on a true story of the London stockbroker Nickolas Winton who before WWII saved more than 600 Jewish children from imminent, almost in all the cases, death in the near future. Mr. Winton certainly at the time did not know of the final solution by the Nazis of the Jewish question: the murder of all European Jews. He just saw, while visiting Czechoslovakia in 1938, the misery and hardship experienced by the Jewish families who escaped Nazis’ Germany and Austria. Especially, Mr. Winton was shocked by the horrible conditions of the refugee children and decided to save them.

Mr. Winton’s compassion and sense of empathy is an example of the best the humankind can offer and his actions reflect the best meaning of the Tikkun Olam movement: to repair the world.

While driving home after watching the movie the feelings of sadness and sympathy to the suffering of the refuges’ families and a sense of gratitude to Sir Nicholas Winton overwhelmed me emotionally and mentally. It brought on thoughts about other events happening in same time in 1938-1940 on the international arena.

There are similarities between the appeasement of Hitler by the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the accommodation provided to Hamas by the government of Israel and by the international actors. The response of many countries to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict in Gaza reminded me the Evian Conference of July 1938 where representatives of thirty-two countries gathered to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees escaping Nazi’s persecution. The conference delegates did not make a resolution or commitment to help the Jews and have found excuses not to let more Jewish refugees into their countries.

History of Hamas ideology and its similarity to Hitler’s hatred of Jews.

The lessons of history show that if some person or organization expresses hatred towards you and their goal is to eliminate you, better trust them and respond accordingly. The policy of appeasement never works with the fanatics of any ideology, be it fascism, communism, terrorism or of religious beliefs.

One of these fanatical extreme religious organizations is Hamas, the offshoot of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. From the time of its creation in 1987 its Covenant was based on the militant interpretation of Islam with the goal to annihilate Israel and Jews. When the leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, in 1993 signed the agreement, called Oslo Accord, with the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Hamas disregarded it and initiated a series of suicide attacks to kill Israeli civilians, and the first intifada was initiated. Ariel Sharon’s visit the Temple Mount in 2000 triggered the second intifada. In 2005 Israel unilaterally completely withdrew from Gaza and left to the population of Gaza to decide what government it wants to have. In 2006, Hamas won the election to the Palestinian Authority legislation. Hamas secured the control of Gaza by defeating the Palestinian Authority fraction in 2007.

Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’ leader in exile, in December 2012 reaffirmed the organization’s hardline approach: “The state will come from resistance, not negotiations. Palestine is ours from river to the sea and from the south to the north” and “We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone, Israel has no right to be in Jerusalem.”

In 2017 Hamas has revised the original manifesto to mislead the international community by softening the language of the 1988 charter and distance itself from Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. But the event of October 7 2023 has proven that the murderous, sadistic and terroristic essence of Hamas remain the same.

The pathological hatred of the State of Israel and wish to murder the Jews equates Hamas with Hitler’s policies and actions. The decision to eliminate the European Jews was finalized at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. “Following the conference, Nazi Germany implemented genocide on a continental scale with the deportation of Jews from all over Europe to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and other killing centers”. In the Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf, he points to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as his justification of the hatred of Jewish people and blames them for all the problems of the world. The extract from Mein Kampf says:” Here he (the Jew) stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need to be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”

Now let quote the Hamas Covenant 1988, Article Twenty-Two: “They (the Jews) took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.”

The above paragraphs show Hamas’s and Hitler’s hatred of Jewish people is absolutely identical-the antisemitism is their main ideology and the world is too small to tolerate the existence of the Jews.

The hypocrisy towards the Israel Defense Force and the appeasement of Hamas by Israel and other countries.

To stop the cancer from spreading it needs to be removed chemically or surgically from the human body. The Hamas is a cancer destroying the lives of the Gazan and Israelis and it needs to be eliminated physically by military force. It is impossible to distinguish the civilian Gazan from the Hamas militant combatant. It is worthwhile to note the findings of the Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research (PCPSR) of the poll conducted in the December of 2023.  The survey identified that almost seventy five percent of Gazans consider the Oct 7 attack by Hamas on Israel as correct. When in combat the Hamas fighters don’t wear a special uniform and they blend among the Gaza’s population. “When it came time for actual war and combat, Hamas’s soldiers shed their fancy outfits and wore civilian clothes to reduce detectability and blend in with Gaza’ s population. These cowardly and shameful tactics has likely resulted in numerous civilian deaths”. Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is conducting the most ethical and moral war it is possible to fight in the circumstances its forces are encountering. IDF warns the population of the coming air raids. It notifies and allows the population to leave the area before initiating the combat. Did any of countries blaming Israel of war crimes followed the same stringent rules to protect the civilian population? Did Turkey warned the Kurd’s civilians that it will start the military actions conducted from 2015 to 2023?  Did US warned Vet Cong population during the Vietnam war of the coming napalm bombing air raid? Did NATO in 1999 warned Serbia and people of Belgrade of bombing which resulted in civilian casualties? No, they did not warn the civilian population in advance. The countries expecting from Israel the impossible are hypocrites and, in many cases, just plainly anti-Semitic.

Let’s take a look at the attitude of the state of Israel towards Gaza’s population before October 7, 2023.  Around 150,000 Palestinians workers from West Bank and some 18,500 Gazans used to enter Israel daily to work prior to October 7, 2023. Now it is known that Hamas used these workers to collect the information for the future attack on the neighboring to Gaza Israeli villages. The invaders knew in advance how many children are in each room and which families have pets. “These details were part of the intelligence manuals found on Hamas terrorists who were killed on October 7”.

Despite of continuous provocations and four wars by Hamas the government of Israel was instituting for decades the policy of appeasement towards Palestinians in Gaza. In 2016 Likud Minister of Transportation Yisrael Katz did not object to building the artificial island with seaport offshore Gaza. It shows the general direction of the Israeli government lead by Netanyahu to pacify Hamas through economic incentives. For years the Israeli government and the Knesset did not face the reality of Hamas’s rejection of the existence of the Jewish state and adapted to “a reality of endless waves of violence from Gaza with hundreds of rockets on Israel’s south and center and all the time trying to appease Hamas instead to fight it and change the reality on the ground in Gaza”.

After the present war, which appears to be the longest in the Israeli history, there will be an investigation similar to the post Yom Kippur war of 1973 conducted by the Agranat Commission Inquiry. The Commission was looking into the circumstances of the operational surprise and also it tried to identify the conceptual deficiencies: the approach which the Israelis are calling ‘conceptzia’ or ‘groupthink’. The future investigative entity which will look into the circumstances of October 7 attack probably will use the same approach. The ‘conceptzia’ of 2023 situation is the assumption that “Hamas was willing to sacrifice at least some of its ideology on the altar of accommodating itself to the reality of governance and the economic improvement could modify ideological zeal. Tragically, this doctrine was proven a complete failure on October 7”.

From countries which appease Hamas a tiny Gulf Arab state of Qatar stands out significantly. Astronomically rich from revenues of selling oil and natural gas Qatar is supporting Hamas politically and financially for many years. The capital of Qatar, Doha, provides a refuge for the key members of Hamas’s senior leadership. An estimated 1.8 billion dollars Qatar gave to Hamas government. Qatar’s foreign ministry issued a statement on October 7 blaming Israel for the Hamas barbaric invasion and the highest authority of Qatar, the emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, refused the accept the Israeli right to defend itself. On Capital Hill, Qatar undertook actions to prevent recognition of themselves as financier of Hamas, the terrorist’s organization. A mouthpiece of the state, the Qatari own Al-Jazeera network, consistently praises the violent actions of Hamas against Israel and after the October 7 attack the network allowed the military chief of Hamas, Mohammad Deif to broadcast his poisonous call to arms. Qatar claims they have relations with Hamas which promote peace and stability in the region but during the Qatar patronage Hamas had initiated five wars with Israel (2008,2012,2014,2021, and 2023), including the October 7 attack.

It would be unfair to the State of Israel and Jewish people everywhere not to mention the contributions of Qatar to funding the US universities with the goal to promote Islam and anti-Israeli propaganda. When the barbaric attack on Israel happened on October 7, 2023 in the morning of October 8,2023 on many university campuses were demonstrations with the participants screaming statements like ‘We Are Hamas’ and ‘Gas the Jews’ although Israel at this time did not respond to the Hamas’s attack. Therefore, these demonstrations were pre-planned in advance. “As of 2017, California campuses including Stanford University, UCLA, UC Berkeley and USC were among the top 10 recipients of Qatari money, accordingly to one federal report.” and “federal reports between 2015 and 2020 concluded that universities with major funding from Arab countries including Qatar and Saudi Arabia experienced 300 percent more anti-Semitic incidents than those that did not get funding.”

Ignoring the Qatar’s support of terrorist’s’ Hamas, the United States consider the Gulf state as a major non-NATO ally. Close to Doha geographically there is Al-Udeid Air Force Base with 10,000  US troops as well as CENTCOM Forward Headquarters.

Shameful appeasement of Iran makes the United States an indirect appeaser of Hamas. US under the President Biden’s leadership eased the sanctions on oil exports from Iran, unfreeze tens of billions of dollars of closed funds and undertook actions to re-negotiate the Obama’s nuclear deal which may lead to Iranian atomic bomb. The strategic ambivalence of the current administration of United States only encourages countries like Iran, Russia, North Korea and China to take advantage of the appeasement towards these countries. “Iran had already sensed weakness and directed its proxies-Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthis in Yemen-to attack Israel, US troops in Syria and Iraq and commercial shipping in the Red Sea”.

The reality of being in constant confrontation with the fanatical enemies which only goal is to annihilate Israel makes the task to destroy the entities such as Hamas and Hezbollah the highest priority. It is impossible to appease or change their pathological hatred to the State of Israel and to Jews in general.