Too many taking sides in this conflict miss the true nature of Hamas – and Netanyahu

Jonathan Freedland

Recall how counter-terrorist strategists had to rethink all that they knew when first confronted with suicide bombers. It’s hard to deter a terrorist who does not fear death. That’s true writ large for an organisation that has explicitly said it is “proud to sacrifice martyrs”. Not its own leaders, mind, many of whom live in safety and, reportedly, great luxury in Qatar and elsewhere. But the ordinary men and women of Gaza.

This is why Hamas has spent hundreds of millions of dollars – much of it international aid money – not on basic services for Gazans, but on building and equipping a network of underground tunnels that, again, it has explicitly said are exclusively for its own use. As one Hamas leader put it, ordinary people in Gaza who need protection should look to the UN….

Biden and co are overlooking the fact that Netanyahu and his coalition are utterly opposed to the very arrangement Israel’s western allies advocate. This is the most rightwing government in Israel’s history. It includes junior ministers who fantasise about flattening Gaza with a nuclear bomb or repopulating it with the Jewish settlements that were uprooted in 2005, and senior ministers who are, even now, wrecking any chance of cooperation with the only body that could plausibly fill the vacuum in a post-Hamas Gaza: the Palestinian Authority.

If it’s not finance minister and documented bigot Bezalel Smotrich refusing to transfer tax revenues to the authority, thereby denying officials their salaries and increasing the chances they will be recruited by Hamas, it’s the ultra-nationalist with a terrorist conviction, public security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, handing out guns to extremists known to be dangerous, all in the name of self-defence. The pair of them are heroes to the West Bank settlers who have been engaged in an under-reported campaign of violence and harassment against Palestinians – with at least 190 killed since 7 October – as if bent on igniting a third intifada in that occupied territory. Netanyahu does nothing to rein them in, because he needs their parliamentary votes to stay in power – and he needs to stay in power to be sure he stays out of jail, as he stands trial on corruption charges.

So Washington, Brussels and London currently back Israel because they agree that no peace is possible without the removal of Hamas. They are much less clear that no peace is possible without the removal of Netanyahu and his henchmen. Yet both can be true…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/17/hamas-benjamin-netanyahu-ceasefire

**************************************************************

United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Dogs of war / New acronym in Gaza: WCNSF – Wounded Child No Surviving Family

Patrick Lawrence: Deeper Into Depravity

A Conspiracy of Silence / The Killing Floor of Gaza

Michael Brenner: Europe-Jews-Muslims

Palestine and Israel: Historical, Legal and Moral Issues

Mohammed Hanif: The rest of the world has had it with US presidents, Trump or otherwise

Evil, with one eye

We’re anti-Zionist Jews and we see genocide unfolding in Gaza

Standing up for Palestine is also standing up to save the west from the worst of itself