A Gazan Voice on Hamas

Not what the Jewish Israelopaths would have you think

Whose fault is it that there has been a war in Gaza lasting over a year, with tens of thousands of casualties in Gaza, including many civilians as well as combatants? And whose fault is it that the war started in the first place?

Many people claim that it’s all, or mostly, on Israel. As someone commented on my post last week about Israelopathic Jews, “The responsibility of the war does not lie with the Palestinians. Gaza was a violently subjugated state on October 6th, ripe for revolution.” And if you say otherwise, they say that you’re blinded and biased because you’re Jewish.

Well, in response, here are some quotes from various social media posts by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. Ahmed is a Palestinian who grew up in Gaza, and lost numerous relatives in an IDF bombing, as well as suffering personal injury. He has deep criticisms of the IDF. He claims that their bombing is deliberately excessive. He issues lots of accusations against Israel. Still, here is what he has to say about whether it was inevitable that Gaza should launch war on Israel:

…Before 10/7, Gaza had options and possibilities to address the economic, humanitarian, and political hardships and problems. Gaza had even shopping malls, sprawling beaches, vibrant communities, art centers, restaurants, and food everywhere, and a functional infrastructure that provided enough for people to survive and, in some cases, even thrive. Hamas deliberately threw all of that away and destroyed the people of Gaza with no way out and no exit plan. Every single member of Hamas’s leadership must be tried and convicted of crimes against the Palestinian people; they must be delegitimized, shamed, and held accountable for high treason against Palestinian interests and, importantly, for cowardly behavior like fighting in civilian clothes and hiding among women and children in tents, schools, and hospitals.

And here is what else Ahmed has to say about how Hamas’ strategy is to put civilians in harm’s way:

Here is an uncomfortable fact that many don’t want to acknowledge: Hamas actively worked to prevent Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza from evacuating to the south. When the first evacuation order was given last October, Hamas’s spokespersons and leaders explicitly and repeatedly told people to stay and not to leave because the Israelis were not really going to attack. Then they said that the “resistance” is more than capable of repelling an Israeli onslaught and to rest assured. Then they said that leaving and heading down south would be akin to treason because Islamic warfare doctrine prohibits fleeing when facing an enemy on the battlefield, which in effect meant that Hamas viewed the entirety of the civilian population as combatant participants in its suicidal resistance project following the October 7th attack.

Hamas didn’t want to be lonely as they faced the Israeli military and wanted to bring down as many Palestinian civilians with them as they could - again, counting on mass suffering as a way to delegitimize Israel and high casualties which generate high pressure on the Israeli government to ultimately stop the war. Now that this nefarious calculus has failed miserably and the Palestinian civilian population in northern Gaza is paying an unimaginably high price, Hamas isn't exactly adjusting course either. The group is despicably and ruthlessly exploiting the civilian deaths that their actions caused and brought upon to keep the focus on Israel and avoid the reckoning that Hamas will inevitably face when the war is brought to an end.

The tragedy in Jabaliya and elsewhere in northern Gaza, where the population is experiencing famine-like conditions, merciless Israeli bombardments and attacks, and sustained pain and suffering, could have been entirely avoided. Instead of working to protect lives, as should be the priority in warfare, Hamas and its cheerleaders wanted to hide behind the civilian population, which was told not to leave and to “hold the land.”

But it’s not just a matter of deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way - Ahmed points out that Hamas actually wants to create civilian casualties on its own side:

While it is impossible to confirm various details during the fog of war, one thing is clear: Hamas’s suicidal behavior continues to hold 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza hostage to a nefarious and destructive calculus that doesn’t care one bit for the consequences experienced by civilians. Worse, Hamas is deliberately inviting Israeli incursions and military attacks in areas that inflict maximum suffering and pain on civilians, hoping to cause international outcry and fury to stop the war. This isn’t “Zionist propaganda” or talking points; it is a fact and the truth of how Hamas chooses to engage in asymmetric warfare in a losing war of its own starting and creation. Think about that before calling this terror enterprise Palestinian “resistance.”

…Hamas is a sadistic Islamist cult that loves to see its own people killed as an actual strategy.

So when you have a group that chose to start an entirely unneccessary devastating war, and whose strategy is to maximize civilian casualties on its own side, then even if and when there are inevitable excesses and/or atrocities commited by IDF soldiers, that should certainly be investigated and punished but which are things that happen in every single war (due the inherently corrupting nature of war itself), it is clear that Hamas bears primary responsibility for the situation.

But it goes beyond Hamas. Here is what Ahmed acknowledges about the larger story of the Israel-Palestinian conflict:

A common theme in the plight of the Palestinian people is the unforgivable failures of Palestinian leadership over the decades: reject deals and say no, only to make a bad losing bet and want (I would say “demand” - N.S.) what could have been achieved, obtained, or received before. It’s important to remember that a viable deal was on the table, regardless of what revisionist academics try to convince you of: a clear pathway to Palestinian Statehood that included the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. What Yasser Arafat did by not accepting the 2000 Camp David proposal was a crime against the Palestinian people, for which there has never been any accountability. Similarly, Hamas in the 1990s and 2000s rejected the Two-state solution, only to ultimately realize that Palestinians would be lucky to even receive that, particularly after the October 7 disaster.

And this pattern of rejecting solutions goes back many decades:

Time and again throughout Palestinians’ contemporary history, their leadership and that of some Arab countries, particularly during the Pan-Arabism of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, a Palestinian State could have been established, and attention could have been paid to nation-building, instead of pursuing fantasies around the destruction of Israel. It pains me greatly that so many Palestinians, both in Palestine and in the diaspora, are woefully unaware of this history and think the entirety of our problems are solely and exclusively the result of Israeli policies. It’s time for a rejuvenated and pragmatic Palestinian narrative that accounts for the consequences of disastrous leadership…

It’s remarkable that a Palestinian from Gaza, who has suffered so much as a result of Israel, is nevertheless clear-headed as to the root cause of the ongoing conflict. Israelopathic Jews would do well to learn from him.