OPINION:
Anyone who thinks that the Oct. 7 rape, torture, killing, and capture carried out by Hamas can be justified in any way needs to wrap their mind around two inconvenient truths.
Inconvenient Truth number one: The leadership of Hamas truly could care less about the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian population. Quite the opposite. They want the suffering, the torment, the blood.
They are merchants of death.
Like gang leaders who send flocks of children out to beg without themselves having a shred of concern for the sufferings of their charges, bleeding Arab babies and their wailing, grief-stricken mothers are Hamas’ stock in trade and prime meal ticket.
In a recent interview on Russian media, Mousa Abu Marzouk, Deputy Chairman of the Hamas Politburo since 1996, who has been deported from the U.S. twice for terrorist activities and for building illicit U.S. funding networks for the group, explained that building bomb shelters for civilians is not Hamas’ job.
Since Israel abandoned Gaza in 2005, Hamas has built a spiderweb of underground tunnels underground using humanitarian relief money and funds from Iran and other benefactors. Estimated to run for some 300 miles, these passageways cost millions of dollars. Those tunnels, Marzouk declared, are for Hamas fighters.As for civilians, well, they are the U.N.’s problem. Or maybe Israel’s.
Gazans who are wounded and killed while serving as human shields for Hamas provide headlines, political leverage on the international scene, and rile up the so-called “Arab street.” They are just terrific for getting high school children, college students, and others to snap to when TikTok says it’s time. At which point, they line up like robots chanting, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” They likely do not realize that they are calling for the genocidal slaughter of Israel’s Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druze, and wiping the country off the map.
On the other hand, those who do understand the implications of what they are chanting are infested with hatred and a lust for torment and death. Their heated, dramatic or tearful claims about “humanitarian concerns” should be summarily dismissed as what they really are – the most cynical of political theatrics.
As we saw with Al Qaeda and ISIS, Hamas is a militant jihadi group whose goal is only war and strife. The “pothole theory of governance” amounts to a Pollyannish presumption that, with time, getting involved in fixing potholes and sewers will trump obsessions with spilling blood and amassing Kassam rockets. It does not work.
While Hamas has been governing the Strip since 2006 (killing off Palestinian Authority rivals to turn that government into a military theocratic dictatorship), their view of the role of the non-combatants under their rule is to breed a pool of potential fighters. They brainwash and recruit from a very young age and groom “martyrs,” feeding them the promise of heaven after death.
Great suffering inevitably results when Hamas forces people to stay put while the Israelis beg them to depart areas where fighting is going on, and every death is grist for Hamas’ propaganda mill. After all, there is no point in having human shields around if you don’t hide behind them.
By their own statements, the Hamas leadership has made it clear that they are more interested in a “permanent” state of war than they are in worrying about governing Gaza or improving the lives of its people. In the words of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, “We need the blood of women, children, and the elderly of Gaza – so it awakens our revolutionary spirit.”
Bottom line – Palestinian suffering is business. Big business. This leads us to Inconvenient truth number two.
The Hamas warlords are living large and have become filthy rich. Between the taxes that they imposed on smuggled goods through the underground tunnels network, the “humanitarian aid” that they have been able to siphon off since attaining power, and the largesse of the mullahs of Tehran and the emirs of Qatar, they have become billionaires. They own a large share of the Gaza housing there and charge rent, too.
It is time to connect the bloody dots. Support for Hamas means aiding and abetting a sick, murderous terror gang that abuses and exploits their very people while preaching a message of unending hatred and destruction. Calling them “freedom fighters” makes about as much sense as claiming that a king pimp is the champion of the women and girls that he addicts to drugs and turns out on the street.
In Gaza, there are a lot of children. About half of the population. They didn’t even vote for Hamas: The elections were in 2006, one vote, one time, and now these terror mongers are getting Gazans hurt and killed.
So, for those with genuine humanitarian concerns – it is time to step up and call for the destruction and dismantling of Hamas. Not a ceasefire. Time to call for the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the return of all hostages. As long as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad rule Gaza and grow fat on the suffering of their flock, neither the Israelis nor the Gaza Arabs will ever have peace.
• Rena Cohen was born in Kibbutz Nachshon, Israel, and was the Co-Founder of the Books for Israel Project, which supplied tons of English language books donated by U.S. synagogues, churches, and communities to low-income Jewish, Arab, Christian, and Druse schools in Israel.
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