The following article was written by ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin, and was ori­gin­ally published by ABC Religion and Ethics.

A ‘Calculus of Death’: Hamas’ Propaganda War in Gaza

Alex Ryvchin
ABC Religion & Ethics
May 23, 2018
Contrary to reports attrib­ut­ing the clashes on Israel’s border with Gaza to the opening of the United States embassy in Jerusalem, the large-scale gath­er­ings and attempts to breach the border began in earnest on 30 March.
The under­ly­ing motiv­a­tion has been plainly stated by the Palestini­an lead­er­ship in Gaza: to “remove the transient border” between Israel and Gaza, in the words of Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, and to achieve a Palestini­an “return” to “all of Palestine,” according to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
These object­ives were sup­ple­men­ted with instruc­tions to kill and abduct Israeli civilians and soldiers in the Israeli border com­munit­ies.
Palestini­ans claim a “right of return,” not into a future Palestini­an State, but into Israel, for up to 7 million des­cend­ants of Palestini­ans displaced during Israel’s war of inde­pend­ence 70 years ago.
The number of Palestini­ans alive today who were per­son­ally displaced following the invasion of Israel is estimated at around 30,000. The concept of hered­it­ary refugee status in per­petu­ity for those who were never per­son­ally displaced is unique to the Palestini­an cause and is claimed by no other people.
Veiled in the language of human rights and inter­na­tion­al law, the “right of return” is concerned with neither law nor human rights. It has long stood as a euphemism for the oblit­er­a­tion of any autonom­ous Jewish presence in the Middle East by turning the Jews into a minority in their own national home, and replacing it with a twenty-third majority Arab state.
While the march has pre­dict­ably been framed – and virtually uncrit­ic­ally accepted – as a peaceful, popular demon­stra­tion, nothing happens in Gaza except at the direction of Hamas. And nothing done by Hamas is for peaceful purposes. It remains, openly and unashamedly, committed to the anni­hil­a­tion of the Jewish people and their nation-state. The complete absence of any demo­crat­ic insti­tu­tions in the Gaza Strip, let alone any civil society with the freedom or capacity to organize a demon­stra­tion, means that any public gathering occurs only at the behest of Gaza’s Islamist rulers and in keeping with its strategic interests.
To be sure, the majority of the tens of thousands assembled at the border did not engage in violence. However, facing squads of Hamas fighters armed with grenades, bombs and guns, embedded among the masses of non-com­batants, Israel deployed its forces. It attempted to prevent breaches of the border with crowd control measures such as rubber-coated bullets and tear gas, and in response to the numerous attempts to bomb or infilt­rate the border fence, it used live rounds.
The majority of the dead have been named by Hamas as its oper­at­ives. The widow of a member of the rival Fatah faction killed near the border left no doubt as to the respons­ib­il­ity for the violence: “The leaders are sending young men toward the borders. The people are the victims.”
Writing for Bloomberg during the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, the American journ­al­ist Jeffrey Goldberg observed:

“Dead Palestini­ans represent a crucial pro­pa­ganda victory for the nihilists of Hamas. It is perverse, but true. It is also the best possible explan­a­tion for Hamas’s behavior, because Hamas has no other plausible strategic goal here.”

Alan Der­show­itz had made the same obser­va­tion a few years earlier when he referred to the “calculus of death” adopted by Palestini­an ter­ror­ists. Dead Israelis con­sti­tute a success. While the higher the civilian death toll on the Palestini­an side, the more effective the ensuing pro­pa­ganda against Israel. In other words, death on either side serves the interests of the ter­ror­ists. The well-doc­u­mented use of human shields by Hamas, the deploy­ment of child soldiers, and the use of minors to goad Israeli soldiers in the West Bank as Palestini­an parents record on their iPhones from a safe distance, are all out­growths of this for­mu­la­tion.
There is a further component to this macabre equation that is essential to its success: the support of the West. To succeed, the strategy of Palestini­an ter­ror­ists depends on a compliant press that will publish hagi­o­graph­ic ren­der­ings of “res­ist­ance” and heroism, a sym­path­et­ic civil society of NGOs and activist churches that will run campaigns based around the Palestini­an narrative of vic­tim­hood, and a hollow United Nations to issue reflexive con­dem­na­tions, and carry out politi­cized fact-finding missions and inquiries which never fail to accuse Israel and excuse the Palestini­ans.
This latest escal­a­tion has followed the same pattern. Hamas, which exercises absolute rule in Gaza, orches­trated a con­front­a­tion with Israel that once again has “no plausible strategic goal” beyond achieving crucial “pro­pa­ganda victories.” Such is the calculus of Hamas. Like all auto­cra­cies, it views its people to be wholly dis­pens­able, fodder on the path to a glorious victory. It is adept at exploit­ing the sym­path­ies of the West, while reviling the Western values of which that sympathy is borne.
As long as Hamas can rely on Western audiences to imbibe images of young children marching on a border, without ques­tion­ing at whose callous instig­a­tion that child has been sent forth and for what purpose, Israelis and Palestini­ans are destined to move from one bout of violence to the next.
Alex Ryvchin is the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry. His new book is The Anti-Israel Agenda: Inside the Political War on the Jewish State.
Image Source: ABC RELIGION & ETHICS / MAHMUD HAMS / AFP / GETTY IMAGES