The fol­low­ing thought­ful arti­cle on the Gaza con­flict was writ­ten by Peter Bald­win, the for­mer left-wing MP and Hawke and Keat­ing Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter. It sets out Baldwin’s rea­sons for sup­port­ing Israel, a rar­i­ty on the Left these days. The arti­cle takes the form of a let­ter addressed to the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Israel UNSW aca­d­e­m­ic Peter Slezak.

Dear Peter,
You will recall that at din­ner after your engag­ing and infor­ma­tive talk to the Black­heath Phi­los­o­phy Forum on 26 July the con­ver­sa­tion turned to the Gaza con­flict. It quick­ly became appar­ent that we dis­agreed fun­da­men­tal­ly, but notwith­stand­ing that the dis­cus­sion remained polite and con­struc­tive. You, as I dis­cov­ered, are quite an activist on this issue – a speak­er at ‘pro-Pales­tin­ian’ ral­lies, blog­ger and a tru­ly prodi­gious tweet­er.
Reflect­ing on it after­ward, I was frankly astound­ed by what you had to say about Hamas, Israel’s main adver­sary in the recent con­flict. I said that Hamas tak­ing con­trol in Gaza was a dis­as­ter that made the cur­rent tragedy inevitable. You vig­or­ous­ly dis­put­ed this, say­ing that the Gazans were being pun­ished for vot­ing for the ‘wrong’ peo­ple. I then brought up the noto­ri­ous Hamas Char­ter that advo­cates anni­hi­lat­ing Israel and, cit­ing reli­gious author­i­ty, looks for­ward to exter­mi­nat­ing every last Jew. You dis­missed the Char­ter as of lit­tle rel­e­vance and referred me to var­i­ous resources that argue the Char­ter is old hat, that a ‘New Hamas’ has evolved.
I don’t think this view can with­stand scruti­ny. Despite over­tures, ‘truce pro­pos­als’ and con­cil­ia­to­ry-sound­ing brief­in­gs for West­ern jour­nal­ists, Hamas’ com­mit­ment to the destruc­tion of Israel and ulti­mate­ly to geno­cide of the Jews is undi­min­ished. They may well be pre­pared to live with Israel with­in the 1967 bound­aries for a peri­od, or as they say “dur­ing this phase”, but this is mere­ly a pre­cur­sor, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare to achieve their ulti­mate reli­gious­ly sanc­tioned goals, set out with chill­ing clar­i­ty in the Char­ter, which Hamas would be in a vast­ly stronger posi­tion to pur­sue once ensconced in all the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries.
Some­thing very strange has hap­pened to the West­ern Left in recent times, exem­pli­fied by its atti­tude to the Israel-Pales­tine con­flict, and I say that as some­one who was affil­i­at­ed with the Left of the Aus­tralian Labor Par­ty through­out by 22-year par­lia­men­tary career. On the one hand, this is the great age of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, where the slight­est impli­ca­tion of racism, sex­ism or homo­pho­bia is instant­ly con­demned and the per­pe­tra­tors required to do penance. Yet here we have clear advo­ca­cy of geno­cide, right there in plain sight in Hamas’ foun­da­tion­al doc­u­ment adopt­ed in 1988. Whole forests have been lev­elled to pro­duce anti-Israel res­o­lu­tions. How many of these have called on Hamas to repu­di­ate this foul, evil doc­u­ment? Some aca­d­e­m­ic enthu­si­asts even argue that Hamas should be con­sid­ered part of the ‘pro­gres­sive Left’.
Israel, on the oth­er hand, is the coun­try that can do no right, blamed for a large share of the ills that beset the region if not the world. Even its friend­li­ness to the gay com­mu­ni­ty (in a recent poll Tel Aviv was rat­ed the world’s top gay tourist des­ti­na­tion) is derid­ed at aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ences as pinkwash­ing designed to mask its repres­sion of the Pales­tini­ans. Mean­while in Teheran gays are pub­licly lynched from cranes. No res­o­lu­tions or con­fer­ences about that, need­less to say. The Left has a sin­gu­lar obses­sion with the real or imag­ined mis­deeds of Israel, giv­ing lit­tle or no atten­tion to far greater human­i­tar­i­an calami­ties such as the con­flict in Syr­ia and Iraq.
The thing I find par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing is not legit­i­mate crit­i­cism of Israel but the tac­it or explic­it sup­port giv­en to a move­ment that embod­ies every­thing the Left should stand against, one face of a hideous bar­barism afflict­ing mul­ti­ple loca­tions through­out the Islam­ic world. It is impos­si­ble to rea­son­ably pass judge­ment on the Israelis with­out tak­ing account of the nature of their adver­saries. This the ‘pro-Pales­tin­ian’ Left seems inca­pable of doing, and in effect ends up lend­ing sup­port to a futile and destruc­tive rejec­tion­ism that will ensure the con­tin­u­ing immis­er­a­tion of the Pales­tini­ans.
THE HAMAS CHARTER – MEIN KAMPF REDUX
At our din­ner dis­cus­sion the main issue we dis­agreed about was the nature of Hamas, a des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion that orig­i­nal­ly spe­cial­ized in sui­cide bomb­ings and has since moved on to rock­ets and tun­nels. Hamas was suc­cess­ful in the Pales­tin­ian elec­tions of Jan­u­ary 2006, and took com­plete con­trol of Gaza in June 2007 after an armed con­flict with Fatah. This out­come was a dis­as­ter for the Pales­tini­ans, the Gazans espe­cial­ly, the Israelis, and for the prospects for peace. You dis­put­ed this, not even con­ced­ing that, in com­par­i­son, Fatah was the ‘less­er evil’.
Hamas’ apol­o­gists try to dif­fer­en­ti­ate Hamas from oth­er Islamist groups in the news such as the so-called Islam­ic State and Boko Haram. Admit­ted­ly, Hamas gen­er­al­ly avoids the extrav­a­gant cru­el­ty of these groups, though the mask slips peri­od­i­cal­ly as with the recent bru­tal killing of 16 men and 2 women accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with Israel, car­ried out before an audi­ence that includ­ed young chil­dren, the ruth­less gun­ning down of Gazan peace pro­test­ers opposed to rock­et launch­es, and the hurl­ing of Fatah offi­cials off the top of tall build­ings dur­ing the 2007 Bat­tle of Gaza. Hamas pur­sues a dif­fer­ent media strat­e­gy to these oth­er groups since dis­cred­it­ing and iso­lat­ing Israel in the eyes of West­ern pub­lic opin­ion is a cen­tral part of its strat­e­gy, but it shares the same reli­gious ide­ol­o­gy and ulti­mate objec­tives.
This brings me to Hamas’ geno­ci­dal found­ing Char­ter, adopt­ed in 1988 and nev­er rescind­ed despite repeat­ed calls to do so. On this, even Israel’s defend­ers often under­state mat­ters, point­ing out the doc­u­ment calls for the oblit­er­a­tion of Israeli. But it is far worse than that. Here are some excerpts (the bold head­ings are mine):
Oblit­er­a­tion of Israel (Pre­am­ble): Israel will exist and will con­tin­ue to exist until Islam will oblit­er­ate it, just as it oblit­er­at­ed oth­ers before it.
Geno­cide of the Jews (Arti­cle 7): The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him sal­va­tion, has said: “The Day of Judge­ment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdul­la, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”
No peace­ful solu­tion (Arti­cle 13):Ini­tia­tives, and so-called peace­ful solu­tions and inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences, are in con­tra­dic­tion to the prin­ci­ples of the Islam­ic Resis­tance Move­ment. Abus­ing any part of Pales­tine is abuse direct­ed against part of reli­gion. Nation­al­ism of the Islam­ic Resis­tance Move­ment is part of its reli­gion. Its mem­bers have been fed on that. For the sake of hoist­ing the ban­ner of Allah over their home­land they fight. “Allah will be promi­nent, but most peo­ple do not know.”
Endorse­ment of Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion (Arti­cle 32): The Zion­ist plan is lim­it­less. After Pales­tine, the Zion­ists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digest­ed the region they over­took, they will aspire to fur­ther expan­sion, and so on. Their plan is embod­ied in the “Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present con­duct is the best proof of what we are say­ing.
The ‘pro-Pales­tin­ian’ Left main­tains that Hamas should be rec­og­nized by Israel and the West as a legit­i­mate part­ner in nego­ti­at­ing a per­ma­nent set­tle­ment of the Arab-Israeli dis­pute. How can that be squared with the Char­ter? Here the nar­ra­tive asserts that Hamas has moved on since adopt­ing the Char­ter, that a kinder, gen­tler ‘New Hamas’ has emerged more con­cerned with win­ning elec­tions and meet­ing the chal­lenges of civ­il gov­er­nance. This view is expressed in the book by the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal econ­o­mist Sara Roy, which you strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed, titled Hamas and Civ­il Soci­ety in Gaza: Engag­ing the Islamist Social Sec­tor. This line has gained some trac­tion. Accord­ing to US Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Nan­cy Pelosi (fol­low­ing assur­ances from Qatari offi­cials) Hamas is “basi­cal­ly a human­i­tar­i­an organ­i­sa­tion”.
For West­ern con­sump­tion Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has said the Char­ter is “a piece of his­to­ry and no longer rel­e­vant, but can­not be changed for inter­nal rea­sons”. So what are we to make of an organ­i­sa­tion that is inca­pable of repu­di­at­ing a com­mit­ment to geno­cide for unspec­i­fied inter­nal rea­sons? What does that say about this organ­i­sa­tion, and those who com­prise its lead­er­ship ech­e­lon? And even if, con­trary to the facts, Hamas were to rescind the Char­ter, what does it say about the men­tal­i­ty of those con­cerned that they were pre­pared to adopt such a doc­u­ment in the first place? Should Israel place its exis­tence on the line by allow­ing it to con­trol a future state that includes both Gaza and the West Bank? You place great store on var­i­ous pro­pos­als and utter­ances from Hamas spokes­men that imply accep­tance of Israel with­in the 1967 bound­aries. I con­tend such sig­nalling is com­plete­ly insin­cere, designed pure­ly for West­ern con­sump­tion. This mat­ter is tak­en up in detail in the next sec­tion.
In case you think Hamas have eased off on the calls for Jew­ish exter­mi­na­tion, take a look at the trans­la­tion of this ser­mon broad­cast recent­ly on the offi­cial Hamas chan­nel Al-Aqsa TV.
And note this sick­en­ing children’s TV show broad­cast on the same net­work in May this year in which the chil­dren are called on to kill the Jews.
You fault the Israelis for being unwill­ing to accept the Pales­tini­an’s ‘choice’ of Hamas. But look at it from their point of view. Is it sur­pris­ing the Israelis are reluc­tant to accept as a legit­i­mate peace part­ner an organ­i­sa­tion that:

• Refus­es to rescind its found­ing Char­ter that calls for the com­plete oblit­er­a­tion of Israel.
• Calum­ni­ates Jews as a group in terms that recall the worst of 1930s Nazi pro­pa­gan­da, includ­ing cit­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry Russ­ian forgery The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion.
• Invok­ing scrip­tur­al author­i­ty, looks for­ward to com­plet­ing Adolph Hitler’s project by exter­mi­nat­ing every last Jew on the face of the earth.
• Con­tin­ues to affirm Char­ter goals, includ­ing Jew­ish exter­mi­na­tion, right up to the present day notwith­stand­ing some faux con­cil­ia­to­ry ges­tures for West­ern audi­ences.
• Takes pains to incul­cate the next gen­er­a­tion with this same hate­ful agen­da.

As against all this, you point to instances of Israeli extrem­ists. I don’t deny the exis­tence of extreme reli­gious zealots in Israel who have made some appalling state­ments. You sent me an arti­cle about the West Bank Rab­bi Dov Lior, who sounds like a thor­ough­ly exe­crable char­ac­ter. But did you notice the para­graph in the arti­cle that reads:
Lior was arrest­ed in 2011 after months of refus­ing to appear for ques­tion­ing for his endorse­ment of the book “Torat Ham­elech,” or “The King’s Torah” by Rab­bi Yitzhak Shapi­ra, which jus­ti­fies killing non-Jews.
Can you point to an instance any­where in the Arab world where some­one was arrest­ed for incit­ing peo­ple to kill Jews? Not in Gaza I bet. Pon­der the con­trast­ing reac­tions to the mur­der of three Israeli teenagers fol­lowed by the bru­tal killing of a Pales­tin­ian teenag­er. In Israel the mur­der of the Pales­tin­ian was unequiv­o­cal­ly con­demned by almost every­one. Netanyahu called it an “abom­inable mur­der” and vowed to hold the per­pe­tra­tors account­able; the con­dem­na­tion includ­ed the Israeli right-wing press. Six sus­pects were quick­ly arrest­ed and will face the full force of the law. Hamas hailed the killers of the Israelis as heroes and offered no con­dem­na­tion, and made no attempt to arrest sus­pects. After ini­tial denials, Hamas even­tu­al­ly claimed ‘cred­it’ for the kid­nap­ping and mur­der.
State­ments by rel­a­tive­ly minor fig­ures hard­ly pro­vide grounds to accuse the Israelis of the same “geno­ci­dal racism” as Hamas, as you did in an email to me. They are clear­ly unrep­re­sen­ta­tive of the gen­er­al tenor of pub­lic dis­course in Israel, or of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. You also say Israeli atti­tudes are far more impor­tant as they have “vast­ly greater pow­er and don’t hes­i­tate to use it”. They clear­ly have an over­whelm­ing pre­pon­der­ance of mil­i­tary pow­er, but to imply they have made unre­strained use of it is absurd. If they had the same men­tal­i­ty as say, the Assad regime in Syr­ia or the Allied pow­ers in World War II, let alone a tru­ly geno­ci­dal men­tal­i­ty, the Israeli air force could reduce the whole of Gaza to smok­ing rub­ble in a cou­ple of days. There would be no warn­ings, no text mes­sages, phone calls, leaflets, and the death toll would be a large mul­ti­ple of what hap­pened. There are plen­ty of ques­tions about the tac­tics the IDF did actu­al­ly use, and I make some obser­va­tions about this below, but to sug­gest they engaged in delib­er­ate whole­sale slaugh­ter is clear­ly false.
And imag­ine if the tables were turned and Hamas had the edge. A point­less hypo­thet­i­cal, you might say, except that Israel is being called on to accept the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Hamas-con­trolled state that includes the West Bank, which they open­ly gloat will allow them to “wipe out” Israel.
TRUCES AND ‘HUDNAS’ – FEEDING THE CHOOKS
A key part of the ‘New Hamas’ nar­ra­tive is that Hamas has, since adopt­ing the Char­ter, moved to de fac­to recog­ni­tion of Israel. Sup­port­ers of this view point to sev­er­al occa­sions where Hamas has pro­posed long-term truces, or to use the Islam­ic term that Hamas prefers ‘hud­nas’. These are clear­ly not sin­cere pro­pos­als as Hamas spokes­men reg­u­lar­ly refute any sug­ges­tion they will accept Israel on any bound­aries, right up to the present day. This talk about hud­nas is impor­tant how­ev­er to give Hamas’ West­ern apol­o­gists and enablers some­thing to fly with, and the media and some politi­cians are all too will­ing to take the bait. It calls to mind the expres­sion ‘feed­ing the chooks’ that for­mer Queens­land Pre­mier Joh Bjelke-Petersen used when brief­ing the media.
A prime piece of chook feed is an inter­view giv­en by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to the New York Times on 5 May 2009. The inter­view is cit­ed in the book by Sara Roy that I men­tioned above, which you strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed Hamas and Civ­il Soci­ety in Gaza: Engag­ing the Islamist Social Sec­tor. Roy is one of the best-known aca­d­e­m­ic apol­o­gists for Hamas:
The world must deal with what Hamas is prac­tic­ing today. Hamas has accept­ed the nation­al rec­on­cil­i­a­tion doc­u­ment. It has accept­ed a Pales­tin­ian state on the 1967 bor­ders includ­ing East Jerusalem, dis­man­tling set­tle­ments, and the right of return based on a long term truce. Hamas has rep­re­sent­ed a clear polit­i­cal pro­gram through a uni­ty gov­ern­ment. This is Hamas’s pro­gram regard­less of the his­toric doc­u­ments.
Meshaal said some­thing sim­i­lar when meet­ing with a group of Euro­pean par­lia­men­tar­i­ans around the same time. Accord­ing to a report in Haaretz:
He said the Hamas gov­ern­ment had agreed to accept a Pales­tin­ian state that fol­lowed the 1967 bor­ders and to offer Israel a long-term hud­na, or truce, if Israel rec­og­nized the Pales­tini­ans’ nation­al rights.
Even if tak­en at face val­ue and assum­ing Hamas would actu­al­ly hon­or any long-term truce, the pro­pos­al amounts to a sui­cide pact for Israel. Note the insis­tence on the “right of return”, by which Hamas – and the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty for that mat­ter – mean the abil­i­ty of Pales­tin­ian refugees and their descen­dants to return with­in the pre-1967 bound­aries of Israel. The Jew­ish Israelis are expect­ed to agree to an arrange­ment in which they are poten­tial­ly reduced to a minor­i­ty, pos­si­bly ruled by an organ­i­sa­tion that can­not bring itself to repu­di­ate a com­mit­ment to anni­hi­late them and all their kind. Clear­ly they will nev­er agree to this.
The ref­er­ence to a ‘long term truce’ – rather than a per­ma­nent peace – is one of a num­ber of such ref­er­ences to which the Hamas apol­o­gists attach great store. But what do Hamas have in mind when they talk of a truce? To most West­ern­ers, this would be inter­pret­ed as an inter­me­di­ate step lead­ing to a per­ma­nent set­tle­ment.
Actu­al­ly ‘truce’ is a some­what inac­cu­rate ren­der­ing into Eng­lish of the Islam­ic con­cept of hud­na, which in Islam­ic tra­di­tion is a tem­po­rary expe­di­ent that pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to regroup, rearm and pre­pare for the next round of bat­tle. The orig­i­nal hud­na was a ten-year arrange­ment that, accord­ing to the Islam­ic scrip­tures, Muham­mad made with a rival tribe. The hud­na held only for 18 months before being bro­ken, when a stronger Muham­mad was able to ful­fil his ambi­tion to con­quer Mec­ca. Accord­ing to Wikipedia:
The use of the term hud­na to mean truce can lead to mis­un­der­stand­ing. His­tor­i­cal­ly with­in the civil­i­sa­tion of Chris­ten­dom call­ing a truce has been under­stood as a move­ment towards per­ma­nent peace and an agreed res­o­lu­tion of the con­flict. The Ara­bic term does not con­tain this mean­ing at all, being used to get the oth­er side to stop fight­ing or hos­til­i­ties or oth­er uses of pow­er or force which look like they will lead to the defeat of the jiha­di. There can be no assump­tion that any­one seek­ing hud­na has any inten­tion of sur­ren­der or per­ma­nent ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties; just a time to rest, regroup and revive.
In May 1994 Yasir Arafat was embar­rassed by the leak­ing of what he thought was an off-the-record talk at a mosque in Johan­nes­burg, South Africa, where his remarks in Eng­lish were sur­rep­ti­tious­ly record­ed. On being crit­i­cised about con­ces­sions made to Israel in the Oslo nego­ti­a­tions, he made a sly ref­er­ence to the orig­i­nal hud­na:
I see this agree­ment as being no more than the agree­ment signed between our Prophet Muham­mad and the Quraysh in Mec­ca… we now accept the peace agree­ment, but only in order to con­tin­ue on the road to Jerusalem.
Hamas MP and spokesman Mushir Al Mas­ri spells it out clear­ly in the video below, where he says:
A ‘truce’ in the dic­tio­nary of the resis­tance means prepar­ing for the next bat­tle… Our resis­tance will keep on devel­op­ing, pro­duc­ing and fill­ing its arse­nals and in the pro­duc­tion of sur­pris­ing ele­ments for the next bat­tles until the Zion­ist ene­my leaves our land, with the help of Allah.
And what does the gen­tle­man from Hamas think can be achieved by uti­liz­ing the breath­ing space pro­vid­ed by a hud­na? Again, the fol­low­ing video is help­ful­ly explic­it, with the Hamas spokesman look­ing for­ward to new and improved mis­siles, sui­cide drones, naval com­man­dos – and much more:
As it hap­pens, Meshaal’s con­cil­ia­to­ry pose for the ben­e­fit of New York Times read­ers is blown apart in the pages of Sara Roy’s own book. In the After­word to the Paper­back Edi­tion at page 246 she men­tions his vis­it to Gaza in Decem­ber 2012 (he is nor­mal­ly safe­ly ensconced in Qatar). Roy notes:
Yet some of Meshaal’s state­ments to the tens (and, accord­ing to Hamas, hun­dreds) of thou­sands of peo­ple who came to hear him stood in strik­ing con­trast to his more prag­mat­ic and con­cil­ia­to­ry posi­tion on end­ing the occu­pa­tion and accep­tance, in effect, of a two-state arrange­ment based on 1967 bor­ders.
That’s putting it rather mild­ly. Here is what he said (as quot­ed by Roy):
Pales­tine is ours, from the riv­er to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no con­ces­sion on an inch of the land. We will nev­er rec­og­nize the legit­i­ma­cy of the Israeli occu­pa­tion and there­fore there is no legit­i­ma­cy for Israel, no mat­ter how long it will take … The state will come from resis­tance, not nego­ti­a­tion.
Here is the video of the full rant:
Roy actu­al­ly man­ages to put a pos­i­tive spin on all this, going on to claim Meshaal had pre­vailed against even more extreme oppo­nents and to ask:
Does Meshaal’s re-elec­tion sig­nal a desire for greater mod­er­a­tion and prag­ma­tism with­in Hamas as Eldar sug­gests?
So, accord­ing to Roy, Meshaal is the voice of mod­er­a­tion in Hamas. I doubt the Israelis will be reas­sured.
Hamas apol­o­gists also claim that a his­toric oppor­tu­ni­ty for peace was squan­dered by Israel’s and the US oppo­si­tion to the cre­ation of a ‘uni­ty gov­ern­ment’ of Hamas and the PLO aris­ing from the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion agree­ment of 23 April of this year. In an opin­ion piece in the New York Times of July 17 this year Nathan Thrall argues the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion gov­ern­ment would have locked Hamas into recog­ni­tion of Israel and con­cludes:
The cur­rent esca­la­tion in Gaza is a direct result of the choice by Israel and the West to obstruct the imple­men­ta­tion of the April 2014 Pales­tin­ian rec­on­cil­i­a­tion agree­ment. The road out of the cri­sis is a rever­sal of that pol­i­cy.
How­ev­er any sug­ges­tion of recog­ni­tion of Israel with­in any bound­aries was imme­di­ate­ly repu­di­at­ed by Hamas spokes­men. The ‘mod­er­ate’ Khaled Meshaal said “Our path is resis­tance and the rifle, and our choice is jihad” and called for a joint strat­e­gy that would lead to the “lib­er­a­tion of our lands and holy sites and the return of the Pales­tin­ian refugees to their homes”. This was reit­er­at­ed on August 17 by Hamas spokesman Samir Abu Zuhri who made it clear the Hamas goal was the “lib­er­a­tion of Jerusalem”, not lift­ing the Gaza block­ade:
Note the chant about 20 sec­onds into the video:
Khay­bar, Khay­bar, oh Jews…
The threat of Khay­bar refers to the Mus­lim slaugh­ter and expul­sion of the Jews in a town of the name in north­west­ern Ara­bia in 628 CE.
But the most telling response came from the deputy chair­man of the Hamas polit­i­cal bureau as report­ed by the Mid­dle East news agency Al-Mon­i­tor:
Hamas will not rec­og­nize Israel,” Mousa Abu Mar­zouk, deputy chair­man of Hamas’ polit­i­cal bureau, told Al-Mon­i­tor in an exclu­sive inter­view.
This is a red line that can­not be crossed,” said the 63-year-old Hamas leader who played a piv­otal role in achiev­ing the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion deal with Fatah on April 23.
Abu Marzouk’s remarks come as Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas meet in Qatar. The Hamas leader added that the Quartet’s require­ment that Hamas rec­og­nize Israel “do not con­cern us one bit.”
“We would have spared our­selves sev­en years of mis­ery under the siege and two wars in 2008 and 2012 had we want­ed to rec­og­nize Israel,” he said.
Note espe­cial­ly the final para­graph. Clear­ly, Hamas’ pri­ma­ry goal is to anni­hi­late Israel even at the cost of inflict­ing untold mis­ery on their own peo­ple.
You sent me a link to an arti­cle by John Lyons in the Aus­tralian news­pa­per of 4 Sep­tem­ber that cites Hamas advis­er Ahmed Yousef say­ing to Lyons that Hamas would renounce vio­lence and set­tle for a state on 1967 bound­aries. The prob­lem is that, as shown above and as acknowl­edged by the author of anoth­er arti­cle you strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed, Jerome Slater, Hamas says dif­fer­ent things on dif­fer­ent days. It also says very dif­fer­ent things in Eng­lish to West­ern audi­ences and in Ara­bic to Pales­tin­ian audi­ences. Even if we take them at face val­ue, all its pro­pos­als are tied to the “right of return” of Pales­tin­ian refugees – and their descen­dants – into Israel prop­er, not a future Pales­tin­ian state. It would be triv­ial­ly easy to find some excuse to breach any such arrange­ment, has hap­pened with the orig­i­nal hud­na. And the Char­ter remains intact, sanc­ti­fied by scrip­tur­al author­i­ty.
Jerome Slater puts the best pos­si­ble slant on it:
Despite the occa­sion­al mixed sig­nals and con­tra­dic­to­ry rhetoric, there sim­ply is no doubt­ing the ongo­ing evo­lu­tion of Hamas think­ing.
Mixed sig­nals? Here is a much less benign but far more plau­si­ble take on Hamas’ evolv­ing think­ing. Hamas would very much like to have con­trol of all the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries out­side the 1967 bor­ders, but not as a per­ma­nent set­tle­ment. Rather, it would facil­i­tate achieve­ment of their ulti­mate and con­stant­ly reit­er­at­ed goal, a Pales­tin­ian state “from the riv­er to the sea” that includes, in Khaled Meshaal’s words, “every inch” of Israel. With a much longer bor­der with Israel, much greater prox­im­i­ty to Israel’s main pop­u­la­tion cen­tres and the abil­i­ty to import weapons and dual-use items with­out let or hin­drance, they would be able to make life pret­ty much intol­er­a­ble in Israel, indeed they are already talk­ing about how con­trol of the West Bank would allow them to “wipe out Israel”.
If you were an Israeli would you be pre­pared to bet your future, and that of your descen­dants, on that not being the real plan?
ABSOLVING HAMAS – ROCKETS, TUNNELS AND HUMAN SHIELDS
Accord­ing to the ‘pro-Pales­tin­ian’ Left, Hamas can do no wrong. Well, that’s an exag­ger­a­tion, but not that far from the mark. One of the items you sent me after our dis­cus­sion was a link to a video dat­ed 3 August of a speech you gave to a ‘pro-Pales­tin­ian’ ral­ly in down­town Syd­ney in which you said the fol­low­ing:
We hear about rock­ets, tun­nels, ter­ror­ists, tar­get­ed pin­point sur­gi­cal attacks, human shields and cross­fire. I teach phi­los­o­phy and lan­guage and I care about pre­cise lan­guage – it’s bull­shit.
I am unclear as to what, pre­cise­ly, you are say­ing here. You have acknowl­edged else­where that Hamas fir­ing rock­ets indis­crim­i­nate­ly into civil­ian areas of Israel is a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law, and it is indis­putable that Hamas has expend­ed great resources, years of effort, and the lives of hun­dreds of chil­dren to build a vast net­work of tun­nels beneath dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas of Gaza to pro­tect its key per­son­nel, com­mand posts and oth­er parts of its mil­i­tary infra­struc­ture, to smug­gle weapons and goods in from Egypt, as well as to pro­vide a means of insert­ing ter­ror­ists into Israel. The one thing the tun­nels are not avail­able for is to pro­tect the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion of Gaza, Hamas’ pro­pa­gan­da strat­e­gy being to ensure such casu­al­ties are max­i­mized when the inevitable Israeli retal­i­a­tion for their attacks comes.
And human shields? Hamas would help their West­ern defend­ers by refrain­ing from boast­ing about the suc­cess of the human shield strat­e­gy on Ara­bic lan­guage media, as Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri does in the video below. Note the first part, where fam­i­lies are described going to the roof of a house “to pre­vent the Zion­ist war­planes tar­get­ing it” in response to Israeli warn­ings that an attack was immi­nent.
It is beyond dis­pute that Hamas has delib­er­ate­ly locat­ed rock­et launch sites, com­mand posts and weapons stock­piles in hos­pi­tals, schools, hotels and dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed res­i­den­tial area. The evi­dence for this is avail­able from a mul­ti­tude of cred­i­ble sources, though you would nev­er guess it from much of the West­ern media. The UN has acknowl­edged the stor­age of weapons stock­piles in its schools (which it then returned to Hamas). Accord­ing to John Ging the UN Relief and Works Agency Gaza direc­tor:
Yes, the armed groups are fir­ing their rock­ets into Israel from the vicin­i­ty of UN facil­i­ties and res­i­den­tial areas. Absolute­ly.
The UN High Com­mis­sion­er for Human Rights Navi Pil­lay accused Hamas mil­i­tants of vio­lat­ing inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law by:
locat­ing rock­ets with­in schools and hos­pi­tals, or even launch­ing these rock­ets from dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas.
Jour­nal­ist Richard Behar has set out an exten­sive com­pi­la­tion of the evi­dence in a recent arti­cle that appeared in Forbes mag­a­zine.
The evi­dence includes video footage of rock­et launch­es. Here is a sam­ple:
1. Finnish tele­vi­sion report of a rock­et launch from the back carpark of the Al Shi­fa Hos­pi­tal, Gaza­’s largest. The jour­nal­ist says “right in the back park­ing lot of Al Shi­fa Hos­pi­tal a rock­et was launched, two o’clock in the morn­ing. Real­ly, it hap­pened right in the area, the sound of it was real­ly loud”. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that the hos­pi­tal had become a “de fac­to head­quar­ters for Hamas lead­ers, who can be seen in the hall­ways and offices”.
2. Footage from Indi­an tele­vi­sion sta­tion NDTV show­ing the assem­bly and launch­ing of a Hamas rock­et from out­side a hotel locat­ed in a dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed area. The Indi­an reporter described the per­va­sive fear among reporters of reprisals by Hamas against any­one report­ing these launch­es. Gen­er­al­ly they refrain from doing so until safe­ly out of Gaza.
3. France 24 tele­vi­sion reporter star­tled by rock­et launch from with­in a heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed area, right next to a UN facil­i­ty.
So why haven’t we heard more about this? Part of the answer is Hamas intim­i­da­tion. The For­eign Press Asso­ci­a­tion com­plained about “bla­tant, inces­sant, force­ful and unortho­dox” intim­i­da­tion of jour­nal­ists in Gaza by Hamas, includ­ing the Indi­an TV jour­nal­ists whose sto­ry appears above. The Forbes arti­cle by Richard Behar I referred to above main­tains there is sys­tem­at­ic bias on the part of some West­ern media organ­i­sa­tions includ­ing the New York Times, the BBC and CNN. The only cov­er­age about this in the Aus­tralian press is an arti­cle in The Aus­tralian by two researchers at the Aus­tralia-Israel Jew­ish Affairs Com­mit­tee.
The evi­dence that Hamas has launched attacks and placed mil­i­tary facil­i­ties in or in close prox­im­i­ty to civil­ian instal­la­tions is over­whelm­ing. The larg­er point is that Gaza as a whole has been turned into one big human shield, sit­ting above a sub­ter­ranean world of tun­nels that pro­tect key Hamas per­son­nel, weapon stock­piles and man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties, and com­mand cen­tres. This net­work is con­cen­trat­ed in par­tic­u­lar sub­urbs, and these are the ones that have suf­fered the great­est dam­age. The tun­nels are pure­ly mil­i­tary instal­la­tions, with no access to for the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion – there are no pub­lic bomb shel­ters in Gaza. By sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly deny­ing or ignor­ing this real­i­ty and attribut­ing all blame for civil­ian casu­al­ties to Israel, Hamas apol­o­gists and sec­tions of the West­ern media are inte­gral to the suc­cess of this strat­e­gy, reward­ing it and ensur­ing its con­tin­u­a­tion.
So how should Israel respond to an adver­sary that thinks noth­ing of putting its own civil­ians at risk? The Israeli author and intel­lec­tu­al Amos Oz, a founder of the Peace Now move­ment, strong crit­ic of the West Bank set­tle­ments, and one of the ear­li­est advo­cates of a two-state solu­tion after the 1967 war, draws an anal­o­gy: Sup­pose you found your­self being fired at by a neigh­bour across the street who does so with a child on his knee. What would you do? Oz thought that Israel had no choice than to mount a mil­i­tary oper­a­tion, even though this would inevitably lead to civil­ian casu­al­ties, though he thinks the lev­el of force was exces­sive.
One can quib­ble with Oz’s anal­o­gy. One thought that occurred to me was to ask whether Israel could not just sit out Hamas’ rel­a­tive­ly inef­fec­tu­al rock­et attacks pro­tect­ed by the Iron Dome sys­tem and its exten­sive civ­il defence mea­sures. There are sev­er­al prob­lems with this. For one thing it is clear that had Hamas’ sin­is­ter ‘attack tun­nel’ strat­e­gy, which Israeli intel­li­gence ser­vices gross­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed before enter­ing Gaza, come to fruition as planned lat­er this year there was the poten­tial for ter­ror­ist attacks and hostage tak­ing on an appalling scale. Fur­ther­more there is no doubt that Hamas strives relent­less­ly to improve its capa­bil­i­ties, with attempts to smug­gle in more potent mis­siles and oth­er weapons, maybe with chem­i­cal or bio­log­i­cal war­heads in future.
So the notion that Israel could have just sat out the Hamas onslaught may pro­vide an inter­est­ing top­ic for a uni­ver­si­ty sem­i­nar on moral phi­los­o­phy, but is some­thing that no real-world gov­ern­ment faced with this sit­u­a­tion could or would do. Once the deci­sion was tak­en to respond mil­i­tar­i­ly to attacks ema­nat­ing from dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas, civil­ian casu­al­ties were inevitable. Could Israel have done more to min­i­mize them, more than the phone calls, text mes­sages and ‘warn­ing rock­ets’ and care­ful tar­get­ing that they used? There clear­ly were seri­ous fail­ures, lead­ing to appalling results. But what we can say with cer­tain­ty is that these were not intend­ed. As the Israelis know all too well, every high pro­file tragedy is a pro­pa­gan­da wind­fall for Hamas, and a cor­re­spond­ing night­mare for them.
A full explo­ration of the pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of Israel response would require a sep­a­rate arti­cle, but it is clear that the claim Israel killed indis­crim­i­nate­ly is false. Had it done so, the death toll would have been far high­er and, as belat­ed­ly acknowl­edged by the BBC and New York Times, the age and gen­der pro­file of casu­al­ties would have been dif­fer­ent (most media accept­ed fig­ures on the combatant/civilian ratio pro­vid­ed by the Hamas-con­trolled Gaza health min­istry, on which UN esti­mates were also based). A detailed analy­sis of the pat­tern of tar­get­ing shows that the strikes were aimed at spe­cif­ic areas close to the bor­der where Hamas infra­struc­ture was most con­cen­trat­ed.
THE GAZA WITHDRAWAL – A COUNTER-FACTUAL
At this point it is use­ful to engage in some counter-fac­tu­al his­to­ry, to pon­der how things might have been, after the Israeli with­draw­al from Gaza in 2005. This with­draw­al pro­vid­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty for an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent future for the peo­ple of Gaza, an oppor­tu­ni­ty trag­i­cal­ly squan­dered.
From August to Sep­tem­ber 2005 under Ariel Sharon’s gov­ern­ment Israel car­ried out a with­draw­al from Gaza, both mil­i­tary and civil­ian. The entire pop­u­la­tion of 21 Jew­ish set­tle­ments in Gaza, around 9000 peo­ple in all, was removed, forcibly in many cas­es.
The deci­sion to do this was huge­ly con­tro­ver­sial in Israel. It was defeat­ed at dif­fer­ent stages with­in the Knes­set (par­lia­ment), the cab­i­net, and the Likud Par­ty, prompt­ing sev­er­al min­is­te­r­i­al res­ig­na­tions and the with­draw­al of Sharon’s coali­tion part­ners. It required the for­ma­tion of a new gov­ern­ment with Shi­mon Peres in Jan­u­ary 2005 to secure pas­sage. Sharon was accused of sell­ing-out by sec­tions of the Right while gain­ing some praise from the Left. Among the most vocal oppo­nents was Ben­jamin Netanyahu, who resigned from the cab­i­net just before it rat­i­fied the first phase of the dis­en­gage­ment plan on August 7 2005. In his first speech after resign­ing Netanyahu warned that the Gaza with­draw­al would cre­ate a “huge base for ter­ror”.
Inter­na­tion­al­ly the response was pos­i­tive. UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Kofi Annan praised Sharon’s “coura­geous deci­sion”; EU For­eign Min­is­ter Javier Solana wel­comed the deci­sion as rep­re­sent­ing “an oppor­tu­ni­ty to restart imple­men­ta­tion of the Road Map”. Copi­ous amounts of devel­op­ment aid were on offer. An Agree­ment on Move­ment and Access was made between Israel and the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty short­ly after that would have opened up bor­der cross­ings, estab­lished a safe pas­sage between Gaza and the West Bank and set in motion devel­op­ment of sea and air ports. The Israelis left behind a sub­stan­tial eco­nom­ic infra­struc­ture, includ­ing 3000 high tech­nol­o­gy green­hous­es. There was con­sid­er­able opti­mism about where this could lead, with talk of Gaza becom­ing the “Sin­ga­pore of the Mediter­ranean”.
A great oppor­tu­ni­ty, but one that was lost almost imme­di­ate­ly. The rock­ets start­ing fly­ing lit­er­al­ly with­in hours of the last Israeli troops with­draw­ing and have not stopped since, some 11,000 between then and the start of hos­til­i­ties in July 2014. The elec­tion of Hamas in the Pales­tin­ian leg­isla­tive elec­tions in Jan­u­ary 2006 led to an embar­go on aid by the mem­bers of the Quar­tet, and in the after­math of the Gaza War that saw the expul­sion of Fatah from Gaza the Israelis and Egyp­tians imposed restric­tions on non-human­i­tar­i­an sup­plies (these were relaxed in 2010). Hamas direct­ed huge resources away from civil­ian con­struc­tion into build­ing its sub­ter­ranean war mak­ing appa­ra­tus, and used this in suc­ces­sive rounds of con­flict with Israel. The result was a dev­as­tat­ed Gazan econ­o­my, parts of Gaza reduced to smok­ing ruins and thou­sands of wrecked lives.
Imag­ine that things had turned out dif­fer­ent­ly. Sup­pose that when the Israelis with­drew in 2005 the lead­er­ship in Gaza had decid­ed to focus on the pur­suits of peace, devel­op­ing Gaza’s eco­nom­ic and social infra­struc­ture, fos­ter­ing mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial rela­tions with Israel and the region, and build­ing thriv­ing indus­tries in areas where Gaza has nat­ur­al advan­tages such as tourism and hor­ti­cul­ture. The peo­ple of Gaza could today be enjoy­ing one of the high­est liv­ing stan­dards in the region. Instead of appear­ing pre­scient, Ben­jamin Netanyahu’s pre­dic­tion in August 2005 that Gaza would become a “huge base for ter­ror” would have been fal­si­fied. This could have pro­vid­ed the basis for a broad­er two-state solu­tion to the Israel- Pales­tin­ian solu­tion based on mutu­al trust. As things have turned out, Gaza may have fatal­ly weak­ened the chances for such a solu­tion.
There is a broad­er point here. Time and again, Pales­tin­ian rep­re­sen­ta­tives and their advo­cates in the West find rea­sons why oppor­tu­ni­ties like this should not be tak­en up because it fails to pro­vide full ‘jus­tice’ to the Pales­tini­ans. In the case of Gaza they raise Israel’s con­tin­ued con­trol of sea and air approach­es, or they com­plain about con­tin­ued West Bank set­tle­ments. In my view, any­one gen­uine­ly con­cerned about the wel­fare of the Pales­tini­ans would urge them to set aside con­sid­er­a­tions of (unat­tain­able) ulti­mate jus­tice and instead try to imag­ine what life would be like for the Pales­tini­ans today if they had embraced the oppor­tu­ni­ty for peace­ful devel­op­ment afford­ed by the Gaza with­draw­al. Or by the Clin­ton-spon­sored pro­pos­al in 2000 that would have giv­en the Pales­tini­ans 94 per­cent of the West Bank (plus 3 per­cent in a land swap), East Jerusalem and a $38 bil­lion com­pen­sa­tion pack­age for the refugees; or the 2007 Olmert pro­pos­al. Or for that mat­ter the orig­i­nal UN par­ti­tion of Pales­tine in 1947. Not full jus­tice, you might object, but an incom­pa­ra­bly bet­ter out­come for the peo­ple con­cerned.
CONCLUSION
A strik­ing fea­ture of this lat­est round of Gaza fight­ing is that the deci­sion to launch Oper­a­tion Pro­tec­tive Edge had the sup­port of the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Jew­ish Israelis, across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Accord­ing to a recent poll, 92 per­cent con­sid­ered the oper­a­tion jus­ti­fied, and that even includ­ed 67 per­cent of self-described Left­ists. The same poll showed much less agree­ment about the way the cam­paign was waged, but the dis­senters over­whelm­ing­ly thought Israel should have pros­e­cut­ed the cam­paign more aggres­sive­ly to achieve a deci­sive vic­to­ry over Hamas.
These fig­ures are sur­pris­ing giv­en the high civil­ian death toll, Israel’s own casu­al­ties and the over­whelm­ing­ly neg­a­tive cov­er­age of Israel’s actions in the world media. While there is a far Right reli­gious fringe, the Israeli elec­torate in the main shares many of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a typ­i­cal West­ern democ­ra­cy where this lev­el of con­sen­sus for a mil­i­tary cam­paign is very rare. Unlike its neigh­bours, includ­ing the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries, Israel has a live­ly and con­tentious demo­c­ra­t­ic life where strong crit­ics can and do have their say.
How do we account for this con­sen­sus? My read­ing of it is that most Israelis feel they are con­front­ed by an appalling dilem­ma, with an ene­my on their doorstep com­mit­ted to the anni­hi­la­tion of their state and each one of them per­son­al­ly. An ene­my that is per­fect­ly pre­pared to launch indis­crim­i­nate attacks on Israel’s civil­ian pop­u­la­tion in a way delib­er­ate­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to max­i­mize casu­al­ties amongst its own pop­u­la­tion when the inevitable response comes in order to dis­cred­it and iso­late Israel in the eyes of the world.
An Israeli author who vis­it­ed Aus­tralia recent­ly, Yos­si Hale­vi, described the poten­tial impact of Hamas’ rock­et attacks in an arti­cle for the The Aus­tralian news­pa­per:
The images of Israeli dis­lo­ca­tion are hard­ly as heart­break­ing as the images from Gaza. And yet the psy­cho­log­i­cal con­se­quences are sig­nif­i­cant. For years, Israelis in some south­ern com­mu­ni­ties have arranged their lives so they are always with­in sec­onds of a shel­ter. But recent­ly these south­ern­ers have been call­ing into radio talk shows with a com­mon refrain: we can’t take it any­more. There is a real pos­si­bil­i­ty of a per­ma­nent mass defec­tion from this part of the coun­try. And if Israelis can’t live on the bor­der with Gaza, the same may prove true for those who live on the bor­der with Lebanon. Many Israelis will draw the con­clu­sion antic­i­pat­ed by Arafat: There is no future here.
This is clear­ly Hamas’ strat­e­gy. Make life intol­er­a­ble for the pop­u­la­tion of Israel as part of its long-term strat­e­gy to elim­i­nate the Jew­ish state alto­geth­er. And imag­ine how much more severe the prob­lem would be if Hamas were to gain con­trol of the West Bank as well as Gaza, with a far longer bor­der and much greater prox­im­i­ty to the main Israeli pop­u­la­tion cen­tres and the free­dom to import weapons and dual-use items with­out restraint.
I will con­clude on a slight­ly philo­soph­i­cal note. Like you (cor­rect me if I’m wrong) I think the best eth­i­cal frame­work for judg­ing actions and poli­cies is Con­se­quen­tial­ism, the view­point that calls on us to focus on prac­ti­cal results rather than sen­ti­ments, motives, dis­plays of sol­i­dar­i­ty – or even rumi­nat­ing too much about what ‘jus­tice’ ulti­mate­ly requires. I doubt the Israel-Pales­tine dis­pute will final­ly be resolved by some grand bar­gain that all the par­ties sign on to and imple­ment in good faith. Rather than hang out for this, a more plau­si­ble approach is to pur­sue every oppor­tu­ni­ty to ame­lio­rate life for those con­cerned and to imple­ment par­tial solu­tions that can build trust and lay the basis for bet­ter things. The tragedy of Gaza is that just such an oppor­tu­ni­ty was squan­dered.