The Far Left has doomed Gaza.
TL;DR
Hamas has an extensively documented history of flagrantly abusing civilians in Gaza.
The Israeli perspective on the situation is bleak and Hamas has given little wiggle room for Israel to successfully address the legitimate concerns of everyday Gazans.
The far left has willfully turned a blind eye to these two factors, and have ignored the actual needs of those they claim to support. The far left has doomed the population of Gaza to continuous suffering by becoming pawns in the Hamas game.
In Sept 2005, almost 20 years ago, Israel left Gaza, evacuating all of their settlements, leaving behind more than 3000 greenhouses. Jewish American donor’s put up $14M to buy the greenhouses from the evacuated settlers, and gifted them all to the Palestinian Authority, with the intent that the PA would build an agricultural industry to support the population in Gaza.
Israel’s last troops left Gaza on a Monday.
On Tuesday morning the looting began. Masked gunmen (guess who) ransacked the greenhouses.
“These greenhouses are for the Palestinian people,” said then Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia. “We don’t want anyone to touch or harm anything that can be useful for our people.”
But the masked gunmen had different plans for the people of Gaza…
Over the last two decades Hamas has proven to be uniquely adept at destroying any hope for Gazan civilians. They have turned every dollar of foreign aid into a cesspool of hate, oppression, Jihadi crony capitalism, blatant abuse, and have sacrificed the entire economy in the name of terror, genocide, and oppression.
Hamas has held Gazans in a literal stranglehold ever since they slaughtered their political rivals, and countless civilians — in and around hospitals — to entrench their full control of the Strip in 2007.
Hamas military forces captured 28-year-old Muhammad Swairki, a cook for President Mahmoud Abbas’s presidential guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City. Human Rights Watch, June 2007
Hamas has been relentless in their brutal crackdown on the population, silencing opposition through violence, intimidation, and torture. Their treatment of women and LGBTQ members is notoriously brutal, at best.
While the population of Gaza struggles with rampant unemployment, Hamas leaders live in luxury from blatant theft, misappropriation of international aid, and crime-syndicate protection money.
Hamas has also destroyed any future for the children in Gaza. Children are not taught basic skills, but are instead subjected to ideological manipulation that idolizes hate and death. UNWRA, festering with Hamas operatives, administers much of the educational activities in Gaza, indoctrinating children to idolize terrorism at the expense of their own future.
The content of the curriculum is so abhorrent that the Europe Union passed a resolution in May 2023 demanding change to the “problematic and hateful material in Palestinian schools” and that “all anti-Semitic references are deleted, and examples that incite hatred and violence are removed”.
Since October 7th, Hamas’ treatment of the people of Gaza has gotten even worse.
Over the last five months Israel has facilitated that transfer of over 280,000 tons of aid. Over 15,000 trucks have entered Gaza, and yet the civilians are starving.
Countless real-time, on-the-ground videos from Gaza show Hamas operatives robbing convoys, sometimes violently, and sometimes very violently:
The aid is siphoned to Hamas, in flagrant disregard to the needs of the population. Hamas has even been executing local Gazans, who have been working with Israel to administer aid more effectively. There are even reports of high ranking Hamas officials secretly evacuating Gaza, leaving everybody else to suffer and fend for themselves.
On rare occasions we hear the voices of actual Gazans, risking their lives to tell the truth.
“The people who don’t need it are the ones who receive the aid”, says the man from northern Gaza. “And the people who need it don’t see it. They don’t even know anything about it.”
“Charity organizations and institutions,” he continues, “All of them are for acquaintances with favoritism.”
Two decades of continuous and extensively document Hamas brutality against the people of Gaza are summarized best by Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist, who recently wrote:
As a Palestinian human rights activist, my loyalty lies with the Palestinian people, whose rights and future have been compromised by a cruel leadership that prioritizes military and terrorist objectives over human welfare.
But the biggest crime of Hamas is their how they peddle Palestinian death for propaganda. They are happy to sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians, including children, to further their aims.
It is frightening to hear Hamas’ leaders publicly state this — announcing to the world how little they care about the lives of the people they allegedly represent:
Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza, summarized the entire scenario bluntly (as reported in the WSJ):
Don’t worry, we have the Israelis right where we want them… High civilian casualties would add to the worldwide pressure on Israel to stop the war.
Hamas is happy to sacrifice civilian lives for their own abhorrent aims. Human suffering and civilian death is not a bug in the Hamas system, it is the key feature, and their M.O.
This is a why Hamas has repeatedly rejected any ceasefire deals, and has withheld information about the status of the remaining 134 Israeli hostages. The longer they delay, the more dead civilians they can use for clickbait and propaganda.
The dialogue currently going on in Israel is bleak. There are two major conversations happening regarding Gaza.
First, what does “winning” actually mean. All but the most hawkish recognize it is impossible to “eliminate Hamas”, and it would also just increase the destruction in Gaza. Hamas, like ISIS, is not just the individual members, it is an ideological cancer that only exists to murder Jews, Christians, and any other type of infidel it chooses.
Even in the face of waning US support, Netanyahu remains steadfast in his determination to bring about the total decimation of Hamas. But the average Israeli knows this is an impossibility, and that Netanyahu’s determination will only bring about additional destruction and devastation in Gaza.
The other conversation is regarding the hostages. Protests against the Netanyahu government have renewed, driven by a mix of concern that time is running out for the remaining hostages, exasperation with the far right elements of government (Ben Gvir and Smotrich), and Netanyahu’s continuous mismanagement of the entire country since Jan. 2023.
News stations and talk radio debate untenable scenarios of what would be a fair transaction for the release of 40 or 80 hostages, or just the women and children, or all of them.
The reality is that there is no viable long term scenario until every single one of the 134 lives are accounted for, in one way or another. Israel spent over five years securing the release of just one hostage — Gilad Shalit.
As long as these lives are unaccounted for, Israel will not relent from being involved in Gaza.
But the vast overwhelming bulk of Israelis are of one mind: As soon as Hamas releases the hostages the war ends.
Given this, it is quite clear what the people of Gaza actually need: An end to Hamas’ inhuman dictatorship and an end to the war.
The former is challenging, but the latter has an easy solution: The quicker Hamas releases the hostages, the quicker ends the suffering of Gazans.
Hamas admittedly wants more civilian deaths to pressure Israel to stop, but Israel won’t stop until all of the hostages are either released or accounted for. Israel will never agree to a cease-fire without this consideration.
It is an Islamofascist Catch-22.
If Hamas releases the hostages then the suffering in Gaza ends, but Hamas “loses”. If Hamas does not release the hostages than the suffering in Gaza continues, but Hamas “wins” because Israel will be increasingly viewed in a negative light.
Sadly, the groundswell of Pro-Palestinian support, specifically from the Far Left, has lost sight of this truism. By not calling for the immediate release the hostages, the Far Left has doomed the civilians of Gaza to prolonged misery and death. The Far Left have become pawns in Hamas’ evil scheme.
If the Far Left truly cared about the Palestinians in Gaza they would divert their energy toward securing the release of the hostages, which would immediately end the conflict.
If the Far Left truly cared about the Palestinians in Gaza they would divert their energy toward removing the 20-year stranglehold that Hamas holds over the citizens, which would give the people in Gaza a viable future.
But instead of speaking out for what Palestinians actually need, the Far Left has become Hamas fanboys (and girls) — defending their horrible treatment of both Gazans and Israelis:
The reason the Far Left has chosen not to take this logical route should be obvious, and has been written about extensively (I highly recommend you reading Noah Feldman, Dara Horn, and Franklin Foer).
Recent events, like hostile protests at the Holocaust Museums in Montreal, Amsterdam, and Washington DC, should serve as yet another proof point in an endless list of proof points that the Far Left never really cared about the Palestinians at all…
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian who fled Gaza for the US and works as a Middle East policy analyst, summarized the Palestinian perspective of the Far Left when he wrote:
Imagine how much more powerful the pro-Palestine movement would be if its actions and strategies were built upon an anti-Hamas framework that acknowledges Palestinians’ rights to resistance but denounces indiscriminate violence against civilians…As Gazans turn against the Islamist group in droves due to the horrendous consequences of its deadly actions, it’s time for the pro-Palestine left to follow suit and abandon Hamas.
Alkhatib is saying that the Far Left is not really Pro-Palestinian. They are Pro-Hamas. And by being Pro-Hamas they are by default Anti-Palestinian.
