HAMAS-ISRAELI CONFLICT EXPLODES WITH BRUTAL HAMAS ATTACK ON ISRAEL

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

The vicious attacks against Israel last week by Hamas, the military group which virtually governs the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza strip, a sudden and well planned incursion, caught even the usually canny Israeli intelligence community completely by surprise. A terrorist attack, which on the first day alone, killed at least 700, including 11 Americans, wounded thousands and resulted in taking hostage of over 150 Israelis and Americans.

The fate and whereabouts of these hostages, including at least 25 Americans, are unknown at the time of writing. It is likely that Hamas is holding them underground, in terrible conditions.

The sophistication of these attacks, which enabled 2,000 Hamas terrorists to successfully breach the highly guarded borders of Israel has caused extreme consternation amongst the Israelis. Hamas has always had the support of the Russians and Iran, who have provided funding, training and weaponry, and who may have assisted Hamas in the planning of these attacks.

However, it has now been discovered that Hamas had been training their men for these attacks at camps near Israel’s most fortified border, one of them a mere 70 meters from the border. It seems inconceivable that the Israeli Defense Forces were unaware of the training conducted at these camps. The Israeli government is conducting an inquiry into the reasons for these unprecedented military and intelligence failures, describing them as a “complete collapse”.

Two thousand Hamas terrorists breached this highly fortified border between Israel and Gaza and committed unbelievably brutal acts on that first day of attack. They went from home to home in kibbutzes (communal settlements) near the border, executing innocent civilians. They killed children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children.

They opened fire on about 3,500 teenagers enjoying a night of celebration of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot (the fall harvest) in a field near the border, many shot in the back as they were fleeing. Paramedics recovered at least 260 bodies in that area. The Israeli government released sickening pictures of children, some burnt alive, others beheaded, of butchered elders, of pregnant women with their babies ripped out of their bodies. “Savagery not seen since the holocaust”, according to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Brutal acts which cannot and will not justify any cause, however urgent, however valid. No peace settlement can even be considered in the light of such barbarism.

In his first public statement since the Hamas attacks last Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the “explosion of violence” between Israel and Hamas, “is a vivid example of the failure of US policy in the Middle-East”. He added that Washington “had ignored the interests of Palestinians, including their needs for their own independent Palestinian state”. A statement which cannot be denied. Though Russia’s complicity in muddying an already convoluted crisis is also undeniable.

The Israelis retaliated the following day, last Sunday, with attacks which killed at least 650 Palestinians in Gaza. A state of war against Hamas and a “complete siege of Gaza” have now been declared by the Israelis. A complete blockade of food, water and power was imposed on Gaza.

President Biden has guaranteed “rock solid” American support of the Israeli people against the current Hamas attacks. Americans have always deemed Hamas a terrorist, even barbarous organization, with its stated ambition of destroying the State of Israel, a common goal of much of the Arab world since the end of World War II.

In turn, Hamas, along with the rest of the Arab world, consider Americans to be the embodiment of Satan, who have destroyed the geophysical and ethnic integrity of the Middle-East with the creation of the Jewish State of Israel and their insatiable thirst for the vast oil reserves in the Middle-East.

Both descriptions have their elements of truth, based on atrocities committed by Israelis and Arabs. Violent struggles for freedom based on barbarous atrocities and ethnic cleansing can never be the answer to the achievement of a durable peace in the region.

Europeans have been guilty of organized massacres (pogroms) of ethnic groups, especially the Jews, since time immemorial. The climax of the “Jewish Problem” came with Hitler’s “Final Solution”, the eradication of European Jews and others of “Impure blood”. The holocaust claimed six million Jews and five million other “sub-human beings”, baked and gassed in Hitler’s ovens and gas chambers.

In the aftermath of the holocaust and the end of World War II, the survivors of the holocaust, whose ancestors had suffered centuries of persecution in Europe and Russia, pursued the dream of a homeland where they would no longer be a vulnerable minority.

In 1947, the United Nations voted the British governed Mandate of Palestine be partitioned into two new states, one Jewish, the other Palestinian, a proposition accepted by the Jews but rejected by the Arabs. The resulting civil war ended with the formation of the new entity of “the Ancient Land of Israel”, the legitimacy of which was established by the title deeds as laid down in the Bible, based entirely on the unilateral interpretation of the Word of the Christian God.

The creation of a Jewish State from land occupied by the Palestinian people for centuries has caused conflict between the Arab states and Israel from 1948 to the present day. From the first Arab-Israeli war, ending in 1949 to the present day, there have been a series of military conflicts between Israel and various Arab forces, all ending in Israeli triumph. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians have been killed and 750,000 dispossessed and rendered homeless during this period of conflict.

After the war of 1949, Israel captured 78% of the historical homeland of the Palestinian people. The remaining 22%, composed of the Gaza Strip (140 square miles), and part of the West Bank of the Jordan river (2,100 square miles), is now home to 1.8 million and 1.7 million Palestinians, respectively. The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated territories in the world.

Of course, Trump made the attacks on Israel all about himself, when he posted on his social media, in all caps, “THIS HORRIBLE ATTACK ON ISRAEL, MUCH LIKE THE ATTACK ON UKRAINE, WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IF I WERE PRESIDENT – ZERO CHANCE”.

In a recent interview with right-leaning news site The National Pulse, Trump said, “Nobody has ever seen anything like we are witnessing now. It (immigration) is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming with disease. People are coming with every possible thing you could have”.

Trump’s words were completely in harmony with Hitler’s racial ideology, which stemmed from what the Fuhrer called the “basic principle of the blood”, the infestation of the impure blood of Jews causing disease in Germany.

The Israeli – Hamas conflict continues. After nearly a week of fighting, at least 1,250 Israelis and 1,500 Palestinians have been killed, many thousands wounded. Over 3,000 Palestinians have already been rendered homeless, with nowhere to go. These numbers will keep increasing exponentially as the Israeli attacks continue. Ultimately, tens of thousands of Palestinians will have to seek refuge in Egypt and other Arab nations willing to accept them.

Israel has formed an Emergency Government and War Cabinet, and retaliated with airstrikes bombarding Gaza, blockading food, water and electricity, causing a deep humanitarian crisis. The blockage is causing severe suffering of the Palestinian civilians living in Gaza. The hospitals in Gaza are turning into morgues as their generators run out of fuel, qnd the power needed to keep patients alive fail.

The Israelis have amassed a massive military build-up of 350,000 reservists near the Gaza border. They have also advised the United Nations to order the evacuation of the northern section of Gaza, which likely means an imminent, boots on the ground invasion of the Gaza strip. An invasion which will put every Palestinian life in the Strip in peril, every Palestinian child in the crossfire, as Hamas uses innocent civilians as human shields against the Israelis seeking revenge for the butchery committed by Hamas against their men, women and children.

At least 20 Americans, among about 150 hostages held by Hamas, still remain unaccounted for. The Israeli government has vowed that the blockade of food, water and power would remain in force until every hostage has been returned.

Any kind of settlement of the “Middle-East problem” is far into the horizon, as long as the Israelis, backed by the Americans, will always refuse to entertain a just and equitable two-state solution in Israel, which will be acceptable to the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors, but devoid of complete advantage to the Israelis.

As Secretary of State, Antony Blinken said at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel last Thursday: “The United States will stand firmly by Israel as the nation continues to strike back against the militants in the Gaza Strip following the attack on Israeli soil. The message I bring to Israel is this. You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself, but as long as America exists, you will never, ever, have to”.

And they have Americans at their side while they destroy Hamas and any other terrorist organizations seeking revenge for the suffering caused in the region by their ambitions of expansionist aggression.

This conflict, with depressingly regular atrocities, is likely to remain unsettled for generations to come.

Apart from the Israel – Palestine conflict, the “Middle East problem” will remain unfulfilled until the unquenchable thirst of the Superpowers for the control of the vast reservoirs of black gold in the region is finally slaked. And once these wells dry up, once the black gold becomes worthless, the European and American predators will disappear, having caused myriad economic, geopolitical and demographic crises in the region as a result of their colonial cruelty and capitalist greed.

As the Europeans bled other countries to poverty, stole their wealth and resources, leaving in their wake internal ethnic, cultural and religious strife and confusion; and disappeared, wealthy and unscathed, after centuries of brutal colonial plunder.

Today, these same colonial marauders of the past have almost magically transformed themselves to be the guardians of human rights in the world, making sanctimonious judgments on other admittedly evil, authoritarian nations which are now acting as barbarously and disgustingly as they themselves did, not so long ago.