Hamas Gunmen: Kill Them Up

I woke up seven days ago to see the awful news of the Hamas attacks on Israel. 

The deaths of some 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, was celebrated by some, but I was horrified. But I would not rush to make judgements until at least a few days passed. Until initial panicked rumors passed around on social media consolidated into confirmed reports by professional journalists, I would say nothing. A week later, as events are somewhat more clear, I will speak.

First of all: what happened. I read today the description of events by Peggy Noonan about the October 7th attack:

“We must start with what was done. Terrorists calling themselves a resistance movement passed over the border from Gaza and murdered little children; they took infants hostage as they screamed. They murdered old women, tormented and raped young women, targeted an overnight music festival and murdered the unarmed young people in cold blood or mowed them down as they ran screaming. They murdered whole families as they begged for their lives; they burned people alive; they decapitated babies.

“There is no cause on earth that justifies what these murderers did. There is no historical grievance that excuses or ‘gives greater context’ to their actions. Spare me ‘this is the inevitable result when a people are long abused.’ No, this is what happens when savages hold the day: They imperil the very idea of civilization. They killed a grandmother and uploaded pictures of her corpse to her Facebook page.“

Peggy Noonan “The October Horror Is Something New”

It reminded me for all the world of the Gaza Strip movies I watched some six years ago that impressed me deeply. If you were to give them free reign, would Hamas gunmen I listened to at length in that movie do these horrible things? Absolutely. We can be surprised at the Israeli security failing to prevent Hamas gunmen from penetrating deeply into their country, but we should not be surprised at what happened afterward. October 6th is the largest violent attacks against Jews since the Holocaust, echoing uncomfortably of the Einsatzgruppen atrocities of the Nazis or pogroms of Tsarist Russia before that. Gunmen ravaging families and taking screaming hostages back with them for ransom resembles the Viking raids of the Dark Ages or some Mad Max movie. It is shocking. But it should not be surprising, considering we are talking about Hamas. They were honest about what they were about. As I wrote in my article about Gaza:

“It is a tenuous thing to have regular army soldiers with a clear chain of command and legal accountability to an established government obey the rules and not abuse their power in a combat situation. You have a rifle and buddies with rifles; you have the power of life and death. That is a dangerous authority to give anyone. But give ‘gunmen’ rather than soldiers that power in a situation with few rules and almost no accountability and it is a prescription for widespread and unstoppable violence.”

I am not in the least surprised that a Hamas gunmen would do any number of unspeakable acts, if Israeli soldiers were not around to stop them. Last week, they did these things.

Once the Hamas gunmen breached Israeli border defenses, it was “Lord of the Flies.”

The Hamas attacks last week were the greatest loss of Jewish life from a violent attack on a single day since the Holocaust. Almost immediately I thought to myself the following: Hamas will do some brutal underhanded thing, like they did last Saturday; and then they will flee back to the Gaza Strip and hide among the civilian population from Israeli reprisals; and the innocent Palestinians surrounding them will pay the price. “How typical, that many helpless poor people in Gaza will suffer for the crimes of a relatively small number of their brazenly violent brethren. So it goes in other parts of the world, too.” And that seems to be exactly what has happened since last Saturday: Hamas goes underground, often literally, hiding from the Israeli Defense Forces by cowering next to Palestinian civilians in and under the Gaza Strip, in effect using them as human shields. So predictable.

But also predictable, and depressing, is the support Hamas has received from elements of American society. As a teacher in California, I have had occasion to see the “social justice educators” preach the message of “decolonizing” everything from university curricula (“get rid of the dead white males!”) to the offerings in libraries and museums, to replacing “Columbus Day” with “Indigenous People’s Day, for financial reparations for African Americans for slavery and segregation, in favor of “land acknowledgements” for Native Americans, and support for the Boycott, Divest, and Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (“BDS”) movement against Zionism and Israel – it is a whole ideological “antiracist” pose to “punch up” at oppressors on behalf of the oppressed. The arguments urged native peoples need to strike back at “settlers” and “decolonize” on behalf of indigenous peoples towards “liberation.” In the United States nowadays a person supposedly does not live in Ventura, California or Manhattan, New York; no, they live on “occupied Chumash land” or “rightfully Lenape territory.” This take is so radical as to be farcical, if one were to take it seriously.

But then this Hamas attack took place and college students in America in too many places took to the streets to support the attacks; if they were talking the talk, now they were walking the walk. George Washington University’s Students for Justice in Palestine rejected any difference between civilians and combatants in the effort for “oppressed” to overthrow “oppressor” in the battle for “justice.”  

“Decolonization is not a metaphor. It is not an abstract theory to be discussed and debated in classrooms and papers. It is a tangible, material event in which the colonized rise up against the colonizer … We reject the distinction between ‘civilian’ and ‘militant.’ We reject the distinction between ‘settler’ and ‘soldier.’ Every Palestinian is a civilian even if they hold arms. A settler is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches.”

I was not surprised. I had heard this before. 

Or how about this one from the Swarthmore Students for Justice in Palestine:

“We call on all Swarthmore community members to unite in solidarity with the plight of the oppressed and confront the dishonest, racist tropes that view resistance as barbaric and uncivilized only when it is exerted by indigenous people.”

There was plenty more of this type on social media:

On the extreme left, this is a consistent ideological stance across the board. It is the thinking behind “ethnic studies” of “Resistance, Autonomy, Liberation.” It is the essence of left wing identity politics generally. The enemy: colonialism and imperialism, capitalism and power; under the banner of race and equity. It is about “resisting settler white supremacy colonialism” via Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (“DEI”) work through “intersectionality” study, both at home and abroad. You find this ideology mostly in American universities, among professors and students there, or in traditional lefty haunts like Brooklyn or Portland. But not only there. I have seen it in the California public schools, too. It captures the mood of a certain slice of the American populace, although it is nowhere near the majority of it.

I spoke at length last year on how I can’t stand these people with their dogmatic denunciations of anyone who deviates from their worldview – the thin-skinned radical educators and student activists who are all too ready to denounce others as “racists” or whatever — in the context of the call at that time to “cancel” author JK Rowling for her views on trans women:

I took their positions one at a time, and responded to them. I took them seriously.

But most Americans, or at least those outside of academia, did not pay the people in this ideological bubble much mind. But the Hamas Gaza War has opened their eyes. Universities in the United States in the past week have seen pro-Hamas protests, and cheerleading for the attacks. Look at these high school students in San Francisco –

– from personal experience I know these kids are posing for the camera with edgy issues, more than understanding difficult issues in a complicated world. (Quick question: Can any of the teenagers making this video for social media attention find the Gaza Strip on a map?) There you see it in certain places: wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, or a Che Guevara T shirt, and adopting radical poses; reading the works of Franz Fanon, Paulo Freire, or Ivan Illich: these are neither new names nor new political poses. It is Marxist-Leninist thought wrapped up in Third World militancy.

I opposed these thinkers like Fanon or Freire back when I studied them in college, and I oppose them now as I prepare to retire from the workforce. I have read them all: I know what I’m talking about. I opposed them back when I was young, and I oppose them now when I’m not. The “radical chic” cosplaying of professors and their ilk as “revolutionaries” in the West is beyond absurd. Despite their brave and bold rhetoric, almost none of these people know anything about using guns or talking lives (unlike the gunmen of Hamas).

The post-colonial left are armchair guerrillas in tenured professorships mostly or outspoken actors or whatnot, and they are unlikely to ever “walk the walk” after having “talked the talk.” It is pathetic. It was like this back during the Munich Olympic killings in September of 1972, and it is the same now in these latest Gaza killings of October 2023.

Maybe there are events like the Hamas attacks of last week, or the reaction to them on the progressive Left, which clarify exactly where you stand and where you don’t, and who you stand with, and who you don’t. I saw Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D.-Michigan) posing with a Palestinian flag outside her Congressional office, and then I saw Congressman Brian Mast (R.-Florida) and his view of events wearing an IDF uniform:

– and I will stand with Mast, and not with Tlaib, if it comes to a vote, if I have to choose.

I might have equivocated somewhat on this before October 7th, 2023. But during the past week I have changed. I see things more clearly now. My eyes are open.

What now?

Well, the ugly business in the unhappy Middle East will continue. I would hope Israel seeks to minimize civilian casualties as they go after Hamas. The point of the Israeli forces on the border of Gaza is to contain and protect their Israeli civilians from Hamas, whereas Hamas uses its own Palestinian civilian population as human shields. Seek to reduce civilian deaths and gain the freedom of as many hostages as possible, but Hamas has to go.

I hope Israel has a plan for a post-Hamas Gaza Strip. There are a whole host of unanswered questions about what would happen in Gaza after Hamas goes the way of ISIS. (The Israeli plan in the past for Gaza has been less than efficacious. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not inspire overwhelming confidence.) I hope Israel will exercise as much practical wisdom as military force. Let me be clear: I conclude that “Hamas has to go” not from an emotional response of revenge for the outrages they have committed. No, instead I conclude “Hamas must go” because if you leave them as the military and political power in charge of the Gaza Strip, as they are now, then these kinds of attacks can and will happen again. Take practical steps, political and military, to change the equation. Mao Zedong used to say that the “the guerrilla must move among the people as a fish swims in the sea.” If so, time to change the conditions in the water. The only way the gunmen of Hamas will be removed from power in Gaza are in coffins. Some of the gunmen there might surrender to superior Israeli military force, but I doubt there will be many. So be it. Gird your loins, Israel, and get ‘er done.

Because Hamas has to go.

So kill up the Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip, Israel. The hardened killers of Hamas are there in the tunnels below waiting for you. Close with and destroy them in gritty urban combat. It will be intense, ugly, and violent. It will resemble Falluja or Stalingrad. But they are “gunmen” and you are “soldiers”; you will win. Israel must obey, as much as possible, the rules of war which Hamas ignores. Nevertheless, it is a war, and the objective is to remove Hamas politically and militarily from Gaza. After the violence on October 7th, 2023, Hamas has to go: that is clear. Hamas delenda est. The fight is worth it. The United States of America, or at latest most of us, stands with you.

But killing semi-illiterate Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip might be much easier than dealing with what happens in that place afterwards. Is there a plan? Israel must act decisively and wisely. There needs to be a military response, and a political one, to try and build some sort of lasting peace. (I know, I know. Will never happen.)

This much seems certain: more misery seems likely in the miserable Middle East. I am not hopeful. This seems just another of the never-ending tit-for-tat violence which typifies the region yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

It is all worrisome. There are the brutal dictatorships in Iran and Syria who back the quasi-state militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah against a democratic Israel, as seen so vividly this week. Similarly, Vladimir Putin has committed a profoundly illiberal Russia to rolling back democratic gains in Europe on the bloody battlefields of Ukraine. And Communist China under Chairman Xi Jinping seeks to intimidate and perhaps invade a democratic Taiwan, as well as to become the preeminent power in the Pacific Ocean, if not the world. The dictatorships are on the march.

The world has grown darker in recent years. Last week’s surprise attack on Israel is only the latest move. The United States should act with strength and prudence to counter these trends. There are currently two American aircraft carriers on post in the eastern Mediterranean, trying to keep Iran and Hezbollah out of the Hamas war in Gaza conflict with Israel. Let President Biden continue to take prudent and concrete steps to project American power overseas and to protect the loose amalgamation of democratic nations the United States leads. With anti-American “post-colonial” far Left fighting “settlers” and “white supremacy” at home and abroad, and “America First” neo-isolationists on the populist Right arguing to stay out of foreign affairs almost entirely, I have my doubts. But the political middle holds in the United States for now. For the future, we shall see.

As Walter Russell Mead wrote today, 

“In a horrible way, the descent of death-dealing paragliders into a peaceful music festival in Israel is an apt symbol of our times. The post-Cold War trance of the West, reaping peace dividend, celebrating flower power, and generally living as if utopia had already arrived, has left us mentally and morally disarmed. The revisionist powers that recognize no moral limits on their power as they seek to overturn the existing world system in an ocean of blood are descending onto our festival of folly like the hell-bound paragliders of Hamas. We cannot and should not respond with irrational panic and random outbursts of violence. We must soberly and deliberately address a mortal danger to everything we hold dear – and we must at long last wake up.”

Walter Russell Meade “A Middle East Wake-Up Call”

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“There you see it in certain places: wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, or a Che Guevara T shirt, and adopting radical poses; reading the works of Franz Fanon, Paulo Freire, or Ivan Illich: these are neither new names nor new political poses. It is Marxist-Leninist thought wrapped up in Third World militancy. I opposed these thinkers like Fanon or Freire back when I studied them in college, and I oppose them now as I prepare to retire from the workforce. I have read them all: I know what I’m talking about. I opposed them back when I was young, and I oppose them now when I’m not.”

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