The Israeli government, through Prime Minister Olmert, foreign minister Livni, or defense minister Barak, seems to agree that Israel’s goal for the ongoing Cast Lead operation is to deter Hamas from continuing its campaign of regular missile bombings of southern and central Israel. If they mean it–and that is still unclear–they are dangerously misguided and misleading their public. Moreover, they are sending Israeli soldiers to their deaths for an illusory goal.
The very concept of deterrence is based on a number of premises, none of which applies to Hamas or any other religion-based terror group. The first is that the Hamas leaders actually care about and/or fear for their lives and those of their families – hence that they will “deal” if in personal peril. That is a doubtful assumption, as demon-strated by senior leader Nazar Rayan, who “appeared to believe him-self invincible. He refused to leave or allow his enormous family to leave their home in the Jabalia camp. The bomb reduced the building to rubble and the death toll was, consequently, dreadful.” Indeed, he made his family a target, with the result that at least two of his wives and a number of his children were killed. When terrorist leaders care little about their own lives, it should be no surprise that they care even less about those of “civilians.”
While a case could be made that once Hamas entered “politics,” al-beit with a peculiar method of ably combining terror and electioneering, that is a weak case. Hamas knows, from experience, that Palestinians, especially Gazans, largely share its goals and methods, and that most are prepared to support its actions, regardless of what others in the Arab, Muslim or wider world think.
Second, as all totalitarian groups–and Hamas is Stalinism with a green banner–know, “peoples” always obey the guys with guns, unless other guys with bigger guns show up. That is why Gazans have noth-ing to say, collectively, about being systematically used as shields.
Thus, when Eyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist who heads the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, claims that “people will join Hamas rather than leave Hamas” as a result of the ongoing conflict, he is correct–just as citizens of Dresden still sup-ported the Nazis after their town’s destruction in February 1945. Fur-thermore, like Hitler, Hamas’ sins do not include lack of sincerity and clarity–the Gazans who voted for Hamas in 2005, giving it control of seven out of 10 councils in the Strip, knew exactly what its ideology and aims are, and the risks those imply. Ever since, they helped Hamas eliminate–mostly through murder–its Fatah rival, provided it with an infinite supply of suicide murderers, and often lent their houses to the organization’s rocket-launching teams seeking to kill Israeli civilians. In fact, as so many liberal observers of terrorism everywhere are always ready to claim, Hamas terrorism could only thrive with (at least some major) popular support–precisely what it has in abundance among the “civilians” in Gaza.
Hamas also understands, as the UN people in Gaza (not to mention the emotional and irrational lefties demonstrating in London, San Francisco, or Paris) do not, that the very concept of “civilians” is largely meaningless. Thus, the “civilian” casualty figures reported by the media, all doubtful since they are coming from Palestinians in Gaza, regularly mention “women and children”–and stay away from any meaningful definition. Are “children” all those under 18 years of age, as Amnesty International pretends? If so, the number of such “children” engaged in suicide bombings should force a rational observer to reconsider the definition. As for “women,” only intentional disregard of reality in the Middle East (and Sri Lanka, Turkey, Iraq, etc.) could consider them ipso facto victims because of their gender. Clearly, some people prefer not to pay attention to the words of this Gaza woman:
“If one of our men dies, a thousand men will set out in his place. We, the women, will set out. We are the granddaughters of Yassin [Hamas’ founder], Al-Bana [the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a branch], and Al-Qassam. We are all the daughters of Pales-tine, the daughters of steadfast Gaza. We will set out, booby-trapped. From every home, a bomb will set out, and it will explode among the sons of Zion. We are no less than Fatima Al-Najjar and Rim Al-Riyashi [two Palestinian women who blew themselves up among Israelis]. We will blow ourselves up among those traitors, those apes and pigs.”
Certainly some women, and all in-fants, are innocent victims of the conflict. But Hamas successfully makes all women and all “children”
victims, knowing that the sob sisters/brothers of the West accept this for their own reasons. Those reasons may vary, from cultural anti-Americanism, historic anti-Semitism, or the long-standing European adoration of everything Third World.
All this being said, and concentrated in the simple statement that Hamas is not deterrable and its supporters are seldom real “civilians,” why does anyone–especially the Israeli government, elected to protect its citizenry and territory–pretend oth-erwise?
The answer, and a disturbing one, is that Israel, or at least its elites, are more “Western” than is good for them or their people. The implicit message of the Israeli officials’ claim that “regime change” in Gaza is not an objective of Operation Cast Lead is problematic. If sincere, Tel Aviv is wasting lives– Jewish and Palestinian– for very short-term success. If not, the problem is worse, because it only creates confusion–in Israel, among Palestinians, and elsewhere.
Ultimately, the only solution–itself limited in time because of the per-manency of dysfunctional Palestin-ian political culture–is the physical destruction of Hamas in Gaza, by killing most of its militants and leaders, be they “political” or “mili-tary” (is there a difference, outside Western artificial legalistic and emo-tional circles?)
As it is now, Israel’s claim that the goal is not Hamas’ removal from power in Gaza is either dishonest, a PR statement, or delusional. The destruction of Hamas’ mili-tary/terror capabilities would make it unattractive to Gazans, who like winners (if they kill Israelis). Anything else would convince most Gazans, who are always ready to be convinced, that Hamas is the way to go, electorally or practically.
Ultimately, the total physical destruction of Hamas in Gaza and the introduction of PA elements, even and especially if that means re-newed intra-Palestinian conflict, is the only stable, if not permanent, solution. Since Hamas cannot be deterred, dealt or “negotiated” with it, a fact Hamas itself admits, is a lost cause – it simply has to be de-stroyed. Hence all Euro-pacifist demands or UN pseudo-solutions are inherently irrelevant.
The whole idea, or so-called princi-ple, of total protection of undefined “civilians” promoted by leftists supporting Hamas without the courage to say so (the perennial Bi-anca Jagger, etc.), is not limited to Gaza’s conflict. That is just the latest pretext of a peculiarly irresponsible phenomenon. Thus the government and people of Sri Lanka are on the brink of finally winning their dec-ades-long war against one of the world’s worst terrorist groups – the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the “inventors” of suicide bombings and responsible of some 70,000 fatalities since 1984. The reaction from Amnesty International and associates? “Too many civil-ians” are being killed or displaced–not the rational question of how many civilians, Tamil or others, would be saved by ending the war.
But no, self-proclaimed human rights or humanitarian NGOs, when not actively encouraging irregular forces by treating them equally with state actors, push for regulations on states, since they cannot do so on Hamas or similar non-state actors. The result is always that the conflict between state and non-state actors, whether in Gaza, Israel, Colombia, Sri Lanka, or elsewhere, is pro-longed — with more “civilians” and innocents, whatever their definition, falling victim to violence.
It may be, or at least appear, cynical or brutal to say that in some circum-stances– the Gaza conflict now be-ing an obvious one– more violence, if correctly targeted, means fewer real civilian victims and better long-term chances of calm, if not peace. If Israel and those who truly seek calm in the Middle East in the long-term are serious, they should support the total military defeat of Hamas, rather than spill tears over the loss of “civilians.” This is a lesson that can be applied to conflicts far away from the Middle East. However, the prospects of this happening are not good, and the result is likely to be more and more “civilians” such as infants sleeping in their cribs being killed from Kyber to Mullaitivu to Gaza. Lack of clarity and reason truly kills.
Michael Radu is Senior Fellow and Co – Chair, Center on Terrorism and Counterterror-ism, at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.