It is the Hamas modus operandi that there be as many civilian casualties as possible. Not just in Israel, but in Gaza too. Hamas terrorists use Western shock and horror to add legitimacy to their calls for genocide, and turn Israeli allies into opponents. Those in the West that sympathise with the under siege Gazans are unaware that Hamas work very hard to ensure that as many Palestinians are killed as possible. This simple fact is often lost in translation when you try to tell a Westerner that Hamas maximise their own civilian casualties. It’s understandably a confusing concept for us, as this is the part of the world where the concepts of Human Rights, war crimes, and illegal weapons of war were born. Why would someone want their own people to perish?
Hamas are responsible for a broad range of human rights abuses and war crimes that most Westerners seem to be unaware of, and at worst, blame Israel for. Hamas digs up and destroys civilian infrastructure such as clean water and sewage pipes to turn them into weapons. They fire rockets from the most densely populated areas of Gaza, purposefully using hospitals and schools in the hopes that the IDF will strike back. They have shot dead dozens of civilians fleeing the North of Gaza, in an attempt to ensure maximum civilian density in the region under siege. They purposefully corrupt their own culture, trying to convert children into willing suicide bombers. Israel have long had a practice of warning locals about an impending strike, by calling building managers, local business owners, airdropping leaflets, and by “knocking” - a term used to describe the dropping of a fake bomb on a building before the real one. The problem here, is that those building managers typically work closely with Hamas, and will refuse to evacuate a building. Maybe they fear retribution, maybe they are bought into Hamas ideology. Either way, we would consider this a war crime in Europe.
Hamas are now desperate for a ceasefire; they’d overplayed their hand, thinking Israel had fallen into weakness and complacency. A spokesperson for the terrorist group went on Russia Today and claimed that for the entire more peaceful period over the last 5 or 6 years, Hamas were preparing for a bigger attack. Now, the IDF have made a decision that they’re going to flatten Hamas completely. Hamas will try their best to ensure as many civilian casualties as possible, but this time, this tactic is unlikely to work. They have their own population between a rock and a hard place; they’re used as human shields, shot at when they’re escaping, and not a single finger is lifted to prevent their death.
Lawfare.
Lawfare is the term given to guerilla tactic of using international laws around war against enemy combatants. An example of this would be using a medic-marked ambulance to transport soldiers. Hamas is deeply entrenched in this style of war, and it is fairly successful; condemnation of Israeli war crimes, despite most of them being Hamas war crimes, has been a useful tool for the terrorists in delegitimising Israel’s self defence. When Jihadi soldiers use doctors, patients, and school children as human shields from which they fire rockets around, they’re able to decry the response as evidence of Israeli brutality to the innocent Palestinian people.
It has also been successful in ensuring that the fight against Jihadi terrorism has been extremely difficult. These terrorists go out of their way to use 1st world sensibilities around warfare against them, and it makes it difficult to justify continued action. Thankfully there are journalists who ensure this context goes out with the news, and that there is regular investigation into Hamas claims of Israeli brutality. There are documented incidents of Hamas using UN marked ambulances to transport soldiers and weapons. In 2006, Hamas pushed local civilians onto the roof of a Hamas executives house after they’d received an early warning from the IDF that the house was being bombed. In 2007 there was a reported accidental explosion of homemade Hamas rockets that destroyed the entire building complex, killing all of the residents. Throughout the unrest in 2008-2014, weapons caches, rocket making facilities, Hamas HQs and training facilities were routinely found in hospitals, Mosques, the Islamic University in Gaza, and residential homes. This is a tiny list of some of the earliest occurrences of lawfare, where Hamas began to more and more use Western aversions to war crimes against Israel.
These aren’t idly chosen by Hamas as incidental staging grounds for indiscriminate attacks on Israelis. These are specifically chosen to aid Hamas in Lawfare, and are documented in a NATO StratCom study on Lawfare between 2008 and 2014 in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Hamas have long been trying their best to ensure that civilian casualties are maximised, and that they operate from legally difficult grounds in their goal to delegitimise the Israeli state. As if this wasn’t enough, Hamas have openly called for North Gazans to stay within the besieged elements of the city during this most recent IDF incursion, in order to use them as human shields. This is a particularly dark request, but the consequences have become even darker; there is video evidence of Hamas shooting fleeing civilians dead, with dozens of bodies laying across highways. All of them had been shot in the back as they were facing away from North Gaza, heading towards the safer areas without Hamas and IDF warring. Gazans know that this is a very real fate that awaits them should they choose to flee, so at the behest of the Hamas terrorists, they’re stuck between either running and getting shot by terrorists, or by staying in north Gaza to be used as human shields for terrorists.
Lawfare is the new guerilla tactic, and the sooner the West realises it, the sooner they’ll begin to build an accurate picture in their mind of the depths of depravity that terrorists like Hamas are willing to go to. The end goal of this is clear, as Hamas puts it quite clearly in their founding Covenant; “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”
Aid stolen from Gazans; infrastructure turned into weapons.
One of Hamas’s many accusations against Israel is that water, aid, food, and power has been cut off by the Israelis. Again, like much of this conflict, this was an atrocity committed on Palestinians by Hamas. As a matter of routine, Hamas poisons international acts of charity and kindness by weaponising anything and everything they get their hands on. It can’t be dismissed as a “Jewish conspiracy theory” either, considering that for most of these crimes, Hamas creates video content about it, boasting of their ability to turn international kindness into weaponry. There’s plentiful video documentaries out there, made by Hamas, that showcases this.
In 2021, Hamas released a shocking video that mostly went unnoticed in the West; it was a propaganda video reel of Hamas insurgents digging up and destroying water piping infrastructure around Gaza. They would then go on to turn those water pipes into makeshift rockets, used in indiscriminate targeted attacks on Israeli civilians. The EU had built those water pipes at a cost of €100,000,000 of EU taxpayers money. Most Europeans are unaware that a portion of their salaries have gone towards terrorist weaponry, but here we are. The EU has demonstrated great naivety in this respect; they trusted avowed genocidal terrorists with valuable, life preserving, civilian infrastructure projects. This isn’t a one-off; Hamas has routinely dug up valuable infrastructure all over Gaza in an attempt to create new weapons. They’re uninterested in the suffering caused by the lack of clean water and the resultant inhumane sanitation. Terrorism is their business, not water.
Shortly after the IDF began to respond, and international aid began to flood in, Hamas immediately began to steal from the civilian population. Aid including fuel, medicine, food, and water, has apparently been stolen by Hamas from the UNRWA facilities near the border. No, it wasn’t distributed to Gazans, it was stolen from Gazans. The very people that Hamas claim to fight for stole desperately needed aid, and left their own people to rot. This has been a regular occurance. The EU especially has been a bizarre indirect contributor to Hamas terrorism. An organisation built on promoting economic activity within Europe for some reason is indirectly funding Middle Eastern terrorism.
Despite claims that aid is not getting through, Hamas has had no trouble getting its hands on weapons produced by Iran. These include Katyushas, Grads, SA-7s, and Fajr-5s, all of which are militarily produced highly effective rockets. With all of the claims that aid doesn’t get through to Gaza, how does Hamas continue to get their hands on these gigantic weapons of war? Most of these weapons start in Iran, and make their way up to Gaza through either Lebanon or Sudan. The rockets are hidden in containers and covered up with a few vegetables; a few bribes are paid, and those weapons make their way into Gaza. The logistics of this operation was once the domain of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas operative that was famously and thankfully found dead inside of a locked hotel room in Dubai, courtesy of Mossad. It’s big business too; entire communities of Bedouins in the Sinai rely entirely upon the smuggling trade. The tunnels are corridors for cars, cash, people, and weapons, and was described as a “smuggling duty-free”.
As mentioned, it’s not just weapons, but also cash that flows into various elements of Hamas. These are often disguised as aid, and the money ends up distributed all around the world to different groups, often terrorist organisations. Take the case of Al Haramain, a Saudi Arabian based charity with offices in many countries. US intelligence uncovered a vast array of information showing that the “charity” was funding Islamic terrorism everywhere from Somalia to Bosnia. The transfers were disguised as funds for construction of orphanages, Islamic schools, and Mosques. Holy Land Foundation, based out of the United States, was also found to be raising money for Hamas specifically, under the guise of providing aid and salaries for teachers. Makhtab al Khimamat was another Islamic charity, which ended up funding Osama Bin Laden directly, and was widely believed to have led to the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. The list goes on and on; Al Wafa, the International Islamic Relief Organisation, the Muslim World League, Benevolence, Global Relief, Muslim Aid, Interpal, even the Red Crescent. Many of these fake charities have had their bank accounts and assets frozen after being discovered as terrorist funding mechanisms. They weren’t providing aid; they were buying weapons.
Despite all of these corridors, and all of the money and resources that Hamas spends on creating new ways to engage in terrorism, ordinary Gazans continue to live in poverty. All of those human rights abuses can be laid directly at the feet of the terrorists. The hundreds of billions of dollars that have now been funnelled into terrorist activities and pointless wars by Islamic charities and Iran has meant categorically one thing; Gazans remain in poverty, the Middle East continues to be a warzone, and terrorism is alive and well, as the infrastructure around the continent continues to deteriorate, resulting in many of its citizens abandoning the continent altogether. Those charities decided not to provide aid to people but weapons to terrorists, because for them, martyrdom is the highest form of death, and there is much hatred of Jews amongst the most backwards parts of the Islamic world.
International Jihadi funding from Iran and Qatar.
So despite the silence about Yemenis suffering in a proxy war between two Islamic powers, or Sudanese Africans being slaughtered by Jihadi soldiers in Sudan, or about the Chinese Communist ethnic cleansing and cultural eradication of Uyghur Muslims, or Burma’s genocide of Rohingya Muslims, the new “current thing” is Palestine. It’s not by coincidence, but by design; there is a real and undying hatred for anything and everything Jewish in Muslim countries. It’s built into many aspects of the most stone-age elements of their religion. Most religions in the world do share some kind of hatred or intolerance for specifically named groups, or at the very least, are millenia behind modern beliefs on Human Rights. However, most of the West has evolved past this barbarism, becoming the most egalitarian nations to have ever existed in history by lightyears. Thoughts of religious hatred does not come natural to most Westerners. Hamas is funded by a variety of sources connected to that hatred of Jews. A great deal of that funding comes from two very specific countries; Qatar and Iran.
Iran is a hostage taking nation. The authorities take a foreign national hostage under the false pretense of an alleged crime, and then uses their lives as a negotiation tool to get money and concessions out of the West. It’s a difficult situation for the West. Britain in particular has had a bad run; 3 British citizens have been taken hostage by Iran in the last 8 years, and at the low cost of £400,000,000, Iran released them (except for one, who although released from prison, is barred from leaving Iran). The charges were usually things along the lines of espionage. They obviously don’t have evidence, they don’t have courts, and they tortured those British citizens. This is the extent to which Iran engages in international relations; taking hostages, funding terrorism, and trying to get their hands on a nuclear weapon. Between that and constantly accidentally killing local women for showing their hair, the West is ill-equipped to understand the level of depravity that a nation like Iran engages in on a regular basis.
Qatar plays an interesting role. The country is host to the exiled Hamas government, and has in recent weeks been responsible for helping negotiate the release of civilian hostages from the grips of Hamas terrorists. Local Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are uninterested in perpetuating wars on their own borders; they blame Qatar for being a perpetrator in much unrest across the region. This accusation resulted in the blockading of Qatar by its neighbouring countries. Al Jazeera is an organisation both physically and culturally very close to Hamas. Although Al Jazeera has been an excellent source of alternative perspectives on major conflicts, it’s clear that they tow the party line when it comes to Israel and Palestine. They do not recognise the terrorist groups as the main antagonists of all conflict there, and they routinely accuse Israel of the very human rights abuses that Hamas inflict on their own people daily. Qatar funds many aspects of Gazan life, including paying some salaries for teachers and bureaucrats, but also by sending oil and gas products that can be sold to raise revenue. As Qatar take on what should be Hamas’s responsibility to pay these salaries, they indirectly finance terrorist activities through these subsidies. Every dollar that Hamas doesn’t have to spend on something important such as infrastructure, they get to spend on terrorism.
It’s clear that, between Iran, Qatar, and the international aid, that there has been a constant and never-ending swell of cash ready and available for Gazans and their government. It’s clear that none of that money, or very little at most, has been used to improve their lives or the situation Gaza finds itself in. Truth is, prosperous Gazans are very bad business for Hamas, and it is not in their interest to spend the money wisely. Instead, they buy rockets and soldiers, and throw innocent people into harms way to justify their cause.
In Conclusion.
It’s time for the West to understand one thing about the Palestinian cause; Hamas, and its terrorist colleagues like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are the sole cause of all Palestinian civilian casualties, and are the root cause of all Palestinian poverty.
It’s a sordid lesson for the West to learn. Westerners can’t begin to pretend to understand the depravity of the martyr mindset. They don’t understand that Hamas glorifies its use of the population as human shields, and celebrates civilian casualties as martyrs. They see martyrdom as the highest form of death, something to be strived for. These beliefs are alien to the Westerner, who might usually find themselves highly concerned with the lives and safety of children. Where Londoners during the Blitz would move their children to the countryside in hopes of protecting them from the bombs, Hamas deliberately houses their operations in schools. Where Allied armies would try to reduce civilian casualties, Hamas specifically target civilians, even babies in the crib. It’s not a way of being that we understand here in the West. It’s a cornerstone to the argument against multiculturalism; what element of that culture do you want in the UK? But more relevant to this article, a picture needs to be painted in the average Westerners head that these terrorists do not think like us.
For the IDF, all there is now is the reality of 7th October. Truth is, when you’re at war with a capable enemy, you’re not under any obligation to do all of the things that Israel goes out of its way to do to prevent civilian casualties. No matter how you look at it, the IDF is at war with Hamas, and vice versa; to Hamas, civilians are legitimate targets. To the IDF, the legitimate targets are purposefully entrenched in civilian areas. The IDF are defending Israel from internationally funded Jihadi terrorism; they’re not going to let their own civilians die, and if it means killing foreign civilians, this is a price that any warring country is willing to pay, and always has, in every case, since the dawn of time.
All of that money, all of that attention, all of that sympathy for Gaza, for decades, and yet nothing has come out of Gaza but rockets and terrorism. If these Islamic international aid agencies with billions of dollars in donations truly had any care for Palestinians, or if Iran really had a heart of gold for the trodden on, or if Hamas was really trying to improve the lives of Gazans, none of this would have happened. There wouldn’t be brutal terrorist attacks, there wouldn’t be missing infrastructure, there wouldn’t be a lack of aid and fuel, there wouldn’t be such a disastrous number of civilian casualties, and most of all, there wouldn’t be an ongoing siege. The Palestinians are victims of an international network of Jihadi anti-Jewish hatred. It has always been in Hamas’s power to improve Gaza, with all of this available aid. They chose death; and now they’re on the precipice of it. It’s only a question as to how many innocent civilians they want to drag down with them.
Some links for further reading:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/05/gaza-palestinians-tortured-summarily-killed-by-hamas-forces-during-2014-conflict/
https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-107shrg89957/html/CHRG-107shrg89957.htm