Gaslight Terrorism & The Free Palestine Movement
Based on the zeal of the protestors in the Free Palestine movement, one might think there’s some righteousness behind all the loudness and rhetoric. But the most visible protesters are not pacifists demanding a ceasefire on both sides or moderates lamenting the failed diplomatic effort to establish a Palestinian state. Many of these protestors don’t care about, know about, or protest about Muslims who’ve killed each other in much greater atrocities such in Syria, Yemen, or Sudan. Further, no one at these protests seeks Hamas’ surrender or demands the return of Israeli hostages - actions that would end the war immediately. They also make no reference at all to the corruption, violence, exploitation, and intolerance of Palestinian leadership and society.
Whatever their justification, the protestors share the same overdetermined conclusion about Israel – that Zionism must be condemned and the state eventually dissolved. Some of them blame Israel – and only Israel – for perpetuating the conflict with the Palestinian people. Some of them think the creation of Israel was a historic catastrophe, that its military flagrantly commits war crimes, and that its continued existence represents a “settler-colonial apartheid state” on Arab land. Some of them hate America, capitalism, and “cultural hegemony,” so they hate Israel too. And some of them – more than anyone wants to admit – simply hate Jews.
If truth is the first casualty in war, then a lie must be the first killer. A few things about lies that are important to consider: One, liars depend on people that are bad at listening and/or bad at thinking critically. Two, the more someone repeats a lie (and gets others to repeat the lie), the more credible the lie seems. Three, pathological liars often believe their own lies because they are incapable of seeing themselves unfavorably. Who does this? People that are driven by extreme politics, religious fanaticism, or conspiracy.
Consider that some people deny the existence or scope of the Holocaust despite volumes and volumes of photographic evidence and eyewitness testimony, and the fact that the Nazis recorded the planning process and kept databases on the Jews they killed. Not coincidentally, virtually all Palestinian leadership and much of the Arab world participates in some form of Holocaust denial. It’s absurd.
But this kind of conspiracy and denial is happening in real time too. Many voices within the Pro-Palestine movement claim that Hamas and other Palestinians did not deliberately maximize civilian casualties or commit rape on October 7 when, in fact, the participants in the massacre recorded themselves committing those acts and bragging to loved ones about the number of Jews they killed. Hamas has also said very publicly that they’re hoping to do it again, and again, and again. Genocide, according to the Oxford American Dictionary, is defined as the “deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.”
One can only imagine what Hamas or its Islamic fundamentalist allies would do if the balance of power suddenly reversed and the Palestinians had the same military capability as Israel. This is what makes the Pro-Palestine claim of genocide so cynical. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, it has the arsenal and technology to do so without sending a single Israeli into Gaza. But Israel’s military, unlike Hamas on October 7, records its own actions to prove they are not genocidal. They spend billions of dollars on precision weapons to minimize the risk to civilians and billions more on missile defense systems to mitigate the need for ground invasions. They do this because they hold themselves to the high moral standards of Israeli society and other Western societies in the civilized world. Their actions include placing phone calls, sending text messages, and dropping leaflets to prevent civilian deaths in areas where Hamas operates.
And Hamas, for its part, not only embeds itself among civilian infrastructure but also reigns over a population with deeply held Islamic reverence for martyrdom. There are many civilians that willingly ignore Israeli warnings because of religious and political beliefs, and there are also civilians that stay in place because of Hamas threats and coercion. Israel, to the limited extent possible when dealing with human-shielded Islamists in a very densely populated area, has shown great efforts to minimize collateral damage. And has it succeeded in this goal? That depends. What is an acceptable number of civilian deaths in the circumstances?
For anyone that thinks this is an unjust war, the answer is zero. Strangely, some people need to be reminded that this war started when an internationally recognized terror organization with a genocidal charter broke a ceasefire, invaded a sovereign country, murdered as many people as possible in unimaginably brutal fashion, fired 12,000 rockets toward civilian areas, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians including children and babies. And when that terror organization governs its own state and builds 500 kilometers of military infrastructure under hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings, what then is the acceptable number of civilian deaths?
According to Israel, at least 12,000 Hamas fighters and other Palestinian militants have been killed since the beginning of the Gaza operation out of a total death toll around 30,000. If this number is reasonably accurate, Israel’s 2:5 ratio of combatants to non-combatants is one of the most successful efforts to minimize civilian casualties in modern warfare. For comparison, more than 80% of casualties in the Yugoslav Wars (1991-2001) and more than 75% of casualties in the Iraq War (2003-2011) were civilians.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Health Ministry claims that roughly 33,000 people – mostly civilians – have died in Gaza after 6 months of conflict, but there are several critical issues with this number and the claim that it’s “mostly civilians.” The first issue is that the “Gaza Health Ministry” is not an independent body but an arm of Hamas, which has every interest in exaggerating casualty rates (as it has done many times before) to antagonize Israel on the world stage.
[Update: On May 8, 2024, the UN lowered their reported death toll by more than 10,000 and lowered the percentage of civilian deaths from 69% to approximately 50%. This does not confirm that Israel’s numbers are precise, but it demonstrates the UN’s willful irresponsibility, which legitimizes Hamas and demonizes the Jewish State.]
One might recall two examples of the Health Ministry’s blatant dishonesty. In one incident, “health officials” reported that 500 people died at the Al Ahli Hospital after an Israeli air raid. The problem with this claim? None of it was true. A rocket from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) misfired, landing in a parking lot next to the hospital and killing about 100 people. Israel had nothing to do with it and had the surveillance to prove it. In another incident, the health ministry claimed that as many as 1000 civilians died in a confrontation with IDF soldiers in February. The reality, as shown by drone surveillance: almost 100 Gazans died in a stampede as Israeli soldiers attempted to deliver humanitarian aid. This is a tragedy, not a war crime. In fact, the only war crime in this instance is that Hamas had been hijacking the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians, creating the type of desperation that led to the stampede.
Another critical issue with the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers is that they make no distinction between civilians and combatants and report all deaths since the start of the war – including natural deaths and deaths as result of errant Palestinian rockets – on “Israeli aggression.” And on that very point, at least 10% of the 12,000 crudely made Palestinian rockets have misfired and exploded inside the Gaza Strip, surely killing many hundreds of civilians besides those at Al Ahli.
After October 7, Israel - which possesses a sophisticated medical system and forensic workforce - needed months to determine how many people had died in the attacks. Hamas’ Health Ministry, on the other hand, does not possess anywhere near the same capability and yet they report their numbers immediately to a UN agency that publishes them without second thought. Not only are these numbers impossible to know, but they are virtually impossible, period. According to Abraham Wyner, professor of Statistics and Data Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Hamas’ numbers increase with “metronomic linearity” and the types of reported deaths have no apparent correlation with each other. In other words, the Health Ministry’s numbers are obviously manipulated and statistically preposterous. Here is one excerpt from his article for Tablet Magazine:
“Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.”
And then there’s another important question: what exactly is a civilian in Gaza? Normally, this is an easy question, however the distinction between civilian and militant is exceedingly blurry in this case. While the word civilian carries the presumption of innocence and non-participation, no one should forget that many hundreds of the participants in the October 7 massacre were not card-carrying Hamas militants but ordinary opportunists, including dozens of UNRWA workers (the UN refugee agency that operates in the Palestinian Territories). One might also recall the scenes on the streets of Gaza where thousands of overjoyed Palestinians paraded on the dead bodies of Israelis and tormented kidnapped children who’d just watched their parents get killed. In fact, “civilians” have held captive many of the hostages in this war. While the degree of support for Hamas may have been low before the war, there has never been a question that a significant percentage of the Palestinian people still support their ideological goals and would serve those goals as martyrs and militants when called upon.
More unfortunate still, children are part and parcel in Hamas’ ideological and military strategy. For years, Hamas, PIJ, Fatah, and other Palestinian organizations have been indoctrinating and using children in their violent campaigns. During the first and second intifadas, about 300 children were recruited as suicide bombers. These organizations have also regularly incited and encouraged tens of thousands of children to throw stones, burning tires, and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers and civilians. They know that children could die if a soldier has a momentary lapse in restraint, but this aids their cause when it happens.
In summer 2023, more than 100,000 children attended Hamas and PIJ summer camps in Gaza. According to Arab journalist Bassam Tawil, many campers ages 11-16 trained in urban and tunnel warfare and learned how to assemble and use various weapons, including AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. Officially, Hamas’ military and ideological wing considers anyone 16 or older an adult, but their health ministry counts anyone under 18 as a child. Hamas fully understands that the IDF is less likely to target children because of international law. They have been caught using children as fighters and weapons couriers before. There is no “possibility” that they are using children as combatants, there is a virtual certainty that they are.
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To be certain, if ordinary Palestinians wanted a more dignified way of life, they’d have every right to demand a change in the status quo. But there is rightful resistance and then there is Hamas and its allies PIJ and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. Combined, these organizations have fired more than 40,000 rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities and have carried out more successful suicide bombings than Al Qaeda (never mind the hundreds upon hundreds that were successfully prevented by Israeli security). For those that think that Hamas is legitimate resistance, ask if it is legitimate to keep weapons depots in daycare centers and nurseries. Ask if it is legitimate to withhold elections for 18 years, murder political dissidents publicly, and drag their bodies through the streets. Ask if it is legitimate to withhold billions of dollars in foreign donations from civilians that live in abject poverty, to steal humanitarian aid, or to dig up water pipes to use for rockets when most of Gaza struggles to access to water.
What Hamas does is not just terrorism but gaslight terrorism. In the traditional sense, terrorism is a tactic to target civilians and inflict psychological damage to achieve an ideological goal. Gaslight terrorism is the act of systematically feeding false information about one’s own terrorist actions and motivations, aiming to make enemies question themselves and eventually support their own self-destruction.
Everyone bearing witness to this war has to be ultra careful in what they believe and what they share. Both Hamas and Israel can manipulate the information they broadcast, but it’s Hamas that has a history of corruption and gross distortion of information. It is an organization that considers itself incapable of making a moral error. In terms of rhetoric and ideology, Hamas and its allies very publicly state that fighting Jews is “an act of worship.” To them, killing for the cause brings one closer to Allah and dying for the cause is the most praiseworthy path in life. Lying for the cause, therefore, is unquestionably permitted. The ends justify the means when the goal is to establish Palestine as “an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day” (Hamas Charter, article 11).
There is also a temptation to think that Hamas is a rogue terrorist group among a population of oppressed Palestinians caught in the crossfire. But ask, to what extent is Hamas separable from the majority of Palestinians that possesses the same long-term aspiration to claim the entire region? In the weeks and months preceding October 7, Israeli volunteers brought thousands of Gazans into Israel for work opportunities and life-saving medical treatments not available in Gaza. Many of those volunteers lived in the communities just outside of Gaza where terrorists would kill them without ceremony. Several volunteers were taken hostage. Consider the contrast: Israelis took Gazans to Israeli hospitals voluntarily where nurses and doctors would save their lives. Gazans took Israelis at gun point to Gazan hospitals where where nurses and doctors – most celebrating – would watch them escorted to an underground tunnel and an uncertain fate.
Certainly, there are many Palestinians that yearn for a fair chance and decent existence and who see Hamas’ ruthlessness, political corruption, and poor governance as the most significant obstacle to a prosperous future. But the fact is that Hamas has established itself as an integral part of Palestinian life, a populist institutional authority on worship, education, and governance. Even if everyone in Gaza knows that Hamas’ leaders profit immensely from perpetuating conflict, they still manage to retain significant popularity. Why? Simply put, Hamas is more ideologically committed, more brutal, more cunning, and more resourceful than its rivals in Fatah or PIJ. Quite simply, they are revered because they are the best at killing Jews.
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No one in the West wants to acknowledge the evidence that Hamas is as bad as ISIS, as repressive as the Taliban, or that its leaders want Palestinian civilians to die to further their cause and bring them more money. Hamas watches the news in the US and in Europe. They see Western sensitivity to cultural issues, its relativistic nature, and they know how to exploit bleeding hearts and apologists. People here hesitate to think that most Gazans are either radical or sympathetic to radicals, but this is the reality when Hamas has remained in power and unchallenged for almost 20 years. There is no hope for a one state or two state solution as long as Hamas continues to exist and as long as no one in the West holds Palestinian society and the Muslim world accountable for their tacit support of violence. Can Israel do better? Certainly in the political domain, yes. But in the domains of morality and warfare, it’s difficult to see how. And besides, that’s not really the point. The point is that protesting against Israel fuels the conflict by signaling to Hamas and other Jihadist movements that the West can be easily manipulated.
Hamas is an Islamic Jihadist movement with an abysmal record on human rights and intentions that are clearly genocidal. But they can lie - and don’t expect them not to - because much of the world is bad at listening and bad at thinking critically. So they lie and, when they are dismissed, they repeat those lies with new qualifications. And they do this because – no matter how much terror, rape, kidnapping, and moral corruption they use in their strategies or implicitly approve of – they (and those who support them) are incapable of seeing themselves unfavorably.
