Told Gaza

On Friday the Israeli government gave civilians in the northern Gaza Strip 24 hours to evacuate to the southern part of the territory, in anticipation of a major military offensive. Hamas, for its part, “told Gaza residents to stay put, despite Israel’s deadline,” Reuters reported the same day.

Reasonable people can criticize Israel for not allowing enough time for civilians to get out of harm’s way: There are, especially, elderly, disabled and sick Gazans — and those who help them — who may be effectively homebound.

Reasonable people can also oppose other measures that Israelis have taken in response to the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. It seems neither right nor smart for Israel to cut off water and electricity to Gaza until Hamas’s hostages are returned — not because Israel shouldn’t do whatever it takes to obtain their release but because the people who suffer most from the action are the ones who have the least say over the fate of the hostages. I am confident that Hamas leaders have adequately supplied themselves and their forces with fuel, generators, drinking water, and other basic necessities.

But what reasonable people cannot discuss is the cynicism with which Hamas has taken its position in the war. This is the cynicism that the world should not reward our gullibility, lest we return to being the useful fools of Hamas.

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Consider: Hamas launched its attacks as loosely as the Nazis' Babyn Yar or ISIS's Sinjar. They did so knowing that it would provoke the most violent reaction from Israel. Why put millions of Palestinians at risk? Because Hamas has learned that it profits at least as much from Palestinian deaths as it does from Israeli ones — the more of each, the better.

Murdering Jews is an end in its own right for Hamas, because it believes it fulfills a theological aim. The original Hamas covenant invokes this injunction: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’” Hamas later softened the language from “Jews” to “Zionists” and “kill” to “resisting the occupation with all means and methods,” but the meaning is the same. Editor's Choice

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Hamas also achieves its practical and propagandistic goals by putting Palestinians in danger. She believes that having more civilians in a war zone means more human shields for her troops. More Palestinians killed and injured means more sympathy for the Palestinians and more condemnation of Israel.

This is why Hamas converted Gaza's central hospital into her headquarters during the 2014 conflict. This is why the missiles were stored in schools. So they used the mosque as a place to store their weapons. So he fires rockets at populated areas of Gaza. He is doing all this knowing that Israel, which has agreed to abide by the laws of war, is trying to avoid attacks on these targets, and that doing so would lead to charges of war crimes and diplomatic demands for restraint. Either way, Hamas gains the advantage.

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The cynicism doesn't end there. In previous fighting, Hamas' political leader Khaled Meshaal accused Israel of committing a "holocaust" against Palestinians. And these are the words of the leader of a Holocaust-denying terrorist group. Hamas also calls for international sympathy for the unfathomable poverty in Gaza. In fact, in terms of purchasing power, Gaza's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in 2021 is $5,600, which is not significantly lower than India.

But Hamas is spending a lot of money building a war machine whose sole purpose is to attack Israel. In 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that with the money Hamas could have spent to build a single tunnel to infiltrate into Israel, it could have purchased construction supplies “enough to build 86 homes, seven mosques, six schools or 19 medical clinics.” At the time, Israel had identified at least 32 such tunnels.

A Hamas that wanted a more prosperous Gaza — one that did not make its neighbors put up fences around it and towers to guard them — could have it, simply by desisting from its ideological aims. If Gaza is the open-air prison that so many of Israel’s critics allege, it’s not because Israelis are capriciously cruel but because too many of its residents pose a mortal risk. For proof, just look at the Oct. 7 pogrom. As I write, the Israeli military appears to be on the verge of launching a ground offensive against the Gaza Strip. As a result of this invasion, the balance of global sympathy as well as diplomatic pressure will undoubtedly shift against Israel. This has always been part of Hamas' strategy. Like the boy who kills his parents and then asks the court for mercy through his lawyer, because he is an orphan himself.