Throughout its history, the State of Israel has fought two defensive conflicts at once—a battle for survival against its Arab neighbors and a PR battle to expose the world to truth. The current nexus for these two conflicts is Israel’s war against Hamas.
While much of the world had sympathy for the Jewish state in the immediate wake of Hamas’ October 7 pogrom, it quickly changed to hostility against Israel once it began defending itself.
If we listen to news reports and the radically ill-informed on college campuses, we might think that Israel is the aggressor or that there exists a moral equivalency between the sovereign Jewish state and the Palestinian terrorist organization. Such comparisons include Mistakes have been made on both sides or What Hamas did on October 7 is terrible, but Israel targets Palestinian civilians.
These claims of moral equivalency are outrageous because of their disconnection from reality and lack of factual evidence. Israel and Hamas are in entirely different categories.
War Aims
Hamas’s primary aim is not a better economy, more freedom, peace with its neighbor, or even a Palestinian state. Its raison d’être is the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish people.
In its original 1988 charter, Hamas explicitly declares this goal. Quoting Imam Hassan al-Banna, a founding member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the covenant states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
What does obliteration mean? According to the charter, it means a full-scale genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of Arabs and Muslims.
Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.
This aim of vanquishing the enemy and bringing victory to Allah directly motivated the October 7 attack on Israel. On that day, more than 1,200 people, most of them Israeli Jews, were heinously murdered. Hamas’s charter tells us it will do much more with additional time and resources
Israel, on the other hand, does not call for the destruction of Arabs, Muslims, or any other peoples. In fact, its declaration of independence says, though it is a Jewish state, it “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
While Hamas is intent on the death of its neighbors, Israel’s aim is life and security for all people.
Israel’s stated aims of its war with Hamas are “the destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.” In other words, while Hamas is intent on the death of its neighbors, Israel’s aim is life and security for all people.
Civilians and Tactics
Another case in point is the dramatically divergent views Israel and Hamas have of civilians and how to conduct urban warfare.
On October 7 and in previous attacks, Hamas targeted Israeli civilians. Of the 1,200 people they killed that day, at least 845 were civilians, many of whom were mutilated, burned, or raped.
Hamas terrorists proudly recorded their brutality using GoPro cameras. One CBS reporter who viewed some of the footage released by the Israeli government reported seeing a clip of a terrorist throwing a grenade into a safe room where a father and his two young boys were hiding.
The father was killed. His small sons, “wearing only their underwear, were splattered with blood but survived. In another clip, the boys are in their kitchen, crying out for their mother, as one attacker pulls a Coca-Cola from their refrigerator and takes a leisurely sip. The younger brother says he can’t see out of one eye and asks, ‘Why am I alive?’”
It isn’t only Israeli civilians for whom Hamas has disdain. It admits that using its own civilians as human shields is its modus operandi.
In an October 27, 2023, interview that aired on Russia Today TV, the interviewer asked Mousa Abu Marzouk, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau, why Hamas does not build bomb shelters for Palestinian civilians, given that it has “built 500 kilometers of tunnels” beneath Gaza. In a stunning admission, Marzouk responded, “We have built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being targeted and killed. These tunnels are meant to protect us from the airplanes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels.”
Meanwhile, Israel warns Palestinian civilians about impending raids and bombings in their neighborhoods. It drops leaflets from the air and sends text messages to Palestinians’ phones urging residents to flee the area during conflict. It also provides maps ahead of time showing them where they should go. The Israeli government also assists Palestinians in moving from the area, constructing shelters with food, water, and medical supplies.
“Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history.”
John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, has never seen anything like it. “I’ve never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy’s civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings,” he says. “In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history.”
No Comparison
Beyond a shared border, Israel and Hamas have nothing in common. One loves life, the other loves death. One desires peace, the other desires genocide. One cares for the lives of civilians, the other targets them.
Campus antisemites will keep making their laughable claims of Israel’s alleged genocidal intent. News outlets will continue their agenda-driven vendetta against Israel. But facts still matter—and the fact is, when it comes to Hamas and Israel, there simply is no comparison.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
About the Author
Comments 1
This is naked truth which many people do not know.