The title asks the question “What is victory to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad?” I believe the answer is not what most people think, but is important because it explains why Israelis are bogged down in forever wars for which they are to blame. Israel is a nation that has been in a constant state of war since 1984. It has relied only on one solution—militarism, a bigger, more advanced military, which it has. It has never believed it had to compromise with the Palestinians because it could rely on advanced military weapons and financial support from the U.S. However, no compromise has meant no peace. In other words, the reliance on a super-military, which Israel has, means that Israel’s existence is guaranteed but peace for Israel is not. And the conflict between Israel and Muslims has reverberated around the world in two forms: terrorism and wars. So the conflict between Israel and Muslims has been a global problem in part because of Israel’s refusal to compromise.
The fact is Muslim jihadists do not fear super-militaries, be they Russian, American, or Israeli, because death and destruction don't intimidate Muslims. They are not afraid to die. Young Muslims have proven that repeatedly. Unlike for Jews, they get to go to Paradise if they die in battle. Israel and everyone should try to give them something to live for rather than to die for. The other issue related to the title of this article is what Muslims consider as victory. Victory is usually considered defeat of an enemy. Hamas knew it could not defeat Israel in a war.
The conflict is a modern David
Hamas against Goliath Israel. David’s slingshot is no match for Goliath wearing
bronze helmet on his head and a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five
thousand shekels. On his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was
slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point
weighed six hundred shekels. That was just a story. In reality, against Goliath
Israel’s modern arsenal, David Hamas’ slingshot can only enrage, not defeat.
David Hamas slingshot
consists of 50 caliber machine guns mounted on pickups and AK-47, homemade rockets, Grenades, Paragliders,
and Bulldozers. Here are the weapons of Goliath
Israel:
I do not mean to glorify
Hamas, a terrorist organization, by associating the organization with David. David was not a good man.
Just ask his faithful soldier Uriah. David took whatever he wanted be it
concubines left to die or Uriah’s wife Bathsheba after having her husband killed.
And by the way, what caused the conflict between the Israel and the Philistines? The Bible tells us: “And I [Yahweh] will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you” (Exodus 23:31). The Israelites imagined God gave them permission to take the lands of the Canaanites and the Philistines, so they did. Scripture has always been used to justify their actions, just as Christians used the same scripture to justify their conquest of the lands of Native Americans with the added justification of converting the heathens. Muslims did the same. In each case, the result was endless wars and killing of innocents.
However, defeat was never the purpose of Hamas’ attack on Israel. It had two purposes. The first was simple: to encourage Israel to destroy Palestinian communities killing thousands of civilian men, women, and children, thus by doing so transforming itself into a terrorist nation like Russia. The second purpose was to make sure that Israelis live in a constant state of uncertainty and inquietude. In other words, their way of life is not that of most people but a constant state of preparation for the next attack. I don’t use words like fearfulness or anxiety because I don’t believe they apply to the social psychology of the Israeli people. Israel is more like Sparta than Athens. It is a nation-size military base. And militarism has seeped into every aspect of its culture and society.
Thus, a victorious battle for Hamas need only create a disturbance that continues the uncertainty and inquietude for Israelis. Thus, the Hamas attack was less an act of war than a terrorist attack. Of course, Israel considers the attack an act of war, which for Hamas is the desired result. In fact, for Hamas the more death and damage on either side the better. And it is here the dark side of Hamas's strategy is revealed. First, to Hamas 700 Israelis killed at the cost of 2,000 Muslims, fighters or civilians doesn’t matter, is a victory because the goal was never absolute victory but creating uncertainty and inquietude among Israelis and preventing them from ever settling down to a normal way of life free of constant military concerns. Second, Hamas knew that a vicious terrorist attack would trigger massive retaliation from Israel that would destroy multi-use building that served as home and business and totally wreck communities, and of course kill numberless civilian men, women, and children who were ignorant of the attack and most likely would have been against it.
The strategy here is the demonization of Israel and Jews generally in the eyes of the world. To create a Terminator nation that inspires fear and loathing, but mostly loathing because people expect barbarism from a terrorist organisation but not from a nation that claims to be civilized. It has worked successfully and more than once. It is an ironic yet brilliant strategy similar to shifting the blame for the crime of rape from the rapist to his victim. The argument implies that the Israelis were responsible for the Hamas attack. The enormous human cost of the victim-is-to-blame strategy doesn't matter to Hamas. The strategy reminds me of King Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia in order to go to war. This is a form of nihilism in which nothing matters or has worth except an overpowering idea fueled by hatred. Israel's desire for revenge is similar in that it is fueled by hatred that has a similar nihilistic effect in that the value Palestinian life is nil.
The origin of the mindset of Hamas toward Jews is Muhammad, as illustrated by the massacre of Banu Qurayza, a Jewish tribe which lived in northern Arabia at the oasis of Medina: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiwtpLHVYIc
Another story that comes to mind is Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein created a creature from the dead. He then lost control of the creature, which became a psychopathic mass murderer. The loss of control was not Victor's intention, but it was Hamas' intention, to create a monster--war--from dead Israelis, and war takes on a life of its own. Americans know that or should. A military superpower, the U.S. lost three wars against small nations: Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Each war took on a life of its own lasting 20 years each for the first two and the third 7 to 8 years. Unending war is what Hamas wants for Israel. An important factor of those wars unlike Desert Storm (43 days) is that they were fought on the enemies' homeland. Also, with all four the U.S. could pack up and leave. Not possible for Israel. The enemy lives next door, so can renew violence at any time. Chaos theory can also be used explain Hamas' strategy. A horrific terrorist act serves as a butterfly flapping its wing resulting in a huge storm that is war. The act was never the intended object for Hamas; the consequences were. The terrorist act was only a trigger.
One other story comes to mind
and with it a painting. The story is the wise Virginia Woolf's Mrs
Dalloway, which shows how the First World War continued to affect those who
had lived through it even five years after it ended. For Woolf memory affects
the perception of reality. In the story it has a distorting somewhat
nightmarish effect. The psychology of the people who endured the war is darken,
even to the point of psychosis, as in the case of war veteran Septimus Warren
Smith, whose broken life affects others such as his wife. This sort
of malformation of people's lives and thoughts and of their culture that
Hamas wants for Israel. I assume that Palestinians have lived for decades in
the pathological state of chronic anxiety and gloominess described by Woolf.
Yet, there is more. Woolf
recognizes that because of masculine aggression the human species exists in a
chronic state of insanity that is rare or nonexistent among other species. Wars
come and go but always threaten. The subjectivity of humans allows them to remember
the horrific events that they experience. Reason enables them to analyze and
evaluate, morally, psychologically, and socially those events. For other
creatures the frightening events are put out of mind until another threat
emerges. Woolf’s story reveals how horrific events settle into the minds of
individuals and society to create chronic states of mental illness mild and severe.
Men who possess Woolf’s
profound understanding that war is an insanity that creates other forms of
insanity are rare exceptions among men. One of those men is the French artist Jacques-Louis
David who illustrates in his painting The
Oath of Horatii what Woolf describes in her novel:
Rome is threatened by Alba
Longa, and three brothers from a Roman family, the Horatii, agree to end the
war by fighting three brothers from a family of Alba Longa, the Curiatii. The
painting illustrates masculinity’s love of conflict (not David’s intention) and
the terrified, depressed state that war has on women—wives, mothers, daughters,
sisters. What one doesn’t see in the painting is that one of the brothers
murders his sister for weeping for one of the enemy whom she was engaged to.
The difference of motivation is important. The brother’s motivation is an idea,
patriotism. The motivation of his sister whom he murders is love. In this way,
the painting captures an inherent difference between masculinity and
femininity. The women represent love and life, the men death. The Israeli
soldiers are like the brave Roman brothers who defend the homeland.
It is the deep chronic depression,
anxiety, uncertainty, and dread suffered by the women that Hamas seeks to
inflict upon Israelis and their society. Woolf saw both as two forms of
insanity. She also understood that women are powerless to break the cycle,
which only adds to the melancholy of the human condition. Thus the wisdom of
animals—even predators who kill don’t hate or hold grudges. The lion doesn’t
hate the antelope it kills, and it kills only because it is hungry. Humans are unique
in that they invent ideas that create enemies where none existed before and
that create unnecessary reasons to justify killing one another. Doing so is a
form of insanity, but the worst form that is common among humans and rare among
animals is that killing fellow humans is clearly enjoyed by men. I say clearly
because the masculine love of warfare is attested to in human history, stories,
and mythologies.
An aspect of the masculine
love of war is seen in the Internet’s almost celebratory illustrations of the
technologies of war—most popular have been tanks (the favorite), missiles,
drones, airplanes, and anti-tank weapons. These weapons have a Star Wars/Terminator quality that makes them makes them amazing and even mesmerizing.
The infatuation with these weapons is mostly masculine, which is troubling because
the amazing character of the weapons encourages their use and further development.
Their existence has a positive reinforcement effect: They are just too
wonderful not to have. The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is more amazing than God. One
website present “12 new stealth aircraft currently heading toward service.”
That doesn’t suggest that the end of war isn’t coming anytime soon. Woolf would
say that it is a masculine addiction that is insane. And she would be right.
So it will be violence back and forth forever until a political solution can be reached, and only Israel can bring about a political solution. A demilitarized Palestinian state (Why not?) might have avoided this carnage and destruction. However, Israel always thinks militarism is the solution for lasting peace. It’s not. Justice is. The Israeli mindset is made clear in the biblical books Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua. What those books suggest is that Israelis can live with chronic violence and may consider it the norm for Israel, a part of who Israelis are. Violence has always been the Israeli solution to violence, and in the Old Testament the Israelites often initiate it. This is not a trait unique to Jews but to aggressive masculinity. Alexander the Great went on his rampage during the 4th century B.C., and the centuries that followed consisted of ongoing war, including ancient Israel being repeatedly invaded. Endless warfare seems very much the way of life for humans, but it is a game that masculinity enjoys playing. And in my opinion religious and secular ideologies tend to codify, encourage, and justify masculine aggression. The deities of the Abrahamic religions are all masculine and each is on the warpath against all of humanity.
Muslims inherited the aggressive ideology of Judaism, which seemed to perfectly complement the militant culture of the Arabs just as Christianity's militarism (Matthew 10:34-36) was adopted by the bellicose Roman emperor. One characteristic shared by the Abrahamic religions when dealing with conflict is that violence trumps compromise. They accept violence as a normal part of life and their religious ideology reinforces or legitimizes that acceptance. Among Jews and Muslims the threat of violence serves as a unifying principle, thus publicly criticized but privately embraced. Even Jesus said “Peace be with you!” but "I came to bring war not peace." Peace to the members of the Christ cult, war on nonmembers.
Worst of all is the nihilism lurking in the us-versus-them ideologies. Again the Old Testament illustrates: The “Israelites devoted the city [Jericho] to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys” (Joshua 6:21). The Canaanite pagans of Jericho had no moral rights because the Israelite religious ideology declared them an abomination to God. In other words, people who fell outside the protective umbrella of the Abrahamic ideologies were stripped of moral rights thus allowing them to be murdered without violated the “Thou shalt not kill” commandment. The rights and value of these people were considered nil. Hatred also breeds nihilism. Sigmund Freud made it clear that any emotion can overthrow moral reason, be it hate or love.
And we must not overlook that
Hamas’ strategy comes right out of Osama bin Laden’s playbook. The 9/11
terrorist attacks killed 2,977 people and injured thousands, but all that death
and destruction was not bin Laden’s ultimate goal. The horrific attacks were to
serve as a trigger to pull the U.S. into a much larger conflict. It was Uncle
Remus' Tar-Baby tap. Retaliation results in getting, for over two decades—of war
and disgrace—for the U.S. The disgrace emerged with the passing of time,
intensified with the Iraq War based on a lie, and culminating with President
Biden’s shameful and inept ending of the first war. The shame increased with
the estimated 432,093 Afghan and Iraqi civilians who died in those wars. The
number of United States troops who have died fighting the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan had passed 7,000 at the end of 2019. To that are added the 933
deaths of contractors in Iraq.
So the 911 attacks were more
than a single terrorist mission. They were a tar-baby trap set by Osama bin
Laden. He understood that it would not have succeeded were it not for the
impressionable, unsophisticated George W. Bush who allowed a cadre of militant neoconservatives
to do his thinking. As a Chicken-hawk who served in the Air National Guard during the
Vietnam War, he was gung-ho for war as long as he did have to participate. His
father had his war, so Bush Jr. wanted one of his own. Bin Laden gave him that
opportunity. Bush rushed in where wise men fear to tread. But with Bush one war
wasn’t enough. He wanted two. After tens of thousands of dead American soldier
he still hadn’t killed the master mind of the 911 attacks—Osama bin Laden. So
much blood, treasury, and reputation wasted. And Joe Biden would add insult to
injury with his bungled ending of the war with Afghanistan, once again proving that sometimes if not often America’s commanders-in-chief have been idiots.
Hamas followed bin Laden’s
game plan. It began with a horrific terrorist attack which was not an end in
itself but a trigger it hoped would set off a desire for endless bloodletting
and destruction. The ever angry and militant Benjamin Netanyahu was their
George W. Bush. And the plan worked. A Terminator unleashed it military might against
what is basically a political reservation Gaza, one of two Palestinian
territories, that does not have an army, navy or air force. Hama killed 1,400
people in Israel. Thus far, 2,750 Palestinians have been killed and 9,700
wounded by the Israeli military. Four
days ago the damage caused by Israeli blitzkrieg was 18 places of worship,
22,600 residential
units, 19
medical centers , 90 education facilities, 70 industrial facilities, and 49
media offices. (“What Gaza infrastructure has been damaged since Israel
declared war?” Aljazeera). However,
the Israeli juggernaut is still on loose, so the horror the future holds can
only be predicted. Here is an image of the destruction:
This is exactly what Hamas hoped for. And, of course, of course this is the moral nihilism that has been caused by or revealed by Hamas’ terrorist attacks. It cares no more for the death and destruction suffered by Palestinians than it did for the Israelis it murdered. And Israelis feel the same about the Palestinians. Neither population has value to the other. This is what Hamas wanted and what Israel gave Hamas. The two goals are forever wars for Israel and for Israel to disgrace itself on the global stage, which will mean more people will sympathize with the Palestinians than they will with Israel in spite of their hatred of Hamas, which is seen more as a political gang than a legitimate political organization.
Hamas’ other Tar-Baby trap for
Israel: to trap it into killing children thus acquiring national disgrace. “Thou shalt not kill children” is the
cornerstone of civilization. And would add the mothers of children and women
generally. To fail at this is to become evil thus uncivilized and to the point
of being barbaric. In this the Nazis became superlatively evil that couldn’t be
concealed by their immaculate uniforms. Yet, they were the first. On a small
yet no less horrific scale Americans killed in one way or another women and
children of Native Americans and enslaved black women and children, a living
death. Genghis Khan comes to mind as a representative of pure masculine
barbarism. Yet, it is important to recognize that the issue isn’t barbaric
individuals such as Khan and Hitler, but a homicidal archetype that dwells in
the DNA of masculinity.
The Abrahamic deity isn’t a
great role model when it comes to the moral status of children. Moses, Yahweh’s
spokesman is angry with his soldiers for allowing Midianite women to live: “Have
you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “They were the ones who
followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the
Lord.... Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,
but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man” (Numbers 31:16-18).
Hardly a morality mission statement. All the other Midianites have been
slaughtered. In Genesis Yahweh tells Abraham “Take your son, your only son,
whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a
burnt offering” (22:2) Then Abraham “bound his son Isaac and laid him on the
altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife
to slay his son” (9-10). An angel from heaven told Abraham to stop because “Now
I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your
only son” (22:12). So this famous story has nothing to with the immorality of
killing children as an inviolable moral principle. It was just a test of faith
implying that if God gives the okay killing children is acceptable. Besides,
the biblical story couldn’t have continued without Isaac, the grandfather of
the twelve tribes of Israel.
Thus, Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac was just a test of faith implying that if God gives the okay killing children is acceptable. But then all one has to do is interpret the killing of children as being justified if one believes God condones the killing, as in the case of Abraham and the killing of Midianite boys in the Book of Numbers. This is where religion becomes nihilistic, using God to justify horrific acts or to deny another people’s moral rights and moral value. One recalls that George W. Bush said that he had been on the prayer phone with God Who gave him the okay to invade Iraq, resulting in 186,901 to 210,296 violent civilian deaths.
Then we have the case where “Then
the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire” out of the
heavens (Genesis 19:24). Reminiscent of what Palestinians are receiving from
Israel, brimstone and fire in the form of modern weaponry. The point being
that when God destroys a city he kills
the children as well as the adults. And then there is flood that kill all of
humanity except a single family, followed by “And that night at midnight, the
LORD struck down all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt, from the
firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn son of the prisoner
in the dungeon. Even the firstborn of their livestock were killed” (Exodus
12:29-38). Clearly, not killing children is not a universal prohibition in the
Old Testament. And it must be kept in mind that Muslims also understand Islam
to be the religion of Abraham.
In conclusion, it can be
argued that that during the 19th and 20th century the
moral ban on killing children as a national policy hadn’t taken hold and little
has changed in the 21st century. However, I wish to argue that
whatever the justification the killing (actually murdering) of children is evil
and uncivilized thus those who engage in killing children are themselves evil
and uncivilized. A note on evil is needed: Evil acts are actions that knowingly kill innocent, defenseless people (children be the most innocent and
defenseless of all), the evil made even more heinous then the killing is enjoyed
by the killers. Thus a nation or people who engage in the killing of children
are both barbaric and evil. Hamas says to Israel ""You call us evil because we kill Jewish babies so that the Palestinians can have a home of their own but you kill Palestinian babies to kill us. We are all guilty of infanticide but we do not pretend to be innocent."
Hamas as a terrorist organization is okay with being evil and behaving barbarically. It must be kept in mind that Hamas sacrificed Palestinian children to fulfill its mission to demonize Israel and energize Israel’s forever wars. The underlying principle is the end justifies the means. No, when it comes to killing children, the means negates any good achieved by the end. Thus, the evil lingers from one generation to the next, as it has in the case of slavery and Indian killing for Americans and the Holocaust for the Germans. Of course, Netanyahu's Old Testament response (“Do not leave alive anything that breathes!. Completely destroy them all!”) the result thus far has been 6,000 to 12,000 children killed in Gaza with countless others still missing buried under the rubble. Let's call it infanticide excused as collateral damage. This is what it looks like:
So, where is a solution to be found? I would say start with Socrates’ approach to dealing with issues—dialogue and reason. But he was executed by those who prefer violence to dialogue and reason. However, violence only encourages more violence. It creates a positive feedback or bad karma if you wish. It is a shame to be witnessing so much death, destruction, and waste in this conflict along with the one in Ukraine. It's really discouraging because it suggests that humans are incapable of controlling their fate and that their leaders are the least wise and effective of all, thus making moral and humanitarian progress even more impossible. As Edward Abbey said in Desert Solitaire, "Swinish politics, our ball and chain." A ball and chain that repeatedly drags humanity back to the Stone Age.
To prove the point of this article and to show how little progress has been made between Israelis and Palestinians one needs only to hark back June 6, 2021:
https://speakingaboutnothing.blogspot.com/2021/06/israels-attack-on-gaza-hitting-back.html
The Old Man in the Moon smiles wryly thinking that the human species was the only one given reason, yet the cows in the meadow show greater wisdom.
