Hamas was said to have been completely degraded a decade ago, but its latest attack shocked Israel and the world
By Tiko Okoye
The nature of the events that happened in southern Israel on October 7 and what subsequently followed and/or would most likely follow are no different from the norm; the only difference this time around is the unprecedented scale of the Palestinian attack.
It has long been a running battle of wits that almost always begins with Israeli security agencies turning a bland eye on atrocities committed by armed ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers running wild in the occupied territories, in Arab west Jerusalem as well as incessant blockade and military raids into Gaza and West Bank, crass violations of human rights of Palestinians and land-grab by the government to build Jewish settlements.
Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad would then respond to such acts by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel, causing Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to correspondingly embark on reprisals aimed at halting the rocket attacks and degrading the operational capabilities of Palestinian militant organisations.
Israel’s traditional friends – Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and the USA (except for some moments during the President Jimmy Carter administration), in addition to a sprinkling of other Western countries – who would hardly utter a rebuke while Palestinians are on the receiving end, automatically express support for Israel’s right to defend itself against “terrorists” and condemn Hamas and associated Palestinian militant groups.
The drama of the absurd would then play out at the UN Security Council, where the traditional ally of Palestine – Russia – would try to move a motion condemning Israel and have USA veto the motion. After several rounds of negotiations – usually brokered by Egypt – a truce is usually hammered out, with both sides claiming victory. Israel would gloat that it has achieved its aim of crippling Hamas’s rocket-launching and military abilities, while Hamas would in turn gleefully declare that it forced Israel out of Gaza.
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That’s how it has always been; a revolving door of deadly confrontations that Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox hawks in his governing coalition are now determined to permanently close. But the ‘how-to’ still remains a question too complicated to resolve.
Last time around in 2012, the IDF launched an eight-day military campaign tagged “Operation Pillar of Cloud,” which anyone conversant with the Old Testament/Talmud can easily identify with. In addition to taking out Ahmed Jabari, chief of the military wing of Hamas, the IDF reportedly struck more than 1,500 sites, including rocket launchpads, weapons depots, government facilities and apartment blocks. Both sides predictably signed a ceasefire mediated, as usual, by Egypt; after which each started claiming victory. At the completion of its retreat from Gaza, Israel unequivocally avowed that Hamas is no longer in any position to launch rockets from Gaza.
If the military capacity of Hamas was completely degraded a decade ago, how come it has become better equipped and savvy to conduct the sophisticated attack that shocked Israel and the world on October 7? What guarantee does Israel have that after causing the deaths of thousands of defenceless civilians and invaluable infrastructural damage, Hamas won’t rise up again from the ashes like the phoenix or – for that matter – that a deadlier than Hamas won’t sprout up, if Palestinians continue to live under the same dehumanising conditions Israel has subjected them for over 50 years – not unless American leaders grow the liver to force Israel’s feet to the fire and make it negotiate the Two-State Solution in good faith?
It is very difficult to predict what will happen next – and after that, except to say – in sync with the language of American baseball – that the bases are fully loaded! Netanyahu is hell-bent on retrieving his legacy chestnuts from a raging fire by conducting an unholy requiem mass for Hamas. Bewildered Israelis are demanding their pound of Palestinian flesh as the only atonement for the humiliation and pain they have suffered. America is entering an election year when politicians would be outdoing each other in ventilating their ‘rock solid’ support for Israel, with no questions asked, as a prelude to winning elections.
President Joe Biden has been frenetically trying to convince Netanyahu not to allow himself to be consumed by rage and easily make the same weighty mistakes the US made following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But will the highly opinionated and foxy Prime Minister with the rallying support of Jews around the world pay any attention to Biden’s unsolicited counsel?
Never be fooled by the fact that Jewish-Americans constitute less than 10 percent of the total American population because whenever push turns to shove – like in the ongoing conflict – they easily and readily demonstrate their ability and capacity to constantly punch above their weight. American universities, for instance, have long prided themselves as citadels of learning where free speech is meaningless if those you hate are not allowed to say things even if you don’t like to hear them.
But not any more, as more and more wealthy Jewish-American donors – who account for more than 60 percent of endowment funds of prestigious US universities, such as Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, and still counting – are deciding to stop any more donations unless the increasingly contumacious student bodies end their castigation of Israel and the authorities of the affected universities take a stand on the war by unquestionably supporting Israel.
Then there’s the matter of the sheer number and key policy-making portfolios held by Jewish-Americans in Biden’s cabinet. They include: Secretary of State (Antony Blinken), Deputy Secretary of State (Wendy Sherman), Director of the Central Intelligence Agency – CIA (David Cohen), White House Chief of Staff (Ron Klain), Secretary of the Treasury (Janet Yellen), Secretary of Homeland Security (Alejandro Mayorkas), Attorney General (Merrick Garland), Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Victoria Nuland), Director of the National Intelligence Agency – NIA (Avril Haines) and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (Eric Lander). And I had thought that Nigeria is the holding company of appointment by nepotism!
Today’s Arab leaders are a far cry from political colossi like Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi who bestrode the landscape in a past era. Still, while several Palestinian casualties are known to have been caused by misfired Palestinian rockets landing inside the Gaza Strip, the mere fact that Arab leaders snubbed a visiting Biden by abruptly calling off the summit he was scheduled to have with them in Amman, Jordan on account of the hospital massacre in Gaza simply means that they don’t feel obliged to accept intelligence reports attributed to the CIA and NIA and rubber-stamp Biden’s finger-pointing at “the other side.”
And the overall picture is getting uglier by the day, as evidenced by the increasing street protests in Western countries, especially America. The intensity of ugly anti-war protests, largely by university students, in 1967/68 caused a petulant President Lyndon Johnson to abruptly abort plans to run for a second term and triggered the defeat of his deputy and Democratic presidential candidate, Hubert “Happy Warrior” Humphrey, by the GOP candidate, Richard Nixon, who subsequently dispatched his Secretary of State, the iconic Henry Kissinger, to broker a truce with Chinese and Vietnamese leaders.
News reports from Israel say that Biden has overtaken Donald Trump in public opinion popularity ratings. That such a fate would befall the maverick who thumped his nose at the world when he unilaterally recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and had billboard photos of him in many strategic locations, with Netanyahu even contesting the last election as a “friend of Trump,” should remind Biden just how fickle human affections are. Let him consequently wisely use whatever leverage he now has to lay down a solid legacy in the Middle East because the honeymoon won’t last too long!
But while the world awaits Israel’s next move, it is pertinent to remember that the US, Russia and China all have warships and carriers prowling the narrow confines of the Mediterranean Sea, with the potential to start WWIII should conflict become uncontrollable. It is also possible that keeping America distracted and fixated on the conflict – with the GOP still unable to elect a House Speaker for 21 days running – would very much play to their advantage where it matters most.
Putin could capitalise on the lack of prying eyes to implement obnoxious military operations in Odessa, Ukraine’s third most populous city, major seaport and transport hub, he desires to recapture at all costs? And Chinese President Xi Jinping could present America with an embarrassing fait accompli if the Mainland opportunistically gobbles up Taiwan while the attention of US leaders and their domestic audiences are focused elsewhere.
