The shock doctrine in Hamas’ ideology
This time the “Yes, buts” in the public debate were few, bitter dissonances in the general revulsion that Hamas’ terrorist actions in southern Israel provoked. The relativization of the crimes did not even touch the Greek Left, which is always prone to anti-Semitism, with marginal exceptions: the Communist Party of Greece, which spoke about “Israel’s aggression,” the former SYRIZA finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who claimed that “the criminals here are not Hamas,” some students at Harvard who claimed that “the Israeli regime is solely responsible,” and the usual suspect, former British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said that “the end of the occupation is the only solution.”
Western public opinion, left and right, cannot help but identify with the victims after the October 7 atrocities that surpass ISIS in horror. It was its own children who died dancing and never came back from the open-air festival; it was its own cups full of coffee that remained untouched at breakfast. The universal paralysing thought was, “It could have been us.”
Western public opinion, left and right, cannot help but identify with the victims after the October 7 atrocities that surpass ISIS in horror
Hamas has achieved its goal: In this war of impressions, its only strategy is to sow hatred, unquenchable thick hatred. It is not interested in raising international public awareness about the plight of the Palestinian people. Quite the opposite. It wants to push even the most sane citizens of the world to wish for the leveling of Gaza; to dehumanize them; to say, “Hey, it’s OK if some women and children pay for it, as long as these monsters are gone”; to allow for lousy jokes on social media, such as “land for sale, deforested, coastal,” referring to the Gaza Strip. And when Israel responds with raids, the full siege of Gaza and ground operations, equally violent and indiscriminate, then the terrorist organization can feel vindicated. “Who is the abuser now and who is the victim?” it will scream, confirming its original goal. Already the Israeli security forces warned of “difficult images” from Gaza in the coming days, expressing hope that the solidarity from abroad will remain intact.
The impasse is obvious. How does one maintain one’s humanity in the midst of this horror without being accused of cowardice, appeasement, Islamophobia or anti-Semitism? I do not have an answer. A little girl in her half-demolished schoolyard in Gaza told the BBC, “I would like to play without war.”
