Hamas’s barbarism does not justify the collective punishment of Palestinians

The Guardian
Laying siege to a civilian population isn’t the same thing as targeting a terrorist organisation.

‘They too have casualties, they too have captives and they have mothers who weep … Let’s make real peace”. Not a liberal peacenik speaking from the safety of London or Washington but Yaakov Argamani, whose daughter Noa was taken hostage by Hamas at a music festival near Re’im on Israel’s border with Gaza. (...)

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The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at a joint press conference in Tel Aviv with the US secretary of state Antony Blinken on 12 October. Photograph: Israeli PM Press Service/UPI/Shutterstock.

Many have celebrated the murderous actions of Hamas gunmen. And many, even if they refrained from rejoicing, have tried to justify those actions. (...)

Yes, there is a historical context to Palestinian violence, and Palestinians continue to suffer from Israeli repression. There is, though, no context in which the mass murder of more than 260 revellers at a music rave, or a massacre in a kibbutz, comes close to being justified, let alone provides an occasion for rejoicing. (...)

These were the acts of an antisemitic, theocratic organisation detached from the moral and political frameworks that guided traditional liberation movements. As with other jihadi groups, terror has become an end in itself. (...)

There have been Palestinian leaders, and supporters, who have deplored the depravity of the acts. Hamas represents a betrayal of Palestinian hopes as well as a threat to Jews.

Condemning Hamas, its policies and actions, is not, though, the same as supporting Israeli policies. Israel has cut off power, water, food and medical supplies to Gaza, begun mass, indiscriminate bombings, and a probable ground invasion. (...)

Yet, this collective punishment and killing of civilians has won the backing of western leaders, who justify it as Israel’s “right to self-defence” against Hamas. But as Daniel Levy, one-time adviser to the former prime minister Ehud Barak, asked a BBC presenter: “Can someone credibly tell me that when the leadership of a country says ‘We are cutting off food, electricity, water, all supplies, to an entire civilian population’, that they’re targeting militants?”

Israeli leaders themselves leave little doubt. “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Force, acknowledged. (...)

Meanwhile, Israel is turning the occupation of the West Bank into annexation. (...) Israeli government policy is effectively for a de facto single state, but one in which most Palestinians are denied basic rights. (...)

Whether in a single state with equal rights, or in two states, “self-determination” can only be the self-determination of all the people who live between the river and the sea, Palestinians and Jews, in a shared future. No bomb, no butchery can erase that.

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