The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
How Hamas helps Zionists in Israel to undermine the peace process and thereby achieve their strategic aim
THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | As the war in Gaza rages, we need to ask: What is the root cause of the problem in Palestine? It is the occupation of Palestinian lands by Jewish settlers largely from Europe. This forceful eviction of Palestinians from their lands did not start and stop in 1947-48. It is a continuous process that is happening even today as more and more Jewish settlements are created in the West Bank by evicting native Palestinians. Hamas is a product, not a cause, of the occupation. It was born to resist the occupation and its attendant apartheid system characterised by daily brutality of the Israel state against Palestinians. Hamas’ arbitrary violence only reflects the frustrations of a people subjected to humiliation and subjugation on a scale rarely witnessed in human history.
Therefore Hamas’ tactics do not reflect a strategic aim of Palestinians to destroy the state of Israel. Even though Hamas has such an aim, it has no means to carry it out. Destroying the state of Israel is just a rallying cry to mobilise a people subjected to violent and arbitrary rule for decades. How can Hamas, armed with rudimentary rockets that have killed only 14 Israelis since October, defeat Israel with one of the top five most powerful militaries in the world and armed with nuclear weapons?
If Hamas has a strategic aim behind its arbitrary violence, it is to bring to global attention the brutality of the Israeli state against defenseless Palestinians. This is achieved in two ways: any Hamas attack attracts international coverage and thus places the plight of Palestinians on the international diplomatic agenda. Second, Hamas violence always elicits even worse violence from the Israeli state and thereby exposes the brutality of the occupation. On this strategic aim, Hamas has recently been quite successful even though her tactics to achieve it have been barbaric.
For Israel, especially Zionists, Hamas may be subjectively an enemy but it is, objectively, a strategic ally. Zionist literature clearly states that that the strategic aim of Israel is for Jews to occupy the whole land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan river. However, that land had an overwhelming majority of Arab Palestinian Muslims and Christians. When the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917 declaring Palestine to become a Jewish homeland, Jews constituted about 10% of the local population. By 1948 when the state of Israel was declared, they were about 30%. Therefore, if you are a Zionist, how do you advance your strategic aim? Zionism was born in Europe and it is therefore in European thinking that we can trace the ideological basis of the current state of Israel.
An ideology grew and consolidated in 19th and 20th century Europe that every nation should have a state. A nation meant a society that is linguistically and ethnically homogenous – Germany for the Germans, Italy for Italians, France for the French, Slovak for Slovaks, Hungry for Hungarians, Poland for Poles, Romania for Romanians etc. The creation of such homogenous states was occasioned by the systemic cleansing of other ethnic groups through mass evictions – and in some cases genocide.
European Jews were the worst victims of this ideology. They became targets of discrimination across all of Europe leading to the holocaust. Ironically, Jews also internalised this ideology of a nation-state through Zionism – the struggle for a Jewish homeland with an overwhelming Jewish majority. There was no geographical homeland for Jews in Europe. So, they went back to biblical teachings and selected Palestine, a place they had left over 2,000 years earlier, to become their homeland. Their mass migration into Palestine led to tensions with Palestinian natives.
These tensions were aroused by the ideology of Zionism – the demand for a Jewish majority state in an overwhelmingly Arab Muslim land. The only way to realise the strategic objective of a Jewish majority state was through mass evictions and/or genocide. This is settler colonialism 101 – a classic European ideology and practice. It had already happened in USA, Canada and Australia where European settlers had established themselves on the land by exterminating native peoples. However, after 1945 this barbarity on a mass scale could not be pursued openly as a strategy.
Therefore, the best way to achieve such a strategic aim would be to move slowly and incrementally. To do this you need a pretex: partners on the other side whose actions would make your counter actions seem morally justifiable. Then comes in Hamas. Its demand for the destruction of Israel and its arbitrary violence against the Israelis creates the perfect pretext for Israel to move in and conduct mass evictions and genocide (as they are doing in northern Gaza right now). Soon northern Gaza, after it has been depopulated of its Arab Palestinian Muslim and Christian communities, will be settled by Jews.
So for the Zionist project of controlling the entire land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea to be realised, they do not need a sober partner on the Palestinian side. That is why Israel has not been keen to work with the PLO and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank for peace. Doing so may bring peace but at the price of losing their strategic aim. Zionists prefer Hamas to always launch these violent and arbitrary attacks on Israel civilians. Then such attacks are used to foil the peace process and consolidate an apartheid system. To undermine the legitimacy of the PLO, Israel has continued to expand settlements in the West Bank. As the PLO looks weak and feckless, Hamas stands as the most determined defender of the Palestinian cause – exactly what Zionists want.
Now the Jewish people, or even the Jewish state itself, are not univocal. Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists subscribe to the most extreme aims of Zionism. There are many people in Israel who want peace with Arab Palestinian Muslims. One such man was Yitzhak Rabin, then his successor, Shimon Peres, then Ehud Barack and their supporters. However, Rabin was killed for seeking peace by a Zionist extremist. Peres was defeated in an election (after Hamas launched violent attacks against Israelis which bolstered support for the anti-peace candidate, Benjamin Netanyahu). Barack was too weak to drive the peace process and later got defeated also by the extremist Ariel Sharon. At each critical stage of the peace process, Hamas intervened causing the peace seekers in Israel to lose elections to extremists opposed to peace. I will expand on this next week.
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amwenda@independent.co.ug
,#, Andrew, in your words, and correctly so, “There was no geographical homeland for Jews in Europe. So, they went back to biblical teachings and selected Palestine, a place they had left over 2,000 years earlier, to become their homeland. Their mass migration into Palestine led to tensions with Palestinian natives.” In saying that they, (Jews) left their homeland over two thousand years earlier, you seem to portray the Jews as having “left” on their own volition. But did they? In about 70 AD the Jewish State was destroyed courtesy of Rome. But all this was to fulfill Biblical Prophecy. Restoration of Jewish statehood can only be sanctioned divinely. This pattern of Rebellion, Removal, Repentance and Restoration has been a hallmark of God’s dealings with the Jews. So, Andrew, your analysis may try to sound rational and convincing, until it’s not! Why? Simply because of your trying to leading up to explain away the role of divine purpose in as far as shaping the Israel-Palestinian future is concerned. The fleshly Israel may not, and is not, God’s favored Community, inasmuch as Palestine isn’t. Still, it appears that God particularly holds an active interest in the affairs of the Jews, until the day they, acclaim or disclaim the Messiah-ship of Yehosuah, Jesus Christ. I know you may not be biblically foresighted, but you may benefit from this passage from Romans Chapter 11…
“25 For I do not want you to be unaware of this sacred secret,+ brothers, so that you do not become wise in your own eyes: A partial dulling of senses has come upon Israel until the full number of people of the nations has come in, 26 and in this manner all Israel+ will be saved. Just as it is written: “The deliverer* will come out of Zion+ and turn away ungodly practices from Jacob. 27 And this is my covenant with them,+ when I take their sins away.”+ 28 True, with respect to the good news, they are enemies for your sakes; but with respect to God’s choosing, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers.+ 29 For the gifts and the calling of God are not things he will regret. 30 For just as you were once disobedient to God+ but have now been shown mercy+ because of their disobedience,+ 31 so also these now have been disobedient with mercy resulting to you, so that they themselves may also now be shown mercy. 32 For God has confined all of them together in disobedience+ so that he might show all of them mercy.”
@alphaRuskin the line of reasoning you seem to pursue is the same as that possessed by American evangelical Christians who empathetically urge their gov’t to supply weapons to the Israel war machine, their understanding of a complex geopolitical issue seems to rest on simplistic arguments of historical grievances & the religious tales they subscribe to, that current subjugation of a population is justified because your ancestors once lived in a place thousands of years ago, would be akin to persons of Bantu tribes in the great lakes region of East Africa, deciding to wage war on West African states to acquire land just because ancestors of the Bantu migrated from their. The world was truly justified in being horrified at the end of ww2 when they realized fully what the Nazi regime had done to European Jews, currently we have benefit of hindsight but I presume the dire outcomes of creating a Jewish state on non-vacant land weren’t fully predicted. But continuing with the status quo is untenable, continuing to pack & restrict millions of Palestinians in small open air prisons as Gaza is, for the next hundreds of years can’t continue indefinitely while global superpowers claim to care for inhumane treatment elsewhere. Unfortunately we have a crisis of effective leadership everywhere currently, & neighboring Arab states use of Palestine conflict in first decades of creation of Israel as a contest for sizing up each other’s manhood, lost precious time in being able to reach a settlement before radicals arose on both sides
@TheManFromUncle…. I too shudder at the brutal violence being perpetrated against innocent victims, on the either side of the conflict. I refrain from taking sides when it comes to human conflicts. My only interest in this issue stems from the conviction that what is currently taking place in Gaza has deep prophetic overtones, a fact which Andrew Mwenda seems to ignore or to be ignorant of. I fear, true peace will not come to Gaza by human means. The same holds true when it comes to global peace and security. Only God’s Kingdom, a heavenly government under the rulership of Christ, will solve Mankind’s problems here on earth once and for all. It alone [God’s Kingdom] will be able to accomplish what human governments have consistent failed, namely, cause God’s Will to be done on earth as it’s I heaven. Matthew 6:9,10.