The clash of fundamentalisms

How Netanyahu and Hamas have worked hand-in-glove to undermine the peace process in the Middle East

THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Israel’s genocidal bombing of Gaza continues with merciless impunity. Thousands of innocent children are being bombed in their homes, in hospitals and restaurants. Meanwhile, Western leaders, who spent most of last year angrily denouncing Vladmir Putin’s bombing of Ukraine, are silent. My own friends in Western embassies in Kampala who were shedding tears on the fate of Ukrainian refugees with moral indignation cannot raise their voice or finger at Israel’s massacres in Gaza. Instead, they ask us to condemn Hamas. But I am glad many citizens of Western nations – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, atheists – are lining the streets of major cities to protest this bloodbath committed in the name of self-defense.

I choose to condemn Israel for Hamas atrocities. Hamas is a creation of the state of Israel. Israel officials have admitted this. They financed Hamas from infancy to maturity to undermine the PLO. They knew they were incubating a very virulent form of extremist political Islam. Many on the far right in Israel needed (and still need) Hamas to justify their genocidal intentions against the people of Palestine. Hamas is now strong and murderous because the state in Israel wished it to be so and also because the far-right profits politically and economically from its terror. Hamas is, consciously or subconsciously, an agent of the far right in Israel. It makes no sense to condemn the agent when the sponsor is there.

The important point is that Israel must bear full responsibility for the atrocities of Hamas. Hamas has been a creature of Israel in two ways. The first was active funding. The second has been the brutalisation of Palestinians. In both cases, Israel has helped to deliberately and inadvertently nourish its enemy. And, as I will show later in this column, large sections of the Israel right have been beneficiaries of Hamas’ brand of resistance. Israel’s problem is made worse by the over dominance of the security and military in its economy. When a country has a huge share of its GDP being based on security, it becomes ever more difficult to avoid the security-military industrial complex driving national policy towards those areas where such an industry makes money. Thus, if Israel policy towards Palestine is war, that is also partly because war drives the Israeli economy. When you add this to the appeal of the politics of hate-fueled identity, you get the kind of results we see in Israel.

Israel is a child of America. It copies America and always imitates it. In the 1980s, the Americans created the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to fight Soviet communism. The success of the Mujahedeen resistance against the Soviets in Afghanistan informed Israel’s embrace of a fringe religious fanatical group in Gaza which grew into Hamas. These holy worriers of Afghanistan included among others a one Osama bin Laden. He used this training with deadly effect on 9/11/2001 in the USA. The Afghan Mujahedeen led to the birth of the Taliban, another virulently violent group. America returned to Afghanistan to fight and destroy this group. It left after 20 years and $2.06 trillion spent in a vain effort to achieve that goal.

Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine, its dehumanisation and violence against Palestinians is the fuel that drives desperate Palestinians into the arms of Hamas. On the other hand, Hamas’ brand of resistance has strengthened the far right in Israel. Indeed, Hamas made Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both are opposed to peace. Netanyahu came to power opposing the peace accords Yitshak Rabin had negotiated. This was because Hamas was attacking Israel civilians deliberately to foil the peace process. Netanyahu, though subjectively a virulent opponent of Hamas, became their strategic ally. He was opposed to the peace process. Hamas’ atrocities provided him the perfect justification for his views.

Netanyahu has since become a permanent fixture in Israel’s politics. He has served as prime minister for over 16 years, the longest any Israel prime minister has ever done. With the active assistance of Hamas, Netanyahu has shifted Israel politics to the right. He has used every atrocity by Hamas to launch his own bloodbath in Palestine. In the process, he projects himself as the defender of the Jewish people against a violent opponent. This is what has kept his political fortunes going. On the other hand, Hamas uses his massacres to recruit young Palestinians into radical extremism. The two sides therefore keep feeding on each other.

As things stand, the moderate forces that want peace in Palestine and Israel have been out-witted, out-foxed and out-smarted by Hamas and Netanyahu. The moderate Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas looks weak and compromised to defend its people. The liberals in Israel look the same – weak.

Yet there is a silver lining to this story. It is about the hypocrisy of Western powers. For most of last year, they spent hours lecturing the world on how bad Putin is. They said bombing of civilian targets is a war crime. Indeed, they used the ICC to indict him for war crimes; specifically the killing of children. Now their own boy, Bibi, is doing exactly the same thing yet their tongues seem tied, their voices silent.

So, what happened to all the moral indignation about Ukraine? Israel has blocked all food, water, electricity and medicines to enter Gaza. How is denying children and pregnant mothers such basic necessities as food and water a war against Hamas? How does cutting off electricity to hospitals where little babies are in incubators become a war to destroy Hamas? Isn’t such action clearly an attempt to exterminate in whole or in part and entire people? Isn’t that the legal definition of genocide? How can Israel claim to be invading Gaza, a territory it already occupies, a people it has kept as hostages in refugee camps and under a ruthless system of apartheid? Essentially, Israel is invading itself.

While I am frustrated and disappointed by most of the political leaders of the so-called liberal democracies, I am at least impressed by their citizens who have come out to protest Netanyahu’s bloodbath in Gaza. But I am also saddened that many Jewish people have been reduced by Netanyahu to become spectators in a genocide just like Adolf Hitler did to Germans. While Western leaders talk of Israel’s right to self-defense, they should remember that Hitler sought to exterminate Jews using the same justification. He claimed the Jews were undermining the German volk. His mission was to defend Germany against destruction by internal enemies – Jews. How can many Israelis fail to see these parallels?

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amwenda@independent.co.ug