It's Gaza, not Hamas

The Phrase “Israel’s War with Hamas” Denies That Israel’s War Is On Gaza & Denies The Gazans’ Right To Choose Their Own Leaders & Destiny..

image by Musa Zanoun

The various labels of the current genocide on Palestine which portray Israel as somehow “at war ‘with’ Hamas” are an insidious mind trick by Israeli and western media propagandists.

Israel’s War On Gaza

These “war with Hamas” labels conjure an illusion that there is some pitched battle between equally powerful adversaries. In reality Israel is mobilizing tens of billions of dollars of US made and funded high powered and high tech weaponry, in a massively disproportionate slaughter of tens of thousands, and displacement of millions, of innocent people - people whose representative government and fighters have almost no funding or weaponry whatsoever, with which to resist Israel’s literal carpet bombing of Gaza from the air.

Using the false trope “the war between Israel and Hamas” allows Israel to falsely portray its pogrom on Palestine as a righteous battle with ‘terrorists’ and to thereby completely disappear its past and current armed-to-the-teeth assaults designed to drive millions of Palestinians out of Gaza.

“War With Hamas” Denies Gazans Democratic Agency Over Their Own Lives

In 2006, Gazans democratically voted for Hamas to run their government and their military responses to Israel’s illegal occupation, in an election personally observed and assessed as legitimate by former US President Jimmy Carter. And while it is true that hundreds of thousands of Gazans who are adults today, were not old enough to vote in 2006, this doesn’t mean at all that they have not chosen Hamas to run their government and military.

On the contrary, the Gazan people have been forged and hardened by decades of a brutal occupation and a strangling economic blockade, and are some of the smartest and toughest people on Earth. If they no longer wanted Hamas to be in charge, they would rise up and demand a change. But Gazans have not made any such move since 2006 to change the results of that election.

We need to acknowledge that the Gazans are not helpless or passive participants, that they have their own common sense and power, and whether or not we understand why, the have chosen their leadership. We in the West (who do not remotely stand in the shoes of the Gazans) don’t have any business telling them otherwise, or denying the leaders they have chosen.

Comparing Hamas & Northern Ireland’s Sinn Féin

In that 2006 election, Hamas became a political party and government, not just a military force. This change was virtually identical to the shift in 1981 when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) re-engaged Sinn Féin as a political party in Northern Ireland, and transitioned from a solely military, to an ultimately successful joint political and military strategy to resist and end England’s subjugation of Northern Ireland.

Not only did Hamas make a similar shift in 2006 to become the leading political party and governing body of Gaza, but Hamas also made the dramatic decision that year to openly state on record, that it was ready to recognize Israel as a legitimate state and negotiate for peace, as long as Israel ended its illegal occupation and pulled back to the borders established before Israel expanded in 1967.

Gaza (Not Hamas) Attacked Israel

The fact that the Gazans have chosen Hamas to coordinate their government and military also means that Gaza’s attack on Israel was a legitimate assault in self defense by an independent Palestinian state, to resist an illegal and murderous occupying power which has engaged a 75 year genocide on both the West Bank and Gaza. (Israel’s unacceptable ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their lands did not start on October 8, 2023, it began in 1948 and has never stopped.)

Again, when we deploy the hasbarist narrative “Israel’s war with Hamas” we pull the rug out from under the deeper truth that it was Gaza and its people, as an independent state, under two-decades of nearly total economic blockade, and near complete surveillance and military control of their lives by Israel, who rose up.

The Gazans (not just their government) have astoundingly managed to maintain a strong resistance for those two decades, and succeeded on October 7, 2023 in mounting a jaw-droppingly effective military strike on their occupier. Israel’s propaganda game is to denigrate (as merely an Israeli war with ‘terrorists’) this clear and profound embarrassment to Israel’s power and credibility.

Acknowledging That Gazans Own Both Their Mistakes & Their Resistance Strategy

When we acknowledge the rightful democratic agency of the Gazan people, we also acknowledge that they own, and have the responsibility to address, any hubris or crimes that any of their fighters may have engaged in, on October 7. We should not be afraid of or shy away from that, we should welcome it. After the current crisis is over, international courts and the Gazan people themselves, have the responsibility to address any war crimes committed by Gazan fighters.

And it is crucial to note that independent reports are now emerging which show that, while Gazan fighters clearly engaged in some actions, such as kidnappings, which were illegal under international law, nevertheless Israeli and western corporate media have egregiously misrepresented and exaggerated Gazan fighters crimes on October 7. There are even multiple credible reports now, which show that potentially hundreds of civilian deaths that Israel falsely attributed to Gazan fighters, were actually caused by intentional ‘friendly fire’ by Israel’s IDF under orders from their leadership.

Gazan Resistance Belongs To The Gazans

It is also up to the Gazans to decide whether the seriousness and deadliness of the Gazan attack on Israel was either a mistake, or was a success that lifted up their cause. Those of us in the West who seek to armchair quarterback the Gazans’ struggle from half way across the planet by finger-wagging to insist they resist ‘peacefully’ and lecturing that Gazan attacks on Israel are self defeating because they invite an inevitable brutal military response, frankly need to knock it off and allow the Gazans, who have eight decades of experience in dealing with Israel’s occupation, to decide for themselves when armed resistance is warranted.

Both the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto under Nazi genocide, and black South Africans under white Afrikaner apartheid, successfully engaged in military attacks in self defense against similarly belligerent and deadly oppressors. While such military resistance at the time seemed utterly hopeless and counterproductive, in the end, it proved to be vital in bringing down the Nazi and Afrikaner regimes. Westerners have neither the experience, nor the right, to tell the Palestinians how to coordinate their own resistance.

Note: My previous substack, Why Gaza's Attack On Israel Made Sense To Palestinians & Why It Doesn't Make Sense To Call It "Barbaric" unpacks the similarities between the strategy of Gaza’s October 7 attack on Israel, and the strategies of the World War II allies, and of the Jews in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The Labels & Phrases We Use To Frame The Palestine Narrative Matter

Because of all the realities laid out above, it is crucial that we not participate in any way with Israel’s fake and disempowering misrepresentation of its pogrom to crush the resistance in Gaza as a “War with Hamas”. We must properly call it what it is: Israel’s illegal, genocidal, war on Gaza.

And by extension we need to get our facts straight about what actually happened during Gaza’s attack on Israel on October 7, and give the Gazans credit for managing with that attack, to completely change the game and turn global public opinion more squarely than in any previous time in modern history, against Israel and its unacceptable, illegal colonial domination over Palestine.

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Eric Brooks is a full time grassroots organizer specializing in the interplay of global capitalist economics and war, with energy policy, the climate and extinction crisis, and environmental justice.