Why Gaza's Attack On Israel Made Sense To Palestinians & Why It Doesn't Make Sense To Call It "Barbaric"

image by Ahmed Abu Hameeda

Gaza’s World War II Strategy In Its Resistance To Illegal Occupation..

On October 7, 2023 the people of Gaza used the same strategy to resist Israel’s 75 year brutal occupation and pogrom on them, as was used by both the World War II Allies and the Jews of Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto to resist the illegal occupation and genocide of Nazi Germany.

Gaza (Not Hamas) Attacked Israel

To unpack this World War II comparison, we first need to establish some basic reality that is being obscured and twisted by Israel propaganda. In 2006, Gazans democratically voted to elect Hamas to run their government and their military responses to Israel’s illegal occupation. Gazans have not made any move since then to change that decision.

That election was personally observed, and assessed as legitimate, in a report by former US President Jimmy Carter for the Carter Center, in which Carter stated “It seemed obvious to us and other observers that the election was orderly and peaceful and that there was a clear preference for Hamas candidates even in historically strong Fatah communities. Even so, we were all surprised at the enormity of the Hamas victory.”

Comparing Hamas & Northern Ireland’s Sinn Féin

In that 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, shifting 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.

US & Israel Quash Gaza Election & Launch 2 More Decades Of Brutal Occupation

Israel and the US recognized and feared, that this powerful shift by Hamas to a primarily political strategy would likely succeed and would give Gaza a moral high ground, as well as stronger connections with other Arab states. This would reduce Western power and control in the region. So in response to the election results, the US and Israel immediately declared the elected Hamas government an illegitimate “terrorist” organization and launched a new siege and war on Gaza to keep Palestine under brutal occupation. This enabled Israel to continue expanding into Palestinian territory, and the US to further justify its widespread military “War on Terror” interventions in the Middle East.

Regardless, the Gazans’ election of Hamas leaders makes clear that when Israel lashed out with mass bombings and a vicious blockade of Gaza in response to the October 7, 2023 attack, it was purposely and knowingly bombing the people of Gaza and their duly elected government, not merely the cartoon bad guy it melodramatically labels “Hamas”. Indeed, the reason to this day, that Israel and the US continue to repeat the perpetual mantra “Hamas.. Terrorist.. Hamas.. Terrorist..” is to continue to disappear the fact that Gaza has a legitimate government, and that government (as early as 2006) declared it was ready to recognize Israel and make peace (a peace the US and Israel do not want).

Defining Israeli "Civilians” & Deciding If Gaza Attacks Were "Illegal" Or "Barbaric"

Now since we've unpacked that the fighters who attacked Israel were Gazans fighting to defend their people, and not “Hamas Terrorists” the next reality we need to sort out is, just who can we legitimately label as an Israeli “civilian”? And by extension, just what exactly does it mean to say that Gazan soldiers attacked Israeli “civilians”.

As most know, nearly all adults in Israel are mandatorily recruited into the Israel military, and can be called up to military service (almost invariably to corral, harass, and/or attack Palestinians). So while it seems clear Gazan soldiers engaged in some brutal and unacceptable attacks on, and kidnappings of, truly innocent children and elders, we need to scrutinize and question the broad brush portrayal in the Western media that the Gazan attacks were nothing but mass terrorism on innocents.

Once we remember that nearly every single able bodied Israeli adult who was caught up in those attacks was also a soldier, that should cause us serious pause before believing the current and perpetual wailing and gnashing of teeth by Israel, the US, Europe, and so many politicians and pundits, that these attacks were somehow nothing but wild “terrorist barbarism” when that doesn't fit the facts. The Gazan fighters in those October 2023 attacks were fully mindful that in every location they targeted, they were going up against trained Israeli soldiers.

A Justification?

Does this justify the war crimes Gazans did commit, both in “collateral” damage and in purposeful kidnapping of hostages who were clearly not all Israeli military? Of course not. And after the current conflict ends, any Gazan soldiers who committed war crimes should face court for those crimes, just like any other soldier.

But Israel’s mandatory military service does remind us that the simplistic cartoonish Western portrayal of the Gazan attacks as nothing but crazed illegal mayhem, amounts to a typical war-time PR fairy story, and does not fit the actual complex reality of Gaza’s military mobilization to defend its people and lands, from decades of murder and imprisonment hammered down on them by Israel. Independent reports are now emerging which debunk hyperbolic Western and Israeli claims about the Gaza attacks. 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.*

This then, turns us to the why and how of Gaza’s military action. Why did those Gazan fighters engage an attack in which they knew it was inevitable that truly innocent civilians (not just conscript Israeli soldiers) would be kidnapped, harmed, and killed? Why did they engage in a strategy they knew would cross multiple lines in breach of the laws of war? The answer, is that the Gazans felt they had no choice, just as did the Allies in World War II.

Gaza’s Desperate Situation

There is a credible logic to what Gaza did in its attack. I’m not going support or oppose that logic in this essay. (Instead I’ll just describe it as a fact on the ground.) However I can show how, to the Gazans, it makes sense. But first we have to set the background and identify the cause of Gaza’s desperation.

For 75 years, and with particular brutality in Gaza since 2006, Israel has perpetually and illegally killed and displaced innocent Palestinians in order to take their lands, and is continuing to do so, showing no signs of stopping. Since 1948, Israel’s relentless illegal war and occupation, has resulted in over 100,000 direct Palestinian deaths due to war, along with the displacement and impoverishment of millions of Palestinians, arguably leading to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths over the past 75 years due to appalling Palestinian living conditions. This situation is nothing less than a living nightmare from which Gazans can never wake up.

Should Palestinian Civilians Be The Only Civilians To Suffer & Die?

So the Gazans know for the foreseeable future, innocent men, women & children will suffer and die, nearly all of them Palestinians. Since Gazans know, no matter what they do, innocent civilians will suffer and die, their first thought should naturally be the very same thought experienced by the World War II Allies in addressing the millions of innocent civilians terrorized and killed by Nazi occupation and war. If innocents will die, why should all of them be our people?

And the Gazans’ next thought would be: If no innocent Israelis die, then Israelis will not have any connection to, or internal comprehension of, the innocent deaths Israel’s occupation is causing us. If innocent Israelis don’t experience what we experience, they won’t act to stop it.

So Gazans, with all of this in mind, made the same desperate strategic choice the Allies did in World War II, and visited en masse for the first time, the same civilian death and suffering, as that which has been, for decades, visited by Israel on the Palestinians.

Justification Of The State?

Can this decision by Gaza as a state be justified? I don't know. After World War I and World War II, seeing the horror of such strategies, the UN, at least on paper, made them illegal war crimes. But those grim strategies have continued to be used ever since, including by the US in every single one of its wars, and of course, by Israel.
Now Gaza, is also using them.

We can decry that all of these players, including the Gazans, are in clear violation of the laws of war (to the extent that it is even rational to believe that such laws will ever be followed). And we can rightly say that neither the US, Israel, Gaza or anyone else should continue such violations. But we can’t sit back in hypocritical horror, protesting all too loudly, as we see Gazans fighting back with the very same tactics being used against them, and that were used by the Allies in World War II.

The Logic Of The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - Why Gaza Attacked Knowing The Israeli Response Would Be Devastating

Now. Even if we grant all that has been established above, and we exercise at least some restraint in how harshly we judge the Gazans for their attack, there remains one nagging question to answer.

The Gazan fighters certainly knew, that if they carried out such a massive deadly attack on Israelis, the backlash from from Israel (as it has always been in the past for lesser assaults) would be even more extreme, and an order of magnitude more devastating. And this has certainly been the case. So knowing this, why the hell did Gaza do it?

The answer is made clear by looking at how the Jews in Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto responded to similarly desperate and impossible conditions under Nazi occupation. A web search on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II, reveals an astounding and inspiring story of courage, action, and strategic common sense in response to impossible odds, which marked a turning point in the war against Germany.

The Uprising in 1943

Much like Gaza, the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw Poland was essentially an open air prison, with appalling living conditions, and with certain death awaiting hundreds of thousands - not just due to the conditions, but also due to the fact that beginning in 1942 Germany had been repeatedly deporting Jews from the Ghetto, into the nearby Treblinka Death Camp, where they were mass executed in gas chambers.

Once it became clear to those in the Warsaw Ghetto that so called “relocation” trains were actually taking their people to a death camp, hundreds of Ghetto residents made the only sensible choice they could under such circumstances, and decided to fight back against the death camp deportations. They planned for and organized their armed resistance for months and then fought back in 1943. At first they made surprising military gains, but eventually the Germans simply attacked them with a decisively larger force, put down the uprising, went on to destroy the entire Warsaw Ghetto, and then used the area to build a concentration camp. Tens of thousands more Jews were killed.

Resistance Matters, Even When Followed By Obliteration

But the uprising, even though it literally resulted in the burning and razing of the entire Warsaw Ghetto to the ground, was far from futile. It inspired all of Europe in its resistance to the Nazis, and triggered a larger citywide uprising in Warsaw, which, though also defeated, had the effect of weakening Germany into further decline.

The Jews who launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising knew full well that it would almost certainly result in the destruction of the entire Ghetto, and the deaths of far more Jews than Nazis, but they engaged that fight anyway, because they preferred dying on their feet to a gas chamber, they knew it was important to make the Germans pay a toll in lives for what they were doing, and they simply made the sensible calculation that fighting back in the face of near certain death could tilt the struggle in Europe more toward winning, even if the Ghetto was wiped out.

In October of 2023 the people of Gaza made the same choice, to fight back against a brutal, decades long Israeli occupation that had already directly killed over 100,000 Palestinians, and would likely continue to kill at least as many more, if something was not done to shift global public opinion and reaction more strongly against Israel.

Against nearly impossible odds, that shift, is exactly what the Gazan fighters accomplished.

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*NOTE: This report was edited on December 21, 2023 to add a sentence and link, citing recent admissions by Israel that it engaged in heavy fire on its own civilian population, during October 7 battles with Gazan fighters.

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.