When the Pope Francis hosted a joint prayer at the beginning of June together with the President Shimon Peres and Mahomoud Abbas, only to pious and compassionate sentimentality of the affectationate humanity it might have seemed as a significant step towards achieving any kind of peace in Israel. Rather, it was a signal that the things have, if fact, gone out of control and that all is in God’s now. Indeed, it was not long before the conflict between the Israeli forces and Hamas escalated with the intensity unseen since 2012; however it is difficult to predict how and when it will de-escalate this time.
A brief
reflection on the circumstances that led to the latest conflict may
only provide a vague outline of the complexity of the present
situation, but it can relativise the passionate bias found especially
in the Western public sentiment, which is mainly a result of
selective media reports. First of all, it is important to note that
it has become customary to report on the conflicts in Israel only
when Israeli forces take broad measures against terrorist attacks
coming from the territory controlled by the Hamas, which have become
a common thing in Israel. One should keep that in mind, because the
media reports do send an image the Israel is the main initiator of
violence and that this state terrorises its citizens of other
nationality. But, I will discuss the relations between the general
public in Western countries and Israel below.
The latest
conflict escalated when three Jewish students were abducted and
killed in the West Bank city of Hebron, after which some Israeli
extremists brutally murdered a Palestinian, which again led to
massive protests of Palestinians in Israel. This all occurred during
the ongoing intense missile attacks from the Gaza Strip on Israel,
for which the Israeli government accused the Hamas, because they come
from the territory controlled by the Hamas. The past year and a half,
that is, the period since the last broader military actions of the
Israeli forces against the organisation, the Hamas used for armament
and planning of large-scale attacks on Israel, favoured by other
conflicts in the region, especially the one in Syria. Soon the
Israeli forces discovered a “terrorist tunnel” that led from the
territory of the Gaza Strip to Israel and destroyed it. The Hamas
denied the accusations that they built it, which seemed very likely
because it would not be the first time they build tunnels leading to
Israeli territory for the purpose of abduction of Israeli soldiers
and civilians. After the tunnel was discovered, the Hams initiated a
series of missile attacks on Israel that resulted in retaliatory
actions by the Israeli forces on the Hamas positions in the Gaza
Strip, with large civilian casualties.
However, it
is important to note that the Hamas, although at least ideologically,
as the Palestinian branch of the Islamist organisation the Muslim
Brotherhood, retains the position of permanent war with Israel, it is
not entirely closed for the political solution of the conflict. The
agreement with Mahamoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian
Authority, and his Al Fatah, on the national unity government, signed
at the end of May in order to organise new elections. (The
Palestinians have not held elections since 2008, so none of the
parties have actual political and democratic credibility). This is
yet another important fact for understanding this conflict. By
forming a coalition with more or less cooperative Abbas and his Al
Fatah, the Hamas leaders corrupted their political credibility among
their radical supporters, making the political position of the Hamas
very weak. That is why the Hamas, in order to distance themselves
from the accusations that they may favour the political solution to
the conflicts with Israel and retain political monopoly over the Gaza
Strip, turned to violence and terrorist attacks. It is thus clear
that the escalation of the conflict, followed by massive civilian
casualties among the Palestinians, is a major opportunity for Hamas
to regain its shaken political authority. The Hamas is simply unable
to escape the logics by which the organisation gained its influence
and political power – the logics of terror and conflict escalation.
On the other
hand, in this situation Abbas can only play the card of
internationalisation of the conflict and seeking the diplomatic
mediation in order to stop the violence. But the general situation is
unfavourable for Abbas and his politics. The main diplomatic players
regarding the conflicts in Israel have always been Egypt at one side,
and the United States on the other. The Obama’s administration and
the Secretary of State John Kerry, however, have not shown noticeable
initiative regarding Israel; actually they managed to strain the
relations. The United States, under Obama, have, in fact, been on the
large diplomatic defensive, as the result of the disastrous foreign
policy moves, from the debacle with the so-called Arab Spring, to
Iraq, and finally the current conflict with Russia in which the
United States is it trying to retain its influence on EU partners,
Germany the most, with its increasing tendency towards an independent
foreign policy position. Therefore, the initiative was taken over by
Egypt. The Egyptian authorities, although still in the position of
the main mediator between the Hamas and the Israelis, they are,
actually, trying to distance themselves from the Hamas, and vice
versa. It is best seen on the example of the ceasefire proposed by
Egypt, which was accepted by Israel, but the military wing of the
Hamas calls accepting that proposal the act of “treason” and
continued the terrorist attacks on Israeli civilian targets.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the Hamas asked for the
removal of the blockade on the border between Egypt and the Gaza
Strip as a condition for accepting the truce. This was, of course,
was rejected by the Egyptians who are reluctant to see the Hamas
militants on their territory, because of the al-Sisi administration
and their disputes with the Muslim Brotherhood. Making of such
request by the Hamas must be perceived in the light of them being
aware it was not acceptable both to Egypt and Israel.
It is clear
that the Hamas proved its political immaturity in this conflict and
inability to emancipate itself in any way from its totalitarian
nature and terrorist methods. To be more precise, any attempt to
distance itself from the aforesaid essence brings them back even more
to the position of permanent war with Israel. The wall the situation
in Israel reached is the wall of the Hamas. In such situation Israel
has only two options. The first is to continue the strategy of
returning fire to the Hamas attacks, which obviously has not yielded
much result, as it means that the Israelis are, in a way, subject to
the logics and political dynamics determined by the Hamas, and –
the second option is to undertake large-scale measures in order to
break the military strength of the Hamas, which would then deprive
this organisation of their most important asset, and enable again the
possibility of the coalition with Al Fatah and the elections.
However, in short terms, this could shake the position of cooperative
Abbas, mainly because of dysfunctionality of the above mentioned
international diplomatic mediation efforts.
In any
event, the escalation of the conflict in an attempt by the Hamas to
gain a favourable position at the forthcoming elections, by pushing
Al Fatah aside, and thus ensure the electoral victory. Of course, if
holding the elections has been the plan in the first place, and this
is a rather optimistic assumption. Anyway, after the Hamas becomes
satisfied with their political position, the ceasefire will come. The
only question is whether they will think their position is that
superior they do not need the elections, or they will embrace the
elections. The conflict in Israel we are witnessing at the moment is
merely the Hamas’ electoral campaign style using militarist means.
It is sad though that such unstable and unpredictable organisation
holds the keys to war and peace in the Middle East and to have such
political significance.
In addition
to this, what also works in favour of the Hamas policy and the
escalation of conflicts is the treatment of the topic by the Western
media. The image constructed by the media is selective, twisted and
altered beyond recognition to such extent that it is very hard to
accept it is just a matter of ignorance and misinformation. The media
do exactly what suits the Hamas – they ignore the political context
of the conflict, i. e. the Hamas struggle for power and influence
among the Palestinians, and report solely on the Palestinian civilian
casualties. This creates an image of Israel being the aggressor,
whereas the Hamas is portrayed as the defender of the rights of the
Palestinian people. By insisting on the victimological approach and
appealing to the emotions of the general public and compassion with
the civilian casualties, they obstruct the rational approach to the
matter. Such emotionalistic appeals are merely an ideological
propaganda in order to support the Hamas’ agenda. The solution of
the conflict has to be political, and in this conflict the only side
that does not want a political solution is the Hamas.
We could
write extensively on the secret love and complicity between the
Western left-winged media and terrorist organisations such as the
Hamas. The thing I would like to draw attention to is the rise of
anti-Semitist sentiment among the general public in the Western
countries over the past few months, since the most recent escalation
of the conflict in Israel. If we see what is going in social
networks, we find an overwhelming outburst of the anti-Semitism,
including calling for a boycott of Israeli products, refusals of
European sports clubs to play their matches in Israel, anti-Israeli
protests, and even open approval of Hitler’s policy of annihilation
of the Jews. This turned into a joint effort of people with very
different ideological profiles – Muslims and Christians, notorious
anti-Semites, capitalism haters, but also intellectually inarticulate
libertarians – all of which eventually merged into a lefty
anti-Semitist propaganda, cloaked as a struggle for the human rights
of the Palestinians, terrorised by the Israelis. As we know, the
anti-Semitism is outlawed in the West after the Holocaust, but it
managed to live on within a matrix of the leftist ideology. This
ideology is still a politically correct medium for expressing
anti-Semitism. This may sound strange only to those who perceive
anti-Semitism as an isolated phenomenon related only to the short
period of the Nazi rule. Nevertheless, the anti-Semitism in the West
is not a short episode related to the Nazism and genocide on the Jews
in Europe, but rather one of the constants defining the political
thought in the West. The anti-Semitism in the West is alive and well
thanks to existence, or even dominance, of the leftist ideological
paradigm.
In one
of my earlier articles I tried to show how the anti-Semitism is
related to a mythical fear of trade and that the merchant, that is a
capitalist entrepreneur, is an archetypical representative of someone
who disturbs the harmony of the community with his business and bears
the properties of something foreign and impure. The Greek word for a
merchant is “stranger” (xenos);
the xenophobia was initially the fear of trade and traders, those who
mediate between the known and the unknown world. In the world of
Antiquity, the nations of traders, such as Phoenicians and
Carthaginians, were outcast as the source of all sorts of horrors and
threats to the internal harmony of the community. The Venetians bore
the similar stigma of “impureness”, earthliness and crime during
their expansion based on the trade (so evident in Shakespeare’s
“The Merchant of Venice”). Still, it was the Jews who, after the
destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and their exile, had to endure
this type of anti-capitalist and anti-trade sentiment in the most
profound way. The anti-Semitism was the expression of the
anti-capitalist spirit in the Western societies.
It is
true that this spirit can be related to Christianity as well, that
is, within the notion of the Jews as the nation of “godslayers”.
However, only with the rise of capitalism and emergence of the
socialist movement in the 19th
century do these sentiments assume political form as political
anti-Semitism, the more dangerous than the religion anti-Semitism
before that. It is a known fact that the political anti-Semitism was
first to be articulated by the socialist theoreticians. The Jew
becomes the embodiment of a Capitalist, and the whole arsenal of
anti-Semitic sentiment became embedded within the anti-capitalist
conspiracy theories about evil bankers and capitalists, existing as a
foreign body in the social organism. No wonder that the Jacobin
France was the first to adopt this kind of political anti-Semitism,
as already being the main centre of anti-Semitism in Europe, later
accompanied by its Jacobin followers throughout Europe. This
anti-capitalist in nature and politically bolstered anti-Semitism
assumed its ideological form in the Nazi movement and its practical
realisation in “the final solution”.
One
may ask – and what has it got to do with the Hamas? How should we
interpret this secret alliance between the Arabic anti-Judaism,
European anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli propaganda of the leftist
media? Is this Arabic anti-Judaism not merely a reaction to the
brutal terror of the Israeli state against the local Arab people,
that is, the Palestinians? Well, not really. If we were to look for
the origins of the Arabic anti-Semitism today, we should not try to
find in the reality or Islam – this being the standard popular
interpretations – but in the Islamist ideology. The political
Islam, or the Islamism, and its anti-Semitist ideology should not be
mistaken for the Islam as a religion. After all, there is no
anti-Semitism or anti-Judaism in Quran or in the Arabic world until
the 19th
century that is similar to the one in the Christian world. Also, it
is hard to believe that any religious teaching would be approved by
the atheist and secular European leftist public we have today.
The
contemporary Islamist movement is primarily a modern political
phenomenon, influenced by the French Enlightenment movement,
political Jacobinism and their totalitarian ideological successors,
Communism and Nazism, and not by the teachings of Islam. Ian Buruma
and Avishai Margalit in their book titled Occidentalism:
The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies managed to show that
the political Islam of today is nothing but an adjusted copy of the
modern totalitarian movements (Communism and Nazism). It is no
coincidence that the first modern radical Islamist movements emerged
in Egypt, which was under a strong influence of the French
revolution. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna,
was highly influenced by the Enlightenment, Jacobin ideas and
totalitarian European movements, among which he admired Hitler and
Mussolini the most. Thus, he tried to reform the Islam according to
“spirit of the time”, ascribing the ideas of equality, freedom
and brotherhood to the teachings of Mohammed. Al-Banna was no
adherent of Islamic conservatism or traditional teachings of Quran –
nor is the Islamism some kind of teaching that advocates traditional
values, as some knowledgeable Western observer may think – but he
was a typical secular intellectual, who usually distanced himself
from the conservative religious circles and their elitism. His
student and the second most important ideologist of the Muslim
Brotherhood, Sayyd Qutb, thought very highly of Lenin and Marx,
claiming that the socialism is a system superior to the capitalism.
To search for the connections between the political Islam and the
teachings of Quran is about the same as trying to find sources of
Lenin’s and Hitler’s ideology in the Bible. It is merely a
perception of the Enlightenment mind that, naturally, finds the
source of all evil in the religion, while the evil is in the very eye
of the beholder.
This
intellectual setting and ideological brotherhood is crucial for
understanding the present-day Islamist anti-Semitism, as well as the
popularity of the teaching among the Hamas supporters in Israel.
Also, here we come to the secret ideological brotherhood between the
Islamists in Israel and the general public in the Western countries,
especially in the leftist circles and media. Well, they are indeed
ideological brothers in their struggle against the Jews and Israel as
the embodiments of the evil capitalism. Through their support for the
Hamas, wrapped in the maudlin human rights ideology, the progressive
Europeans can now finally fully express the love for their own
ideological heritage, already deeply compromised in their native
world.
Our support
for the Hamas is a mirror image of our love for our wicked past,
which we have not overcome. Alas, this support the Westerners show to
the totalitarian movements, presented as the struggle for the human
rights of the oppressed, today more than anything – even the Hamas
– overshadows and blocks the hope that the people of Israel will
manage to overcome the legacy of conflict and turn to the peace and
their future. The fact is that praying for the peace and showing
compassion for the victims will not make any difference. Whether the
Hamas will continue or discontinue their policy of conflict, terror
and annihilation of the Jews is the key to the problem. In reality,
the Hamas today is not supported by the majority of the Palestinians
or by the Muslims in general, but among the Western leftists policy,
prone to totalitarianism and anti-Semitism, which tries to honour
their fanaticism and terrorism as the just struggle for human rights.
By doing so, the progressive and highly praised European left-wingers
actually return to their dark totalitarian roots and their endemic
anti-Semitism. This is the ideological pact between the Western
leftists and the Islamists that hinders any hope for a peaceful
solution to the conflict in Israel.
* The article
was originally published on the blog page of “Večernji list” on
18 July 2014.
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