by Justine Hemmestad, with help from Major Itamar Ben David
Our latest question for Major Itamar Ben David is from an anonymous source; he asks: “Why can’t Hamas be eradicated a year after October 7 as an army; and why can’t Hamas as a jihadist ideology that glorifies martyrdom be silenced and marginalized by the Gazan people themselves?” Ben David answers honestly: I absolutely love this question because it gives me an opportunity to clarify what Israel is dealing with, and also to point out the dramatic difference between a Western society and a traditional Muslim society. Hamas is not a gang in LA. Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, meaning it is the political and military embodiment of the most dominant ideology of the Sunni Muslim World after the collapse of “arab-nationalism” in 1967, following the Israeli victory in the Six-Day-War. Just so you’ll understand the power of this ideology - Turkey is held by the Muslim Brotherhood; Qatar and Al-Jazeera are the Muslim Brotherhood; the only president of Egypt that was actually democratically elected, Mohammed Mursi - is from the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinians (from both the West Bank and Gaza) in the only free and fair elections supervised and endorsed by Condoleezza Rice in 2006 and got 55% of their Parliament. Point is - this is not a gang that took over Gaza - this is a part of a massive ideological movement in the Muslim world. Now that we have established that - how come Hamas is still in Gaza? Hamas for decades now uses the “human sacrifice” strategy against Israel and the West. Meaning that they use our Western values in order to defeat us. How? They shoot at our civilians and commit suicide bombing attacks for decades (a war crime against Israelis, which nobody in the international community seems to care about), and when Israel responds they hide within their population deliberately - in order to maximize civilian casualties on the Palestinian side, so that they can show “the brutality of the Israelis” and drive the international community against Israel. It’s been going on for 30 years, and is nothing new. Israel in the past just like now defends its citizens by bringing war to the enemy’s doorstep and into their homes. The Palestinian society itself - some willingly and others unwillingly - harbor the terrorists, and even if they don’t want it they are forced to be complicit. They can’t object - entire families of Palestinians will be butchered (Daghmash family in Gaza for example). Add to that the fact that Hamas has 400 miles of tunnels under Gaza - all funded by Western taxpayer’s money - and the fact that they always wear civilian clothes and they have 100 hostages Israel wants to save as the West puts endless pressure on Israel to go easy on Gaza, and you’ll see why this war takes more than a year instead of a few months. As I mentioned earlier Hamas was elected by the Palestinians in 2006, not only because the Palestinians were indoctrinated for 5 generations to wage Jihad against the Jews (since the 1920s), they also voted for Hamas because they saw the Fatah movement and the Palestinian Authority as it is - a corrupt dictatorship that steals their aid money and gives jobs to an exclusive group of people. The Gazan society will not go against Hamas, inasmuch they curse them every day following the war that turned them into refugees. Yet Hamas stemmed organically from this society. I don’t think there was a single case of Hamas operatives being attacked by the civilians since the beginning of the war. Judging from the Gazan social media and how the Gazans express themselves - they very rarely criticize Hamas, and if they do - they do it in certain codes and within certain boundaries that don’t cross a line. Don’t expect the society to stop Hamas. Which brings us to the last and most difficult point to unpack and explain and the most challenging point for the Israeli policy makers: Can Hamas be defeated as an ideology? Can Israel De-radicalize the Gazan society and the Palestinians as a whole? Or in your words, “can Martyrdom ideology be dishonored,” “can the youth break this lifestyle?” Before I approach the actual answer - Let’s talk about two massive differences between a western society like America and a traditional Muslim society like Gaza: in America a person can choose many things: his religion, his community, his friends and nowadays - his gender. This freedom to choose nearly doesn’t exist in Gaza. The second difference - in America, even if you have a large family, it will never be as large as the Gazan families and it will never be all concentrated in one area. You need to understand that the tribes in Gaza - first, second, and third cousins - all live in the same area. It could easily be 500 people with literally the same grandfather or great grandfather - in one neighborhood or town/village. Some tribes are tens of thousands of people. When the entire society around you is literally related to you by blood - and they are the tribe that will provide you with protection, financial network and marriage- you can’t simply break away that easily. The Gazans can’t form their own opinion, they can’t choose an ideology or lifestyle other than the one of the clan, they don’t have freedom of expression, they can’t choose a wife from another clan (it is just impossible), they can’t work outside the network of the clan - they can’t choose their lifestyle. The suggestion that someone in Gaza will go against the armed forces of Hamas is not impossible. I can imagine a scenario that the IDF crushes Hamas to the point that the Gazans are no longer afraid of it but this will take another year or so. That brings me to the crucial question - can Israel as a matter of national security - de-radicalize the Gazans? When Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945 it went through the successful process of denazification. Yet I claim that the Gazan case and the Palestinian case - is way more difficult: in as much as Lutheran and Catholic Christianity in Germany preached against the Jews for centuries, Germany, just like the rest of Europe, experienced a secularization process that weakened the grip of the churches even before the war. In the case of Gaza the opposite happened - the Muslim Brotherhood movement is the Sunni Muslim religious and political attempt to answer the challenges of modernity and Western dominance - especially after the failure of an arab secular ideology (arab-nationalism) to do that. The Muslims in general and the Palestinians and Gazans in particular - try to find the answer to their “oppression by the west and Israel” - in Islam. So the religious sentiment was and is their hope. The Nazi-German society didn’t have an external source to support it after the defeat. That’s not the case in Gaza: they have a lot of strong moral, ideological and financial support: Iran, Turkey, Qatar, the West Bank, Hezbullah in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Radical Muslims in the West. That’s not even the entire list, there is more. The Gazans have continued support to hold their ground against Israel by Muslim individuals and countries, like Malaysia and Indonesia. Also consider that Nazi Germany was defeated, conquered and decided by super powers: US, UK, Russia and France. The Gazans are mainly facing Israel - 7.3 million Jews - and cowardly western countries that hesitate and have dwindling support in Israel’s war efforts, politically, diplomatically, and militarily. The German society had constructive foundations to build upon after the defeat. They were the leading culture of Europe in science, music, and more. To simplify - German society was caught in the Nazi madness for a while between 1933-1945, 12 years, and after a colossal military defeat they were able to return to other positive components and take it from there. This is very far from the situation in Gaza: the Gazans are marinated in Jihadist mentality for Generations. We can argue when the starting point of this mentality started - WW1 or 1948 or 1967 or 1987 or 2007- in all cases it will be longer than the 12 years of the Nazi rule in Germany. Nazi Germany was deradicalized by a combination of Western and Russian powers and positive German powers from within the society. The fact that the Allies were white, Christian, and a product of Western Culture, very likely made it easier. In contrast - how would Jewish Israel re-educate and de-radicalize the Muslims in Gaza? They will say, “The Jews? Those who are hated by Allah? Those who Allah’s anger is upon them will teach us the Muslims the right values? You have to be insane!” For all of these reasons and more, this seems like a mission that will require four massive efforts: 1- complete defeat of Hamas and ongoing military incursions to uproot every attempt by Hamas to rise again. 2- defeating Jihadism in its terms (check out our previous article). 3 - an actual change in the Islamic discourse, meaning actual religious leaders who will give a fight to the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda and ideology. 4 - actual intervention of the Arab world (22 countries) and the Muslim world (57 countries) in this process. As you can see these are all challenging conditions which are a bit far from the current reality. My sad conclusion is that Gaza won’t be a de-radicalize very soon, it will be a matter of more than one generation. Thank you for your Question.
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