By Jack Rosen, President of the American Jewish Congress
We have been here before. The task of clearing Gaza of militant control is daunting, but not impossible. We did something similar in post-Nazi Berlin, against an enemy more powerful and entrenched than Hamas is today inside a tiny Mediterranean enclave.
In Berlin, it required strategic clarity and multilateral cooperation. We neutralized both the territory and tools that enabled a violent ideology to destabilize Europe and the world.
We face a similar situation in Gaza. It is a daunting task, but not impossible. We can stop an ideology that has imposed war on Palestinians and Israelis and radicalized the region and the world.
The West, Israel, and our Arab and Muslim partners have an opportunity to remove an emerging Iranian extremist outpost on the Mediterranean, deliver a blow to violent extremism that uses religion and political grievances as a cover, and decisively hit back at the Antisemitism that drove a fanatical group to commit the worst act of violent hatred against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
The stakes are high. The cost of not acting now will be borne by moderates across the region – Arabs and Israelis. This will also impact Western societies. Inaction can embolden a nascent disturbing trend – seen both at home here in America and in Europe – where embracing antisemitism and cheering a terror group has become synonymous with supporting Palestinian aspirations. Radicals must not be allowed to expropriate legitimate Palestinian aspirations. Moreover, Hamas’ Oct. 7 carnage in southern Israel threatens to normalize and mainstream attacks on Jewish people and identity as a legitimate expression of opinion on Palestinian-Israel conflict.
Skeptics are unnecessarily adding a halo of invincibility around Hamas – exemplified by refrains that the group’s ideology is pervasive, and that fighting Hamas is an exercise in futility. This is false. And dangerous.
There are two experienced armed forces on the ground that have fought battles against Hamas militants since 2005: the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and the security forces under the Palestinian Authority — also known as the Palestinian Security Forces. Both have battled Hamas; know the terrain and people and have two decades’ worth of experience fighting violent extremism and militancy.
In fact, what Hamas did on Oct. 7 – killing babies in their cribs and executing a ruthless planned assault on Israeli civilians – is something this terror organization has already done to Palestinians who refuse to adhere to its ideology.
Between 2005 and 2007, around 450 Palestinian security personnel lost their lives to Hamas terrorism, according to Palestinian Authority records. In one such incident, three sons of Bahaa Baalousha, a colonel in Palestinian Authority intelligence, were killed along with the driver on the way to school when Hamas gunmen opened fire in December 2006. The brutal killing shocked the Palestinian public in that year, and Palestinian Authority accused Hamas of auctioning the car off after the murder. Palestinians affiliated with groups opposed to Hamas were executed in front of their children. The Palestinian Authority honors the victims even today and remembers them as martyrs to a coup attempt that Hamas executed, which resulted in seizing power in Gaza. There is a long list of atrocities that Hamas committed against Gazans and Palestinians before it added Israeli civilians to the list.
Working with its own intelligence and sometimes in cooperation with counterparts in the Palestinian Authority, Israel has taken out some of the most ruthless Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders and commanders.
Officers in the Israeli military and Palestinian officers who battled Hamas during the Palestinian civil war over a decade ago understand what it means to liberate Gaza from Hamas. They can do it again.
We need to disrupt the ability of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and its Iranian backers to set rules of the game on launching attacks and negotiating ceasefires and ransom deals. This is what the IDF is doing now. We must not afford the aggressor any opportunity to dictate the terms and circumstances of the response.
Hamas has perfected an influence operation in the decade and half it has controlled Gaza. It has the resources to run that operation, thanks to years of siphoning off the Strip’s revenues and living off its economy. Censorship on real Gazan voices remains intact since the start of the war as most indigenous voices in or from Gaza avoid getting on the wrong side of the militant group. Many voices from Gaza that speak to international media repeat Hamas talking points and are unable to come up with any criticism of the terrorist group. Local journalists in Gaza working with international media often comply with militant instructions to avoid a violent end.
The ideology that drives Hamas might survive once a military operation decimates the group’s infrastructure of terror. Violent ideologies can simmer for decades; Nazism is still around on the fringes. But that is not a reason not to wrap up Hamas terror enterprise in Gaza. The United States worked with NATO allies and with Pakistan to dismantle Al-Qaeda. Saudi Arabia and Egypt eradicated Hamas’s ideological cousins in their territories, and America worked with international partners to successfully obliterate the Islamic State. Surely, Hamas can be taken care of.
For Hamas to walk scot-free from the devastation it caused across Israel and Gaza will allow it to return stronger with emboldened allies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
Israel has the right to self-defense. It should get support from the international community and the Arab and Muslim states to deal with this threat that impacts all. A delay in action now will make achieving the goal harder.
A ceasefire now will hurt Palestinians, Israel, and moderate Arab and Muslim states and will empower Iran and its network of terror proxies.
We waited too long when the annihilation of six million Jews in Nazi gas chambers steadily proceeded. In their memory, and the memory of those killed in Gaza and Israel in Hamas’ war, let us not let indecision cause a second Holocaust.
(Photo Credit: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)
