The world overnight has been marking the first anniversary of the Hamas atrocity that set off the current round of carnage in the Middle East. Politicians and opinion leaders have had much to say, some of it wise, some foolish. I want to single out one in particular; I’ve previously criticised independent senator David Pocock, but in this statement I think he sets exactly the right tone:
Today we remember the almost 1200 people killed and the more than 250 people taken hostage in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel. It is a terrible anniversary for many in our community, and around the world, with almost 100 hostages still being held.
This greatest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust has caused much pain and suffering for Jewish people around the world, including in our community. I continue to join with our government and so many others in calling for the immediate release of all remaining hostages. This is a day to commemorate those lives.
Without diminishing their grief, I also recognise the pain, suffering and mourning of Palestinians. In the year since Hamas’ terrorist attack, the IDF has killed over 40,000 people in Gaza, including women, children, aid workers and journalists. Their attacks have caused one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes of our generation and it must end.
By being sensible, he has naturally enough attracted fire from both sides: Hamas’s apologists are appalled that he should describe the attack as terrorism and lead with the suffering of its victims, while Likud’s apologists are appalled that he should acknowledge, even in the third paragraph, the subsequent harm inflicted on the Palestinians.
But although both groups of apologists are no doubt equally sincere – and, on a quick inspection, roughly equally represented in the comments section – there is an enormous disproportion in the influence that they have. Those who defend Hamas inhabit the fringe of public discourse, but Likud’s supporters control a major political party and a major “media” network, and their propaganda is so widespread that we rarely stop to notice how monstrous it is.
No-one really thinks that unleashing a war that has killed tens of thousands with no end in sight is a proportionate response to a single act of terrorism, even one as dreadful as last October’s. It only makes sense on one (or both) of two assumptions: either that Palestinian lives don’t count (at least to anywhere near the same extent as Jewish ones), or that the real object is not just the defeat of Hamas but a much larger and pre-existing project of geopolitical reconstruction.
Yet even people who can readily grasp the evil of blood-and-soil nationalism when it is promoted by Donald Trump or Viktor Orbán, or pursued on the ground by Vladimir Putin, seem blind to the ambitions of their soulmate, Benjamin Netanyahu. And Netanyahu’s example in turn inspires autocrats and ideologues around the world to continue inflaming racial conflict and sapping the foundations of democracy.
An essential element of Likud’s propaganda is the idea that the 7 October attack had no history but was a bolt from a clear blue sky; that everything was going just fine for the Palestinians and the peace process before Hamas wickedly chose to intervene. But this position only has to be stated for its absurdity to be obvious, at least to anyone who has a passing acquaintance with the last twenty years of the region’s history.
Netanyahu’s promise, to his voters and to his sponsors in the United States, had been that he could deliver peace without Palestinian rights. It worked for a short time (as these things usually do), but it could only be believed in as a long-term strategy by people who had already discounted the humanity of the Palestinians. Hamas were the ones who shattered the illusion, and they did so in barbaric fashion, but that it would ultimately shatter somehow was inevitable.
Twelve months on, the new version of the illusion is Likud’s claim that it can destroy not just Hamas but its other enemies as well on the battlefield. And perhaps it can, if Trump wins the election and gives it a free hand. But that too would be only a short-term success: even with American support, Israel is not strong enough to hold the whole region at bay, and new enemies will spring up at every turn.
For more on the whole depressing story you can read last November’s compilation of my thoughts over the years about Hamas. One passage in particular, from May 2011, strikes me now as especially prophetic:
It’s a common but rather strange misapprehension that intransigence can bring moderation to an adversary’s demands. …
In fact, of course, the reverse is usually the case: intransigence breeds intransigence, unmet demands are escalated not retracted, and concessions that were refused to moderates end up having to be made — with interest — to extremists.
The World is Not Enough 
Let’s look at this ‘genocide’ claim.
Hamas claims that 42,000 people have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023. I don’t believe this figure, but let’s assume that it’s correct. And let’s ignore the fact that 17,000 of those killed have been Hamas combatants. Let’s assume that all 42,000 have been innocent victims of Israeli genocide.
The Gaza Strip in 2023 had an estimated population of 2.1 million. That means that in one full year of committing genocide in Gaza, the Israelis have managed to kill only 2% of the population. Israel possesses one of the most powerful armed forces in the world. Gaza is a densely populated urban area, with virtually no air defences. Yet Israel has managed to kill only 42,000 people in a full year of committing genocide.
Let’s compare this with some other genocides in recent times.
* The Turks (who now accuse Israel of genocide), killed up to 1.5 million Armenians in two years (1915-17).
* In occupied Poland, the Germans killed 1.5 million Jews in 18 months in Action Reinhard (1942-43).
* In Hungary, the Germans and their Hungarian allies killed 430,000 Jews in three months (May-July 1944).
* In Nigeria, 3 to 4 million Igbo people were deliberately starved to death during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70).
* In Bangladesh, the Pakistani army killed 500,000 people in eight months (March-December 1971)
* In Rwanda, the Hutu killed 600,000 Tutsi in four months (April-July 1994).
* In Sudan, the army killed 200,000 people in the Darfur region in two years (2003-05), and is still doing so now.
It does seem strange that the Israelis, who have themselves, within living memory, experienced an attempted genocide, and who ought to be very clear about how to commit genocide, have proved so completely incompetent at committing genocide in Gaza.
Does it really need to be pointed out that if Israel wanted to commit genocide against the Gaza Palestinians, it could have killed everything living thing in Gaza ten times over by now, from the air, without risking the life of a single Israeli soldier?
Apparently, it does.
In fact, of course, this allegation is a deliberate and malicious falsehood, generated by Hamas and its sponsors in Iran, amplified by the Russian propaganda machine, and endlessly repeated by gullible fools in the world media, NGOs, academia and the western left.
The irony here is that Hamas has made absolutely no secret of its intention of committing genocide against the Jews, as they made clear on 7 October 2023. Iran and its other proxies, Hezbollah and the Houthis, are doing their best to commit genocide right now, by firing thousands of missiles at Israeli cities, with the sole intention of killing as many Jews as possible. (So far, they have only managed to kill one Palestinian, but it’s the thought that counts).
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Could not have said it better. The article itself starts off well with David Pockock’s statement – who could not regret innocent deaths on both sides and blame the real culprits, but then goes rapidly downhill, peddling its own propaganda. I stopped reading at the point where he accused Donald Trump of “blood and soil” i.e. Nazi nationalism.
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Yes.
No different to modern-day progressives claiming de Valera in Ireland was a ‘fascist’. Dev was a conservative Catholic Irish nationalist, not a ‘fascist’. Likewise, the ALP is only ‘centre-right’ as Adam Bandt and others claim if the ones making that claim are themselves far-left (of the average median voter).
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Two other claims that I haven’t made!
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Graham – Certainly the Nazis were “blood and soil” nationalists, but the term is much older & broader than that. I don’t see how it can reasonably be denied that the people I listed (Trump, Orbán, Putin & Netanyahu) all belong to that political tradition: they all believe that having the right bloodline gives certain people a claim to national territory to the exclusion of others, regardless of things like democracy or international law.
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Thanks Paul. You may not have noticed that I didn’t use the word “genocide” at all (nor did David Pocock, whom I quoted). I don’t think it’s a particularly useful debate to have; people should be able to agree that killing tens of thousands of people is a bad thing, without having to agree on the detail of whether or not it counts as genocide.
As it happens, the legal definition of genocide doesn’t require killing at all; the key thing is the intent to destroy a national group as such. I think it’s fair to say that Likud’s policy for a long time has been genocidal in its implications, since it’s based on the denial of the existence of Palestinian nationality. No doubt the same could be said of Hamas if it had anything like the same sort of power.
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Charles, I’m not criticising *you*, I’m criticising the far left like the Greens and pacifists who think that a ceasefire and forced Israeli withdrawal will help the ordinary Palestinian people et al.
Leaving Hamas in control of Gaza was not an option. Remember the Rhineland in 1936?
Remember Munich (both 1938 and 1972)?
I am happy to criticise my own party (the ALP) on issues where they are foolish or incompetent – the shitshow that was the asinine acts in the seat of Fowler in 2022 with Kenealy as dumping her on an Asian community at the expense of a well-qualified local candidate was extremely stupid, and the result was what the National Executive *deserved*.
But no western power is going to leap in and save Fatah or Hamas from their own folly.
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Paul – I don’t disagree with your view of Hamas, but I take much the same view of Likud. Yet the problem is that somehow both of them have to be brought to the table to talk peace.
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