In a culture where terrorists in the field don’t wear uniforms, where large families have sizable stocks of weapons, and where children are taught to kill and die, the externals don’t matter.
Daniel Greenfield | June 14, 2024
Palestinians line up in the Gaza Strip to receive drinkable water numbers while battles take place between Israel and Hamas in the southern city of Rafah on May 20, 2024. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
Americans expected Osama bin Laden to be found in a cave in Afghanistan. In reality, he was living comfortably in a military town in Pakistan under the protection of local authorities. Similarly, Israeli hostages, including the four who were rescued last Saturday, have come home telling stories of being kept captive in “civilian” households.
Many in the West fundamentally misunderstand what Islamic terrorism is. It’s not a “fringe group of extremists,” as politicians and the media describe it, but an ethnic and religious movement. The religious values of Islamic terrorists are universally shared by the vast majority of Muslims, while the ethnic ones ground Islamic warfare in the interests of specific clans and families.
Hamas is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and has a widespread base of support across the Muslim world, which is dotted with branches of the Brotherhood. But its ethnic power base is also grounded in the key clans and families that control Gaza. That is why Hamas still retains the support of the majority of the Muslim colonists currently occupying Gaza. It’s also why those same “civilians” held Israeli hostages prisoner and could be trusted not to inform on them.
The latest Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll shows that 71% of Gazans support the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, and 56% expect Hamas to win the war. Some 62% in Gaza are happy Hamas’s performance during the war, and 59% want Hamas to stay in power.
That’s because they are Hamas and the terror group is also them.
The “Palestinian” myth is that the Muslim colonists occupying parts of Israel are the “indigenous” people. The reality is that they were Arab settlers who arrived with and after the Islamic conquest of Israel. Some, like the notorious Husseini clan, which produced Hitler’s mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, were relatively recent arrivals. The most powerful and wealthiest of these large families took control of urban areas, as the Husseinis tried to do in Jerusalem, and became a vital part of the Ottoman feudal order, serving as mayors and muftis. When the Ottomans were defeated, the clans fought to reclaim their power with movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, also known as Hamas.
Hamas is an ideological Islamist movement, but its control over Gaza depends on these large families. That’s why the idea that most people have that Hamas is a fanatical movement that exists apart from ordinary people and can be fought and defeated apart from them is wrong.
That’s also why so few of the hostages have been rescued. Like the recently rescued four, the hostages are largely dispersed among “civilian” clan families across neighborhoods controlled by them. These families are formally civilian households, but many of their members are affiliated with Hamas. Rather than being an army whose members belong foremost to Hamas, they are more like the mafia and belong foremost to their extended clan, and choose to lend their support to Hamas.
It’s not just that Hamas uses human shields, which it certainly does, it’s that its infrastructure depends on clans whose adults provide fighters, and whose women and children act as human shields for the greater glory of the clan and Islam. The same clans that will kill teenage girls for violating family honor will also serve up even younger children as human shields for honor.
There is no way for Israel to rescue its hostages without going into dense neighborhoods under the control of the clans to get them out. And that will lead to firefights and “Black Hawk Down” moments. Clan members, who never identify themselves as such, will cry that they were massacred. And foreign leaders and the media will condemn the deaths of “civilians.”
Defeating Hamas without civilian casualties is impossible because the Islamic terrorist group not only operates among civilians but is rooted in the society of Gaza. The clans that run Gaza, that provide the manpower that controls UNRWA institutions, and that are the mainstays of Hamas are also the large families that dominate the businesses, cultural and religious life in Gaza.
There’s no meaningful distinction between civilians and Hamas. Some clans reject Hamas authority and Israel has tried to solicit some of them to run Gaza. For now, with few results. The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq had similarly depended on swaying certain clans, elders and warlords into abandoning Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, with very temporary success.
Eventually the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, rebranded as the Islamic State, returned. And some of the same men we had armed and trained turned their guns on us. It is an almost inevitable outcome of counterinsurgency (COIN). When bringing democracy to the Muslim world fails, Westerners begin competing with jihadists for the support of the clans, only to be stabbed in the back.
The jihadists have the Quran on their side. To Muslims, their terrorism will always be more righteous than our fumbling efforts to avoid civilian casualties and collateral damage. Appealing to moderates or promising a better life will not win their support. On the contrary, it only infuriates the imams in their mosques and the influential clan leaders into opposing us.
Instead, we must reckon with the reality that there are few civilians in Gaza or the Muslim world generally. And those who legitimately are civilians should be measured by their deeds, not their clothing. In a culture where terrorists in the field don’t wear uniforms, where large families have sizable stocks of weapons, and where children are taught to kill and die, the externals don’t matter.
There are no civilians in Gaza. The vast majority of the population supports Hamas or some Islamic terrorist movement. Only a tiny minority opposes Islamic terrorism and wants peace.
The distinction is not between soldiers, terrorists and civilians, but enemies and non-combatants. Israel and Western nations should stop thinking about civilians, a concept that does not apply in a battlespace where terrorists wear street clothes and entire neighborhoods are controlled by clans that hide hostages in plain sight, and think about enemies and neutrals.
An enemy is anyone, regardless of clothing or sex, who is aligned with Islamic terrorists.
Every poll continues to show that the vast majority of those in Gaza are aligned with the enemy. And if that were not the case, the war would have long since ended once locals informed the authorities of where the hostages are and where the remaining Hamas terrorists are set up.
Israel is not just at war with an organization, but with an enemy culture. As is most of the world, whether it chooses to admit it or not. The war is not defined by what they wear, but by what they think. As long as human shields, female suicide bombers and child soldiers abound, the war cannot be fought by treating civilians as noncombatants while hunting elusive terrorists.
The only way to defeat an enemy is to fight him as he is, not as we would like him to be.
It would be a far cleaner and neater war if Islamic terrorists fought like conventional armies. They do not. And it is time to fight them on their own terms instead.
Hamas can’t be defeated by waiting until its terrorists take off their civilian clothes and put on uniforms. Hamas are the civilians. They are the ones holding the hostages. The only way to free the hostages and defeat the terrorists is to destroy the terror culture in whatever form it takes.
Adam
I want to clear up historical errors, not slight but of the deepest kind in the following
“Felix and other leftists think the US is the only “Empire,” But Russia is als and empire. Has been at least since the sixteenth century when Russia conquered Tatarstan. And the Russian Empire has been expanding ever since thn.”
1. OTHER LEFTISTS
sorry not applicable
I am a Trotskyist and I guard that name with care
I belong to the tradition that when Stalin was supporting the Nazis and preparing for the Pact with Hitler…
Trotsky was the only Jew on the planet who was capable of analysing capitalism and warn about the nature of the battle facing the Jews in the Holocaust. (I add to this in a separate note)
2. The misreading of the workers state of 1917…and socialism in socialist revolution. In trying to break free of the capitalist straitjacket the workers of Russia carried out a massive revolution. But it was recognised at the time as a partial revolution, a blow struck for true freedom. And from that moment the revolution would be able to advance or capitalism would definitely defeat it. Note two competing forces. In political terms the revolution would advance or the revolution would be defeated. This theme played out in the Russian Civil War.
(Check validity of this analysis by means of historical data)
@GreatWhite
Kedar put forward his Emirates Plan beleiving it was better than allowing the PA to rule. WEhat he argued ws that Clan members won’t defy their leadership. Greenfield shows how such a pan is a longshot at best. I am with Greenfield.
I prefer the Jordan Option any day.
Felix and other leftists think the US is the only “Empire,” But Russia is als and empire. Has been at least since the sixteenth century when Russia conquered Tatarstan. And the Russian Empire has been expanding ever since thn.
1. The issue has got to be made world wide
2. It has to be linked to Ukraine.
3. The support of Russia and China must be sought
4. Israel, Russia and China face a common enemy
All the barriers to unity of these countries and not only these three have to be addressed and solved. The common enemy is “Empire”. A good guide to Empire is made up, more or less, of those at the Swiss Zelensky/Biden summit taking place now
The very first step, without this step noone can go forward and inch, is to create a party
The poll showing the demographic make up of Gazans is the indicator also of the way forward
No step forward can be taken without putting the following into operation. That also reads into existence: break totally with American Empire and simultaneously a conscious drawing closer and ever closer to the American people.
The defence of Zi, of Putin and of Netanyahu is a new concept for Jews but nevertheless the language and really vile deeds of Empire pushes relentlessly in that direction.
“…The jihadists have the Quran on their side. To Muslims, their terrorism will always be more righteous than our fumbling efforts to avoid civilian casualties and collateral damage. Appealing to moderates or promising a better life will not win their support. On the contrary, it only infuriates the imams in their mosques and the influential clan leaders into opposing us….”
BINGO
@Madeline
Thanks for the link.
@dreuveni I agree. They must never be allowed to govern themselves in the land of Israel again. In the language Progressives so love to abuse, ” it’s unsustainable.” Arabs within the Green Line lived under martial law from 1948-1966. That would be sustainable while facilitating their departure. All Israel should worry about is making herself sanction-proof and self-sufficient like Russia and China.
Now I’m really worried – the Netanyahu government wants Pali clans to government Gaza after Hamas has been defeated. All along we thought they knew what they were doing. Now the Biden demands about the day after are a real concern.
Unfortunately, it takes a long time for the Western world, ruled by the dream of niceness, to wake up to the reality of horribleness. If the West had understood and responded sooner to Hitler’s evil, many more lives would have been saved. Same thing with Gaza, and jihad in general.
My outlook is shaped by the Bible. I believe God knew what He was doing when He ordered the Israelites to take Canaan (which includes Gaza) and kill all the terribly immoral inhabitants and build a just society. This is found in the books Deuteronomy and Joshua.
This is the solution for today too, IMO.
Daniel Greenfield is right, as usual, but perhaps more delicate than definitive. The problem is the Koran. Hamas is just following their religious script. As Greenfield points out, this is not what people want to believe. But it’s true. As the former NY chapter head of ACT!forAmerica, I published this monogram on jihad.
What You Need To Know About Islamic Jihad: Information The Main Stream Media Is Not Giving You. http://www.scribd.com/doc/31132476/WHAT-YOU-NEED-TO-KNOW-ABOUT-ISLAMIC-JIHAD,
I have been a student of history for nearly all of my 71 years. Islam is a racist, supremacist, totalitarian political ideology masquerading as a religion. What we are constantly told by politicians and the media is “radical Islam” is nothing of the sort – it is true Islam, practiced as Muhammad created it and taught it.
I have great respect for Daniel Greenfield’s work, which I began reading many years ago when I knew him only as Sultan Knish. In reading this latest piece I thought about Mordechai Kedar and his suggestion that the best way to change the status quo not just in Gaza, but also in Judea and Samaria as well, would be to divvy up those areas between the dominant clans in each of the towns because unlike Hamas or Fatah/PA the leaders of which generally aren’t even from those areas (yes, I realize I’m splitting hairs), the respective clan leaders would feel a much greater sense of responsibility to their brethren in those towns and also be held accountable by them and therefore be a positive force in the everyday lives of those people, meaning rather than spend all foreign aid on terror tunnels, etc., they’d actually do some of the things the people pushing the Oslo “peace process” claimed would eventually happen with the PA. Being a Mizrachi Jew I don’t think Kedar is naïve about endemic Jew hatred within the entire culture, but after reading this article it’s hard to know if what he’s pushing is a pipe dream. Or perhaps he knows it is, but it’s the lesser of all evils and the only ostensible solution that would be acceptable to the US, etc.
Curious, to get thoughts from Ted, Peloni, Eve and the Israpundit readership generally.
Statements by some Israeli government officials and/or senior officers in the IDF to the effect that “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza,” while for the most part true, are being used against us in the international MSM. It is best to be aware of the public relations impact of everything we say. I gues it does no harm if a journalist such as Daniel greenfield comes out with the truth.
https://www.jns.org/poll-75-of-palestinians-satisfied-with-hamas-performance-in-war/