Please Don’t Call the Conflict in Gaza a “War” — It Is Not.
What’s happening in Gaza is a campaign of genocide perpetrated by an Occupying Power who is using a people’s legitimate resistance to justify mass murder.
Many writers here on Substack and elsewhere have bought into the false precept that what is happening in Gaza is a “war”.
It is not.
These people — even well-meaning ones — have simply fallen prey to the Zionist narrative that Israelis want all Westerners to believe — namely, that Israel is “at war” and “fighting for its life”.
This is a ridiculously false framing of the situation, but it is one that serves Israeli interests, permitting the wholesale slaughter of Palestinians whilst portraying Israel itself as the plucky, defiant “David” fighting yet another unspeakably evil “Goliath”.
Israel portrays itself is the perennial victim, even as it drops 2500-pound bombs on refugee tents.
The nature of Israel’s wars
To undserstand this framing, and why it is so effective, we should look at Israel’s previous “wars”.
First, in the 1956 “Suez Conflict”, Israel (with its allies the UK and France) took on the nation of Egypt, the strongest and most militarily sophisticated Arab state at the time.
Then there was the 1967 “Six Day War”, in which Israel stood alone — and won — against the Arab nations of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon.
And finally there was the 1973 “Yom Kippur War”, in which Israel was surprised by — but ultimately defeated — Egypt and Syria, whose own armed forces were reinforced with expeditionary armies sent by Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, and even Cuba and North Korea.
One simply cannot view today’s slaughter in Gaza through the frames of those multinational wars, in which both sides had tanks, ships, artillery, air forces, and vast mechanised armies of men in uniform.
We must not think of what Israel is doing in Gaza in the same terms of how they stood up to the might of the combined Arab armies of the Middle East (plus Cuba and the DPRK).
The nature of the Palestinians
Firstly, it is important to realise that the Palestinians are an Occupied People, as defined in the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the United Nations, as well as every major human rights group on the planet, have ruled that Israel is an occupier — even of Gaza.
Moreover — and this part is key — according to that same Geneva Convention, Palestinians, as the occupied people, have the legal right to resist their occupation.
I will repeat: Palestinians have a legal right to resist their occupation by any means available.
Additionally, according to UN Resolution 3314:
“In relevant part, the resolution not only went on to affirm the right “to self-determination, freedom and independence […] of peoples forcibly deprived of that right,[…] particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination” but noted the right of the occupied to “struggle … and to seek and receive support” in that effort.”
Now, we might argue whether the Israeli occupation qualifies as “colonial and racist” (I believe it is both), but you cannot argue the fact that the Palestinians are under occupation, and living in what are universally described as “the Occupied Territories”.
The nature of Gaza
In a speech on 28 June 2010, then UK Prime Minister David Cameron said: “Everybody knows that we are not going to sort out the problem of the Middle East peace process while there is, effectively, a giant open prison in Gaza”. Cameron repeated his characterisation one year later in an admonition to the Israelis: “Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp”.
This definition of Gaza as an “open air prison” has since become accepted parlance. In 2022, Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, declared: “Israel, with Egypt’s help, has turned Gaza into an open-air prison”.
Although the walls and the lock-downs and the brutal violence visited pn the population might seem to justify such a comparison, I disagree with Cameron’s characterisation.
I disagree for the simple reason that in a prison, you have people who have been convicted of a crime. The overwhelming majority of the people in Gaza have committed no “crime” other than having been born Palestinian.
Therefore, I would rather say that Gaza is a “concentration camp”.
This, to me, is a more apt definition, as the sequestering of the Palestinians is due to their ethnicity. In addition, Israel maintains strict control over what — and who — goes in to or out of Gaza. For decades, Israel has kept Gaza under a brutal siege, forbidding necessary materials, supplies, domestic appliances, even many foodstuffs.
For example, it is allowed to bring in plain hummus, but hummus with a topping (like olives) is forbidden. Likewise spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, cumin; sweets such as cakes and candy and even chocolate is forbidden. Fresh meat is also banned, as is potato chips and snacks, cookies/biscuits, jams, preserves, even vinegar.
“Gaza on a diet” — Israel’s Nazi-style level of control
The Israelis have made calculations of the total number of calories that Gazans needed to fend off actual starvation, and the amount of food that they allowed to enter Gaza was based on those calculations.
“We are putting Gaza on a diet” is the joke the Israelis tell themselves.
This is all just to make the Gazans live in misery. At least in a prison, the prisoners are allowed access to candy.
Now the situation is even more dire, since Israel is blocking ALL forms of aid, food and other materials from entering Gaza. The “diet” has now become a “starvation diet”.
And what the Israeli government doesn’t block, crazed Zionist settler fanatics destroy:
The relationship between occupied and occupier
The complete control that Israel exercises over life in the occupied territories — including Gaza — is why the UN says that Israelis an occupying authority over both Gaza as well as the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Moreover, as the occupying authority, Israel has certain legal responsibilities to provide for the health, safety, and well-being of the occupied population.
In fact, Israel has done the exact OPPOSITE of what it is obligated to do under international law.
Over the past decades, Israel has destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure. The Gaza airport was destroyed by Israel in 2001. The Gazans could not rebuild it because the Israelis do not allow building material to be brought in (they say that Hamas will steal it and use it to make tunnels).
Consequently, the public facilities such as sewage and water are degraded or non-existent. The tap water in Gaza is non-potable and has been for decades.
This was all so that the Israelis could point to Gaza and say, “look how the Palestinians live like animals”.
These actions and omissions by Israel are part of the reason that the UN has declared Israel’s occupation to be illegal.
The nature of Hamas
To say that Israel is “at war with Hamas” is both misleading and factually incorrect.
Firstly, given what I have described above, one cannot compare the Al Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas) with the combined mechanised armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, etc. Gaza is not a nation state, it does not have agency. It does not have a functioning economy, let alone a proper military.
Gazans are prisoners in a concentration camp, and that basic fact makes them different from all of Israel’s other “enemies”.
Secondly, it is important to remember that “Hamas” is an acronym for the Arabic “Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, meaning “Islamic Resistance Movement”. Hamas is the organisation that “resists” the Israeli occupation (as opposed to the Palestinian Authority, which collaborates with the Israelis).
Hamas is resisting the occupation of the Palestinians in accordance with their rights under international law.
This is set forth quite clearly in the Hamas Charter of 2017.
In fact, Article 1 of the Hamas Charter is VERY clear in circumscribing Hamas’s mission scope:
1. The Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” is a Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement. Its goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project.
So Hamas is like the French Résistance or the Italian Partigiani. These groups were also condemned by the Nazis as “terrorists”, but they had no other goal than to liberate their people from occupation.
So is it with Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement.
In short: Hamas is not ISIS. Hamas does not seek to establish a Caliphate. Its raison d’être is limited to the struggle in Palestine.
To put it simply: if the Occupation ended tomorrow, Hamas would also end.
The nature of the conflict
First, let us be clear about what October 7 was and what it was not. The clear and obvious fact is that what Hamas did on October 7 was NOT a “terrorist” act.
Israeli Hasbarists insist on calling Hamas a “terrorist organisation” and so it follows that they would seek to depict the action of October 7 as “terrorism”, but that is demonstrably NOT TRUE.
The Hamas operation on October 7 was a highly orchestrated and planned military operation code-named “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”. It was designed and executed to achieve specific strategic goals.
Yes, Hamas used violence to achieve its aims. But its aims were not to “destroy” Israel. Hamas’s main mission directive on October 7 was to CAPTURE HOSTAGES and take them back to Gaza so they could be exchanged for some of the thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons.
Prisoner exchange
Currently, almost 10,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons, over 2000 of which are being held without charge. Hundreds of these prisoners are children. In fact, Israel tries 500–700 Palestinian children in military courts each year. Military courts!
These child prisoners, according to Save The Children, are “treated like animals”, and over 85% endure beatings while in captivity.
Moreover, Palestinian women and girls face rape and torture daily while in Israeli captivity, according to a UN report.
Hamas wants a hostage deal
Hamas, as the official “Resistance Movement” for Palestine, saw its mission as to try and get as many of these poor, mistreated Palestinian prisoners released as possible.
Their mission was NOT to rape or torture Israeli women.
In fact, contrary to the false reports promulgated by Israeli Hasbarists, not one Israeli woman has been confirmed to have been raped by Hamas on that day. While “incidents of deliberate killings” that day by Hamas and other gunmen in Israel has been documented by groups like Human Rights Watch, there is so far no evidence of rape or torture — let alone beheaded babies.
No. As described above, the October 7 Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was planned and executed with one aim in mind: to capture Israeli hostages that could be exchanged for the thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons.
And Hamas is still on mission. Contrary to popular propaganda, Hamas has, all along, been anxious and accommodating in trying to secure a deal that would see some of the thousands of Palestinian hostages held by Israel released.
Such a hostage deal would, after all, mean the fulfilment of Hamas’s mission.
Israel just wants to keep on killing
Unfortunately, the Israelis are not really interested in seeing the hostages released. Indeed, under the Israeli “Hannibal Directive”, which the military high command issued at noon on October 7, the IDF tried to kill Israeli hostages rather than let them be taken back to Gaza. Since then, Israeli forces have continued to kill hostages, including three Israelis that had escaped their Hamas captives only to be brutally assassinated by IDF snipers.
In fact, according to a study done by BreakThrough News, Hamas has offered a total of TEN (10) cease-fire hostage deals over the past 7 months. All were rejected by Israel.
Even the latest hostage release deal, brokered by Egypt and Qatar and blessed by the United States, was accepted by Hamas, but rejected by Israel, so that they could proceed with their deadly slaughter of civilians in Rafah.
This is occupation and resistance, not a war
When you invoke the word “war” with all its connotations, it implies a symmetric conflict, when what we have in Gaza is extremely asymmetric. Israel is the world’s most advanced military, with the most sophisticated US weapons in its arsenal and over 150,000 active duty soldiers — plus 500,000 reservists. Israel also has over 200 nuclear weapons at its disposal if needed.
Hamas has 30,000 fighters, armed with home-made rockets, RPGs, small arms and IEDs fashioned from unexploded Israeli ordnance.
Hamas as the official “Resistance Movement” of the people of Palestine, is resisting the illegal Israeli occupation, as they are entitled to do.
Israel, in return, is committing genocide on the Palestinian population.
Why Israel will never defeat Hamas
My favourite film of all time is Casablanca. The film takes place in French Morocco during WWII, where a famous resistance leader named Victor Laszlo has come to Casablanca on his way to America to escape the Nazis. At one point, Laszlo is confronted by a very sinister Nazi officer, who looks forward to torturing Laszlo to find out the names of all the resistance movements under Nazi Occupation. But Laszlo answers defiantly:
“And what if you track down these men and kill them, what if you killed all of us? From every corner of Europe, hundreds, thousands would rise up to take our places. Even Nazis can’t kill that fast.”
The situation is the same in Palestine. Every time Israel drops a bomb, they create more Hamas recruits. As a result, the popularity of Hamas has skyrocketed — even as the destruction of Gaza has increased.
October 7 was a “great escape”
Israeli officials have described the events of October 7 as “Israel’s Pearl Harbor” and “Israel’s 9/11”.
First, it is absolutely ludicrous to compare a bunch of rag-tag resistance fighters breaking through a fence to Pearl Harbor, where the Imperial Japanese Navy crossed the Pacific Ocean and launched one of the most sophisticated aerial assaults in history.
October 7 should also not be compared to America’s 9/11. That was a terrorist attack that occurred from without, and was indeed aimed at “hurting” America. On 9/11, the mission was to cause destruction and death, not to take hostages and return.
October 7 is best described as a prison break, in which prisoners being held captive in an “open air concentration camp” broke free, inflicted murder and mayhem on their captors, collected hostages, and went back inside the camp.
Why Israel lies about October 7
Making it seem like the conflict in Gaza is between two belligerents of equal standing plays into the Israeli propaganda narratives , such as the ones that claim “Hamas is a new Nazi Germany” dead set on perpetrating “another Holocaust” on the Jewish people.
That is why it is important to keep in mind that Israel is not “fighting for its life”, and that Hamas is not Nazi Germany.
The idea that Israel is battling annihilation is just one more bald-faced lie Zionists use to justify the genocidal destruction that Israel is raining down on Gaza right now.
Like the salacious and false fantasies of rape and torture allegedly committed by by Hamas on 10/7 — stories which have all been subsequently debunked — the shrill cries of Israeli officials about an “existential threat” from Hamas are simply more Hasbara designed to distract us from the gruesome and disturbing death and dismemberment of babies and children resulting from Israel’s mass slaughter.
These Hasbarist comparisons are as cynical as they are inappropriate.
In fact, for the Israelis, the destruction of Gaza is a form of morbid entertainment.
Still, Israeli officials from Netanyahu on down continue to compare Gaza to WWII. Some have even used the West’s own WWII atrocities like the fire-bombing of Dresden to justify their actions in Gaza.
Such arguments are as shameful as they are pitifully transparent. After all, the Allies rebuilt Dresden and restored the native German population there. Do the Israelis plan to do the same with Gaza? Unlikely. Netanyahu has steadfastly refused to discuss or reveal any Israeli plans for what the Biden Administration calls “the day after” in Gaza.
End the conflict: end the Occupation
We must recognise the nature of the conflict in Gaza for what it is: a genocide perpetrated on an indigenous people by an overwhelmingly more powerful and sophisticated Occupier: ISRAEL.
Indeed, the only comparison that can be made between Gaza and WWII is the relative viciousness, inhumanity and sheer volume of war crimes being committed by the Zionist Occupying force each day.
Israel cannot defeat Hamas. The conflict in Gaza will only end when the illegal Occupation ends.
#End.
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I wish they would stop calling it a war. It isn’t . It’s a Holocaust, and not a Jewish one.
"in a prison, you have people who have been convicted of a crime. The overwhelming majority of the people in Gaza have committed no “crime” other than having been born Palestinian." 📢🍉