“At War with a Death Cult” by Brian Henry

Israeli victims on stretchers

In Hamas’s latest war against Israel, the media began its game of keeping score on Day 1. As I write these words, the CBC says the score stands at more than 1,000 people killed in Israel and 830 killed in Gaza and the West Bank.

The score card makes it sound as if both sides are suffering the same kind of casualties, with the numbers being the only difference. That’s a media lie.

The 1,000 dead in Israel were murdered. The overwhelming majority were civilians – 260 of them young men and women enjoying an outdoor music concert. Others were children, infants even. Others were elderly. Often entire families – mother, father, and children – were slaughtered all together.

In Gaza, most of the dead are terrorists – members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. On the Israeli side, the dead are victims. On the Palestinian side, the dead are the criminals who murdered them – the murderers, their accomplices, and the leaders who planned and ordered this mass atrocity.

And they are not only murderers. The terrorists went through southern Israel committing rape and gang rape, torturing people, disfiguring the dead, kidnapping men, women and children to use as hostages – filming it and uploading it to social media for the loved ones of the victims to watch. These are the terrorists being killed in Gaza.

The more of them killed, the better the world will be.

Civilians are also dying in Gaza. But like every modern, civilized nation – like Canada and the UK in Afghanistan, for example – Israel works to minimize civilian casualties. In every war, though, civilians die.

Israeli child's bed

Here in Canada, we’ve had the luxury of forgetting how war works. To begin a war is to unleash untold death and destruction. The aggressor kills not only its enemy, but inevitably and always brings misery and death to its own side, as well. 

The real score card should read that, to date, Hamas has murdered 1,000 Israelis, and Hamas has caused the deaths of 830 Palestinians, as well – mostly terrorists, but civilians, too.

And while in all wars the aggressor bears the responsibility for the deaths, injuries, and destruction on both sides, in a war like this, Hamas is doubly responsible for all civilian deaths.

On most battlefields, it’s possible to create some distance between fighters and civilians. Hamas’s strategy is to embed itself entirely within the civilian population. Hamas sets up command posts in apartment buildings, headquarters in hospitals, and stores arms beneath schools and houses. All of Gaza City stands on two layers: citizens above and a warren of Hamas tunnels hidden below.

Hamas’s aim is to make it impossible to hit them without also hitting civilians. Thus, for example, Israel tells the Palestinians in the north of Gaza to go south, trying to create some distance between fighters and civilians. Hamas tells Gazans to stay in place, so that when Israel moves in to destroy Hamas {as it must if Israelis are ever to sleep again} the civilian death toll will skyrocket. 

We should remember, though, that the Gaza Health Ministry is run by Hamas, and Hamas vets every word doctors in Gaza say to journalists. So numbers of causalities coming out of Gaza aren’t reliable – especially the number of civilian casualties. In all previous conflicts with Hamas, many of the supposed civilian deaths turned out to be Hamas terrorists, and many child deaths turned out to be young men or teens Hamas had enlisted into its ranks.

Why did Hamas attack now?

There are complicated answers: Hamas attacked because Iran told them to. To sink the Israeli-Saudi peace agreement that was in the offing.Or because Iran is ready for a war with Israel and this is how they’re starting it. Who knows.

There’s also a simple answer: Because Hamas was ready. Hamas has been preparing for war against Israel since the end of the last round they instigated back in 2021. This is just what Hamas does. 

Hamas kidnapping Israeli woman

Hamas attacks because they want to destroy Israel. And because killing Israelis, killing Jews, makes them happy.

Hamas doesn’t make a secret of this. Most countries have a foundational document. In the British North America Act, Canada aspires to “peace order and good government.” In its foundational document, its Covenant, Hamas aspires to the day when the trees will call out, “There is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him” (Article 7 here.)

Hamas Interior Minister Fathi said: “We will cleanse Palestine of the filth of the Jews. We will establish the Caliphate, after the nation has been healed of its cancer—the Jews.” There are many similar statements by many other leaders of Hamas.

Hamas is not what you or I think of as a political party. It’s a Jew-hating death cult. When Hamas succeeds in murdering a Jewish mother and child, they celebrate. They hand out sweets on the streets of Gaza.

{Alas, not only in Gaza. On hearing of the mass murder of Israelis, Hamas’s supporters were dancing in the streets of Mississauga and handing out candy in Montreal. See here and here. Not to mention the demonstrations in support of Hamas in all major Canadian cities and the statements of support from CUPE, student unions, professors, and the other Nazis in out midst.}

It's hard to wrap our heads around the idea of people so depraved that they delight in murder, rape and torture, who burn people alive and riddle babies with rifle fire. But it’s not only Jews whose deaths Hamas seeks. They seek their own deaths, too.

Israeli infant and others in body bags

In Gaza, children are raised from infancy to aspire to martyrdom. When Hamas terrorists get their wish, their deaths are glorified – often by their own parents, who pledge to bring up younger siblings to follow a dead brother’s example. 

“We love death like Israelis love life,” said Hamas commander Muhammad Deif on al-Aqsa TV (here). This is the Muhammad Deif who’s believed to have planned this mass terrorist attack on Israel. Many other Hamas leaders have said the same. 

Seeking death, they say – their own deaths and the deaths of Jews – is commanded by Islam. 

{I can only the imagine the horror of most Muslims at this sanctification of murder.}

This glorification of death dates back to the fusion of radical Islamism and Nazism in the 1930s and is shared among all the Islamist terrorist groups: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al Qada, ISIS, and the rest.

That is what Israel is fighting.

On the other hand, Jews do love life. Since Bergen Belsen was liberated in 1945, Am Yisrael Chai, “The people of Israel live!” has been our rallying cry. This is more than a cry of unity and a cry of defiance to our enemies; it also is a commandment: The people of Israel must live. That is why the Israel Defence Forces are moving into Gaza and why Jews in Israel and the diaspora, secular and religious, right and left are united in support. Life must be defended.

***

In Israel, January 2023

Brian Henry is a writer, editor, creative writing instructor, and publisher of the Quick Brown Fox blog. He’s written opinion pieces for the National Post and the Toronto Star. He was also a regular contributor to the (now defunct) Jewish Tribune and the Engage and Harry’s Place websites in the UK.

This piece, "At war with a death cult," also appeared in TheJ.ca, a Jewish Canadian Journal of news and commentary (here).