Why Is A 2-Billion-Strong Umma And The Global Left Hostile To A Tiny Jewish State?

On 7 October 2023, a Palestinian terrorist organisation called Hamas massacred over 1,400 Israeli and other citizens in the Jewish state, including children and babies, and took more than 240 of them hostage.

But, after an initial round of global condemnation of this gruesome terrorist act, the world has declared the victim guilty and designated the aggressor victim. 

There cannot be a greater perpetration of falsehood premised on the simple fact that there may be collateral damage amongst citizens in Gaza as Israel seeks to dismember the infrastructure and leadership of Hamas. Most of the civilian deaths are the result of Hamas’ own decision to use them as human shields, not Israel’s deliberate attempt to target non-combatants.

And yet, from the United Nations and its agencies down to academics and “civil” society activists (mostly foolish social justice warriors with no skin in the game) have been busy targeting Israel in the weeks following 7 October as Israel got its counter-offensive against Hamas going.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres drew false equivalence between the Hamas terror attack and the Israeli response to it. He said: “Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians — or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.”

A few days ago, other UN agencies like the World Health Organization and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society chimed in with their own condemnations after Israel allegedly targeted ambulances which were presumed to be carrying Hamas agents.

The point is simple. Regrettable though the collateral deaths of civilians are, the truth is there is no war in human history, including the US wars in West Asia and the Balkans, which did not result in civilian deaths. It is thus hypocritical for the UN to suddenly start targeting Israel for the temerity to defend its own people from rabid terrorists.

A Brown University research study shows that over 4.3 lakh civilians were killed in the US’s post 9/11 wars in West Asia and Pakistan. The US may not be directly responsible for all the civilian deaths, but it was its war on terror that triggered these casualties.

Post-7 October, while pro-Israel protests in the US and Europe have been limited, the scale and size of anti-Israel protests have been truly staggering. 

Isn’t it time these virtue-signallers asked themselves some honest questions? Especially on the religious dimension of the Israel-Palestinian conflict?

One, why is a global Umma of more than two billion people feeling threatened by a global Jewish population of just above 15 million, of whom less than half live in Israel? Even assuming you want to blame Israel for all the violence, why are 50-and-odd Islamic/Islamist countries not able to take on a few million Palestinians and give them a better life in their own countries? Clearly, the answer is Islamic bigotry against Jews. 

Two, why is the global Left-Liberal nexus so much against Jews, especially after the holocaust caused by Nazi Germany? How is Nazi anti-Semitism any different from their own covert anti-Semitism based on historical memories of Christ’s crucifixion and/or envy over Jewish economic success in Europe and the US before (and after) the Second World War? 

Three, why is the world seeking to blame everyone who raises a question about Islamist terrorism accused as an Islamophobe? Terror-phobia, bigotry-phobia and violence-phobia is being relabelled as Islamophobia.

The Left-Liberal non-democrats should know that their love-fest with jihadists can only end in tragedy if Islamism gains ground. Ask Iran’s Leftists. The theocrats led by Ayatollah Khomeini used the Iranian Left to oust the Shah of Iran, but once they came to power, they eliminated them altogether. 

The goals of Hamas are no different from Islamic State (ISIS), and these were enunciated in its 1988 charter: “The Islamic  Resistance  Movement  is  a  distinguished  Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and  whose  way  of  life  is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah  over  every  inch  of Palestine.” (Article 6).

The preamble to the charter said that “Israel will exist and will continue to  exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

What does this mindset tell you?

A more moderate version of the Hamas charter was announced six years ago in 2017, but even this charter does not dilute its enmity with the “Zionist state”, and views living alongside the state of Israel as only a transitional arrangement.

In short, Hamas is a jihadi organisation no different from ISIS, Boko Haram, Lashkar-e-Toiba or Jaish-e-Muhammed, all of which want the destruction of non-Muslim states in their regions.

Do the Western students and professors agitating for Palestinians know that they are essentially rooting for jihad against their own societies?