Hamas are the civilians.
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 last rescued, have come home telling stories of being kept captive in ‘civilian’ households.
In both cases we fundamentally misunderstood 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. 62% in Gaza are happy with the performance of Hamas 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 Husayini clan, which produced Hitler’s Mufti, were relatively recent arrivals. The most powerful and wealthiest of these large families took control of urban areas, as the Husayinis 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 last four, the hostages were 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 for 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 United States 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 ISIS, returned. And some of the same men we had armed and trained, turned their guns on us. That is an almost inevitable outcome in Counterinsurgency or 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 Koran 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 in the Muslim world. 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 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 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.
Mike says
And the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland and some other developed countries are talking about importing (or are planning to import) thousands of Palestinian refugees?!
Johanna Jahns says
They brought terror whereever they went.
OLD GUY says
You’re right Hamas is a civilian army. Bring Palestine civilians is transporting Hamas fighters to America.
andy says
Biden must be defeated.
Grannya says
Amen
Peter Burrows says
From The Reliance of the Traveller, pg. 601, slightly edited, my emphasis:
“Jihad is also personally obligatory for everyone able to perform it, MALE OR FEMALE, OLD OR YOUNG, when the enemy has surrounded the Muslims — having entered our territory, EVEN IF THE LAND CONSISTS OF RUINS — for non-Muslim forces entering Muslim lands is a weighty matter that cannot be ignored but must be met with effort and struggle to repel them BY EVERY POSSIBLE MEANS.”
somehistory says
islam is the problem. As long as some people follow the evil, unholy filth of the book filled with demonic demands, islam will be the reason for all of the murders, whether of their own or those fighting them.
mozlums may be *loyal* to their clan, but moreover, they are loyal to the false god and fake prophet of the unholy filth.
as long as anyone believes in it, there will be the actions we see all around wherever mozlums are.
Wellington says
Proceed from this starting point: Hamas and the so-called Palestinians are one.
Here’s another starting point: Islam fills one up with so much hate for non-Muslims (especially Jews) that going on and on about so-called moderate Muslims makes about as much sense as going on about moderate Marxists, moderate Nazis or moderate KKK members (and moderate “Squad” members in the Democratic Party too).
Tony Rice says
By their actions and their friends, so shall you see and judge them.
PRCS says
I am so tired of politicians, talking heads, and so-called reporters referring to “radical Islamic jihadists” as though there are moderate Islamic jihadists, and for that matter: to what relgion other than Islam is jihad a component?
The individuals they’re talking about are—–Muslims. All of them.
Just call them Muslims and let them prove otherwise.
Reziac says
Exactly. And out of their own mouths:
“These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”
— President Erdogan of Turkey
PRCS says
+1
Yes.
tgusa says
“There Are No Civilians in Gaza”
That’s true. Gaza is an armed camp of homicidal maniacs and their supporters. Besides that, I always hear the usual suspects use the word civilian as if all civilians are flower picking guitar strumming campfire circling people and dont commit terrible crimes. If that is true why are there upwards of 650,000 violent criminals in our prisons?
somehistory says
Two guys on “morning joe” were saying the same thing…surprisingly enough.
“Civilians” is a word cops and military use for anyone not part of those two groups. “Civilians” get into all kinds of trouble…from traffic violations to murder.
It’s the same kind of thing that the U.K. has used saying “Asians” instead of pakistanis, or other mozlum rape gangs.
And reports from Nigeria saying “herdsmen” instead of mozlums.
“palestenians, gazans, now civilians”…all to cover for the mozlum terrorists, rapists, murderers…waging war.
tgusa says
Asians, herdsmen, civilians.
“all to cover for”
I wonder how the media would feel if we added “media” to that list of, Asians, herdsmen, civilians.
150 slaughtered by “media” in such and such place. Fair is fair.
somehistory says
You may be onto something. As someone said long, long ago…”all’s fair in love and war.”
The media gladly gobble up and regurgitate the numbers of “dead” hamas gives them…so by word, they do ‘slaughter’ those.
tgusa says
“Six Russian nationals with potential ties to ISIS have been arrested in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles”
“all to cover for”
I guess we now have to add “Russians” to the Asians, herdsmen, civilians, media, list. At some point they are going to need a bigger list.
somehistory says
“8 from Tajikistan with ties to isis in the U.S.” for over a year, now held by ICE and they are seeking to deport as there is not enough evidence to try them.
They came in over the Southern States…the non-border-border last year…supposedly *vetted*.
Add tajiks and “vetted” people. Anyone “vetted”….
tgusa says
I am shocked that they didn’t write, 8 Americans with a spark of divinity (Nasty Pelousy) from Tajikistan with ties to isis.
somehistory says
And now it’s bananas and terror.
“A federal jury in Florida ruled Tuesday that Chiquita, the Florida-based banana conglomerate, must pay $38.3 million to 16 family members of individuals killed by a violent right-wing paramilitary group funded by the company during Colombia’s civil war.
In what has been labeled “a historic decision,” the ruling holds Chiquita liable for its financial ties to the AUC, which was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/banana-giant-found-liable-for-financing-terror-group/ar-BB1o2s3S?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=2d342c22d90948f78a67d9a8446f3de8&ei=42
tgusa says
AUC
“The militia had its roots in the 1980s when militias were established by drug lords to combat rebel kidnappings and extortion by communist guerrillas”
So even drug lords dont like kidnapping extortionist communist guerrillas. I didn’t know that. If I stand with the drug lords is that also showing support for the presidents son and his favorite leisure activity as well?
tgusa says
I’m not sure the AUC could be described as far right but the media’s vocabulary is very limited. Very very limited.
somehistory says
I always question the term “far-right” these days. Just as so much other stuff needs to be questioned if people wish to know what is True and what is *conspiracy*…the real thing…and what is an outright lie.
The banana people are appealing (that could be a joke) the verdict.
tgusa says
Yeah. Why didn’t the media just call them Asians, herdsmen, civilians, Russians, bananas, etc?
abu taleb says
Just like there is no innocent person among non muslims, all non muslims are guilty and should be killed, according to Quran.