Reuters reports that “Hamas says it will not compromise further with Israel to win Gaza ceasefire.”
It’s just another headline about the heirs of Yassir Arafat; we know better than to take the statement seriously. Hamas will keep talking as long as they can, for obvious reasons.
The people engaged in negotiations, at least, if not their foot-soldiers, are safe while they’re at the negotiating table.
But there’s a different question that ought to be inspired by that quote: Why is any kind of compromise even an issue?
In a normal war, between two legitimate governments, one hopes for negotiations, discussions, compromises, whatever it takes to bring an end to hostilities.
This is not a normal war.
Israel has a legitimate government, and Hamas is a crime gang full of the most brutal of homicidal maniacs. This isn’t so much a war as it is a police action; Israel finally has the political will and the public support to wipe out a powerful criminal gang that has spent 35 years attacking and terrorizing Israeli citizens.
What does Hamas say, every time they return to the table? That they want Israel to stop shooting at them and give them lots of money and resources, which everyone knows Hamas will then use to make more rockets to shoot into Israel.
It’s what Hamas does. It’s what Hamas always does. It’s Hamas’s raison d’être.
Think for a moment about the most horrific crimes you can think of in American history.
Richard Speck was a violent drunkard and robber, who went on a crime spree, stabbing, raping and murdering at least eight innocent, defenseless women in 1966.
John Gacy was a child molester, rapist and Chicago Democrat party political activist who went on a crime spree, raping and murdering over thirty young men over a period of several years in the early 1970s.
Charles Manson was an arsonist, robber, pimp and drug abuser who organized a drug-driven death cult and engineered a notorious murder spree of at least seven people in August 1969.
How would the American press react if the police were working on finding and catching these criminals, and the criminals released statements to the press saying that they’ve already compromised as much as they’re going to, and the police are just going to have stop being so demanding? How would we, the American public, react if they haughtily insisted on an end to the pursuit once their hideouts were identified? Would we be open to the idea of leaving them alone, and setting them free, once we finally had these killers surrounded?
Of course not. The very concept is outrageous. Once you have identified vicious mass murderers, and pursued them to their lairs, you finish the job. There’s no question here. But the way the mainstream press reports the stories, we forget what’s really going on.
Please note: this is not about ethnicity at all. It’s not a blanket judgment of the people of the Gaza Strip, many of whom are just as terrorized by Hamas as the Jews, Christians, and Arabs of Haifa, Ashdod and Tel Aviv are. The innocent Arab population of the Gaza Strip – those who do not support Hamas – are victims of Hamas as well, and they deserve freedom from their local tyrants, too.
This is a judgment of Hamas, a huge, malevolent crime gang that has been documented – in fact, they have proudly documented themselves – committing the most ghastly of crimes, at least equal to the ones committed by the American mass murderers named above.
Both the Western press and the American Democrat party insist on treating Hamas as if they are a legitimate government in a normal war. They are anything but.
The Gaza Strip is not an independent nation, and Hamas is neither a legitimate government nor a legitimate army.
On October 7, Hamas partisans charged through the wall separating Gaza from an area of kibbutzes, and they started rampaging, attacking the innocent residents of the farmhouses in these undefended, communal farms, and the equally innocent revelers at a music festival.
Within hours, 1,140 innocents had been murdered, many of them raped and tortured first, not by one or two fringe outliers of the invaders, but by many of them – too many for these crimes to be considered an exception to the rule.
These Hamas terrorists burned people and places. They destroyed property. They raped children, adults, and seniors, both men and women, before torturing and killing them.
The press denied these extremes at first; saying there was no evidence.
But there is tape.
It turned out that Hamas militants, proud of their handiwork, high on their abuse of defenseless Jews, giddily filmed their war crimes, and shared the film with their cheering crowds back home.
And then those tapes got out into the world.
Even the New York Times had to admit it. Even the United Nations had to certify it. Even the most antisemitic, corrupt world bodies had to admit the truth, that the Hamas attacks on October 7 weren’t just quick, indiscriminate attacks, but personalized, dedicated, malevolent attacks including sexual brutality often too grotesque to write about.
No, it is no exaggeration to compare the Hamas attackers of October 7 with Speck and Gacy, or other monstrous criminals of old. Speck used knives to kill; Gacy used his hands, Hamas used motorcycles, knives and guns. There aren’t that many other differences.
But what of Charles Manson? He didn’t even commit the crimes himself. Where does he fit in this analogy?
Manson just stayed back at the headquarters and directed his “family’s” actions, keeping his own hands clean. He taught his followers to kill, gave the orders, and stayed home.
Not unlike the political leaders of Hamas.
Hundreds of miles away from the fray, the Hamas bosses sit at a comfortable negotiating table, talking with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, who then try to convince Israel to give these criminals a break, to stop the pursuit and let them live to fight another day.
What’s the difference between the crime boss who orders the hit from the corner booth at a fine restaurant, and the hit man who carries out the contract? Under US law, at least, we recognize that both are guilty.
And so it is in the Middle East today, as we are encouraged to negotiate with mass murderers who have spent their entire lives using their own people as pawns in a genocidal quest to seize the nation of Israel and wipe out its current inhabitants, “from the River to the Sea.” (Yes, that’s exactly what it means.)
Hamas is not a legitimate government. Their forces are not uniformed; they don’t subscribe to the Geneva Convention. Hamas, which spent virtually every day of the 35 years since their founding in planning for the eventual destruction of Israel, merits none of the courtesies we give to real governments in peace talks. In fact, it is an insult to all the legitimate governments of the world, to grant the same status to Hamas.
So, how should we respond to the leaders of Hamas, when they insist on undeserved concessions?
Exactly the same way we would respond if the request came from Speck, Gacy or Manson.
Hamas tortured, maimed, raped and killed 1140 innocents on Oct. 7, 2023 alone.
The only difference between them is scale.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer and speaker. A one-time Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. Read his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III).
Image: Fars Media Corporation, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED
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