Hamas terrorism is not about a Palestinian homeland. It is about the extermination of Israel
At 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas, the Iran-backed terror group controlling Gaza, launched an unprovoked and vicious surprise attack on more than 20 communities in Israel, brutally murdering some 1,200 innocent people, injuring more than 5,400 and seizing 239 hostages, many badly injured.
The knee-jerk response of many left-wing radicals, along with their feckless political enablers, was to either justify or downplay the violence, seeing it as a response to the perceived persecution of Palestinians. This reaction was shaped by an overly simplistic understanding of critical race theory, a Marxist-based ideology that views all human interactions as a conflict between oppressors and the oppressed.
This knee-jerk response was also evident during the Oct. 24 Security Council meeting on the Israel-Hamas conflict. During the meeting, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for a ceasefire, stating that the Hamas attacks “did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
 Photo by Joe Catron |
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Similar sentiments are expressed in the 1988 Hamas Charter, a document that promotes jihad and rejects any negotiated peace with Israel. The charter states that “The Holy Land is regarded, like all lands forcibly conquered by Islam, as unalienable property belonging to the Muslim public.” This sentiment reflects the group’s stance that Palestine, as part of this Holy Land, cannot be surrendered or compromised through peace talks, as it is considered Islamic land by divine decree.
The violent language found in the original Hamas charter and its 1998 revision has been backed by 10 wars aimed at the extermination of Israel and by hundreds of terrorist attacks targeting innocent men, women, and children in Israel and abroad. These attacks have occurred since Israel’s re-establishment as a sovereign state in 1948 – a process that stands out in a world where many countries were formed either through violent conquest, as in much of Europe, or through relatively peaceful colonization, as seen in Canada.
In a statement on Nov. 14, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed deep concern about the impact of the ongoing conflict, particularly on civilians. “On TV, on social media, we’re hearing the testimonies of doctors, family members, survivors, kids who’ve lost their parents. The world is witnessing this. The killing of women and children, of babies. This has to stop,” he said.
His statement can easily be interpreted as an attempt to blame Israel for the war, as it focuses on the suffering of Palestinians without explicitly mentioning that Hamas started the war. In other words, kindly fight Hamas with one hand tied behind your back.
Not surprisingly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately fired back on X (formerly known as Twitter), writing: “@JustinTrudeau: It is not Israel that is deliberately targeting civilians but Hamas that beheaded, burned and massacred civilians in the worst horrors perpetrated on Jews since the Holocaust.”
“While Israel is doing everything to keep civilians out of harm’s way, Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm’s way. Israel provides civilians in Gaza humanitarian corridors and safe zones, Hamas prevents them from leaving at gunpoint.”
“It is Hamas, not Israel, that should be held accountable for committing a double war crime – targeting civilians while hiding behind civilians.”
Critical race theory also underpins the simplistic assertion held by many Western activists that because Israelis are white invaders and Palestinians are black indigenous people, the current conflict is just like American Jim Crow and South African apartheid: Israelis are racist victimizers; Palestinians are oppressed victims.
Such a comparison is ludicrous.
Unlike Europeans, who have no historical claim to America or Africa, Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. They have lived there continuously for over 2,000 years, even after being exiled by the Romans in the first century AD. This connection means Zionism – the Jewish nationalist movement aimed at recreating and supporting a Jewish state in the Promised Land – is not an expression of “settler colonialism.” Israel has never been a colony of any country, nor was it established as one. Therefore, Zionism is a movement of indigenous people seeking self-determination in their ancestral homeland rather than an external colonial project.
As for the apartheid charge, there is nothing remotely resembling the South African example. Jews and Palestinians share the same DNA given their origin in the same Middle Eastern area. Some 45 percent percent of Israel’s Jewish population is categorized as Mizrahi (“Oriental” Jews defined as having grandparents born in the Middle East, North Africa, or Asia). When Muslims are included, 70 percent of Israelis are “people of colour.”
Those who wish to defend or excuse Hamas, are free to do so. But they should stop equating colonialism with Zionism and making nonsensical comparisons between the Palestinian cause – whether for statehood or the genocidal elimination of the Jews – and black liberation struggles in America or South Africa.
Hymie Rubenstein, editor of REAL Indigenous Report, is a retired professor of anthropology, University of Manitoba. He is co-author of Residential School Recrimination, Repentance, and Reality for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, where he is a senior fellow.
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