HAMAS - NETANYAHU: SIDES OF A COUNTERFEIT COIN

“News don’t exist”, Umberto Eco pointed out, they are created by journalists. What's novel, he added, is “the drastic drop in print media sales, and the saturation of the market in which traditional journalism must compete with less formal or unprofessional modalities”.

So, one would expect that as increasingly more people realize "they don’t need newspapers because they can tell lies by themselves” (as a Brazilian song goes), more Internet users would take on the task of making news while bad journalism would become gradually more 'democratic'.

"Do you know why Trump doesn't give a shit about the press? Because his Twitter has 15 million followers. If you put all the media organizations together, it doesn't reach ten. When he tweets, he talks to more people than the entire American press can talk about". (Miguel Nicolelis)

The problem is that very few of us seem to be aware of such a process. Again according to Eco, this is because we don't know "how to pick out accredited sources from those that aren't". Just think, he says, of the "incredible following of websites on absurd stories - from ordinary viewers to influential, supposedly smart people, all  taking the web seriously”.

The war of Israel against Gaza is the case in point, since what is portrayed in the media, mainstream or Internet, reflects extremely poorly the realities of the region. Still less the structural forces, both local and abroad, that are leading the Middle East to disaster. 

Just take one example. On December 1st in broad daylight a person dressed in the Palestinian flag set self on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. "It was an extreme act of political protest", the chief of police said. Yet there were no photos, so far no one seems to know whether the victim has survived nor even if it was a man or a woman!

Even more impressive: until now - apart from that chief of police and the settlers' state consul general ("tragic to see the hate and incitement toward Israel expressed in such a horrific way") - the media and authorities have not only ignored the event but paid absolutely no attention to the censorship created around it. The truth is: if corporate news outlets challenge the consensus pro-settlers' state, journalists face the risk of losing their jobs and probably their entire carrers.

All of this in stark contrast to the standard narrative, for which the current war of agression constitutes a ‘manna from heaven’ to Likud, the political party created in 1973 by Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon in an alliance with several right-wing organisations. 

In power since 1996 and after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the party has contributed to the expansion and the military conditioning of Hamas - Arabic acronym for 'Islamic Resistance Movement'.

Back in the 1960s, the Al Mujamma al Islami (‘The Islamic Center’) established the presence of the 'Muslim Brotherhood' in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, only a set of charities. It remained as such until 1987 when a group of activists created Hamas, a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, but structured transnationally.

One of Hamas’s first adherents was sheik Ahmed Yassin, the organisation's wheelchair-bound leader who concentrated Mujamma’s activities on religious and social services. 

Oddly enough, it belonged to Israeli authorities the task to actively support Hamas to become a militarised coalition, specifically during the time when the settlers' state main antagonist was Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

In those days, the Islamists affiliated with Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood were allowed to operate almost freely in Gaza, assisting Israel in its repression of PLO operatives in the occupied territory. At that point Sheik Yassin was arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison but was not surprisingly released a year later.

Around the same time, Benjamin Netanyahu made his first exploit as a representative of the new generation of Israeli politicians, trained by North American PR experts and his former employer, the Boston Consulting Group, a company specialized in controversial businesses - from shady transactions with natural resources in Africa to setting up dubious health insurance companies in Sweden.

Whilst serving as Israeli ambassador to the U.N. he authored a handbook on “how democracies can defeat domestic and international terrorists”. Right after, in 1988 amid the first intifada/uprising Hamas made clear it rejected the settlers' state and launched a campaign of attacks against civilians.

At that point, when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat initiated a process of peace negociation, Sheik Yassin was again in prison, this time sentenced for life. However, as soon as Netanyahu became prime minister,the sheik was released “on humanitarian grounds”. Even more surprising, in late 1997, after Yassin had been expelled to Jordan, Netanyahu allowed him to return to Gaza as a hero. Until his killing in 2004, he set up a wave of suicide attacks against Israelis.

In 2007, after Hamas’ controversial victory in Gazan elections, the coalition began to administer the enclave, leading both Israel and Egypt to impose a strategy of total blockade. This was not the end.

In March 2019, conceivably following the 'lessons' of his book, Netanyahu addressed Likud’s members in the Knesset saying that “anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank”.

Nevertheless, even before the global pandemic Hamas organised widespread protests demanding Israel to end the blockade and address the Palestinian-Israeli conflict differently. Which prompted Likud to revert in desperation Netanyahu’s plan and at a cutting edge favour a ‘final solution’, as explained by settlers' Times of Israel: 

"It has never been our position to massacre our enemies. We would rather see them move [from their own land] to other countries where they would feel more comfortable and safe among their own people. Same language. Same culture. Same religion. Same culinary traditions ".

Hence, the preference for the ‘Dahiya Doctrine’, outlined by Gadi Eizenkot, former IDF chief during the 2006 Lebanese War and in the 2008-09 Gaza War. The doctrine's premiss is the destruction of civilian infrastructures of “hostile regimes”.

“What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases… This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved”.

The 'doctrine' is, from the perspective of international law, nothing but ‘state terrorism’, and from the United Nations's point of view a “carefully planned” assault “to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population”.

Thus, last July Netanyahu was left with no alternative apart from making unambiguously clear that his government would no longer bolster Hamas, but “crush” any Palestinian statehood ambitions. To do that he's using the principles drawn by Eizenkot, now a minister without portfolio in the 'war cabinet' of the former BCG consultant on 'defeating terrorism'.

In the first six days of the war the settlers' state dropped six thousand bombs on Gaza – almost the number the United States used in Afghanistan in just one year. To understand the intensity of such bombing, it suffices to know that Afghanistan is almost 1,800 larger than besieged Palestine. 

Israel is going by the book – no longer Netanyahu’s but that of Eizenkot, a new/yet another Messiah.

Pedro Scuro (academia.edu)

“I can compel no man to agree with my opinions, but at least I can compel him to have an opinion.” - Søren Kierkegaard