The action alert on Israel’s war on Gaza that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has disseminated is clear and to the point regarding an immediate ceasefire and no new military aid for Israel. But one action item or talking point could use some work. Is is this:
“Acknowledge the loss of lives and recognize the humanity on both sides, including Israelis and Palestinians.”
What does Hamas have to do to convince CAIR, and all who seek peace, security, and self-determination for Palestinians, to unequivocally condemn the organization?
No one should doubt that the planners of the October 7 Hamas massacre fully anticipated a disproportionate response by Israel. And when that “mighty vengeance” came, a Hamas official promised more attacks like October 7, probably to the delight of some of those vengeance seekers in Tel Aviv.
Can you get any more depraved than that? In whose interests is Hamas acting?
While condemning the Hamas attack it is nonetheless important to contextualize it, so that people can understand the despair and rage that Palestinians experience after decades of an unjust order being imposed on them, which has been aptly called apartheid. It has included land confiscation and displacement, occupation and its daily burdens and outrages, home demolitions, blockade, excessive military reprisals to Palestinian violence, relentless settlement expansion, settler attacks on Palestinian villagers, mass arrests and military justice which neglects due process, including the routine use of administrative detention.
But if we want people to stick around and listen to all this rather than dismiss us as Hamas apologists, we need to first call Hamas what it is: bad news, period. Hamas is a disgrace to Islam.
Had Hamas attacked Israelis with the single goal of capturing as many adult male hostages as possible, with no more deaths than necessary to accomplish that goal, that would have been different. Instead, large numbers of Israelis suffered horrific deaths. Some parents were murdered in front of their children, and some children murdered in front of their parents. There seem to be plausible evidence and accounts of sexual violence, whether or not it was systematic, as investigations by credible human rights groups will ask.
Israel is guilty of a grave injustice against the Palestinian people, and the ongoing retribution against mostly innocent people in Gaza is barbaric. It disgraces Judaism. The grisly excesses of Hamas do not justify it.
But Muslims are called to respond to evil with something better.
In truth, Hamas and Israel’s fanatical government deserve each other. They each certainly derive any legitimacy they enjoy from the other. And both hate all talk of a two-state solution.
Now, if both the Israeli government and Hamas oppose a two-state solution, there must be something good about it. Some people believe the settlement project is too far gone for there to be any hope of a viable Palestinian state. I cannot know. But if both Hamas and the Israeli government fear the idea, all sensible people should give it a fair look.
Israeli leaders, who don’t want to negotiate anyway, claim there is no legitimate Palestinian leadership to negotiate with, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has promoted Hamas over the Palestinian Authority in order to weaken the latter. Perhaps the most promising Palestinian candidate to negotiate with the Israeli government, Marwan Barghouti, is in an Israeli prison (see: https://prospect.org/world/2023-10-20-barghouti-palestines-nelson-mandela/)
One thing all of us can do is call for the immediate release of Marwan Barghouti, along with the rest of Palestinian prisoners and all of the Israeli hostages, to accompany an immediate ceasefire. Some people may object that whereas all of the hostages are presumably innocent, not all of the Palestinian prisoners are. But Hamas is not going to release the hostages without such a deal, and every day Israel refuses that deal, at least as many innocent Palestinians are slaughtered, and the risk of a larger conflagration grows.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will resist that call, and so we will need to take the matter to the White House and every U.S. senator’s and Congressperson’s office. With Netanyahu and his extremist cohorts, the United States needs to push its weight around.
This could be the perfect project to revive Muslim-Jewish cooperation throughout the country, which cooperation undoubtedly took a big hit in recent weeks.
For more posts on the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy, please go to: getrealwithisrael.com.
Reform CAIR 