Let's Take a Minute to Consider Israel's Deranged Military Strategy, Shall We?

What does it mean 'to destroy Hamas'?

Destruction in Gaza, by Haneen Salem

Some things in our political reality at the moment are so obviously unhinged we hardly bother to stop and call them by name. One of those things, and not the least important of them. is Israel’s military goal of ‘destroying Hamas‘.

Now, I’m not going to discuss all the million inhumane sadisms that aren’t even related to fighting a war, like starvation and cutting off water and electricity, helping diseases spread, or not allowing aid, including anesthetic, to go into war-torn territory. All the things that Israel has been doing to add to the death, torture, and suffering of the Palestinian population in Gaza. I’m not going to talk about those this time.

I want to isolate Israel’s declared war strategy. This, when observed as a phenomenon in itself, is enough to realize just how crazy Israel has become.

"If you want peace, destroy Hamas. If you want security, destroy Hamas. If you want a future for Israel, the Palestinians, the Middle East, destroy Hamas," Netanyahu told ‘Meet the Press‘ in early November.

In March he excitedly told this to an AIPAC audience as an explanation why Israel simply must invade Rafah:

That language of ‘destroy Hamas‘ was well-received and quickly adopted by American fans of Netanyahu like Marco Rubio, who, in May of this year, explained to a Fox News host that Hamas has to be destroyed:

These examples make a tiny sample of a big ocean of ‘destroy Hamas‘. Google ‘destroy Hamas‘ and you’ll get endless results in text and video, all repeating this slogan.

To understand what Israel intends to do, look at what it’s doing

But what does it mean to destroy Hamas? Well, you don’t need to be a genius to understand what Israel and its Western canopy bearers mean by this language. As evident from Israel’s dropping 80,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, purportedly aiming at Hamas militants and leaders, it is clear what Israel means when it says it needs to destroy Hamas. It means very literally killing everyone it suspects is involved with the organizations, their families, relatives and neighbors, passers-by, and everyone who happened to be within the blast radius of any of hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions already, of bombs dropped on Gaza.

And while we may have spoken abundantly about all the horrors Israel committed, I don’t think the sheer insanity of this part of Israel’s modus operandi has been discussed at all.

There are two different psychotic aspects to this, which together create the sick, depraved vision of hell we’re witnessing: the first is Israel’s definition of victory in this war as the killing of every Hamas member, and, the second, is Israel’s by now established code of conduct according to which it is ok to kill any number of innocent people to hurt a Hamas member.

Now if you combine these two aspects of Israel’s Gaza strategy, you’ll understand the real implication (therefore meaning) of this is an extermination of the entire population of Gaza.

Hamas has around 30,000 members. They have 30,000 families, and probably around 1 million neighbors within a radius of 100 meters or so. Given not all Hamas members may be eliminated in the first attempt, and allowing for some mistakes, misfires, and actual dynamic fire exchanges, you suddenly realize the only point of this is murdering the entire population of Gaza by hundreds of thousands of ‘targeted‘ bombings.

Nothing else makes any sense, especially when you take into account all the added means Israel uses to deepen and increase the damage done to Palestinians.

No military in memory defined victory this way. This is unique to Israel.

Imagine, in WW1, Britain, France, and the US pursuing this kind of strategy, namely: every member of the Central Armies, and all their families and neighbors, must be killed.

Or in WW2: imagine Britain, the US, and the USSR continuing to bomb Germany, Italy, and Japan until everyone involved in any way with the political regimes was dead.

Imagine this in America’s invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan: everyone who played any role in the former regimes, and everybody within a big explosion radius of wherever they may be, are legitimate targets and must be killed for victory to be achieved.

Are you feeling like you’re going to be sick? Good.

You know what? As an exercise, just to free our minds from the tyranny of habit, imagine a combined military of all formerly colonized countries taking on and occupying Britain, France, Canada, or the US, and deciding that their measure of victory is the targeted killing of everyone who ever served the regimes in any of those countries in any way, and everybody they may come in contact with.

This is horror beyond imagination, right?

Wrong. This is Gaza.

Gaza has a small population, of about 2 million, but Israel has basically targeted all of it already. There aren’t many people in Gaza who haven’t heard a mighty explosion near them. There aren’t many who did not lose someone.

It is hard for us to grasp the scope of Israel’s ambition and strategy in Gaza: we do not think like monsters. But this is what ‘destroying Hamas‘ actually means, and this is what Israel is doing: slowly evaporating the entire population of Gaza.

To destroy an entire people, a huge demonization campaign is required

And, guess what: Israel has whipped the West into a frenzy about Palestinians and Muslims and terror and threats and Nazis and victories, and the US mass media and political establishments have been more than happy to oblige.

Palestinians are never looked upon as people first, but only as would-be terrorists. Sorry, not even that, because terrorists may have political objectives in mind, whereas, in Western propaganda, Palestinians want nothing but to kill. Israel's demonization of an entire people succeeded beyond all expectations.

Together with America’s boundless support, the message for Palestinians is clear: the US intends to equip and protect their final destruction. Because Israel said that what must be done, and no one argues with Israel.

But when you think about what Israel has been doing this past year, when you consider its use of the ‘destroy Hamas‘ slogan, and Amalek, and all the horrific things it has knowingly, deliberately unleashed on Gazans, you can’t have the slightest doubt Israel has lost its mind completely, and tossed any inhibition in may still have had into a big dumpster, and set it on fire.

And then you also remember that Gaza has been under foreign military dictatorship for 57 consecutive years and that half of its population are Nakba refugees, and you get all the frenzied, breathless demonization: its design is not only to legitimize the mass murder of all Palestinians by a million targeted bombings, it is also to prevent any discussion of Israel’s crimes, past and present.

No country in memory defined victory as killing every member of its enemy’s military, regimes, and any formal establishment, and everyone within a blast radius around them. It is a unique Israeli invention. And no country since WW2 demonized an entire people with such international success. The guiltier the more accusatory, and the more murderous.