by Martin Schram
URGENT. Attention must be paid. The world’s leaders and chroniclers, who have wasted a year flailing but failing to fully recognize what really happened on Oct. 7 and ever since, have just one last chance to finally get it right.
We are talking imperatively today to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, President Joe Biden and the leaders of NATO, the G7 industrialized world, the peace-seeking nations of the Arab world and, especially, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And we are also talking to my news colleagues who cover them.
Less than three weeks before the one-year anniversary of the horrific war crime that was deliberately inflicted upon civilian populations of both Israel and Palestinian Gaza, The New York Times has revealed some of the basics of Hamas’ brutality toward its own Palestinian people in Gaza, who they are supposed to be protecting.
Today we will be talking about what the Times reported – yet also what was left unreported. A four-reporter Times team merits praise for the investigative report, published online on Sept. 13, and on the front page of its Sunday, Sept. 15 print edition, beneath this headline: “Hamas Uses Brutal Tactics to Keep Its Grip on Gaza,” and this subhead: “Group Puts Palestinian Civilians in Peril in War and Violently Represses Dissent.”
The Times uncovered details of brutal crimes against civilians who have been critical of Hamas and also journalists who are just trying to report facts about problems ordinary Palestinians suffer under Hamas.
Importantly, midway through the article, the Times reported about Palestinian civilian frustrations and anger at how Hamas imbedded its military and arsenals in massive tunnels beneath Gaza’s civilian apartment houses, schools and hospitals. As we all know, Hamas used Palestinian civilians as their human shields. Last June, 270 civilians were killed when the Israeli military rescued four Israeli hostages.
But all of that mainly spotlights the real diplomatic and journalistic failure that has been at the core of all that has been so wrongheaded with the way the world has been deceiving itself about the real hell that has been happening in Gaza ever since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,200 and kidnapping more than 240 Israeli hostages who Hamas held in Gaza.
Faithful readers know exactly where we are going with this today — because I have been writing about it since shortly after that horrendous Hamas attack. I have warned that Hamas really trapped two sets of civilians as their hostages: One was, of course, the Israeli hostages they kidnapped. The other was the more than 1 million Palestinian civilians of Gaza who Hamas trapped into becoming their hostages, by hiding in tunnels beneath the people they were supposed to be protecting.
Journalists are taught their craft’s basics in Journalism 101. To report a complete story, we simply need to report the Five Ws: Who, What, Where, When and Why. But the reporting about Hamas brutal and devastatingly effective attack of Oct. 7 reported only the first four Ws. Nobody bothered to report or even think through the Why. Hamas obviously attacked civilian targets that were left unguarded and killing and kidnapping was easy.
But Why at that time? Because Saudi Arabia was about to normalize relations with Israel. Hamas’s benefactors in Iran wanted to prevent that from happening – and this would reignite anti-Israel fury in the Arab world.
But there is a far more hateful Why. It starts with the reality that Hamas definitely knew Israel would retaliate massively. So, Hamas had to want Israel to retaliate massively. They prepared for a massive retaliation long ago – by building massive networks of tunnels beneath civilian apartment buildings, schools and hospitals so they could hide their soldiers, their arsenals and their headquarters beneath their entire civilian population.
Where this thus takes our analysis is profoundly sick but tragically true: Hamas had to want Israel to inflict massive casualties upon the civilians. But why would any sane leaders want that? Only for a cause they considered far larger. There could only be one of those – and while humanly contemptible, it had to be the sick but real answer. Namely, Hamas and probably Iran hoped to goad Israel’s Netanyahu and his far-right regime into inflicting massive casualties upon the Palestinian women, children and elderly — just to ignite a worldwide explosion of anger against Israel.
And lo, that has come to pass. Netanyahu’s Israel did just what Hamas schemed to goad Israel’s easily tricked leaders into doing. Israel may never recover its global respectability. And there was one other outcome Hamas couldn’t have expected.
Tragically, a wave of antisemitism seems to be sweeping the world. We are living in an era so regressive it seemed unthinkable back when Israel was created after the Holocaust and generations of young Jews were being taught in their Sunday schools that this would be the most noble place on the planet for the Jewish people to be safe. As in: Never Again.
