It is a miracle that 1.4 million Gazans have survived Israel‘s secret weapon—starvation. Israel has been throttling the flow of food and goods into Gaza not just for months, but for years. Recent UN press releases state that since Israel’s “cease fire,” Israel allows only a fraction of needed food through the produce gate into Gaza. The Director of Operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), John Ging, said on Feb 5: “The Agency is responsible for feeding 900,000 refugees in Gaza, yet can only get food packets out at a daily rate of 30,000, giving an idea of just how long those at the end of the queue have to wait.”
“Hamas sweeps to election victory,” the BBC headline read on January 26, 2006. “Preliminary results give Hamas 76 of the 132 seats in the chamber, with the ruling Fatah party trailing on 43. The win poses problems for efforts to restart peace talks with Israel, say analysts. Israel insists it will not deal with an authority including Hamas.”
Former President Jimmy Carter and a team was on hand to certify a free election, stating and documented that Hamas is indeed the political party duly elected by a democratic vote of some four million who live in the so-called Palestine Authority.
There is no state of Palestine, so we respectfully refer to Palestinians as Philistines. Hamas and most of those it governs have survived an 18 month blockade of imposed starvation and a military attack by a world class nuclear power with weapons of mass destruction. Israel has killed by systematic execution some 1500 persons, mostly civilians, and including about 400 children. Thousands more have been wounded and scarred for life.
The survival of the Gazans can only be attributed to Hamas and the tunnel system it operates to bring additional food into Gaza. Some tunnels were there before Hamas, but now there is an underground network of tunnels that defies counting. (1)
The Philistines are survivors; they know how to work, and they know what they are working for. We do not know details of how hundreds of tunnels were dug; probably few people do. However it was accomplished, it could only have been Hamas that organized; financed and supervised the network that runs underneath the closed border with Egypt into the barns, homes and businesses of Egyptian businessmen. It has been said that operation of the tunnels is the biggest employer in Gaza. It provides desperately needed goods and food, and it generates pay checks with which to buy them.
The Gaza tunnel operation cannot be done without currency; the Egyptians and Gazans must be paid for their goods and labor. Gaza does not have a printing press or central bank, and if it did, no one would take the money. Instead, they must trade with the currency of those around them—the Shekel, the Egyptian Pound, and we do not know what else. In order for Hamas to run an “underground economy,” someone had to provide gifts or loans of currency exchangeable for goods and services. I suspect supporter nations and individuals trust Hamas with substantial money. I also suspect a large amount of small business free enterprise makes this system work; it is far too complex to be run by any government.
The tunnel economic system operates something like this; (1) knowing the United Nations cannot get by the blockade, sympathetic groups, nations, and individuals buy and deliver money to Hamas or to businessmen in Gaza through the tunnel network, perhaps in suitcases. (2) Businessmen, contractors and workers dig and maintain 500 miles or more of the small tunnels, repairing them and dragging goods and even animals on sleds and little wagons into Gaza for sale there. (3) Egyptian businessmen find the food and goods and sell it to the Gazan businessmen at the tunnels Egyptian portals. (4) Philistine men, stooped to the waist, work the tunnels under constant threat of being discovered and bombed while inside, but they are paid to do it, and with their pay, they are able to buy food for their families. It is a cycle of money, sweat, and hope that sustains life and hope in Gaza.
We ask one simple question, how could this system feed a big city without a government that was reasonably honest and trusted by the people? It is easy to see why Israel wants the tunnel system destroyed. It thwarts Israel’s blockade plan. As long as the network is open, the Philistines will survive. How can we, who say we love freedom, do better than to support the government that the people trust and that keep the tunnels for life project going?
If the Philistines are to escape extermination it will be because those who should be Hamas’ natural friends support it. Presently they do not. During the last 20 months when the US gave the Gazans nothing, it gave Israel several billions in military and financial aid. Can we not at least even up the sides by giving no more to the criminals than we give to their victims?.
Those who should support Hamas include Muslims and Arabs worldwide, Christ followers in America who stand for life and freedom, and the Conservative Right, which favors constitutional representative government and opposes US foreign aid and bailouts. There is considerable overlap in the last two groups, but they are motivated by entirely different beliefs and goals. Israel and its Zionist allies have pronounced Hamas to be its enemy.
Israel thinks it will profit from exterminating Hamas and says so openly. Israel’s political machine sees no profit for them in a one-state solution with universal citizenship for all races and religions. For Hamas, however, success will produce that result because it alone will not settle for a disguised form of occupation. Those like CBS’s Bob Simon, who says the time for a two-state solution has passed, are correct. The future will either bring one state with universal citizenship, or the current one-state policy of gulag like confinement and execution of the Philistines will continue. (3)
Israel hates Hamas and seems to fear its success even though Hamas has no serious offensive nor any defensive weapons. But it has popular support. Jimmy Carter has asserted, ”Jewish Zionists have for sixty years demonstrated they want no part of peace.”
They are the superpower bully over a defenseless, occupied opponent, whom they would eventfully exterminate. Knowing this, the Philistines cannot quit. If Israel’s Zionist politicians wanted peace, there would have been peace for at least some period of the last 60 years; Since Israel has never been at peace, it is reasonable to conclude they do not want it.
American Jewish Zionist leaders, including radicals David Horowitz and Alan Dershowitz, whom we have written about and quoted recently, all condemn Hamas, and, in one way or another, call for its extermination. These radical Zionists have no concern for facts; they are out to win, period. Dershowitz wrote to us personally to tell us:
“These deaths (Gaza children) were not collateral. They were deliberately intended by Hamas by its willful use of human shields. Anyone who supports Hamas is complicit in the death of these babies–you included!”
Little can be done to change radical Zionists. But the other enemies of Hamas should be its natural allies. Most important of these are found the evangelical Christian Zionists, of whom we have written and documented much. This large and powerful group favors a fight to the death with Islam for what they believe to be a religious mandate. This author has already defined Evangelical Zionism, written articles, and produced a movie on the subject.
The other anti-Hamas group is the “anti-communist Conservative Right” usually associated with the Republican Party; its mouthpieces include fanatical propagandists Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Republican Rightists usually consider themselves Constitutionalists, but we do not find their motivation in the founding documents, but in the “Project for the New American Century” (PNAC) of September 2000, which lays out a Middle East war strategy against Islam (4)
More damaging yet to Hamas are its Arab turncoat detractors, including Joseph Farah of “World Net Daily,” which never misses a chance to take a swipe at a Muslim, and Dr.M. Zuhdi Jasser, Chairman of the “American Islamic Forum for Democracy” an anti-Islamic Muslim activist who, among his many publicized speeches, debates, and media presentations, appeared in and supported the hate movie “Obsession, Radical Islam’s War Against The West” and was featured in the controversial PBS film “Islam vs. Islamists”. (5)
To these, Hamas is a “terrorist” organization and Israel is a free enterprise democracy. The Israeli siege on Gaza is not over; it is only in temporary remission for political reasons relating to US and Israeli elections.
Israel has attempted to turn Hamas supporters against it by telling them Hamas is responsible for the suffering of their own people as a result of Israel’s “defensive” attacks. Gazans know otherwise; they were suffering before Hamas came to power. Israel has launched more and more super bombs, even testing new and awful weapon technology on civilians, refusing even to allow international doctors into Gaza to treat their victims. Hamas responds by continuing to shoot symbolic junkyard-made rockets over fences and walls into its aggressor’s back yard. Their acts are acts of defiance and are not capable of massive damage because most of their rockets do not explode.
The tragedy of dead Philistine women and children can be laid at the feet of Hamas’ natural friends, who do not support it, having bought the claims that the Philistines are the aggressor and therefore deserve whatever they get. One example is found in the pages of the self-professing constitutional conservative publication “The New American Magazine.” In an article entitled “Militant Muslim Connection” in the February 16th issue, William Jasper joins Limbaugh, Hannity, Farah, Dershowitz and hundreds more in the Zionist press, in condemning Muslims. Of Hamas he says:
“The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas” (Hamas)“The militant Islam group that wages terrorist war on non-believers of Islam”
The only reason “Militant Muslim Connection” is interesting is that its author, Bill Jasper, helped this writer complete my own March 21, 1994, groundbreaking story “Attacking Islam.” Six years later, the Neo-Conservative PNAC finally admitted to my observation…that the USA was indeed engaged in an “ideological war” against Islam. Editor Jasper was assigned the task of helping make my first story ever “acceptable” to his magazine. He cushioned my story with a 1000-word introduction, explaining that ideological enemies are not new to the USA. Today he and his publication help spread the fashionable, but outrageous misstatements about Hamas, and indeed all of Islam.
“Attacking Islam” exposed a terrible war trend that has just led our current President Obama to assign 17,000 more Americans to Afghanistan. In 1994, before there was a We Hold These Truths, blogs, or mass Internet publishing, “Attacking Islam” needed a home, and found it in TNA, which has since purged the story from its archives. The USA had by then already destroyed Iraq and Bosnia and had targeted Somalia and Sudan, but few writers seemed to notice or think it important that all our target countries were Muslim. (6)
Most Americans believe the Zionist-controlled mainstream press, which tells them repeatedly that Israel is our “democratic” ally. They have been turned against Hamas by an ongoing campaign from this establishment media, joined by the Christian Zionist and Republican Conservative Right.
The Philistines are the victims, isolated by hatred. Yesteryear found Russian peasants and workers victims of 70 years of repression and captivity; today it is the Philistines and Iraqis, and the Americans are paying for the wars, including Israel’s 60-year war on its neighbors, and for this warmongering, Americans are hated world-wide. Zionism is the only winner.
But Israel is a loser in the world public opinion scoreboard because most of the world’s population can see for themselves that Israel also lost a moral battle with Hezbollah two years ago in Lebanon. Israel is desperate to destroy Hamas any way that works. The siege on Gaza had nothing to do with a few hundred worthless rockets Hamas may have fired that hurt practically no one. The condemnation of Hamas has everything to do with Israeli and US efforts to change the leadership of the Palestinians to bring them back under control.
Hamas provided commitment, blood, and hope for the Philistines, but it is important to recognize it could not do so without some brutality of its own. Muslims in America should resist the temptation to denounce Hamas’ acts of barbarism, as do World Net Daily and Dr. Jasser. Peace-loving Muslims want to be well thought of, but they should not denounce Hamas to win friends in the American media. In my talks to Islamic groups, I advise never to apologize for the acts of those who, unlike us, are under life and death pressures.
We Hold These Truths does not support or condone brutality. We are pro-life, and that means we are against almost all war. In fact, we are all about seeking peace. But we do understand the horrors of war and occupation in Gaza. I saw it in 2002 and will never forget it; I am also in close contact with those who are there. We are very slow to denounce act of war by Hamas, or any Philistine because they are committed under the pressure of siege that most of us cannot even imagine.
We can, however, absolutely denounce the brutality of ISRAEL, because these acts are by the aggressor in almost every instance for the past 60 years. Israel has a choice. It chooses death.
Leaders in the last three administrations have told us they were justified in bombing civilians and torturing humans in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prison, even though we were always the aggressors in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is nothing that Hamas has done in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon that is even close to the acts of needless brutality committed by our own government in its wars on Islam. This includes Israel’s gulag system that holds some 10,000 Philistines without charge as we speak. (7)
The next wave of propaganda attack is on the way, discrediting Hamas and leaving the Philistines entirely dependent upon the Palestine Authority’s US government puppet, Mahmoud Abbas. It will attempt to show Hamas to be corrupt and brutal, in order to justify destroying the tunnel access that keeps Gazans alive.
Years ago Israel concocted and published a plan to destroy the tunnel system through flooding. President Obama has now stated he needs to help Israel shut off the Gaza tunnel system. Israel knows that the tunnels are a vital source of life for Gazans and that Hamas is the gatekeeper of the tunnels.
On Feb 12, Amnesty International published a press release that we posted in full on our website for you to read. It asserted that Hamas, during the Israeli siege, killed some two dozen Arabs it considered internal enemies and may have deliberately wounded many others to incapacitate them.(note 8)
Assuming what Amnesty International reported is true, we agree this is inhumane. But not so inhumane as warrant an attack on it, and on a very small scale when compared to the many validated reports of Israel’s murder of innocent, random civilians, many of them children. Amnesty International reported the fact that Israel deliberately destroyed the Gaza City Central Prison on December 28th, a few days before starting its savage destruction of Gaza. Imagine living in a metropolitan area where all the criminals in the prison have been loosed on the population!
This is not the first time Israel destroyed the Gaza City Prison in order to make Gaza unsafe and ungovernable. I saw this same Gaza Central Prison in the spring of 2002, windows and doors blown off and part of the roof collapsed, deliberately destroyed by Israel to release the criminal element upon the people. I have photos of it, and a senior Palestinian Authority officer whom I interviewed in front of the prison told me Israel wanted the prisoners free and bombed the prison to free them. It seems Gazans rebuilt their prison, and Israel has destroyed it again.
Hamas appears to have done what governments do when prisoners escape and there is no place to hold them. It tracked down some who they considered dangerous to their defense efforts and assassinated some of them. Amnesty International could have pointed out how extremely difficult it would be for Hamas to hold criminals and informants without a prison. Most wars produce accounts of executions of prisoners because there is no good way to hold them. A bullet has long been the most expedient way to keep a prisoner from escaping a second time, and in war this solution is used often. Hamas could hardly chain prisoners to bedposts while it fought Israel.
Hamas was not handed the reigns of government after it won the election in 2007; it had to fight to take over. During the January 09 bombardment, Israel dropped at least two sets of mass leaflets on Gazans, begging them to inform on their Hamas neighbors. Many people lost their homes or their lives because they were suspected of being relatives of Hamas activists.
Perfectly disguised agents are everywhere in Gaza, Jewish Arabs who speak perfect Arabic, or simply mercenary Arabs who act as trained spies inside the Gaza gulag. I do not doubt for a minute that Hamas would assassinate someone it thought to be an agent of the enemy. After all, hundreds of Hamas leaders have been targeted for execution by the Israelis, and many of them have paid the high price of seeing their families murdered from the air. Would they do less when they think they have found an informant?
Let’s look at the total score before we judge Hamas. By any count, Israel killed and wounded about 500 times more people than Hamas did during the January invasion. And Hamas did not destroy a single Israeli building or home during those 20 days, as best we can tell. Israel left tens of thousands homeless. Hamas has taken only one Israeli prisoner since it was elected; Israel holds many thousands of Philistines in prisons under brutal conditions and without charges. So who is the aggressor?
It is up to the people of Gaza to tell us if they reject Hamas. They voted it in. Hamas still has their support, else no one would negotiate with it. We Americans must stop our leaders from deciding by whom and how others are to be governed. These are the same leaders who have given us a broken, corrupt banking system and economy that is on the ropes. Much of the cost and cause can be tied to our ongoing policy of continuous war and brutality against Islamic states. Hamas could not be more inhumane than our leaders have been in Iraq, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo. So, who are we to join Israel in condemning the Philistines’ government?
It was Jesus, the presumed moral guide of 200 million professing American Christians, who reminded us to take the timber out of our own eye before we try to remove the fleck from someone else’s eye. When Evangelical Zionists again follow the clear teaching of Jesus, whom they call “Lord,” the Philistines will have peace, and so will America.
A majority of Americans believe there is a God who actually judges men. Many disagree by what rules He decides. Consider how God might view an individual who knows the Israelis are exterminating the Philistines with weapons America willfully provide, but who says and does nothing, or worse, encourages the murder. Some think the USA is, as a nation, undergoing Gods judgment.
This author happens to believe God judges all people one by one, and not by political subdivisions. Jesus’ biographers tell us; many will claim to be His followers in their end times, and He will say to them, “I never knew you.” A question for those who think there might be a God: If God despises the murder and the abuse of the Philistines, or any of His Children, will He know you?
Notes
1 The Tunnels of Gaza an underground economy and resistance symbol
Sara Flounders Feb 13, 2009 http://cp.whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2871
2 Bob Simon of CBS News: “Gaza is the world’s largest prison” http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9900
3 Evangelical Zionist’s Dilemma: Love Your Enemy or Starve Him
Charles E. Carlson Jan 31, 2009
http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2843
4 The Neo-Cons). http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.PDF
5 “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/14/muslim.dvd/index.html
6 Attacking Islam, Revisited
Charles E. Carlson Mar 21, 1994 http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=261
7 The Lie That Justifies Mass Murder: “Hamas Hit Us First”
Charles E. Carlson http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2770
8 Hamas waged a deadly campaign as war devastated Gaza
http://cp.whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2873
