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But Hamas…

by | Mar 26, 2024

But Hamas…

by | Mar 26, 2024

When Israel’s defenders bring up Hamas’s execrable anti-Semitic and genocidal charter, they should be reminded that for decades before the 1948 self-declared founding of Israel, Zionist leaders and settlers had talked about reclaiming and sanctifying the “Promised Land” for the “Chosen People”; supported the “transfer,” by force if necessary, of the Palestinian Arabs (those non-Jewish people who for generations lived inexplicably in the “land without a people”); treated them with utter contempt to their faces (to the dismay other Jews); expelled over 750,000 Palestinian Arabs in 1948, the Nakba; massacred hundreds of others and even poisoned their wells; destroyed some 500 villages to make way for Jewish towns, forests, and parks; and militarily ruled the remaining Palestinian Arabs for the next two decades. Then came the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip through the 1967 war with its attendant brutality and humiliation.

All of that preceded Hamas’s emergence in the late 1980s. This does not justify Hamas’s horrendous violence against noncombatants, but perspective advances comprehension — if comprehension is deemed desirable.

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

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