More videos, Hamas instructions and other information keeps coming to light on the brutality unleashed by the reactionary Islamist group’s anti-Jewish slaughter in Israel that began Oct. 7. Financed, armed and directed by Tehran in alliance with Lebanon-based Hezbollah and its other proxy forces in the Middle East, the Hamas death squads murdered over 1,400 people, wounded more than 5,400, and seized 220 hostages to Gaza.
Like the czarist-organized pogroms in Russia near the turn of the 19th century — mass attacks on Jewish neighborhoods to kill or drive out as many Jews as possible — Hamas thugs tortured some of their victims before they killed them, raped women, murdered children in their beds, burned entire families to death and posted videos of their acts for the whole world to see.
The assault marks a turning point that highlights the necessity of working people standing up to Jew-hatred as today’s capitalist crisis deepens. This was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel Defense Forces are preparing for a land offensive to destroy Hamas, to prevent it from carrying out further anti-Jewish massacres, which it promises to do. As of Oct. 23 the IDF had carried out strikes against 10,000 military targets in Gaza. Unlike Hamas — whose goal is to maximize civilian deaths, including of Palestinians, whose misery it uses to try and win sympathy for its Jew-hatred — Israeli forces try to minimize civilian casualties.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry claims that more than 5,700 Gazans have died from Israeli attacks, but no figure given by Hamas can be trusted. Supporters of Hamas even claim the slaughter in Israel was carried out by the Jews themselves!
The IDF has repeatedly called on civilians to take refuge in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, before the ground war begins in the north. Some 700,000 have done so, despite Hamas instructing them to stay. Still, hundreds of thousands remain in the north.
After imposing a total blockade of the Strip for several days, the Israeli government has allowed convoys of food, water and medicine to enter through the Gaza-Egypt border crossing on condition this aid goes only to civilians.
A land offensive will not be easy. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have built a network of 1,300 tunnels totaling some 300 miles, some as deep as 225 feet.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah in Lebanon has threatened to launch an offensive if Israel invades Gaza. Unlike the more primitive missiles Hamas and its allies have in Gaza, Hezbollah has at least 150,000 more advanced rockets, hundreds of them equipped with GPS navigation, along with anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. Tehran — which is determined to develop nuclear weapons for use against the Jews in Israel — has also been sending weapons to the West Bank, hoping to convert it into another Gaza.
Some 200,000 Israelis have evacuated from more than 105 communities near the Gaza and Lebanon borders in advance of any escalation in the war.
“We have faced rocket fire from Gaza for the last 20 years, but this has been the worst,” Nili Yehieli, an official of the Histadrut trade union federation in Ashkelon, just 8 miles from the Gaza border, told the Militant by phone Oct. 24. “One quarter of all the missiles they fire at Israel are targeted at Ashkelon.” When the warning siren sounds, “we only have 30 seconds to reach a shelter.”
“There has been a lot of solidarity by workers across Israel,” Yehieli said. “The Histadrut initiated a program to invite people from Ashkelon” and other areas near the border “to come live in their homes” during the conflict.
Hamas ‘proud’ of killing Jews
During an Oct. 24 interview by Sky News reporter Dominic Waghorn, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal avoided answering questions about the massacre and hostages.
But when Waghorn asked if Meshaal felt “ashamed” that Hamas gunmen had slaughtered 260 unarmed civilians at a dance party Oct. 7 and went door to door killing men, women and children in kibbutz farm communities near the Gaza border, the Hamas leader did not challenge the facts.
“No. I feel proud that our Palestinian people did not surrender, did not raise the white flag and are still fighting Israel,” he said.
When Waghorn called the men, women and children captured by the group “hostages,” the Hamas leader cynically claimed they’re “our guests.”
Supporters of Hamas around the world have initiated demonstrations, centered on demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, which would leave Hamas free to launch future pogroms against Jews.
A pro-Hamas march of several thousand took place in Bay Ridge, home to a large Arab and Palestinian population in New York Oct. 21. One sign showed an Israeli flag in a trash can with the slogan “Keep the world clean,” an antisemitic slogan that echoes the Nazi’s goal of eliminating all the Jews.
Some of the largest demonstrations took place after Hamas claimed an Israeli airstrike had killed over 500 people and destroyed the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza City Oct. 17.
The New York Times featured an article about it under the headline “Israeli strike kills hundreds in hospital, Palestinians say.” There was just one problem. It wasn’t true.
The Israeli government rapidly released evidence — confirmed by numerous other sources — that it was an Islamic Jihad missile that fell short and blew up next to the hospital.
Five days after its original article the Times finally published an “Editor’s note” — not even a correction — saying it had “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas.” In fact, the Times editors, like other liberal papers and politicians, wished the account was true.
Despite the pro-Hamas propaganda barrage, a new Al-Monitor poll showed that 27% of Americans it interviewed said that their support for Israel has increased since Oct. 7 and only 10% said it had decreased.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Oct. 24 condemned the massacre of Jews, but then claimed “the Hamas attack did not happen in a vacuum.” He spent the rest of his remarks denouncing the Israeli response to the pogrom, demanding an end to the humanitarian crisis he blames it for. Israeli officials called on Guterres to resign.
The U.N. chief repeated Hamas’ claim its supply of fuel for Gaza hospitals will soon run out. But the IDF then released aerial photos of 12 full gas tanks in southern Gaza where Hamas is hoarding fuel for military purposes. “Hamas is accountable for the suffering in Gaza, not Israel,” IDF spokesperson Jonathan Cornicus said.
The “democratic” imperialist powers — from Washington to Paris — have stopped pointing to Hamas and its slaughter of Jews as the problem, instead focusing on calls for a cease-fire.
Opponents of Israel’s existence worldwide have joined in the liberal chorus for a “humanitarian pause.”
Israel’s irrefutable response is that an end must be put to Hamas as a threat to annihilate the Jews. Hamas is responsible for what is unfolding.
Washington has warned Iran and Hezbollah to not get directly involved in the war. It has stationed two aircraft carrier groups in the Mediterranean and shot down three missiles fired from Yemen at Israel. But Washington’s real aim is to protect its own imperialist interests in the region, not defense of Israel as a refuge for Jews.
“Working people cannot rely on democratic imperialism to protect the Jews,” Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party 2024 candidate for U.S. Senate from Florida, said in a statement just days after the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom. “Washington and London closed the door on Jewish immigration before, during and after the Second World War. That fact, and the betrayal of revolutionary opportunities by the Stalinists in Moscow and elsewhere, led to Hitler’s ‘Final Solution.’”
“The Socialist Workers Party is part of the continuity in the fight against Jew-hatred that goes back to Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia,” Fruit said. That continuity strengthens the fight against Jew-hatred and to defend Israel as a refuge for Jews today.