Israeli soldiers are making steady progress against Hamas in Gaza, destroying command posts, eliminating its leaders and beating back its forces, increasing numbers of whom are surrendering. Even with the widespread destruction the fighting has caused, more Gaza residents are taking advantage of the increased space to speak their mind and are openly criticizing the Tehran-backed Jew-hating terrorist group.
Hundreds of Hamas fighters have surrendered to the Israel Defense Forces, in many instances captured on video. The U.S-based Institute for the Study of War estimates that at least seven Hamas battalions have capitulated.
Dismantling Hamas as a fighting force and eliminating its leadership structure is key to preventing the Tehran-allied outfit from carrying out more pogroms, which it has repeatedly promised to do “over and over again.” Hamas and allied Islamic Jihad death squads killed 1,200 people Oct. 7, the vast majority Jews, wounded thousands more, and took 240 children, women and men hostage.
The reactionary bourgeois clerical regime in Iran, Hamas, Lebanon-based Hezbollah and related militia forces in Iraq and Yemen — what Tehran calls its “axis of resistance” — are determined to wipe Israel off the map and kill or drive out the Jews who live there. This is not a war between Israel and Palestinians. It’s a war begun by Tehran, Hamas and their allies against Jews, with big consequences for working people worldwide.
Working people and our unions need to speak out and join actions against Jew-hatred and to defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews. As the worldwide capitalist crisis deepens, Jew-hatred will be used by the capitalist rulers to divert attention from the real enemy — their dog-eat-dog profit-driven system.
It’s no secret to anyone in Gaza that Hamas places its command posts and weapon stores in tunnels underneath hospitals, schools, mosques and apartment buildings, using civilians as human shields. Hamas leaders were convinced this would slow down the Israeli response as it has in the past, while getting Palestinian civilians killed that can be claimed as “martyrs” to win sympathy abroad.
The Hamas-run health ministry claims more than 18,000 people in Gaza have died amid the fighting. Israel officials say some 7,000 are Hamas combatants.
Gaza residents speak against Hamas
More and more Gaza residents are losing their fear of Hamas, which has ruled over them with an iron fist since 2007. And they’re stepping forward to lay the blame for the death and destruction squarely on the reactionary Islamist group.
![Woman tells Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza that “all the aid goes to them [Hamas], to their houses, they take everything.” Israeli army’s blows degrading Hamas open up space for Palestinians in Gaza to speak out.](https://themilitant.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Al-Jazzera_reporting_8748-300x142.jpg)
On Dec. 6, an Al Jazeera Live reporter outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza began blaming Israel for the crisis there, when an elderly Palestinian woman challenged him. “All the aid goes to the [tunnels] underground,” she said, while a crowd gathered around, all caught on video. “A lot of aid comes in, but it doesn’t reach the people.”
The Al Jazeera reporter tried to persuade her she was wrong. “It is being distributed,” he said. “This is what they say.”
“All the aid goes to them [Hamas], to their houses, they take everything,” she responded. “They can shoot me, do whatever they want to me.”
The reporter cut her off, turned to the camera and said, “It seems that the situation is unclear.”
Radio Elam, a station based in the West Bank, interviewed Gaza-based journalist Muhammad Mansour. “I have a message for the Hamas government — go to hell,” Mansour said. “Allah will take revenge on you for the destruction you brought upon us.”
“We were deported from Gaza City to Khan Yunis, and from Khan Yunis to Rafah,” he said, referring to instructions from the Israel Defense Forces for civilians to leave combat zones. “Release these abductees already! Sinwar, Deif, [two central Hamas leaders], and their wicked companions hide underground. We don’t even have access to water!”
Israeli police report that dozens of those killed Oct. 7 were sexually abused, a prominent feature of the anti-Jewish assault. Some were gang raped, many were viciously mutilated. Hamas still holds some 138 hostages, including 20 women and children. Some of these women have been sexually assaulted by the Hamas thugs, hostages that have been freed report.
Liberals demand cease-fire
There is an increasing hue and cry for a cease-fire from supporters of Hamas, some capitalist governments and liberal media around the world, as Israeli forces make gains in Gaza. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a highly unusual move on his own initiative, called an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council Dec. 8 to vote on a resolution demanding Israel accept a cease-fire. But any serious break in the fighting would just give Hamas time to recover, to murder, torture and rape again.
Washington vetoed the resolution, the only vote against the measure. In one reflection of the shifting alliances resulting from Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas pogrom — major watersheds in world politics — the French government voted for the resolution. Britain abstained, but said it would have voted yes if a clause was added that condemned the Oct. 7 pogrom.
The United Nations was set up on the heels of Washington’s emergence from the ashes of the second imperialist world war as the top imperialist power. But today its massive bureaucracy gets pulled in different directions as the capitalist “world order” is coming apart.
In Gaza, U.N. aid agencies have long been complicit with Hamas. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine runs over half the schools there. The U.N. is involved in health care and distributes funds to Hamas, as well as some aid to Gazans. Their politics are linked to Hamas. Textbooks used in their schools teach that Zionists are the enemy and that Israel must be destroyed.
The UN Women organization didn’t “unequivocally condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas” until nearly two months after the pogrom. Even that statement starts by criticizing Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Meanwhile, the actions of President Joseph Biden’s administration continue to show why Jews and Israel can’t depend on U.S. imperialism. Washington sends weapons to Israel and vetoes some anti-Israel U.N. resolutions, but its goal isn’t to defend Jews. It’s to defend the U.S. rulers’ own economic and political interests, including in the Middle East.
At a Dec. 12 fundraiser for his 2024 election campaign, Biden said Israel “is starting to lose support” because of what he called its “indiscriminate” bombing in Gaza. Administration officials are part of the growing chorus for a stop to the fighting.
But it is only by Israel decisively dismantling Hamas that doors will open wide for both the fight against Jew-hatred and for the rights of the people of Gaza.