As the sixth-month anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 pogrom against Jews in Israel approaches, the Israel Defense Forces are dealing blows to the reactionary Jew-hating group in Gaza and to the Tehran-led “axis of resistance.” But Hamas still holds some 100 hostages and has thousands of its fighters in tunnels in its last stronghold in Rafah, near the Egyptian border.
The Israel Defense Forces March 31 wrapped up a two-week battle that eliminated or captured hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters who had reoccupied Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. In November Israeli forces had expelled Hamas and destroyed the tunnels they had built underneath it. But Hamas and Islamic Jihad had returned, once again using some 5,000 civilians taking refuge at the complex, as well as patients and medical staff there, as human shields.
The terrorist leaders calculated that basing themselves in the maternity ward and other parts of the hospital would protect them from Israeli attack. And any moves to dislodge them would result in civilian “martyrs” Hamas could use to appeal to liberals internationally to back its lie that Israel is engaged in genocide.
Instead, Israel Defense Forces evacuated the patients and doctors to a field hospital away from the combat before taking on the reactionary Islamist thugs. But the battle left the hospital in shambles.
Since Oct. 7, when Tehran-backed Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, wounded more than 5,000 and took more than 250 hostages — the worst massacre of Jews since the Nazi Holocaust — Israeli forces have degraded or destroyed the majority of Hamas’ battalions.
Gazans speak out against Hamas
Israeli successes have begun to open up space for Gazans to speak out against Hamas. In February modest demonstrations took place in Rafah, Jabalya and Deir Al-Balah denouncing Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh and chanting “Down with Hamas.”
Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2006, jailing, torturing and killing political opponents; breaking strikes by trade unions; and restricting women’s rights. It is the biggest obstacle Palestinian workers face in Gaza and the West Bank to be able to freely join with others — including Jewish workers — to fight in their class interests.
Amira Hass reported in the daily Haaretz April 1 on the growing opposition to Hamas. Hass, a longtime opponent of what she claims is Israeli “apartheid” and of Israel’s current war to eliminate Hamas, spoke by phone with four people in Gaza. They told her that many in Gaza, likely most, oppose the massacre carried out by Hamas Oct. 7.
One woman told Haas that “she too hears the curses against Hamas everywhere: at the hospital that couldn’t treat her wounded granddaughter, when she’s waiting in line to fill their water container, and when passing by piles of stinking garbage that no one clears.”
One man told her “Hamas’ military power in Gaza has been almost totally destroyed, but not its power to oppress us.” But that’s beginning to change also.
Another indication of the declining influence of Hamas is the failure of its “call upon our people in Jerusalem, the West Bank, the interior, and the occupied lands to mobilize and confront the occupation’s schemes against the blessed Al Aqsa Mosque” during Ramadan.
Instead, tens of thousands have been praying peacefully at the mosque since the start of Ramadan March 10.
In addition, the annual “Land Day” protests inside Israel — while still attracting thousands of people — were the smallest in years. The actions protest what some groups call “theft” of Palestinian land during the formation of Israel in 1948.
Of course not every action of Israel’s capitalist government and army advance the fight against Hamas. Israeli officials admitted that seven volunteers from the World Central Kitchen — which has set up dozens of kitchens in collaboration with Israel to alleviate lack of food in Gaza — were killed in an airstrike on civilian vehicles April 2. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he lamented the killings, calling them tragic and unintended. The IDF said an independent fact-finding body has been set up to investigate what happened.
Meanwhile, the Joseph Biden administration continues to pressure the Israeli government to call off its planned offensive in Rafah, feigning concern for Palestinian civilians. The main concern of the capitalist rulers in Washington is to protect their own interests in the Mideast, not Israel’s.
The White House says Israel should “enhance” security at the border with Egypt instead.
But this would leave Hamas able to rebuild and relaunch its war to kill Jews and destroy Israel.
Tehran’s ‘axis of resistance’
On April 1, missiles fired from Israeli planes destroyed a building near the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, killing at least seven Iranian military and intelligence officers, including three generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They were meeting with Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders.
The meeting in Damascus came on the heels of visits by central leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to Tehran, where they conferred with top Iranian officials to coordinate stepped-up attacks on Israel. According to the Iranian daily Hamshahri, they discussed expanding “the scope of the fight against the occupying regime,” including from the Houthis in Yemen, Iran-organized militias in Iraq and Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened that “the evil regime” will be “punished” for the strike.
The danger of further escalation takes place in the context of a deepening crisis of the Washington-dominated imperialist “world order,” accelerated by Moscow’s war against the people of Ukraine, the Oct. 7 pogrom in Israel and the step up in Jew-hatred worldwide.