The cold-blooded murder of six Israeli hostages by Hamas in late August is further proof that defeating the Tehran-backed group and demolishing its command structure is essential for defending Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews. And for opening space for Jewish, Arab and other working people to come together and find a way forward to defend their class interests against the capitalist rulers and their governments in the region.
While expressing “outrage” at Hamas for the executions, President Joseph Biden and the liberal bourgeois media charged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “not doing enough” to end his assault. They want the Israeli government to make more concessions in negotiations over a cease-fire. This would allow Hamas to recover and prepare future anti-Jewish pogroms, as it promises to do.
Five of the six hostages — Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino — were kidnapped from the Nova music festival Oct. 7. The sixth, Carmel Gat, was grabbed at Kibbutz Be’eri. Israeli soldiers found their bodies in a 65-foot-deep tunnel in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, Aug. 31 — all shot multiple times at close range a day or two before.
Hamas has publicly taken credit for murdering the six and vowed to keep killing hostages anytime Israeli forces come close to liberating them.
According to Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari, the site of the executions was less than a mile from the tunnel where hostage Farhan al-Qadi was rescued a few days before. Al-Qadi, a Bedouin Arab citizen of Israel, spent 326 days in captivity.
When they realized Israeli troops were getting near, Hamas thugs fled, leaving him in a booby-trapped room. Al-Qadi was working as a security guard at a packaging plant at Kibbutz Magen when Hamas attacked Oct. 7. They shot him in the leg when he refused to tell them where to find Jews.
The Oct. 7 pogrom led by Hamas — and financed, planned and coordinated with the reactionary regime in Tehran — was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust during World War II, leaving 1,200 dead, thousands wounded and 251 people kidnapped. The thugs raped dozens of women, often mutilating their bodies. Israeli officials believe that of 97 hostages still in Gaza, at least 33 are dead.
Obstacles to a ‘deal’
A key bone of contention in the negotiations between Hamas and the Israeli government over the release of the remaining hostages and a cease-fire is Hamas’ demand that Israeli troops totally abandon control of the Egypt-Gaza border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.
Until Israeli troops took it over in May, Hamas continued to use it to smuggle in massive amounts of weapons by bribing Egyptian officials.
Netanyahu told a Sept. 2 press conference that maintaining troops in the corridor is necessary “to ensure that we don’t have another Oct. 7 and another Oct. 7 and another Oct. 7, as Hamas has promised to carry out.” That view is backed by a majority of Israelis.
The hostages were shot “in the back of the head,” Netanyahu said. What message would making concessions now “send Hamas?”
“I won’t let them rearm,” Netanyahu said. “It’s a strategic, existential issue for the State of Israel.”
Divisions in Israel
Not everyone in Israel agrees. One member of the cabinet, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, voted against insisting on maintaining control of the corridor.
Israel — like the U.S. — is a class-divided country, including a significant middle-class meritocratic layer. Israel’s capitalist class is riven with competing factions.
Many of those killed, mutilated or taken hostage by Hamas and its allies on Oct. 7 were from kibbutzim and communities with ties to bourgeois opposition parties or who considered themselves part of Israel’s “peace” movement that promotes ties between Jews and Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The Hamas assassins and rapists couldn’t care less. They strongly oppose friendly relations between Jews and Palestinians. Hamas’ roots are as the Gaza branch of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, which actively collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. They hoped the Nazi army would come to the Middle East to complete its “Final Solution,” the extermination of the Jews.
Hamas’ founding covenant explicitly states that its goal is to kill the Jews and establish an Islamic Caliphate in all of Palestine.
To Hamas, the Palestinians are just human shields they cynically use as “martyrs” to win sympathy and funding from imperialist governments in order to pursue their goal: driving out the Jews through the complete destruction of Israel.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel organized a demonstration of tens of thousands Sept. 1, calling on Netanyahu to accept Hamas’ demands for freeing the remaining hostages. The group includes relatives understandably distraught over the fate of their loved ones.
The Histadrut labor federation called a several hour strike the next day in support. Histadrut head Arnon Bar-David said that “a deal is more important than anything else.” The labor federation was backed by the Israel Business Forum and by Yesh Atid, the main bourgeois opposition party.
U.S. imperialist interests
Washington too has been pressing the Israeli government for an end to the war on Hamas for months, but its concerns have little to do with getting the hostages released, regardless of Biden’s statement of outrage at Hamas’ recent executions.
The U.S. rulers’ concern is not opposing Jew-hatred, but securing stability to defend their imperialist interests in the region.
This is nothing new. After President Truman de facto recognized the creation of Israel in 1948, the U.S. government enforced an arms embargo to try to prevent the new state from getting the weapons it needed to defend itself in a war against the rulers of five Arab states.
Washington also enforced an arms embargo in 1967 during what is now known as the “Six-Day War,” when the Israeli government launched a preemptive strike on Egyptian forces that were massed at the border preparing to invade.
U.S. capitalists concern today is the same as it was in ’48 and ’67. They seek stability for their own economic and political interests. That includes making superprofits off oil and maritime shipping currently curtailed by attacks on freight vessels in the Red Sea by the Houthis in Yemen, also backed by Tehran. The Biden administration is also seeking an accommodation with the regime in Tehran.