The White House and the bourgeois news media present the current negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza as if both the Israeli government and Nazi-inspired Hamas have equally legitimate interests and could end the war, if only they would be more “flexible.”
President Donald Trump presents himself as the only arbiter capable of making this deal, pushing both sides to make concessions. Netanyahu “wants to solve it, I want to solve it, and I think the other side [Hamas] wants to solve it,” Trump said July 8.
This leaves out the sharply opposed interests and goals involved.
Hamas wants guarantees that a temporary ceasefire will lead to a “permanent” one with full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, allowing it to rebuild its capacity to carry out more pogroms on the road to a “Final Solution” of the Jewish question. The Israeli government says the war cannot end until Hamas’ leaders are exiled, its forces completely disarmed and any role it has in ruling Gaza foreclosed.
The current war was started by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, when it launched the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, planned for years in collaboration with the reactionary Jew-hating regime in Tehran. Hamas death squads murdered 1,200 people, including some two dozen Arab citizens of Israel and more than 50 immigrant workers; raped dozens of women, and some men; and took 251 hostages.
Hamas should free all the remaining hostages immediately and unconditionally. Instead, it continues to brutalize and use them as bargaining chips to try to stave off future Israeli attacks.
Hamas rape of women was planned
On July 8, the Israel-based Dinah Project, established to counter groups that deny the sexual violence unleashed by Hamas and its allies, released a new report titled “A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond.”
The report is based on the testimony of 15 released hostages, a survivor of an attempted rape Oct. 7, 17 witnesses of over 15 separate incidents of sexual assault at numerous locations — including gang rapes, 27 first responders, and morgue attendants who saw the bodies of victims, along with photographic evidence, including videos filmed by Hamas thugs themselves. Authors of the report also reviewed Hamas’ intercepted communications.
In more than one case, the rapes continued after the victim was dead. The genitalia of many of the women and men murdered by Hamas were mutilated.
One difficulty in being able to paint the full picture, the report notes, is that “in most of the cases, the rape victims were murdered during or immediately following the assault.”
Because many victims and witnesses of the assault are still too traumatized to tell their stories, the report is only a partial picture. But it is more than enough to establish that the sexual assaults were part of Hamas’ plan from the start.
The bourgeois media routinely gives prominent coverage to alleged killings of civilians by the Israel Defense Forces and promotes casualty figures released by the Gaza Ministry of Health, as if this was an accurate source, often without noting that the ministry is run by Hamas. The New York Times and other papers barely mention what the Dinah Project helped uncover and make more widely known.
Hamas has not changed
Nothing has changed in the aims of Hamas and its enablers in Tehran since Oct. 7. Their goal is to destroy Israel and expel or kill all the Jews there. Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad says, “There will be a second, a third, a fourth” Oct. 7. The rulers in Tehran say their goal is the same.
The liberal bourgeois press presents Hamas as an organization that in some distorted way represents the aspirations of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Hamas established a brutal dictatorship in Gaza that tortured and murdered its political opponents and gay Gazans, trampled on women’s rights and busted labor unions. Hamas spent hundreds of millions of dollars, diverting resources meant for economic development, to prepare for its war of extermination against the Jews. Hamas built a tunnel system for its troops to rival the New York City subway — but not one bomb shelter for the people of Gaza.
It continues to use Palestinians as human shields. “Even if Israel killed 20,000 or another 100,000 [civilians]; this is a strong card we have on our hands,” Hamad said in early July.
Israel’s destruction of military sites in Iran has left Hamas further isolated. While Israeli forces have wrested some 70% of Gaza from Hamas rule and decimated its leadership and arms supplies, it still has the capacity for hit and run attacks against Israeli troops.
Hamas continues to cling to power, brutalizing the people of Gaza, beating and murdering those who challenge its rule. This anti-working-class group has killed Palestinians who have helped with the food distribution program of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which works with Israel to bypass the Hamas-riddled U.N. relief efforts. And it continues to threaten those who led protests in May and June of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza calling for Hamas to “get out.”
U.S. imperialism wants a ‘deal’
Israel’s daily Hayom ran an article July 9 titled “Iran War 2.0? Trump, Netanyahu have different ideas.” While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to ensure that Tehran fully dismantles its nuclear weapons program, “Trump has different objectives,” the article notes. “He sees an opportunity to press Iran to cut a deal and seize a grand diplomatic feat of restoring ties with Iran.”
Like the Biden administration before him, Trump sees ending the war in Gaza as necessary for advancing Washington’s goal of improved relations with Arab and Muslim governments across the Middle East and blocking any advance by Beijing, its main rival — a new Pax Americana.
U.S. imperialism’s only interest is in plundering the human and natural resources in the region, not in defending Israel’s existence as a refuge for Jews or the lives and national rights of Palestinians.
Israel, like every capitalist country in the world, is class-divided. Class-conscious workers don’t give political support to any wing of the government, its institutions or to any of the capitalist parties there.
But working people and others who oppose Jew-hatred understand that an Israeli victory against Hamas is necessary to prevent another Holocaust. And it’s a decisive question for advancing the class interests of all workers — Jews, Palestinians and others across the region.