The Israeli government is implementing its battle plans to defeat and disarm Hamas in Gaza. Decisively defeating Hamas is necessary to prevent the Nazi-like group from launching more pogroms. It will also remove Hamas’ boot from the neck of the Palestinian people.
Israeli troops now control 75% of Gaza and as much as 40% of Gaza City, Hamas’ last major stronghold. Unlike Hamas, whose goal is to kill as many Jews as possible, the Israel Defense Forces tries to get civilians out of harms way before going after Hamas death squads.
Over the last several weeks the Israel Defense Forces ordered civilians to evacuate several high rise buildings Hamas was using as command posts. Once the civilians left, the buildings were leveled.
On Sept. 9 the IDF dropped thousands of leaflets over Gaza City telling civilians to completely abandon the city in advance of Israel’s offensive. The next day it followed up with texts and recorded messages to residents’ cellphones.
The roads heading toward Israeli-designated safe zones along the coast were packed with Gazan families who fled the city ignoring Hamas’ demands they stay and become “martyrs.”
The IDF flyer gave Gazans a phone number to call to let Israeli forces know if Hamas sets up roadblocks or attacks them to prevent them from leaving.
One of the lies promoted by many “democratic” imperialist governments, as well as Stalinist groups and Hamas apologists, is that Hamas has some connection to the defense of the national aspirations of Palestinians in Gaza.
Gazans demand Hamas end the war
In fact, thousands of people in Gaza have joined protests over the last several months demanding “Hamas out, out!” Hamas has since stepped up its brutal attacks on those who speak out against its dictatorial rule. Videos over the last few weeks show Hamas thugs brutally beating or shooting people in Khan Younis and other neighborhoods.
A Sept. 3 statement by the Forum of Families of Khan Younis Governorate condemned Hamas for the recent beatings and murders. It demanded Hamas “take every measure to stop the war immediately.” It accused Hamas of turning “our pain and suffering into bargaining chips or delays.”
Amid Israel’s advances, liberal bourgeois news media, United Nations agencies, and imperialist governments from the United States to the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Australia and beyond are stepping up pressure on Israel to end its defensive war, even if that means the Nazi-like group survives intact.
Hamas’ true colors
But amid the slander campaign claiming the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is the obstacle to peace, Hamas once again showed its true colors, murdering six civilians and wounding 12 others in Jerusalem Sept. 8.
Two Hamas thugs opened fire indiscriminately at a bus stop at Ramot Junction, near an orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades issued a statement celebrating “with pride and honor” that “our fighters were able to kill six Zionists,” just another way of saying they killed Jews. And they have no intention of stopping.
The victims were school prayer instructor Yosef David, students Yaakov Pinto and Israel Mentzer, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Pash, administrator Sarah Mendelson and 79-year-old bakery owner Rabbi Mordechai Steinsteg.
Hamas — financed, armed and backed by the reactionary regime in Tehran — is not interested in peace. Nothing has changed from the goal outlined in its 1988 charter, which explicitly calls for killing Jews and annihilating Israel. Hamas views all Jews in Israel as “settlers” who must be eliminated, one way or another.
Partially in response to Hamas’ bloody assault in Jerusalem, the Israeli air force bombed a meeting of Hamas’ central leaders in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 9. This is Hamas’ main headquarters from where it orders massacres of Jews.
While the White House claimed it supported Israel’s goal of killing Hamas leaders responsible for the Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom that killed over 1,200 people, President Donald Trump said he assured the Qatari government that “such a thing will not happen again on their soil.”
“Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Sept. 9, “does not advance Israel or America’s goals.”
What concerns Washington is not the life of Jews — or Palestinians — or combating Jew-hatred. The U.S. rulers see the continuation of the war in Gaza as an obstacle to the stability they need to increase their plunder of the labor and resources of the Middle East. And an obstacle to pulling together an alliance in the region, including with the government of Iran and the new regime in Syria, against Beijing, Washington’s main rival.
Netanyahu appeals to Gazans
At the end of his remarks at an event at the U.S. Embassy Sept. 9, Netanyahu made an appeal to the Palestinian people in Gaza. Hamas doesn’t “care a hoot about you,” Netanyahu said. “They go to the underground tunnels and they keep you above ground so you serve as human shields.”
“Stand up for your rights and for your future. Make peace with us,” the prime minister said. “We can promise you a different future but you’ve got to take these people out of the way. If you do, there is no limit to our common future.”
Netanyahu’s goal is to ensure Israel’s survival and provide stability for the country’s ruling capitalist class.
But the working class has its own class-struggle interests at stake. The end of Hamas’ tyranny would remove a deadly obstacle to creating conditions to advance common struggles by workers of all nationalities, including for the Palestinian people’s fight for their national aspirations.