Coexist Part 4: Hamas case Study

This part four of the Coexist series. It explores the Hamas case study introduced in Part 1. It builds on the analysis in Part 2 and Part 3.

Why do so many of the social justice groups that seem to support Coexist support Hamas, who violently attacked Israel, raping and murdering over a thousand and taking hostages, many of whom they later murdered?

When I was the Deputy J5 and the J7 at USEUCOM, I got to work on Israeli issues since Israel is part of the EUCOM Area of Responsibility (AOR). My sympathies were with the Palestinians. With their rising birthrates, I thought all they needed to do was wait out Israel. Israel would have a choice. Either be a democracy with a majority Arab population which could take away the Jewish nature of Israel or become something other than a democracy, If they continued with the confrontational approach they internal community could brand Israel an apartheid state and subject to the same measures as South Africa. That was in 2009, and the situation has gotten even graver.

One would think the brutality of the Hamas attack would have been a punctured equilibrium that changed the situational dynamics. It did punctuate it, but not in the way many thought. The Coexist groups are square anti-Jewish. Not anti-Hamas; anti-Jewish.

Facts:

• Estimated 1200 Israelis killed in the initial attack.
• Hamas took an estimated 240 hostages.
• The Israel Defense Force (IDF) says they discovered 800 tunnels and destroyed about 500 of them.
• Palestinian casualties are harder to estimate, but there may be as many as 40,000.
• Israel destroyed over half the residences and many other buildings in Gaza so far.
• The UN says the residents of Gaza are in danger of starvation.
• The US tried to establish a port in Gaza and failed.
• Israel assassinated a key leader in Iran and drew Iran closer to the conflict.
• Hezbollah has now attacked Israel, and the war is in danger of spreading.
• Demonstrators have blocked Jewish students from attending classes on college campuses, burning Israeli and American flags, disrupting cities.
• College leaders have supported these demonstrations. After Congressional hearings, several college presidents were fired.
• Jews have traditionally supported the democratic party.
• The US does not have a treaty with Israel. They are not an ally; they are a security partner. The US has no legal requirement come to Israel’s aid. The US has supported Israel since 1973, and Israel is the largest recipient of foreign aid.

We have a punctuated equilibrium alright, but not in the way expected after Hamas’ surprise attack accompanied by rape, murder, and kidnapping. Clearly, Hamas broke too many rules of war to count and one can make a case that Israel’s response, at least initially, conformed to Just War Theory.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Israel’s just war. Hamas intertwined their leadership and war-making capability with the populace. To get to the war-making capabilities, Israel has to mix it up with the population and inflict casualties and damage on them. One could say this is yet again a violation of the rules of war, but the horrific images of dead Palestinians and destroyed infrastructure obscured the Hamas crimes. If Israel does not take down Hamas, history shows they will rise again and attack. In the abstract, that is easy to understand. But pictures of dead children are not abstract.

That, in part, explains why the Coexist movement supports Hamas, or more particularly, is anti-Jewish. Before getting into the theory behind the Coexist movement’s actions, let me ask a question. If Black Lives Matter had not existed and the US had not experienced the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE), would we see the violent anti-Jewish demonstrations we have seen?

The dramatic pictures capture the hearts of the “Me Too” groups. That is their intent and the exploiters understand how to pull their heart strings,

World Systems Theory and Critical Theory attract the exploiters and some of the evolving groups. Now the roots of these theories is Marxism. They set up a dynamic of the oppressed against the oppressors. In this case, the oppressed are the Palestinians and oppressors are the Jews. But Marxism is not a popular term. Antonio Gramsci’s concept of Cultural Hegemony sought to put a kinder, gentler face on Marxism and make it appeal to a broader base. I remember a fellow student in a political science course say how much she loved Gramsci. If you called her a Marxist, however, she would have vehemently denied it. But it is still Marxism and a dialectic of struggle and war.

The next question is, how will the American Jewish population vote in the 2024 elections?