It is no coincidence that the word razzia comes to us from Algeria. Since the Middle Ages, Arabs and Ottomans carried out continuous raids on the Mediterranean coasts, where they captured hostages who were then sold into slavery, thrown into harems or forced into forced labor.
It is not an act of war, but a thousand-strong raid that Hamas perpetrated on October 7, entering Israeli territory at dawn to “kill Jews” and assassinate more than a thousand soldiers, civilians, women and children combined. Without forgetting to round up a hundred hostages who will serve as human shields, bargaining chips or human flesh in executions broadcast on social networks in order to terrorize the unbelievers.
Those who profess to be blind will see this as just one more attack in the long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet we are faced with the worst carnage committed since 1945 against Jewish civilians, murdered for the sole reason that they were Jewish. On their way, the jihadists killed 260 young people who were participating in the rave party Supernova. When they didn’t slit their throats or rape them. Madmen of God emerging from another age facing the carefree globalized youth of Tel Aviv, the contrast could not be more stunning. For many Jews, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, it amounted to nothing less than a pogrom.
Of course, this offensive also pursued political objectives. This was to torpedo the Abraham Accords, which were poised to diplomatically reconcile Israel and Saudi Arabia. A particularly worrying alliance for Iran, the main support of Hamas. Particularly because it shows that Jews and Muslims can live in harmony, as illustrated by the 150,000 Israelis who visit the Arab Emirates each year. Another intolerable vision for Hamas, because the slightest sign of reconciliation would sign its death warrant.
This carnage therefore has nothing to do with the Palestinian national cause, and even less that of an independent state. On the contrary, it is in line with the great Islamist attacks of September 11, Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan.
The word terrorism, which the prudish CBC and the French far left refuse to pronounce, is moreover largely insufficient to designate this Islamist, anti-Semitic and totalitarian organization which holds Gaza under its thumb. His crimes go well “beyond terrorism”, to use the words of cartoonist Joann Sfar. Because Hamas is not an ordinary liberation movement that has committed a few attacks. Created in 1988, it is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, born in Egypt in the 1920s, which notably supported the alliance between Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Here, the umma replaces the nation, Islamism nationalism, and the caliphate the democratic state.
Radically opposed to liberal Palestinian voices – which the Muslim Brotherhood has often physically eliminated – Hamas has never had any other goals than to Islamize Palestinian society and prevent the establishment of a secular leadership. concerned with the national interests of its people. “Death in the path of God is the highest of hopes,” proclaims its founding charter, which also stipulates that “the banner of Allah” must fly “over every inch of Palestine.” The Palestinian state can only be, strictly speaking, a step before the complete expulsion of the Jews from the region.
The idea that over time Hamas would become a serious interlocutor appears today to be an illusion. This organization has always acted to derail any prospect of peace and the creation of a Palestinian state. This is what made the Israeli journalist Stéphane Amar, whom we interviewed in Tel Aviv, in 2016, say that “the dream of the two States has long since died”. It could only be reborn the day Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, finds an interlocutor who does not want its extermination.
We then observed on site how the second Intifada, with its kamikaze attacks against civilians, had completely killed all hope of peace, thereby destroying the Israeli left, which had long been open to compromise. As long as Islamism dominates the Palestinian movement, the two-state theory will remain a myth. Which state in the world would like the creation on its borders of a theocracy coupled with a terrorist state?
The real defenders of the Palestinian people today are not those who, too happy to wash their hands of the matter, put the potentates of Hamas and the democratically elected government of Benjamin Netanyahu back to back. These are those who fight Islamism in the hope that one day a Palestinian leadership worthy of the name will be reborn.
The time to judge Netanyahu’s grave errors will come soon enough. We can count on the Israeli people for this. As if to demand a targeted and proportionate response. But, for now, let us note that the war that Hamas is waging to destroy Israel has nothing of a national struggle and everything of a war of civilization.
We could dream of another fight. But you don’t choose your enemies. They are the ones who choose us.