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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Letters to the Editor: June 25, 2021

HAMAS’ ROCKETS VS. THE “GOLIATH” OF ISRAEL (NO CONTEST)

What is worse, open hostility to an established state or preventing the founding of another? According to the mainstream media, Hamas’ hostility to Israel is a graver matter than Binyamin Netanyahu’s refusal to even consider the idea of “another” Palestinian state east of the Jordan River. Netanyahu and many senior Israelis consider Jordan a Palestinian state.

A recent Associated Press article mentions how Hamas “seized power in 2007.” In fact, Hamas was democratically elected in 2006 after an electoral process that Canadian observers considered fair. This unexpected result; however, was loudly condemned by Israel, Canada and the U.S. and led to a failed Gaza coup attempt by Fatah, Israel's collaborators in the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas’ attitude may be considered in light of Dov Weissglass’ 2004 remarks on Palestinian sovereignty. Weissglass, an adviser to the late Ariel Sharon during Israel’s 2005 exit from Gaza, noted, “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process…And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Recent Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel have been answered by crushing air strikes and artillery barrages agaisnt Gaza. The destruction wreaked by even one IDF air raid is disproportionate to the damage resulting from Hamas' rockets, which have improved slightly in power and accuracy.

If overwhelming military force were capable of breaking the collective Palestinian spirit, it would have happened already. What we see instead is a development mentioned by German Rabbi Moritz Gudemann in 1895. In his anti-Zionist tome, National Judaism, Gudemann feared a future where, “Judaism with cannons and bayonets would reverse the roles of David and Goliath to constitute a ridiculous contradiction of itself.”

Nostradamus could not have made a more accurate prediction of the massive power imbalance between Palestinian society and the combined might of Israel and the United States.

Morgan Duchesney, Ottawa, ON