“Stand against Hamas’ terror or stand with them” was the title of an article in New York Daily News a few days ago.

It is exactly like this.  It is not easy to understand what the people who govern Gaza really think.  In the wake of Hamas’s recent terror attack on Israel, it’s clear that Hamas’s ultimate goal is to commit again a genocide against the Jewish people.  It openly wants to do it, as is written in its founding documents.

Hamas, unlike its secular rival, Fatah, has declared that Israel has no right to exist.  And sadly, Israel did not see “the strategic meaning of the rhetoric of Hamas,” said Shlomo Avineri, a former Israeli officer and political scientist.  For Hamas “every civilian is a soldier; this was not rhetoric but identifying the vulnerability of the Israeli communities inside Israel,” he added.

IDF, Mossad, and Shin Bet were focused on individual terrorism in the West Bank.  That was a fatal mistake.  To gather intelligence is an art, but to gather intelligence from the Arabs is on another level.  What come to my mind on this are some words by a Greek-French philosopher: “[The Arabs] present themselves as History’s eternal victims” (Cornelius Castoriadis, 1991). 

We need somehow to look at history and a particular letter by Stuart Gottlieb — a professor who teaches at Columbia University — to the New York Times.

Re “The Yom Kippur War Led to Peace. This One Can, Too,” by Bret Stephens (column, Oct. 9):

The 1973 Yom Kippur War led to peace because the parties involved recognized and accepted a new status quo in the Middle East. In 1967, Israel upended the status quo with a stunning military victory, including the seizure of the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.

The 1973 war showed that Egypt, Israel’s most powerful neighbor, was never going to accept that outcome. Ultimately, the 1978 Camp David accords traded land (Sinai) for peace.

What is different now?  He points it out: Iran!

It makes all the difference in its support for Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezb’allah, and other smaller hate groups.  “Iran supports the Palestinian cause itself,” Gottlieb notes.  At this point, we can mention that the Wall Street Journal saw clear involvement in planning the attack on Israel over several weeks.  The New York Times could not find clear evidence of this, and the attack surprised the Iranian leaders, it wrote.  But even if there was no clear evidence of involvement this time, Iran has helped Hamas for years with plenty of cash and guns. 

The writer of the letter — which should have been published as an article on its own because of its value — saw the broader designs of Iran to become the region’s hegemon in economic and military terms. 

Thus, the Gaza attack can be traced to Tehran’s panic over progress made between Israel and Saudi Arabia on a “normalization” agreement.

For sure, the conditions in the Gaza Strip are bad, and the horror that has unfolded was a predictable result, someone could argue.  Hamas and other factors have made Gaza a kind of prison, but again, being in a prison does not mean that Hamas, or anyone, has the right to slaughter kids and women, to kidnap, rape, and take hostages.  The only thing visible from this is that Hamas has a genocidal ideology, and its ultimate goal is to commit genocide against the Jewish people.

Sadly, they do have that goal.  Iran’s president has said before that Iran wants Israel to be wiped off the map.

The conflict in the Middle East is the harbinger of global disorder.  Israel alone has mobilized 360,000 military reservists to fully defend itself.  We need to be cautious with everything, as countries like Russia and China would like an opportunity to push for this global disorder to take place sooner rather than later. 

Is a Palestinian state possible after all this catastrophe in order to end the constant bloodshed?  Israel needs to restart land for peace negotiations with the Palestinians.  Yes, but someone can argue and say: “I don’t agree with the idea Israel needs to trade more land for peace, or do more peace talks.  They tried that several times already and got the Hamas attack for it.  To do more of that is the insanity of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  It is good, leaving off the idea of Israel giving concessions to the regime in Gaza.  Of course, these land for peace solutions could work if Iran is out of the picture as a supporting point.”

Thus, ways must be found to diminish the power of Iran that always supports the “forces of chaos” in the region and beyond, but also, the Palestinians have learned over the years and have become “forces of chaos,” too, without a state! 

The thrust of an argument could be that Iran is the problem to be eliminated here.  Iran threatens Israel. 

But again, how you deal with the theocratic Iran?  This is the big question.  And someone can say this time: “The problem remaining is, who gets the job of getting rid of Iran, and how it should be done, and at what cost, and who pays?”

Persia, 2,500 years ago, tried to wipe ancient Greece off the map, and it now aims at Israel.

As a conclusion, peace and reconciliation must be the only way forward for the Holy Land.  The terrorists of Hamas terrorized a nation, and this cannot be forgotten easily or ignored.  How can you forget when you see Hamas and Iran making Adolf Hitler proud with their evil actions?  How can you forget if someone plans a genocide for you?

And what is very sad, as the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, has revealed, is that a Holocaust survivor in a wheelchair was dragged into Gaza and taken hostage.  Thus, in these days, we are with Israel.  Solidarity with Israel — we are all Jews!

Dimitris Eleas is a New York City–based writer, independent researcher, and political activist.  Originally from Greece, his writings in Athens have appeared in books, journals, and newspapers.  You can contact him via his email: dimitris.eleas@gmail.com.

Image: Alan Davey via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.