6 reasons Gaza's 'innocent' civilians may not be so innocent

Eliyahu Tulshinski

November 17, 2023

Growing evidence reveals that a large portion of Gazans are not “innocent” of Hamas crimes
Gazans only oppose Hamas when they personally suffer from Hamas violence and corruption

Torturing and murdering Muslims

Frontline News has detailed the brutality of Hamas toward Gazan Arabs, from the recent gunning down of Gazans attempting to follow evacuation orders in military zones to the long standing practice of abductions, torture and executions of dissidents.

Emboldened

Frontline News also covered the support Hamas receives from foreign governments like Iran and Marxist groups like The People’s Forum. Even US taxpayer dollars make it to Hamas through America's funding of the PLO, which passes a large percentage of the funds to Hamas.

Innocent Gazans?

The police state tactics of Hamas and its international support may seem to exonerate the approximately 99% of Gaza's residents who are not Hamas members. However, consider:

1. Violent history - Hundreds of thousands of so-called Palestinians (previously known as Egyptian Arabs from Gaza and Jordanian Arabs from Judea and Samaria, the so-called “West Bank” of the Jordan River) have been expelled from Arab lands for supporting murderous tyranny against the Arab populations of their host states. In Jordan, Palestinians instigated a violent uprising against the government that would have removed the monarchy from power had the rulers not led a 1970 crackdown, known as "Black September," killing thousands of insurgents.

Continued subterfuge led to the banishment of Palestinians from Lebanon in 1982 (where they had instigated a Civil War in 1975) and from Kuwait in 1991.

2. Voting for Hamas - Since Israel gave control of Gaza to the PLO in 2005, the sole election held there resulted in a Hamas victory when it secured 56% of parliamentary seats in the 2006 vote. The voters knew how violent Hamas was when they voted them in.

3. Nazification - Following nearly 20 years of Nazi-style public education and media propaganda describing Jews as subhuman, and the execution of Gazan dissidents, the percentage of Gazans who are not supportive of Hamas violence can be expected to have dropped considerably.

Polls in fact show large majorities of Gazans, as well as Muslims in Judea and Samaria, supporting the end of Israel.

Though surveys conducted in a police state like Gaza are generally unreliable, the following points support these particular poll findings.

4. Residents joining the violence - For every Hamas member who entered Israel to carry out the October massacre, there was approximately one civilian Gazan who crossed over from Gaza to join in the killing, rape and torture.

When those same “innocent” attackers brought hostages back to Gaza, random residents of the towns to which they were brought were caught on video continuing to physically abuse them, without even one Gazan civilian seen attempting to protect the hostages.

5. Proud mothers - Phone calls home by Hamas members bragging about carrying out multiple murders of civilians during the massacre were not met by any condemnation from their mothers - to the contrary, their mothers immediately blessed their “success.”

6. Self-serving - Only now, when Hamas is sufficiently weakened that Gazans fear the possibility of dying while being used as human shields more than they fear Hamas itself, are Gazans calling the IDF's Arabic language hotline in significant numbers, in the hope of being freed from use as human shields.

The senior officer told the Jerusalem Post his unit received thousands of calls from Gazan Arabs wanting to help them against Hamas, “an order of magnitude which we had never seen before. It seems that the residents of Gaza are unhappy with the barbaric conduct of Hamas.”

Gazans who are not on the Hamas or PLO payrolls have even risked their lives to protest Hamas violence and corruption; but, again, only when they themselves were the victims of physical abuse and economic difficulties. Hamas' murder and torture of Jews and even Israeli Arabs, in contrast, has been either tolerated or encouraged by “innocent civilians.”

Contrast

Lest one write off Gazan support for Hamas violence as a mere consequence of conflict that afflicts all parties, it is noteworthy that, despite the mass rape of women and girls during the Hamas massacre, there has not been one rape accusation against the IDF, even as soldiers maintain full control of neighborhoods throughout northern Gaza with thousands of young women living there and passing by day after day.

Israel also maintains a controversial “Jewish section,” in its police department, dedicated to entrapping Jews who might consider avenging violent attacks against the Jewish community. The section is so aggressive that it regularly files charges that lead to acquittals, for lack of evidence, and even tortures Jewish Israelis until they confess to attacking Arabs even when the confessions contradict physical evidence.

Many Israelis want to see the Jewish section closed for its illegal procedures, but those very procedures indicate how infrequent are actual revenge attacks by Jewish Israelis, let alone unprovoked assaults of the kind regularly planned by Hamas.

After the war

Civilians who bring to power violent regimes have, in the past, been required to pay reparations for their nations' aggression and have lost territories when finding themselves on the losing end of their government's ill advised militance. They have not been considered separate and “innocent” from the massacres they assist or do not prevent.

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