OPINION:
Gaza residents are celebrating. For the past few days, large crowds of healthy, energetic men, women and children have been cheering, dancing in the streets and chanting “Allahu akbar!” — all recorded on their fully charged cellphones.
These scenes make clear that there is no Israeli-engineered famine in the Gaza Strip, much less a genocide.
Of course, the propagandists behind these hoaxes will continue to slander Israelis. They will say: “Who are you going to believe: us or your lying eyes?”
Their defamation campaign is intended to justify and, indeed, incite a holocaust in the Middle East on par with the Holocaust carried out in Europe less than a century ago.
CNN headline last week: “It’s been two years since Israel launched its war in Gaza and life in the enclave has never been harder.”
Correction: Life has been increasingly hard for Gaza residents since Hamas terrorists, on Oct. 7, 2023, invaded Israel and slaughtered some 1,200 men, women and children and dragged about 250 others back into the dungeons of Gaza.
A central pillar of Hamas’ war strategy has been to cause maximum hardship in Gaza, confident that useful idiots in the West, on the left and the right, would blame Israelis.
Even before Oct. 7, the news from Gaza was fake. Journalists who either sided with or were intimidated by Hamas characterized Gaza as a “hellhole” and an “open-air prison.”
After Oct. 7, however, videos of prewar Gaza were suddenly plentiful online as Gaza residents lamented the destruction of their communities in a war Hamas could have ended at any moment by freeing the hostages.
On Dec. 24, 2023, Gaza City Mayor Yahya R. Sarraj lamented in The New York Times that his city had boasted “cultural riches and municipal institutions,” a “beautiful seafront,” a theater, schools, libraries, mosques, parks, a “Children’s Happiness Center,” and even a zoo with “many of its animals killed or starved to death, including wolves, hyenas, birds and rare foxes.”
Gaza also had 36 hospitals, elegant restaurants, shopping malls and luxury auto dealerships.
Such wonders were produced thanks to the river of foreign aid that flowed into Gaza after Hamas’ violent ascension to power in 2007, two years after Israel’s complete withdrawal from the territory in the hope that good fences would make good neighbors.
United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations provided social services and remained silent about the war preparations taking place in their hospitals and schools.
That left Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar free to devote his energies to war planning: importing munitions via Egypt, building weapons factories and constructing a subterranean fortress.
Mr. Sinwar instructed his terrorist troops to commit multiple atrocities, film them and then broadcast them. According to a memo acquired by The New York Times, he believed Muslims around the world would “respond positively to calls for them to join the revolution.”
The day after Hamas invaded southern Israel, Hezbollah began launching rockets and artillery from Lebanon into northern Israel, causing tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes.
Less than two weeks later, on Oct. 19, the Houthis in Yemen began firing cruise missiles and launching drones toward Israel.
On April 13, 2024, Tehran targeted Israel with an enormous missile and drone assault. A second major attack followed in October.
Mr. Sinwar was eliminated on Oct. 16, 2024.
In the end, of course, Israel crippled Hezbollah. That led to the downfall of the Assad regime, Tehran’s proxy in Syria, on Dec. 8.
Most important, with significant help from President Trump, Israel smashed the nuclear weapons facilities Iran’s rulers had buried under mountains.
When the 12-day war against Tehran ended on June 25, the Israel Defense Forces might have been pulled back into buffer zones within Gaza. It was not apparent that the benefits of continuing to wage urban warfare against terrorists in tunnels shielded by civilians on the streets above were worth the costs.
Hostages were still held deep inside Gaza, and Israelis could not abandon them.
Why not? Because of the Israeli conception of communal responsibility, the ancient Jewish directive to “redeem captives,” the conviction that “All of Israel are responsible for one another.”
Mr. Trump’s 20-point plan, announced Sept. 29, took that into consideration.
That’s why Phase 1 featured the release of the 20 hostages who had survived (all now back in Israel) and the bodies of 28 who were murdered (only four returned so far).
Hamas troops have now emerged from their tunnels. No longer disguised as civilians, they are instead proudly wearing their uniforms and reasserting control by summarily executing opponents, rivals and dissidents.
Hamas leaders, it’s important to understand, regard the ceasefire with Israel not as “peace” but only a “hudna,” Arabic for a truce during which they can prepare for the next battle in the centuries-long jihad.
Are most Gaza residents good with that? The answer may be irrelevant because they haven’t been allowed to vote since 2006. Still, I would be curious to know.
Surely, some must be thinking: “What did Hamas achieve with this war? Our cities are rubble. We’ve lost loved ones. We’re poorer than ever. Hamas was supposed to protect us. Will Hamas rule us forever?”
Among the more religious, some may reason: “It is Allah who determines the outcome of battles. So, if Hamas did not achieve victory, Hamas does not deserve loyalty, much less the martyrdom of my children.”
I’m reminded of something said by my late, great colleague, scholar Michael Ledeen, more than 15 years ago: “Nothing is more devastating to a messianic movement than defeat.”
We’ll soon know whether that maxim applies to Gaza, and perhaps the broader Middle East.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.
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