The strategy of terrorism

 How Hamas lured Israel into taking actions that have ruined the reputation of the Jewish state

THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Will Durant, an American philosopher, after writing eleven volumes of a book titled The Story of Civilization, was asked what lessons he had drawn from such an extensive study of history. He said, “The greatest lesson we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.” How apt. Nothing demonstrates this truth better than Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

The arguments used by those defending Israelis’ merciless genocide against Palestinians are the same Adolf Hitler’s Nazi collaborators used against Jews, almost to a script. The justification for genocide as self-defense against an existential threat is the same. Hitler claimed the German people and nation were facing an existential threat from Jews, then a very small group of German citizens. Israel claims it faces an “existential threat” from Hamas, a tiny “terrorist” organization with 20,000 fighters, according to Israel intelligence.

Israel has an army of 170,000 active soldiers and 465,000 reservists—a total of 626,000 soldiers. With nuclear weapons, advanced aircraft, drones, tanks, etc. backed by an annual budget of $37.4 billion, among the largest in the world. In fact, in per capita terms, Israel’s defense spending is double that of the USA, the biggest spender in the world. This is not to mention that in its war against Hamas, Israel is funded by the USA, which since October 7, 2023, has reached $30 billion. Israel is also funded by the UK and the EU and assisted by Middle East nations like Jordan and Egypt. How on earth, by any stretch of the imagination, can anyone in their right mind claim tiny Hamas poses an existential threat to Israel?

Then, the sadistic and barbaric violence with which Israel is starving to death and bombing Palestinians makes Hitler’s pogrom pale into moderation. Many German officers refused to execute the genocide against Jews, leaving it to the SS. German citizens were only indirectly complicit in the Holocaust, which was conducted in concentration camps away from them. I cannot believe that a civilized people like Israelis, and their highly civilised allies in the USA and Europe, can carry out this genocide in Gaza before our own eyes. It is then that I remember that all genocides I have read about have been carried out by these very same “civilized” people.

For instance, the genocide against the native populations of Australia, Canada, and the USA was carried out by these “civilised people.” Like Israelis today, the settlers came and exterminated the local population and robbed their land. The colonial genocides in Africa against the Nama and Herero people of Namibia, the Banyoro in Uganda, the Shona and Ndebele in Zimbabwe, the Kikuyu of Kenya, the Congo genocide by King Leopold of Belgium (20m people were killed), and the hundreds of massacres and pogroms were all carried out by these “civilised people.”

In his book, Exterminate all the Brutes, Swedish travel writer, Sven Lindquist, shows that the intellectual justifications for these colonial genocides were a product of the “Enlightenment.” Their arguments were presented in the most respected fora of Western societies—think tanks, books, peer-reviewed journals, parliaments, universities, etc. Hitler was not an aberration, as we have been led to believe. Lindquist shows that his ideas and actions were consistent with what these “civilised people” were taught, heard, learnt, believed, and did to native peoples in other parts of the world.

The difference between Hitler and other European leaders of the time is that he chose to carry out his genocide in continental Europe and against fellow Europeans of Jewish faith and ethnicity. Basically, he held a mirror in front of Europeans for them to see themselves, and they didn’t like what they saw. In this sense, therefore, Hitler was the least racist of the Europeans. He did not believe that having white skin exempted one from genocide. All his contemporaries were okay with exterminating native peoples in Africa, North and Latin America, Australia, etc. and would sleep happily thereafter.

Today, we are told of the evil men of history as being Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Amin, etc., but no one mentions King Leopold, who killed 20m Congolese. No one mentions the presidents of the USA under whom over 70 million Native Americans were exterminated. There is no mention of any of the leaders of France, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, etc., under whose leadership native peoples in other parts of the world were exterminated. This selective indignation is the real racism we see in our world today.

This brings us back to Israel’s sadistic violence and genocide in Gaza and its relationship to the lessons of history. In 1975, David Fromkin published in the Foreign Affairs journal an article titled “The Strategy of Terrorism,” from which the title of this column is derived. Fromkin looked at three “terrorist organizations”: the Irgun, which fought the British for the independence of Israel; the FLN, which fought the French for Algerian independence; and another for the independence of Ireland. Interestingly, Israel employed terrorism to gain her statehood, just as Hamas is doing.

The major point by Fromkin is that “terrorism is violence employed to create fear, but it is aimed at creating fear so that the fear will, in turn, lead someone else—not the terrorist—to embark on some quite different program of action that will accomplish whatever it is that the terrorist really desires.” In short, terrorism seeks to elicit action from the government. It is the reaction of the government that enables the terrorist to achieve their aims.

For instance, Fromkin argues, an ordinary murderer will kill someone because he wants that person dead. But the terrorist will shoot someone even though it is a matter of complete indifference if that person lives or dies. The terrorist would shoot somebody to provoke a brutal government reaction. It is this reaction that will mobilise public opinion against the government. This is what Osama Bin Laden lured the USA into on 9/11. The USA overreacted by invading Afghanistan and Iraq and bombing Pakistan, etc.

After October 7, Jo Biden flew to Tel Aviv and advised Benjamin Netanyahu not to overreact like the USA had done. Instead, the Israeli Prime Minister did the opposite and overreacted worse than the USA had done. The result is that the entire world has forgotten October 7 as they witness this merciless, sadistic genocide in Gaza. The cause of the Palestinians today has greater appeal across the entire world than it has ever had. This is, without doubt, a strategic victory for Hamas.

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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug