44 No. 72 JUSTICE the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”41 In the same paragraph that included what became a famous chant, the authors inserted a phrase that convinced some journalists that Hamas had moderated its stance. It read, “however, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”42 If the “Zionist entity” is rejected and “Palestinian rights” as Hamas defined them could not be “relinquished,” and the refugees had to be returned to “their homes from which they were expelled,” the State of Israel would have to be destroyed. “Resisting the occupation with all means and methods” was not a reference to Israeli occupation policy on the West Bank but meant that “the occupation” referred to all of the State of Israel.43 Its intent was not only to reverse the outcome of the Six Day War of 1967, but also Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Nevertheless, the 2017 statement had considerable success in linguistically transforming this profoundly reactionary organization into a member of good standing in the global, “anti-imperialist” left.44 Following its violent seizure of power in 2007, Hamas unified ideology with policy. It became not only a terrorist organization, but also a small dictatorship whose core purpose was to wage war against Israel. It killed or jailed opponents, famously throwing some off the roofs of buildings, intimidated the press, controlled education, and imposed sharia law. It spent millions that could have been used to improve the lives of Gaza’s civilians on armaments, and on a stupendous construction project that built over 400 miles of tunnels designed for waging wars against Israel.45 Then on October 7, it engaged in a genocide that was stopped only by the belated arrival of Israeli armed forces.46 Conclusion The attack of October 7, 2023, made clear that without addressing Islamist Jew-hatred and the resulting hatred of Israel, no strategy of fighting antisemitism can be successful. The Islamist face of antisemitism and the desire to destroy the State of Israel by force of arms emerged in the 1930s, moved away from the center of attention during the Cold War, but proudly announced its aims in Iran, and in the Hamas Charter in the 1980s. The ideological origins of the attack on October 7 were 41. “The Document in Full,” supra note 23. 42. Id. 43. Id. 44. David Hirsh, CONTEMPORARY LEFT ANTISEMITISM (London: Routledge 2017). 45. Adam Goldman, Ronan Bergman, Patrick Kingsley and Gail Kaplowitz, “Israel Unearths Subterranean Fortress Under Gaza,” N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 16, 2024), available at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/us/politics/israelgaza-tunnels.html?searchResultPosition=6 46. Jeffrey Herf, “An Interrupted Genocide,” QUILLETTE (July 18, 2024), available at https://quillette.com/ p/16221d14-a0a2-4f86-b731-9d3daffc9464/; on the accusation of genocide made against Israel, see “Opening Statement of MFA Legal Adviser Dr. Tal Becker at the International Court of Justice Proceedings,” MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Jan. 12, 2024), available at https:// www.gov.il/en/pages/opening-statement-of-mfa-legaladvisor-tal-becker-at-icj-proceedings-12-jan-2024; see also Norman Goda, “South African Lawfare at the Hague,” QUILLETTE (Jan. 17, 2024), available at https:// quillette.com/2024/01/17/lawfare-at-the-hague/ long-standing, public, yet insufficiently noticed or examined. The inclination to describe criticism of Islamism as a form of “Islamophobia” confused the necessary critique of religious fanaticism with racism. We have endured a second era of underestimation, one that is less excusable than the first such era in response to Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s. We have witnessed a deficiency of comparative historical analysis, and a failure to grasp that though Nazism was finished as a major force in Europe, it had an afterlife in the history of Islamism in the Middle East. The cultural references, language, chants, costumes, and slogans differed but the war against the Jews continued unabated. The road from Husseini’s Islam and the Jews in 1937, to the Hamas Charter of 1988, to the tunnel construction and then the attack of October 7 is long and winding. Yet there is sound evidence that Nazism had a role in this under-examined history. That said, the interrupted genocide of October 7 took place 78 years after Nazi Germany was defeated. Israel’s adversaries assert that the hatred is a result of Israeli injustice and oppression of the Palestinians. Hence, the Jews, or Zionists, were again blamed for their own misfortune. A considerable body of historical evidence suggests instead that the Islamist interpretation of the religion of Islam, and the Islamization of Palestinian politics, should bear the weight of responsibility and causal significance for launching a war of extermination. n
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