The Palestinian Arabs support Hamas not because they have to, but because they want to

 

 by Dr. Alex Sternberg

Beginning on Oct. 8, immediately after the Hamas massacre the day before, the Hamas choir worldwide cried out for a ceasefire, supposedly to protect the peace-loving citizens of Gaza.

Thankfully, the Biden administration stood fully behind Israel and loudly supported Israel’s right to defend herself. But it didn’t take President Joe Biden and his advisers long to realize that the Arab vote could be lost due to this support for Israel. Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Kamala Harris immediately began to demand Israeli restraint. Unfortunately, the Democrats know they can always count on the Jewish vote, and thus take the Jews for granted.

Some of us saw the handwriting on the wall early on, when Biden rushed to Israel to “review” Israel’s military plans.

While in Israel, Biden exerted enormous pressure on Israel to let Hamas off the hook. Meanwhile, he assured Jewish voters that the U.S. stood firmly behind Israel’s right to self-defense. Blinken, one of the architects of the Iran nuclear deal under that famous friend of Israel former President Barack Obama, kept rushing to Israel in a frenetic effort to slow the IDF down.

Biden and his crew keep assuring the pro-Hamas lobby, including Democratic members of Congress and the denizens of America’s “Arab street,” that they want to save “innocent” Palestinian Arabs from suffering because of the despicable deeds of Hamas.

But just how “innocent” are the Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza? Or in Judea and Samaria, for that matter?

In 2021, a poll taken by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research revealed that over 59% of Palestinian Arabs opposed any peace agreement with Israel. In a more recent poll, 74.7% of Palestinians opposed a two-state solution. They preferred a single Palestinian Arab judenrein state “from the river to the sea”—in other words, no Israel.

Another poll taken by Bir Zeit University’s Arab World for Research & Development (AWRAD) revealed that an overwhelming

 83.1% of surveyed Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria support the Oct. 7 massacre. An even larger majority have a positive view of various terrorist factions. A stunning 98% of respondents felt prouder to be Palestinian Arab after Oct. 7 and believe that “coexistence is increasingly impossible.”

It should not be surprising, then, that ordinary civilian Gazans drove across the border with Hamas so as not to miss out on the slaughter. Nor is it a shock that they teach their children math with the question: “If you find 10 Jews and you kill three, how many Jews will be left to kill another day?”

So, where are Biden’s “peaceful” Palestinians?

Biden’s doublespeak is not confined to the “peaceful” Palestinians myth. He has been speaking out of both sides of his mouth for some time. He proclaims Israel’s right to protect her citizens in public while, in private conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he threatens to withhold aid unless the IDF stands down. This fools only those Democrats who want to be fooled.

Netanyahu, unfortunately, is no Menachem Begin.

In 1982, then-Senator Biden was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He threatened then-Prime Minister Begin with withholding military assistance unless Israel stopped building new communities in Judea and Samaria. A proud Begin retorted, “I am not a weak-kneed Jew who trembles at threats.”

Begin continued to do what was necessary to keep Israel secure and Israel continued to receive assistance from the U.S.

But Bibi is no Begin. Biden’s pressure (and the well orchestrated protests for freeing the hostages at any cost, ed.), worked and Netanyahu agreed to a “pause” in the fighting. This, although it succeeded in bringing home some of the hostages, really only benefitted Hamas and allowed them to reorganize. (We are seeing that in the higher numbers of IDF soldier fatalities, ed.). We all remember the saying, “He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.” Hamas is no exception to this rule.

A Hamas spokesman recently promised that the terror group is determined to repeat the Oct. 7 massacre many more times. As Begin admonished us, “When your enemy threatens to kill you, believe him.”

That is why Israel must destroy Hamas. It’s kill or be killed.