Hamas attack on Israel, The right to rise up against the Israeli occupation
The 7 October 2023 surprise attack of Hamas on the South of Israel with thousands of rockets codenamed ”Al-Aqsa Flood”, surprised me, like doubtless many others, but I was not completely taken aback.
It was a bloody attack in which a great number of Israeli civilians were killed [according to Israeli authorities at least 1200] or abducted and at least 260 people were killed by the Hamas attack on a Festival near Kibbutz Re”im.
Of course, this deserves strong condemnation since targeting civilians is not only inhumane but prohibited by International Humanitarian Law, declaring a clear distinction between combatants [soldiers and fighters, who are legitimate targets] and non-combatants [civilians, who must be protected]
So I understand the common [especially Western] sympathy with the Israeli
victims, because I share the feeling.
But there my understanding stops.
Because of the almost hysterical “we stand with Israel” reactions, especially from the Western World [USA, EU], completely with Israeli flags hanging from their official buildings [luckily not in Scotland!] is not only hypocritical.
It is disgusting!
Disgusting, because it implies support for Israel as a State and that is, to say it is mildly, controversial.
Because of the bloody 7 October Hamas attack and subsequent abduction operation diverted the attention from the important fact, that since 1967 Israel has been the occupying power in the West Bank, Eastern Jerusalem and Gaza [still
occupied according to International Law since Israel controls the Gaza borders, airspace and territorial waters]
Not only did Israel refuse to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories despite UN Security Resolution 242 [1967], but there is a decennia-long brutal oppression, Israel is guilty of torture of prisoners, administrative detention,
bloody military attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, with as macabre result thousands and thousands of civilian victims, the building [since the end of the sixties] of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian territory [land theft!], extrajudicial execution, apartheid, etc., etc.
En despite this brutal occupation the EU never took any sanctions against the State of Israel, which made them complicit in the Israeli occupation and oppression.
According to International Law, every person has the right to rise up against an occupation, which includes armed resistance.
So Hamas, as any other Palestinian organisation, is in its right in this regard, but of course according to International Humanitarian Law
Hamas must refrain from attacks on civilians.
By the way, I wonder whether the EU will also condemn Israel, which right now launches a bloody attack in Gaza by bombing.
Gaza for a whole week, with more than 2200 deaths, denying the Gazan population water, medicines, fuel and food supplies, in the same strong terms as it condemned Hamas.