By Aristos Michaelides

Copyright philenews

It is impossible for me to understand how someone in Cyprus can think they must take sides either for Israel or for Hamas. If you are not with one, it means you are with the other. As if you are in the stands at a football match.

I wrote this seven days after the barbaric Hamas attack on Israelis and Israel’s equally barbaric retaliation. But two whole years have passed. Are we still there? In the stands? Especially those saying Israel has the right to self-defence?

Self-defence with tens of thousands of civilian casualties, children and women. Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis in its 7 October 2023 attack, and Israel has killed over 50,000 Palestinians. Yet the terrorist Hamas still exists. Gaza has been razed to the ground, but not Hamas. Ultimately, the only winner from this slaughter (of both sides) will be Hamas and Islamist terrorism. Because even if Netanyahu wants to exterminate all Palestinians, some will remain to create a new Hamas seeking revenge. Revenge for their people they have lost.

One need only consider that 50 per cent of the 2.3 million Palestinians living (or who lived) in Gaza are under 20 years old. What will those who survive this new massacre do? At least many of them, even if Hamas is dissolved, will strengthen the war machine of the many terrorist organisations that exist in their land. They will become the new “fighters” of jihad and will seek revenge.

This is the vicious cycle that will never close as long as the leadership of Israel and Palestine cannot see that the solution is not war, but recognition of the right of five million Palestinians to have their own sovereign state.

“As long as there is occupation, there will be some form of Hamas,” said Khaled Elgindy, director of the Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute in Washington, from the early days of the Israeli offensive. “Hamas leadership can be killed, their bureaucracy and weapons can be dismantled, but Hamas exists in various forms in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and has public support. It will acquire new leaders and new weapons, because they do not accept the existence of the occupation, an apartheid system against Palestinians. As long as these exist, there will always be some kind of resistance from Hamas or some other organisation.”

How is it that the great leaders of our world do not grasp this simple but inevitable theorem? Israel has the right to self-defence, they say. Does this mean it has the right to unleash its war machine against civilians? To kill and raze for two whole years? One million children lived in Gaza, almost half its residents. Was their relentless bombing self-defence? And now? Some 700,000 people live in Gaza City, where tanks have also entered. They are being bombed from land and air. Whatever homes remained standing during these two years are being razed. In the ruins, total genocide is being implemented.

“Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country… a sane country does not fight against civilians,” said Yair Golan, representative of the Zionist Left (a former general and hero of 7 October 2023 when he saved several participants in the Nova festival from the Hamas massacre).

Now, after two years of slaughter, let everyone consider what Israel has achieved. Has it eliminated Hamas and terrorism? Has it solved its problems with the Palestinians? Has it freed the Israeli hostages? None of these. It has only succeeded in killing tens of thousands of people, strengthening the influence of Islamo-fascism among its Muslim neighbours, and turning many allied countries against it, with decisions to recognise the Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly. Precisely because a rational country does not wage war against civilians. And a rational person neither watches a terrorist attack nor genocide and applauds.