Mick Hartley

Jake Wallis Simons in the Spectator – Hamas has all but won:

The way in which the Jewish state – the regional military superpower, enjoying huge military support from the global superpower – is being forced to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is a cautionary tale for the West. It is often correctly said that Israel is on the frontline of the struggle against jihadism. Well, pay attention: the collapse of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which after the October atrocities was the most justified imaginable, is a harbinger of what may lie ahead.

Let’s look at the facts on the ground. At the height of the war, there were hundreds of thousands of troops in Gaza. This week, however, almost all Israeli forces were withdrawn, leaving behind only 1,000 combat troops from the Nahal Brigade. They are deployed only along the narrow Netzarim corridor, which bisects Gaza from east to west to prevent Hamas creeping north. The southern portion of the Strip, from Rafah on the Egyptian border to Khan Yunis – where the 98th commando division sacrificed many lives to root out Hamas and pursue a fruitless search for its leader, Yahya Sinwar – has been abandoned to the jihadis. And there remain pockets of Hamas in the north.

The official Israeli line is that all this is simply a regrouping tactic to prepare for a future invasion of Rafah, which is backed by most Israelis. This is not out of some bloodlust: Israel understands that without taking Rafah, Hamas will simply return and repeat October 7. In the words of a senior Israeli politician, you can’t extinguish 80 per cent of a fire.

In a desperate attempt to steady his restive coalition and calm the voting public, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have set a date for the Rafah operation, once the troops are ready. But few people believe him. It is now very difficult to see how this can ever take place.

With Hamas once again taking control of the south, Israel would need to pull hundreds of thousands of reserves away from their families once again and re-conquer that territory before driving down towards Rafah. In fact, now that the troops have left, the jihadis are already returning. […]

This was never about revenge, nor about provoking a regional confrontation. The aim of the war, which Israel never wanted, was to eliminate a genocidal threat on its border. On October 7, it was given no choice. Yet now the gains are being thrown away. For this so many families gave the lives of their sons?

The West must take heed. The epicentre of the other side’s strategy is in Tehran. Last week, the Ayatollah Khamenei held a meeting with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, during which he made the starkest of statements. ‘We have, so far, successfully won the media and PR wars, and have managed to change public opinion across the globe,’ he said. ‘We must continue with this.’ You have to hand it to the jihadists: they never keep their strategy a secret. That’s what makes it even more appalling.

For six months, commentators like me have been constantly warning that Hamas’s strategy is to manipulate public opinion so that Israel’s hands are tied before victory is secured. It does so, we repeated, by excluding numbers of Palestinian combatant dead in its death tolls, which are parroted by journalists and politicians alike. It does so by censoring the footage that comes out of Gaza, allowing the world to see only images of suffering civilians, never suffering terrorists. It does so by relying upon the relationship it has built up over many years with international aid agencies, the United Nations and the global media, all of whom are congenitally biased towards the Palestinians. In the West, we have swallowed this whole.

The counter-narrative – that Israel is taking all possible measures to protect innocent life, that it has been facing an existential war that can only end with the destruction of Hamas if any peace is to be won, that it is on the frontline of the struggle between the free world and jihadism – has been drowned out. The results can be seen in the hundreds of thousands taking to the streets, in the natural assumption in the minds of the public that Israel is perpetrating a ‘genocide’.

Preposterously, this can also be seen in Washington. President Biden himself has begun parroting Hamas’s casualty figures and levelling wild accusations against Israel, accusing it of ‘indiscriminate bombing’ and going ‘over the top’. In recent weeks, there have been a number of attacks on Israel from the Democrats, who now expend almost no energy criticising Hamas.

You could argue that Hamas has played a brilliant game, but could they – could anyone – have foreseen the sheer delight that erupted across the streets of western cities after the October 7th pogrom? And the sheer brazenness of it all: making no secret of the desire to kill as many Jews as possibe; using the death and suffering of its own people as a key tactic. And the west, leaders and media, just go along with it. All the venom is aimed at Israel: none at Hamas.

As I've said before, it's a strange war where the "attackers" are keen to kill as few as possible, while the "defenders" rejoice in the rising death toll.

From the point of view of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, this is a dream come true. His strategy – to resist Israel’s assault until the international community tied its hands – is working wonderfully. What motivation has he to release any hostages now? What leverage is left to the Israelis?

According to reports, Sinwar’s messianic tendencies are now in full flow as he revels in ecstasy underground. This weird trait of his used to be described as ‘pathological or out of touch with reality.’ It now seems anything but.