Even Antisemites Should Be Smart Enough to Know
And Other Observations about the Situation in Gaza
Preventing Other Terrorist Groups from Emulating October 7th:
Even if you sympathize with Palestinians, even if you hate Jews, you should want Israel to thoroughly beat Hamas for one simple reason: Terrorists learn from other terrorists. If this attack succeeds and Hamas obtains its political aims, it will only be a matter of time before some other Islamist group emulates its tactics and carries out a similar attack on US or European soil. Instead, we want Islamist groups, and other terrorists, to learn that attacks of this scale are counterproductive. The only way for them to come to this conclusion, however, is to demonstrate it concretely: By beating Hamas to death.
The Perverse Brilliance of Hamas’s “Go-Pro Propaganda”:
Most outlets have shown only sanitized versions of Hamas’s October 7th attack footage: The Daily Wire is the only outlet that I know of which showed the completely uncensored footage. Indeed, I was surprised to see conservatives calling for suppression of these materials out of “respect for the family.” While I understand the desire to be compassionate towards the friends and family of the victims, this impulse is quite short-sighted. In order to succeed, Israel must release as much evidence of Hamas’s massacre as possible. If this causes anti-muslim terror, so be it: That is the fault of the very muslims, and Hamas apologists, who made the release of the evidence necessary. While I promote skepticism, asking for information still carries with it certain moral costs—and those burdens should be borne by the people who inaccurate beliefs required that release.
For starters, Hamas must have known that many of these Go-Pro cameras would be found by the IDF on the bodies of dead Hamas operatives and that only a fraction would end up “coming back home.” Thus, Hamas knew that they would not be in full control of all the footage. That said, they were confident they could control the media reaction: I think they understood enough about the Western media to know that you could circulate videos of these atrocities—even to the families themselves—via text messages and the internet while remaining confident Google and the Western media would keep most of the content out of the public’s view. In essence, by intentionally veering into snuff and “video nasty” territory, Hamas knew the Western media would be flooded with images of Palestinian children being pulled from wreckage while the video of their rapes, beheading, and the like would go unviewed.
In short, our own sensibilities—and the sensibilities of women in particular as they seem the most opposed to this sort of content—are playing into Hamas’s hands. We must distribute the evidence of Hamas’s terror as widely as we possible can. If people are traumatized, all the better. If this worsens the trauma experienced by the friends and family of the victims, so be it: Better that than allowing this to happen again.
A Solution to the “Hamastinian Problem”:
Once Hamas is entirely eliminated, I think Israel should seriously consider forcibly deporting the entire population of the Gaza strip to Iran. They should put them on ships specifically built to secure the crew from the passengers (or, better yet, design the ship to be crewed remotely by IDF navy sailing on a alternate ship—though insuring a proper crew could be landed onto the bridge in the event of an emergency).
This ship should then be taken to a random spot on the Iranian coastline and the people dropped off with survival supplies. This process should be continued until the Gaza strip is fully depopulated.
This will force Iran to “put up or shut up” when it comes to “showing compassion” for the Palestinians.
Iran will not be able to fire on the ship, as they will be committing the very atrocity they accuse Israel of.
The Palestinian population of Iran will, if they are taken in, become a source of terrorist violence that will help to destabilize Iran—in essence, paying Iran back for funding Hezbollah and Hamas.
Of course, the UN will complain. However, if this can be done, it would solve the problem and punish Iran for their meddling.