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Hamas's Disappearing Responsibility for Gaza's Suffering

(Times of Israel) Prof. Jeffrey Herf - Describing Israel's wars of self-defense as examples of genocide has been an effective but false tool of political warfare for decades. My rejoinder as a historian is to focus instead on the conceptual problem in the genocide accusation, namely, the disappearance of the responsibility of Hamas for launching a war of extermination, and then for fighting the resulting war with a strategy intended to maximize death and suffering in Gaza. Professor Bartov attributed genocidal intent where it does not exist and ignores it where it does. The clearly articulated consensus of the Israeli government is to wage war to defeat Hamas, but not to wage war against the people of Gaza. Bartov refuses to give any causal significance to the ideology, agency, and responsibility of Hamas for launching a war of aggression and extermination. He is that most unusual historian who writes about a war as if there is only one actor involved. Since its 1988 founding charter, Hamas leaders over many years have proudly expressed their intent to destroy the state of Israel and kill its citizens by force of arms. Hamas and the attack of Oct. 7 are not figments of the imagination of Israeli officials who supposedly and cynically use the memory of the Holocaust to wage unnecessary wars against non-existent threats. The threats exist. Any government of Israel committed to the defense of the lives of its citizens would have to fight a war to defeat Hamas and ensure that it did not return to power in Gaza. The writer is professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park.
2025-07-27 00:00:00
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