"In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers." - Neville Chamberlain
__"He who makes war his profession cannot be otherwise than vicious. War makes thieves. And peace brings them to the gallows." - Niccolo Machievali
On October 7th, 2023, when some 2,000 armed Hamas militants infiltrated into Israeli-controlled territory by both land and air, killing some 1,200 Israelis and taking another 240 hostage, the world was horrified by this atrocity; this horror serving as the backdrop and the senseless slaughter the 'justification' for the subsequent invasion of and relentless war on the besieged Gaza Strip by the Israeli war machine under the pretense of rescuing the hostages and dealing a militarily crushing defeat to Hamas – once and for all.
Now, 300 days-and-counting into Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, and the whole world is again looking on in horror, wondering when this madness will come to an end, and at least some semblance of peace will return to the region. With over 40,000 Palestinians killed in the onslaught – roughly half of those children – since the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza, another 10,000 or more missing (likely buried under the rubble), 100% of the 2.3 million residents of the famine-stricken Gaza displaced, and over half of the Strip's infrastructure now decimated, the Gaza Strip not only lies in complete ruins but also showcases one of the most prominent, most pronounced and most shockingly horrifying examples of human-caused human suffering on the planet today. The actual death toll resulting from this onslaught is almost certainly higher, as not all deaths have been reported due to the breakdown of Gazan infrastructure and society, and is ever rising with each passing day, with an additional 90,000+ injured, and no real way to calculate the true scope of the lasting negative repercussions of this intensely tragic human suffering on such a massive scale.
Nor do these numbers take into account the inherent nature of armed conflicts to cause more indirect deaths than direct deaths, with a Lancet report published in July stating that “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.” This estimate suggests that the war has thus far claimed the lives of 7-8% of the entire population of Gaza, which was already prior to the war suffering in “unlivable” conditions, trapped within an open-air prison – ruled by the iron fist of Hamas from within and under brutal military siege by land, air and sea from without – ~80% of its water undrinkable, its power and much-needed humanitarian aid severely rationed and at times throughout the war denied altogether, its children suffering from PTSD; the entire ~2.3 million population ravaged by severe food and medical supply shortages, with some 70% of the population food-insecure, half of the population starving, and unemployment rates run rampant.
Not surprisingly, this severe humanitarian crisis and the plight of the besieged Gazans has been largely ignored by the whole world – at least until now. Now, as the whole world looks on in horror, wondering why, this many months into such a reckless war of destruction, a ceasefire agreement has yet to be reached, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly appears to be doing absolutely everything in his power to ensure that peace does not disrupt his endless, unwinnable war – the one thing preventing his fall from power, as Bibi's wars always seem to do.
But this tragic story of human suffering is about far more than one man’s desperate bid to cling to political power at all costs, or the large-scale terrorist attack that shook the soul of Israel and triggered a genocidal war. It is the story of an ancient war being bitterly fought still today in a land of two peoples who desperately seek peace, a war that is also raging within the collective heart, mind and soul of all Mankind; the story of Israel, the story of Palestine, the story of me, the story of you, and the story of all humanity.
Upon reading the ICC Prosecutor's report that was issued following in-depth investigations – which charges three Hamas leaders along with Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant with a slew of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and aligns with all of the available evidence we have about this conflict – it becomes glaringly obvious that the world is here dealing with two military forces, both of which are responsible for engaging in horrific war crimes and crimes against humanity in clear contravention of international law and every moral standard we in ‘civilized’ society claim to hold dear.
Two dark monsters if you will, these militant entities are; both of which resort to committing heinous criminal atrocities because the other monster also does the same; both pointing to the other as the true monster and themselves as the hero and God's instrument for justice, both dismissing the charges laid against them and the filing for their arrest warrants as outlandish, both pointing to the other's crimes as the truly heinous acts that should be punished.
This is but the very nature of those lost in the maze of darkness cast upon this earth from which humanity ever seeks to free herself, the cycle of violence perpetuating violence, hatred fueling hatred, and "deeper darkness adding darkness to a night already devoid of stars," as the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so elegantly put it. But what many may not be aware of, is that these two entities are in fact but two heads of the very same monster; in much the same way that here in the US, the democratic party and republican party are but two heads of the very same corrupt establishment oligarchy, two wings of the very same imperial bird of war.
This first installment of this 3-part series tells the story of the rise of this two-headed monster; and how, working hand in hand, these two seemingly opposed heads of the selfsame monster have risen to power together, working jointly to accomplish their shared goal of preventing peace in Palestine - at all costs - as they achieved so masterfully many years ago, on a short-lived day when peace once threatened to break the decades-long status quo of the perpetual conflict between Israel and Palestine. The ongoing war on Gaza today is a result of their joint success at that time, and as one, from then until now, these two heads have grown in power until the day on which one head seized control of Gaza, and the other seized control of Israel; this present war the result of that treacherous rise of the two-headed monster, now showing its true colors boldly for the whole world to see.
A monster is born: Israel first creates Hamas
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, former Israeli religious affairs official involved in Gaza for over 20 years, explained to the Wall Street Journal in 2009.
Hamas, for whatever purposes it was originally spawned by Israel to accomplish, is, nevertheless, to some degree or another, “a creature of Israel,” to quote the late Fatah/PLO leader Yasser Arafat; in much the same way as ISIS and the smorgasbord of allied fundamentalist Islamic Jihadist US-proxy militants in Syria – armed, trained and deployed by the US to overthrow President Bashar Assad's secular Syrian government – were but a creature of the CIA and its Operation Timber Sycamore; the primary difference being that Israel never directly armed Hamas or its progenitor. It did, however, intentionally permit the Jihadist Muslim Brotherhood-inspired group to arm itself, as it was a bitter enemy of the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization which Israel at the time viewed as its primary Palestinian enemy and a major threat to the Zionist plan to forever prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. So it is that, in much the same way the Afghanistan Taliban is also a CIA creation that in time created serious blowback, so too is Israel responsible for creating, protecting and empowering the entity as it transformed itself into the militant powerhouse the world now knows as Hamas.
In a 1994 book, “The Other Side of Deception,” Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky contended that aiding Hamas meshed with “Mossad’s general plan” for an Arab world “run by fundamentalists” that would reject “any negotiations with the West,” thereby leaving Israel as “the only democratic, rational country in the region.”
The plan worked brilliantly, perhaps better than anyone at the time could have imagined, or at least in ways that were surely unforeseen and perhaps quite unintended. Nevertheless, at the same time, despite serving to advance the agenda of empowering and enlarging the militant Islamic fundamentalist movement among Palestinians – which was at the time nonexistent in the land of Palestine – would in turn also eventually serve to fuel and empower the equally radical fundamentalist Jewish Zionist settler movement and its own plans to foment terror in the region, consisting of literal terrorist groups, as deemed by Israel itself in those years. This would, ironically, throughout the following years in turn also destroy all prospects for and the last vestiges of a free and democratic Israel which had been a key component of the above stated Mossad plan.
It all began in the wake of the Israeli seizure and subsequent illegal occupation of Palestinian lands in 1967 in the wake of the 6-Days war, including the Gaza Strip. Before then, Egypt, which had outlawed and brutally suppressed the extremist Islamic Jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, had been in control of the Gaza Strip. But with the transfer of government control from Egypt to Israel, Muslim Brotherhood inspired radicals now began to appear, and, thanks to Israeli policy, grow and flourish.
They were, after all, seen as a counterbalance to the secular PLO which was engaged in an ongoing campaign of violence against the Israeli occupation forces at the time and into the early 1990s. One of these new leaders was a paraplegic by the name of Sheik Yassin, "who formed the Islamist group Mujama al-Islamiya, which was officially recognized by Israel as a charity and then, in 1979, as an association." In the 1980s, Mujama would officially become Hamas, but it followed in the style of the militant Muslim Brotherhood from the get go; and it wasn't long before Yassin began collecting arms. Israel was tipped off, arresting and sentencing him to 11 years in prison; but then, upon assurances he wouldn't be using the weapons against Israeli forces but only in its fight against the PLO, he was released, and from that point onward Israel knowingly permitted the group to operate freely in the Strip while arming itself and growing its ranks of Muslim extremists.
This little known history of Israel's crucial role in the rise of Hamas has also been documented by the Washington Post – 'How Israel helped create Hamas'.
“That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups” has by now been well-established, though the eventual results of the policies that served to put Hamas into power in Palestine – seen playing out on the world stage today – may not have been quite the intention the humans behind these policies giving rise to Hamas originally had in mind. For the dark forces which these men served, however, it was surely the intention all along.
Be that as it may, once Hamas transformed from being a Zionist “collaborator” warring against Fatah and the PLO, into Israel's apparent arch-enemy now sworn to its complete and total destruction since its charter came into being in 1988, it has remained indispensable to the Zionist Israeli plan to perpetuate endless war, keep the Palestinians divided and oppressed, and ultimately to ethnically cleanse and forcibly displace the Palestinian population from the whole historic land of Palestine. This is seen not only in official government decisions, but also the choices made by the radical fundamentalist Jewish Zionists, whose actions have also served as a giant gift to Hamas, directly fueling its rise to prominence and power within the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice, thereby greatly tarnishing the Palestinian name in the world's eyes; all the while actively preventing the realization of peace for the very people it pretends to be fighting for - a people who desire peace just as much as the rest of us do.
Killing in the name of God: The rise of the Jewish extremists who eventually took over Israel
Meanwhile, as Yassin was gathering weapons, soldiers, influence and power in occupied Gaza, creating the fundamentalist militant movement that would soon be Hamas; a similar phenomenon was also occurring in the occupied West Bank, but here it was the founders of a fundamentalist movement of militant Jews which was at work. Following the Israeli seizure and occupation of the West Bank in 1967, an equally extremist, ultra-nationalist Jewish Zionist settler movement was born, which would soon go on to launch its own campaign of terror.
This Jewish Zionist settler movement(s), known as Gush Emunim ('block of the faithful') and Eretz Yisrael ('Greater Land of Israel'), “is based largely on the teachings of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook,” the NYT relates; and was nothing less than an ultra-nationalist religious cult composed of supremacist Jews and aspiring terrorists espousing hate and inciting racism wherever they went. It seeks to restore the 'nation of Israel' to what it sees as its biblical borders, extending from the Jordan River to the Red Sea and encompassing all of historic Palestine, leaving no room or possibility for a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, nor for an independent Palestinian state of any kind.
As for Yehuda Kook, according to Karma Ben-Johanan, writing in The Jewish Quarterly Review in 2016,
He saw himself as a warrior "fighting our lengthy war, the Lord's war with Amalek, a war of erasing from under the heavens, a war of blotting out all memory." (via Wikipedia)
According to this theology, Arabs are viewed as 'Amalek', God's eternal enemy which the Jews are divinely obligated to destroy. Israel's Netanyahu government sees itself as waging this so-called 'holy war' in its ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza; and Netanyahu himself, during a televised speech made in the wake of the October 7 attack, in a statement which would set the tone for the duration of the war and referred to by many around the world as an "explicit call to genocide," said: "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible," at the same time declaring his genocidal assault on the Palestinians of Gaza to be a "holy mission."
The Bible as we have it does in fact include an explicit command to commit a genocide against the Amaleks or Amalekites, found where King Saul and his army is commanded to utterly wipe out Amalek, by killing ever single man, woman, child, baby, and even their livestock.
https://x.com/elivalley/status/1718710810069860507
Rabbi Kook, although preaching a modicum of tolerance and restraint that the movement he gave birth to would soon abandon, nevertheless taught his followers that if the Palestinians whom this settler movement sought to further displace and purge from their long-native land resisted their "just cause," that they must be violently persuaded. As one former Kook student explains:
He compared [our situation] to a man who was forcefully expelled from his home, which others seized and trespassed upon. That is exactly what happened to us. Rav Kook stressed that the Arabs had, and have, absolutely no national right to the land. If they deny the justice of our cause, and choose to go to war against us, we must persuade them – he said – with our tanks.
So, while preaching that the Palestinians were welcome to peacefully coexist with its Zionist occupiers if they accepted the "justice of [their] cause," that cause was, according to Kook and the movement he gave birth to, to build a Jewish supremacist theocracy, not a free democracy affording equal rights to all. And so, being later built upon this model, Israel has become a racist, genocidal, apartheid occupation-state.
The irony and hypocrisy of such a doctrine of course being that the ultra-nationalist Jews here are comparing their own situation and cause to the very situation and cause of the Palestinians, which they themselves are responsible for causing, while simultaneously denying the justice of the identical Palestinian cause. The primary difference being the expulsion of the Jews from that land took place a whopping 2,000 years ago, and came about at the hands of the Roman Empire, not the Palestinians they are now murdering and displacing themselves.
According to Rabbi Kook and those who would follow in his footsteps; rather than studying Torah and patiently awaiting for their Messiah to establish the expected Kingdom of Israel as so many classical and anti-Zionist Jewish Rabbis taught, the anticipated coming of the Jewish Messiah could instead be brought about by first militantly establishing that theocracy themselves.
As the New York Times would later put it: “The debate over the settlements in the occupied territories in part reflects the struggle over the vision of Israel between the secular left and the right-wing Zionism generally known as Revisionism.”
One of the most prominent early Rabbis of the movement was Meir Kahane, who both founded the militant Jewish Defense League in 1968 and later the Kach party, which would become a hotbed for Jewish terrorism for years to come. Many Rabbis, branches, offshoots, political parties and leaders would arise out of this movement, including the Jewish Underground; later officially deemed a terrorist organization by Israel, and responsible for a number of terrorist attacks through the years.
“Zionism came into being to create a Jewish state,” Kahane said in an interview