Hamas, Palestine and Jews that the world prefers homeless, helpless and hopeless

That is why, the other day when Hamas launched a ghastly raid on Israel, butchering 1,400 people, most of them women and children, and abducting 200 others, the world was like: “is that so? Pass the butter, please”.

Hamas, designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union, has a particularly interesting sense of occasion.

The day they chose to attack Israel – October 7 – was not only a quiet Saturday morning when the Israelis were distracted by and absorbed in observing their Sabbath, a day when they, traditionally, do no work at all and only eat and pray; it was also the festival of Sukkot, when the Jews commemorate the Lord’s awesome protection of the children of Israel during their 40-year journey through the desert in the period 1313-1273 BC. 

So as the Jews were celebrating the Lord’s protection, Hamas chose that moment to dampen the euphoria, sending a whopping 3,000 rockets at random into Israel and their ground troops slaughtering 1,400 people.

In response, Israel did what civilised nations do – defend yourself to ward off the onslaught. Then, issue a formal declaration of war, warn civilians to get out of harm’s way and later, launch raids on legitimate military targets, in this case, terrorists and terrorism infrastructure. 

When Israel did this, demonstrations broke out all over the world, with hundreds of thousands of people protesting with great indignation, Israel’s perfectly legitimate reaction to the deadliest attack it had suffered since the Jewish Holocaust during World War II. “Palestinians lives matter!” is the war cry on so many lips across the world. Inference: Jewish lives don’t matter at all.

Will Jewish lives ever matter at all? During World War II, 1939-1945, then Germany chancellor Adolf Hitler the godfather of the Nazis, spearheaded the systematic annihilation of Jews, in what the Nazis called “the final solution to the Jewish question”.

To Hitler and his ilk, the Jews – who have a reputation for brilliance, innovation, industry and entrepreneurship – were a problem that had to be solved by killing them all. Jews, wherever you plant them, will blossom, flourish and overwhelm everyone around them. That, to Hitler and so many others, is a sin. 

What few people talk about is that the six million Jews who were killed were not only in Germany. No sir. Hitler systematically profiled and collected Jews from all over Europe. Hundreds of thousands were used as guinea pigs for medical experiments, as the Nazis took pleasure in their agony and made significant breakthroughs in medical science.

At the end of World War II, the Jews decided enough was enough: they would go back to their homeland from which they had been earlier uprooted and thrown into exile. But no one wants to hear that the Jews simply came back to their homeland and had to navigate the tough task of dealing with the occupiers who had taken over in their absence. 

Israel is willing to co-exist with the Palestinians and did sign the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords to that effect. But its enemies have always had one mission: push the Jews into the sea and wipe Israel off the map.

That was the inspiration underpinning the wars in 1948, 1967, 1973 and the attack of October 7. Now, suddenly, Hamas are saints, Israel the sinners!

The world, it does seem, won’t be happy and content, until the Jews are once again homeless, helpless and hopeless.

Mr Gawaya Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda, [email protected]