Part I: Peace Will Never Come
I haven’t been able to write lately. Not because I’ve been physically kept from my keyboard — I’ve had plenty of time for more games of solitaire than I care to count over the last few weeks — but because every time I sat down and cracked my knuckles, I’ve found the words simply wouldn’t come.
October 7th was too shocking; the response too awful; the insistence from all sides that I must be on their team too depressing. My protestations of “I’m on Team Human!” have fallen on deaf ears. “Oh, so you want to see us wiped out by the other side? You want innocent people to be killed?!”
Is that what I said? No, it isn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Most of all, the implications of all of this — the attack and the aftermath, and the historical circumstances leading to it, and the wider geopolitical context, and, and and… well it all seems just too huge. I can’t quite seem to get my arms around it. There are numerous half-finished attempts at essays littering this Substack’s draft file, some of which may be finished in the next few weeks, some of which will simply get binned. Many could be turned into hefty doorstop books if I really wanted to put the time and effort into the research. But truth be told, I don’t. Leave that to the hacks and historians. I’ve never much been one for looking back, unless it’s been so that we can better look forward and avoid the same mistakes. But learning from mistakes seems to be at the bottom of everyone else’s agenda right now.
So what changed? Why is this draft not half-finished, but instead sitting in your inbox? Well, about a week ago while surfing Facebook I stumbled upon this poem. It’s long, but I’ll give it to you in full anyway:
Untitled
by Sarit Steinfeld
“Some poems take minutes and some days. This one has taken me weeks. I kept changing the ending. A part of me feels like I'll be writing this forever, because I will never understand.”
I needed to give you a different name Because it seemed as though we’re not all made the same At first I thought of Barbaric Animals Because of the way you prowled the fields Like predators looking for your next kill Not stopping until You got every last one still breathing But animals are pure instinct That’s what makes us distinct Isn’t it? So no matter how much I fought with my own mind I couldn’t liken you to the animal kind It wouldn’t be fair to them So then I thought of Monsters Because of the way you crept up on unsuspecting children in their beds Then cruelly dismembered babies’ heads Murdered children in front of their mothers Or dragged them into captivity with their little brothers But monsters are pure imagination So after much examination I realized you were all too real During that horrific ordeal So I couldn’t liken you to monsters It wouldn’t be fair to them And then I landed on Demons I had so many good reasons, Your mission was to bring hell to earth Allow yourself a kind of evil rebirth The way you threw grenades into packed rooms Then cheerfully welcomed their fiery booms That would rip off an arm or a leg And waited to hear the people cry and beg The name seemed so fitting Yet after much internal digging I couldn’t ignore that I imagined Satan himself was judging you from hell And I was so confused, can you tell? At last, I had to conclude, what I thought was true That even they wouldn’t collude with the lot of you So I couldn’t liken you to demons It wouldn’t be fair to them. How my mind raced How much I paced I tossed and turned late into the night Sitting up and turning on the light As I went through my whole name list Among which were sociopaths, rabid dogs, soulless creatures… you get the gist And in the end I wondered, do I even have a choice? As I finally whispered in a pained and tortured voice And called you Human. You should’ve heard my anger and profanity Thinking about how it’s the root word for humanity You, human? You who took: bonfires and made them burn rainbows and made them storm a child and made him cry a woman with life inside her and made her die How could I possibly call you Human? Yet, it felt necessary. Because when it’s your time To confess your heinous crime Like Eichmann before you, You too Shall stand trial and pay like a man with bile In his throat as he chokes at the rope Because that’s what you deserve When you mutilate children in front of their parents Destroy generations and future descendants Rape and murder and kidnap with thrill As you employed all of your free will You used yours to kill. Free will, isn’t that what makes us human after all? Causing some of us to rise and some of us to fall Without being human, you could make the case “I’m an animal, a monster, a demon, so you have no base from which to judge me” It was difficult, but as you can see Calling you Human seemed so absolute I was determined and resolute. But then, I sighed. I couldn’t My heart My mind My soul Wouldn’t. You simply brought the world too much pain The horrors you inflicted, you considered a gain I want to believe that humans are innately good and pure But I saw no sign of that in you So at last, I vowed, I will never give you Human as a name Perhaps we truly aren’t all made the same. You shall remain nameless. In the same way that you were heartless. Not Human, not Animal, not Monster, not even Demon You are nothing.
When the first grisly reports of babies being cut from wombs started to surface, my first thought was: “Who would do such a thing?” Or more to the point: What has to happen to a person to make them capable of such an act? Because people who have fulfilling lives, full of hope and joy, don’t simply wake up one morning and think to themselves “I’m going to go out today and not only kill someone, but brutalise them in the most heinous way imaginable.” You want a motivational poster line? How about this: Happy People Don’t Hack Off Limbs.
Even ordinary soldiers who have been trained to kill find it hard to actually do it. They have to be roused into a state of aggression by their officers before they’re mentally capable of pulling that trigger, and even then it often haunts them for years afterwards. We all know this. We’ve all seen Deerhunter and Jarhead. The idea that an otherwise healthy human being would decide from their own free will to brutalise others is ludicrous.
In fact, we saw during Covid how much free will plays a part in people’s decision making at the population level: hardly at all. Sure, there were dissenters — non-mask wearers and non-vaccine takers, just as there are, presumably, a few people in Gaza who start walking the other way when the Hamas recruiter walks toward them (though carefully like — they’ve no more wish to be imprisoned and beaten for their ‘free choices’ than you do). So no, it’s not free will. Something has to first happen to the people who brutalise, or, rather, a whole lifetime of cruel, sad somethings that slowly eat away at their soul have to happen.
Palestinians, like all Arabs, having something of a romantic nature about them, love poetry. Love it. Can’t get enough of it. They revere their national poets and teach their children the verses in school. I’m assured that Arabic poetry is very beautiful, although I wouldn’t know first-hand.
I’ve been trying to find some poems written by Palestinians that speak of the Israelis as sub-human, demons, worse than dogs. Alas, I couldn’t find any. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, likely they do, merely that I none turned up when I sifted the shifting sands of the internet. I’m not trying to make out here that the Palestinians love their Jewish neighbours; they wouldn’t mutilate their still-alive victims if they loved them. But, like all humans, they do love.
From Anas Al-Yaziji to his fiancé, Shaima Abu Al-Ouf, whose body he recovered after two days of searching
by Hamed Ashour
Well, Shaima, I love you so very much, and more and again, I am under attack since we hung up the telephone three days ago, when five missiles hit your family’s house. Since the dress rehearsal and the henna night, since our last words together, our state of happiness. Since Eid and ululation, since neighbors, friends, and wedding dates, since our first postponed child and your first stubbornness, I say, “I only want one.” you say, “no, I want a clan.” I love you so much, and more, and again I’m under attack, my hand in my pocket, my mind in its place. I say, “O, Shaima, a warplane has passed by, the bell and the minaret have fallen.” and you say, “it is alright, the doves remain.” I say, “they have smashed the window.” You say, “that’s how light’s freed.” I love you so much. But now I am under attack, as always, and under rubble. Traders and bastards will come, attend conferences, auction the land and its last few survivors, form committees, reconstruct towers, and rebuild ruined houses. And our house, my love, our little home, we built stone by stone before bills and debt drowned us and quarrels overwhelmed us - the color of sofas and of walls and where in our backyard we would plant the grape’s seedlings. We will get back the streets, the minarets, the gardens, electricity and water pipelines I say, once the ceasefire takes hold, who would bring the blood back to Shaima?! We will get back the streets, the minarets and yards, the electrical lines and water pipes. I say, “the bombing’s stopped, but who’ll restore Shaima’s blood?”
Peace will not come until both sides can sympathise with the other. When the Arabs understand that the Jews also love the land every bit as much as they do, and, in discovering this, are inspired by love to be generous enough to share; when the Jews understand that the Arabs are not dogs, or demons, or nothing, but simply also want a homeland of their own, then there will be peace.
Until then, this is what happens: A child is born in Gaza. His family tell him: you live in an open air prison for now, but Al Quds (Jerusalem) is our real home and one day we will return there. At two, a toy gun is put in his hand; he plays with it while on his TV, Farfour, Palestine’s version of Micky Mouse, is ‘martyred’ by Israeli forces, and he learns very quickly what guns are for.
Time goes on. He goes to a school run by UNWRA. There, he is taught that he is a victim, that his family are victims, that he will always be a victim, that there is no other road for him to travel down. An outbreak of fighting flares up between Israel and Hamas. His school is bombed; it turns out it was being used as a weapons cache. Most of the teachers and children had already evacuated, but a teacher he never much liked had stayed in the area and was killed. He feels guilty for not liking that teacher, especially when he sees her body in the rubble.
More time goes on. The flare up passes. Life returns to normal. Turning on the TV in the evenings, he watches programs that glorify the martyrs of Palestine as great heroes. At mosque on Fridays, the Imam reminds him and his friend that to be martyred is the greatest of achievements.
At 14 he and his friends, bored and full of resentment, decide to go and throw stones at the occupation’s soldiers. His best friend is a good shot with the slingshot — he scores a direct hit to a soldier’s head with a heavy rock. Moments later his friend is shot dead. His friend is given a martyr’s burial; the whole town turns out for the funeral. A few weeks later, the boy’s name is on a plaque on the school gates, listed as a most glorious martyr. The boy feels sad that his friend is gone, but also jealous that his name isn’t on that plaque. He makes up his mind: he, too, will one day be a martyr.
Meanwhile, the soldier was rushed to hospital but the throw was too accurate, the rock too heavy. He too has a hero’s burial. His sister stands at the grave and wonders why her brother was killed. Why was he there, on the border at all? Oh, she knows the family history: how only one of her great grandmothers survived the holocaust, bringing her only remaining child with her on the long and perilous journey by land and sea to Israel. How the boat they took to Haifa was nearly sunk by the British in an attempt to divert them to Cyprus. How her grandmother had spent her childhood on a kibbutz where all the children slept in a dormitory and did farm work in the afternoons. The land had been harsh and desolate, life was perilous, war was never far away, but they were all one family, united in this great project to build a country where no one could ever again say “You’re not welcome here, dirty Jew, go back to where you came from”.
Every year the family gathers at her grandmother’s house in Jerusalem for passover, and together they say the last line of the seder: “Next year in Jerusalem” with a wry smile, which turns into a laugh. Not a laugh of triumph, mind, but a laugh of relief and gratitude. For how many generations was that line said with yearning? How many of her relatives died at the hands of another without ever having even a glimpse of the city? And here they are, able to walk right up onto the Temple Mount if they want to. Yet when they do, they are greeted by angry Arabs holding guns who make them dress in Muslim clothing. God forbid they should say a prayer while there.
Passover is only a few weeks away, but this year there will be an empty chair. Her brother will be missing. And for what? Why should he have been killed here, of all places, by those who say “You’re not from here, dirty Jew, go back to where you came from”?
Part II: The Ethnostate
Israel is an ethnostate and proudly so. In 2018, it hammered home the point with the introduction of the Nation State Law, which states as it’s basic principles:
A. The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established.
B. The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.
C. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.
People in the West don’t like this. Leftists don’t like it because they don’t like white people having ethnostates, and right wingers don’t like it because they want an ethnostate of their own and fail to see why they can’t have one if the Jews can. How is that fair? Futher proof that The Jews really do run the world.
“I’m not antisemitic, I’m just saying that, in reality, Zionism is an ethnostate project,” they whisper angrily, as though this was contraband knowledge. What they mean, of course, is that they want to be able to criticise Zionism without being accused of antisemitism. But of course Zionism is an ethnostate project. It was conceived at a time when the whole of Europe was involved in creating ethnostate projects: nation states as we now conceive of them, with flags and anthems and national pride. Before that there were peasants and there were landowners who swore feilty to the King in return for more land and more peasants. During the same period, Germany and Italy unified from city states and feifdoms into the Germany and Italy we know today. Should they too not exist? After all, those little experiments didn’t exactly get off to a good start.
Perhaps those critics of Zionism are right to criticise and perhaps they’re not. Who am I to say? The point everyone seems to miss, however, especially those supporting the Palestinians and calling for the destruction of Israel on the grounds that it is an ethnostate, is that Palestinian nationalism is also an ethnostate project — or more technically it is a theocratic-nationalist project, as Articles Six, Twelve, and Fourteen of Hamas’s (1988) Covenant of the Islamic Resistence Movement spell out:
Article Six: The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned. In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails and schisms and wars will break out.
Article Twelve: Nationalism, from the point of view of the Islamic Resistance Movement, is part of the religious creed. Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Muslim land. Resisting and quelling the enemy become the individual duty of every Muslim, male or female. A woman can go out to fight the enemy without her husband's permission, and so does the slave: without his master's permission.
Nothing of the sort is to be found in any other regime. This is an undisputed fact. If other nationalist movements are connected with materialistic, human or regional causes, nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement has all these elements as well as the more important elements that give it soul and life. It is connected to the source of spirit and the granter of life, hoisting in the sky of the homeland the heavenly banner that joins earth and heaven with a strong bond.
If Moses comes and throws his staff, both witch and magic are annulled.
Article Fourteen: The question of the liberation of Palestine is bound to three circles: the Palestinian circle, the Arab circle and the Islamic circle. Each of these circles has its role in the struggle against Zionism. Each has its duties, and it is a horrible mistake and a sign of deep ignorance to overlook any of these circles. Palestine is an Islamic land which has the first of the two kiblahs (direction to which Muslims turn in praying), the third of the holy (Islamic) sanctuaries, and the point of departure for Mohamed's midnight journey to the seven heavens (i.e. Jerusalem).
Since this is the case, liberation of Palestine is then an individual duty for very Muslim wherever he may be. On this basis, the problem should be viewed. This should be realized by every Muslim.
The day the problem is dealt with on this basis, when the three circles mobilize their capabilities, the present state of affairs will change and the day of liberation will come nearer.
The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not about land; it if were, it would have been solved a long time ago through a two-state solution. It’s about supremacy, and specifically, it’s about supremacy in the Old City of Jerusalem — as it has been for over three thousand years, which is why Arafat walked away from a deal when he couldn’t have East Jerusalem, which includes the whole of the Old City.
(A slight aside: between 1948 and 1967, the whole of the Old City lay within Jordanian territory. When people advocate for a return to ‘67 lines, they’re calling for the explusion of the Jews from Jerusalem’s Old City. The last time such a thing happened was in ‘48 — when the Jews were expelled, the whole Jewish Quarter was completely razed to the ground.)
Jerusalem’s history is instructional here. The earliest settlement on the spot now known as Jerusalem was built some five thousand years ago by the Canaanites. Three thousand years ago it was taken over by the ancient Hebrews, and became the capital of King David’s kingdom and remained in Jewish hands for about a thousand years. Lying, as it does, on the crossroads between Asia, Africa, and Europe, Jerusalem was repeatedly overrun in both directions by whichever empire happened to hold sway in the region at the time, and was often a vassal state. The Jews fully lost control of Jerusalem in the Jewish-Roman wars of 66 - 70 AD, and didn’t regain it again until 1948. In the intervening two millennia, the city was Pagan, then Christian in nature under the Byzantines, then Islamic — then Christian again during the Crusades, then Islamic until the British wrestled it off the Ottomans.
In total, Jerusalem has been attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times, and destroyed twice. It seems that, for some reason, the Great Powers always want to be supreme in Jerusalem, and whoever is always has a lot of competition to fend off. Our times are no different.
This all suggests that perhaps no-one should be in charge; that Jerusalem’s Old City should be an international heritage site with Jews, Christians and Muslims all given equal access, given that they all have key holy sites there. And while we’re at it, perhaps Israel at large should become a secular state with no particular flavour. After all, small Muslim and Christian populations have also called it ‘home’ for centuries. There’s actually a fair amount of support within Israel for such a solution — or at least there was before October 7th. But when I suggested this to an Arab friend of mine over a few beers at the pub one night, he said: “But then there would be no Jewish state, anywhere.” And he’s right. Israel is different for the Jews. The Christians have Christendom; the Muslims have Mecca; without Israel what do the Jewish people have? They will be relegated once again to the status of unwelcome tennants in foreign lands.
Jerusalem is a fascinating place for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is that the Jews, Christians and Muslims all place the Centre of the World there. For the Jews and Muslims, the centremost point is located under Temple Mount — it is the rock that gives the Dome of the Rock its name. That rock, it’s said, was the first piece of land that God made; the rest all spread out from there.
The Christians take a slightly different view. They moved the centremost point up the hill to sit inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the church built over the locations of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection, and also Adam’s burial place. The point, however, is the same.
The Centre of the World. Maybe that’s why everyone wants to own it.
Part III: The War on the West
It has become fashionable to say, as of late, that a war is being waged on the West. Will it survive or will it crumble under the weight of its own follies, the news anchors ask breathlessly? Tune in next week to find out!
Who is waging the war? Islam, of course. If you’re wondering why a local spat between Arabs and Jews is all over your TV, radio and newspaper all day, every day, not to mention why your government is sending vast sums of your tax money to both parties, well, this is it: what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. Haven’t you seen the pro-Palestinian crowds marching through the streets of your capital? Don’t you know they’re coming for you next?
And, of course, they really are. It’s not only small children in Gaza who are indoctrinated at their mosques on a Friday, or in school the rest of the week. Forget ‘coming to a town near you’ — walk through any major city and you’ll see that they’re already here.
But there’s something wrong with how this narrative is being shaped. A war on the West implies that those waging it are not from the West. They are foreigners, they are the barbarians amassing outside the gates; the dragons at the edge of the map. They may be animals, they may be demons. Whatever they are, they’re not like us (they’re also not nothing, unless ‘nothing’ can ram a truck into a crowded marketplace).
Only… well… let me share with you a few excerpts from a poem I stumbled across while looking for Arab poetry to share with you in this essay. It’s a very long poem so I’ve taken just a few excerpts. If you want to read it in full, you can find it here.
A State of Siege [excerpts]
by Mahmoud Darwish
there is no starry night in our nights of explosions our enemies stay up late, they switch on the lights in the intense darkness of this tunnel Here after the poems of Job, we wait no more This siege will persist until we teach our enemies models of our finest poetry. ... There is no Homeric echo here Myths come knocking on our door when we need them There is no Homeric echo here... only a general looking through the rubble for the awakening state concealed within the galloping horse from Troy ... We may find time for relaxation and fine art We may play cards, and read our newspapers Catching up on the news of our wounded past and we may look up our star signs in the year two thousand and two, the camera smiles to those born under the sign of the siege ... Waiting for you, I cannot wait I cannot read Dostoevsky nor listen to Umm Kalthum, Maria Callas or another. Waiting for you, the hands of the watch go from right to left to a time without a place. Waiting for you, I didn't wait for you. I waited for eternity. ... [to a semi-orientalist] Let's say things are the way you think they are - that I am stupid, stupid, stupid and that I cannot play golf or understand high technology nor can fly a plane! Is that why you have ransomed my life to create yours? If you were another - if I were another we would have been a couple of friends who confessed our need for folly But the fool, like Shylock the merchant, consists of heart, and bread, and two frightened eyes ... [To a killer:] If you reflected upon the face of the victim you slew, you would have remembered your mother in the room full of gas. You would have freed yourself of the bullet's wisdom, and changed your mind: 'I will never find myself thus.'
Here we have: the Old Testament, Homer and Virgil, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, star signs in newspapers, rounds of golf — Maria Callas! Where are these barbarians who are so much outside the Western World that they are waging war against it?
Someone needs to tell Douglas Murray: The Anglosphere and Western civilisation are not a perfectly aligned Venn diagram, a singular solitary shining circle of light. Nor does The Anglosphere + Europe = The West. For most of the formative years of the Western world, Britain was a soggy little tin-mining outcrop at the edge of Europe and Germany was a large, dense forest. We were, in fact, quite literally The Barbarians.
You could argue that Muslims have more right to be considered Westerners than us Northern Europeans, because they actually hail from the part of the world where Western Civilisation was founded: the Eastern Mediterranean. That was where the Jews, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Mamluks all held their empires. That was where the Jews, Pagans, Christians and Muslims all scrapped for supremacy in Jerusalem. That was where our culture began.
And it’s not just culture. Politically, too, they are Western.
“For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realizations of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.”
Can you guess where it comes from? Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party Manifesto? Or perhaps the pages of online neo-Nazi rag The Daily Stormer? No, no, it’s actually Article Twenty-Two of Hamas’s ‘Covenant’ document. Yes, Hamas are concerned about the causes of the French Revolution and the rise of the Rotary Club. Deeply concerned.
You’ll also be pleased to know that, according to Article Thirty One: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is a humanistic movement. It takes care of human rights and is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions. It does not antagonize anyone of them except if it is antagonized by it or stands in its way to hamper its moves and waste its efforts.”
Why, someone clear a space for Hamas to take their seat at the UN’s Human Rights Council!
Politically, Hamas (and the PLO) are fully aligned with the Progressive neo-Marxist movement (although like all good Lefties, they hate the other factions perhaps more than they hate non-lefties; their charter shows as much enmity toward Communism as it does to Capitalism) — which is why the flag waving for Israel and Palestine aligns perfectly with party affiliation in Western nations.
Hamas, of course, hails from within the Muslim Brotherhood which was conceived in the 1920s by Hassan al-Banna as an Islamic variant of the fascist movement that was sweeping through Germany and Italy at the time. It is quite purposefully Islamo-facism. In other words, their politics are distinctly, intentionally, foundationally Western.
So that’s two boxes ticked: culture and politics, but above all, Hamas and the other Islamist groups are religiously Western.
Western civilisation is a Judeo-Christian civilisation. When those religions were being created, Europeans were still worshiping woodland gods. While it may be an uncomfortable truth for many, Islam is as much a Western religion as Judaism and Christianity. It must be, because of course it is a brother religion to both of those. Literally. Ishmail and Isaac had the same father.
The story of Western Civilisation has been, for over two thousand years, a story of religious wars fought around the Mediterranean Sea, with a focus on the Eastern Med. If ‘Westerners’ don’t know this, Hamas certainly does.
Article Thirty-Four: Palestine is the navel of the globe [ie, centre of the world] and the crossroad of the continents. Since the dawn of history, it has been the target of expansionists. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, had himself pointed to this fact in the noble Hadith in which he called on his honorable companion, Ma’adh ben-Jabal, saying: O Ma’ath, Allah throw open before you, when I am gone, Syria, from Al-Arish to the Euphrates. Its men, women and slaves will stay firmly there till the Day of Judgement. Whoever of you should choose one of the Syrian shores, or the Holy Land, he will be in constant struggle till the Day of Judgement.”
Expansionists have more than once put their eye on Palestine which they attacked with their armies to fulfill their designs on it. Thus it was that the Crusaders came with their armies, bringing with them their creed and carrying their Cross. They were able to defeat the Muslims for a while, but the Muslims were able to retrieve the land only when they stood under the wing of their religious banner, united their word, hallowed the name of Allah and surged out fighting under the leadership of Salah ed-Din al-Ayyubi [Saladin]. They fought for almost twenty years and at the end the Crusaders were defeated and Palestine was liberated.
This is the only way to liberate Palestine. There is no doubt about the testimony of history. It is one of the laws of the universe and one of the rules of existence. Nothing can overcome iron except iron. Their false futile creed can only be defeated by the righteous Islamic creed. A creed could not be fought except by a creed, and in the last analysis, victory is for the just, for justice is certainly victorious.
Article Thirty-Five: The Islamic Resistance Movement views seriously the defeat of the Crusaders at the hands of Salah ed-Din al-Ayyubi and the rescuing of Palestine from their hands, as well as the defeat of the Tatars at Ein Galot, breaking their power at the hands of Qataz and Al-Dhaher Bivers and saving the Arab world from the Tatar onslaught which aimed at the destruction of every meaning of human civilization. The Movement draws lessons and examples from all this. The present Zionist onslaught has also been preceded by Crusading raids from the West and other Tatar raids from the East. Just as the Muslims faced those raids and planned fighting and defeating them, they should be able to confront the Zionist invasion and defeat it. This is indeed no problem for the Almighty Allah, provided that the intentions are pure, the determination is true and that Muslims have benefited from past experiences, rid themselves of the effects of ideological invasion and followed the customs of their ancestors.
Islam v’s ‘The West’ is a false construct. This isn’t a clash of civilisations, it’s an inter-civilisational dispute.
Well, and so, you might ask? What difference does it make?
On one level, none, I suppose. People are still going to take up flag waving and team cheering. They are still going to shout ‘monster’ and ‘devil’ at those on the opposing team. They’re still going to slaughter each other if they get the chance.
But on another level, all the difference in the world. Who are you fighting, you flag wavers? You are fighting with your reflection in the mirror. Take a look at your reflection. It is nothing like you! It is all backwards! The left eye is slightly wider, when you know that on your face, it is the right which is always a little more alert. And notice how, on closer inspection, all the flaws become woefully apparent! Yet when you turn away from the mirror those flaws are the furthest thing from your mind; why, you believe they don’t even exist.
Muslim, Jew, Christian; Marxist, Conservative, Liberal.
Westerners.
The West is responsible for many wonderful things. Western Civilisation has given us riches in the shape of philosophies, arts, architecture, science, and great wealth. But it also contains the seed of its own destruction, and that seed is called The One True God. He is the god of the Centre of the World, and he is a jealous god.
And that, I think, is all I have to say on the subject of Israel / Hamas.
I will leave the last word to The Jeweler, a character from Cormac MacCarthy’s 2013 film The Counselor:
There is no culture save the Semitic culture. The last known culture before that was the Greek, and there will be no culture after. Nothing.
The heart of any culture is to be found in the nature of the hero. Who is that man who is revered? In the classical world it is the warrior, but in the western world it is the man of God. From Moses to Christ. The prophet. The penitent. Such a figure was unknown to the Greeks. Unheard of. Unimaginable. Because there is only a man of God, not a man of Gods, and this God is the god of the Jewish people, there is no other God. We see him... what is the word... purloined. Purloined in the West.
How do you steal a god?
The Jew beholds his tormenter dressed in the vestments of his own ancient culture. Everything bears a strange familiarity. The fit is always poor and the hands are always dripping blood. That coat... didn't that belong to Uncle Chaim?
What about the shoes?