Israel has rebuffed Hamas’ attempts at peace

If you follow the news from Israel, you have read and heard repeatedly that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. You’ve also read and heard that Hamas is the latest in the long line of evildoers who have persecuted Jews.

In fact, it’s not true.

For two decades, Hamas leaders have repeatedly signaled their desire for a long-term truce with Israel, giving time to negotiate for a two-state resolution to the conflict. (See the detailed history at https://www.aljazeera.com/ features/2024/1/22/how-israel-has-repeatedlyrejected-hamas-truce-offers.) Now the Jerusalem Post reports that Hamas leaders have just “expressed a willingness to demilitarize in Gaza.”

The Israeli government has invariably ignored these offers. Instead the Israelis have put a spotlight on dissident voices within Hamas calling for an all-out war on Israel. Israelis have much better access to U.S. media than Palestinians have. So the meme of Hamas wanting to destroy Israel has become a permanent fixture in the news we get here.

When pressed for evidence to support that meme, the Israelis and their U.S. supporters point to the Hamas charter. Its original version, from the 1980s, did call for Israel’s destruction. But its current revised text leaves room open for a two-state solution, while still saying that Israel has no right to exist. (The U.S. entered public talks with mainland China seven years before the U.S. recognized the PRC’S right to exist.)

The Hamas charter functions much like the platforms of our major political parties. It includes all sorts of language to mollify different constituencies in the party. The leaders, once in office, feel free to ignore the document and change policies whenever they like. So there’s no reason to take the ambiguities of the Hamas charter very seriously — unless one would rather demonize Hamas than accept offers to negotiate for peace.

Yet that’s exactly what the Israeli government has always chosen to do: malign and vilify rather than make peace. To make their case seem more convincing, Israeli leaders and media have insisted that Hamas is merely one more in the long line of antisemites who wanted to destroy the Jewish people.

Our U.S. news media repeat that story over and over. They consistently imply (and sometimes say outright) that the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, and indeed all Hamas actions toward Israel, grow out of the same antisemitic impulse that fueled attacks in centuries past, culminating in the Nazi holocaust, which is often referenced in these news reports.

Putting the anti-hamas meme in this historical context makes Israel look like an innocent victim. Certainly the Jews were innocent victims of the Nazis, and of all their previous persecutors in the long sad history of antisemitism. And the many situations where Jews and non-jews got along tolerably well have been largely forgotten in our public arena.

So it’s easy enough for Americans to conclude, “Those Jews always get the shaft. Now they’re getting it again. Those poor long-suffering folks.” Americans like to root for the underdog, the side that appears to have less power. That’s one reason most Americans tend to favor Israel.

Before the mid-20th century, when Jews were persecuted they were innocent underdogs, because they were relatively powerless. With the creation of the state of Israel, though, that changed dramatically. Israel has proven over and over again that it is more powerful than any of its neighbors in every way.

The Israelis’ disproportionate attack on Gaza has proven how overpowering they can be. And it has blunted sympathy for them somewhat. But every news report that puts Hamas in the context of centuries-old powerlessness and antisemitism still boosts the image of Israel as an innocent victim.

So it’s all too easy for us to forget that the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, as morally abhorrent as it was, did not come out of unprovoked hatred. It came from many decades of powerful Israel controlling the lives of the relatively powerless Palestinians. That doesn’t justify the attack. But it does explain it.

Rather than debate about who is innocent, because neither side is, we should ask: Which side has made, and which side has rebuffed, moves toward peace? The answer is clear.