Israel must prepare for the de-Hamasification of Gaza

Sitting on my desk is a Palestinian schoolbook. Behind its jolly pink cover, it is shot through with the basest Israelophobia. A few pages in, you will find a romanticised picture of Dalal Mughrabi, who in 1978 took part in the murder of 38 Israeli civilians in the Coastal Road Massacre. She is praised as a national hero.

This is the indoctrination to which Palestinian children are subjected. If this is what happens under the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, what hope for the children of Gaza?

In its 17 years in power, Hamas’s brainwashing has churned out jihadis. Schoolchildren are taught to produce plays in which they dress up as terrorists and act out atrocities. At summer camps, they practise the rudiments of terrorism.

Hamas’s ideology is strongly influenced by Nazism, so it should come as no surprise that this resembles a wartime German school system that was pervaded by Third Reich ideology.

Even mathematics textbooks featured questions about fully laden bombers flying to Warsaw. Once the Allied victory had been secured, the denazification of young Germans posed a more difficult problem than the deprogramming of older people.

To replicate the postwar economic and cultural miracle of Germany in Gaza would be a true triumph. What can be learnt from the Allied denazification programme that may help cleanse Palestinian society of Hamas? In short: that military victory is not enough if the ideology of the death cult persists.

It starts, however, with a decisive military victory. By the close of the war, the destruction of the German war machine was total, making it indisputable that the promise of Nazism had turned to ashes. Gazans must get the same message.

Then the process of de-Hamasification must begin. The lesson of postwar Germany is that there can be no room for compromise. The measures introduced by the Allies were remarkably illiberal. Those supporting Nazism faced the death penalty, and draconian censorship rules were introduced. Thirtythousand books, including Mein

Kampf, were banned.

Nobody would advocate execution in post-Hamas Gaza, but a similarly intolerant approach towards jihadism will be vital. In Germany, those suspected of war crimes faced the Nuremberg trials, heavily advertised as a deterrent. Alongside this, the atrocities of the Holocaust were publicised across Germany, to bring the nation face-to-face with its crimes.

A comprehensive re-education programme was rolled out to German children. The tone unapologetically placed the blame for wartime atrocities on the Nazis. All of this holds lessons for Gaza, where citizens must reckon with the atrocities that have been committed in their name.

Accompanying these aggressive policies was a programme of economic reform that led to Germany quickly becoming a European powerhouse. Crippling price controls were lifted. Currency reform helped tame inflation. Taxes were slashed.

This will be harder to implement in the Gaza Strip, which has no meaningful base of economic productivity to begin with. But a petri dish of growth must be created, and it will require similar levels of international ingenuity.

There are, of course, differences between denazification and deHamasification. For one thing, jihadi ideology is a global phenomenon. For another, Western public opinion is hardly friendly towards Israel.

But the core lesson is unassailable: alongside economic development, jihadism must be outlawed and not the slightest tolerance must be shown towards it.

After the Second World War, strenuous effort was required to de-Nazify Germany. We must replicate it