Israel vs. Hamas: A Clash of Civilizations?
During a war, the statements of the belligerent countries' leaders are sometimes more revelatory than the count of artillery shells fired. The war of words surrounding the current Israel-Hamas war in Gaza took a brutal new turn on August 20th, during a press conference of the Israeli prime minister. Never one to mince words, Netanyahu took the occasion of the horrifying execution of photojournalist James Foley to put forth a new account of the current conflict. He declared: "Hamas is ISIS. ISIS is Hamas. They're branches of the same tree. You saw the gruesome beheading of James Foley ... It shows you the barbarism, the savagery of these people. We face the same savagery."
With these words, Netanyahu indicated that he intends to ignore Hamas's nationalist motivations completely, and view their actions solely in the context of a stark and age-old binary between good and evil. The result is a tragic universalizing not only of the war between Israel and Hamas, but also potentially of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict as a whole.
The sameness of Hamas and ISIS is an interesting question. Their similar reputations none-withstanding, the likeness of these two organizations is not as straightforward as some may presume. ISIS kills Americans (and other Muslims) and Hamas kills Israelis (and other Palestinians), but ISIS is not currently interested in killing Israelis and Hamas has no interest in killing Americans. Both organizations grew intellectually out of the Muslim Brotherhood, the first Islamist organization founded by Hassan al-Banna in Cairo in the 1920's. But the Brotherhood, unlike ISIS, has never sought the realization of a caliphate -- terrible leader that he was, Muhammad Morsi was democratically elected and never tried to install an Islamic regime in Egypt -- and Hamas, for all practical purposes, is interested not in systems of government but in maintaining power and firing rockets.
But the point of Netanyahu's comment was not to teach the world a history lesson. It is visibly obvious that Netanyahu was, instead, capitalizing on ISIS's own horrendous actions to garner support for his own country's campaign against a different Islamist organization, Hamas. As foul as it sounds, for Bibi the timing of Foley's execution could not have been better. The question, of course, is just how legitimate Netanyahu's comments were -- and what their implications may be.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-r-fattal/israel-vs-hamas-a-clash-o_b_5699216.html
