On the day Hamas invaded Israel, Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing, ordered his own people, as well as Arab residents of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Israel, to grab rifles, axes or Molotov cocktails and set out in a truck, bulldozer or car on a campaign of murder, destruction and arson. These orders render his instruction “not to kill children and the elderly” ridiculous.
Moreover, Deif left Israeli women out of his ban on killing. He thereby allowed Hamas’ men, who have been educated on the principles of machismo and heroic bravery, to take out their anger on these women and thereby take revenge on the hegemonic Israeli male, who, in their view, humiliates them and is responsible for their failure to obey two of Islam’s fundamental commandments — protecting their families and providing for them.
Feminist movements and human rights organizations not only didn’t bother to listen to what Deif said, but also refused to look directly at the difficult images documenting the degradation and violence perpetrated against Israeli women by members of Hamas’ military wing.
These organizations were joined by activist Muna Hawwa, who was born to a Palestinian family from Safed and now lives in Vancouver, where she works as a producer for Al Jazeera television. In December 2023, she posted a video in which she completely denied Israel’s claim that Hamas members raped Israeli women.
She claimed Israel was making up these claims so it can continue what she called its genocide of the Palestinians in general and Palestinian women in particular. She stigmatized the women who testified about the sexual violence as being affiliated with “notorious” organizations that lack credibility, and accused the first responders from Zaka, the organization that retrieves body parts after terror attacks, as having themselves committed sex crimes against women and children.
She accused Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, an expert on international law, gender and human rights leading the civic commission which is collecting testimonies from victims of the October 7 assault, of passing off pictures of female Kurdish fighters as if they were Israeli rape victims. She described the blood on the pants of one female hostage as having come from an injured hand, or alternatively, from a wounded soldier who was near her. And she rejected one surrendered Hamas fighter’s admission to the Shin Bet security service that rape was weaponized on October 7 by claiming his confession was obtained under torture.
At the end of the video, Hawwa asserted that nothing is worse than rape and there can be no forgiveness for it. That’s precisely why she rushed to Hamas’ defense to erase the stain of rape accusations, which tarnishes Palestinians and Muslims. Her behavior brings to mind the words of Palestinian historian Hisham Sharabi, who said that women in patriarchal societies sometimes become agents of oppression in their own right.
Consequently, we women have a duty not to allow Deif and Hamas’ external leadership to erase these acts of rape by framing October 7 in the historic context of “the Nakba, the occupation and the apartheid regime” and the international context of “non-implementation of international decisions relating to the Israeli occupation.”
We must strive to ensure that Deif — who thought that through the “great revolution” of October 7, he would follow in the footsteps of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, one of the organizers of the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–39, and the man for whom Hamas’ military wing is named, and of Yasser Arafat, father of the “armed Palestinian revolution” — is branded with the mark of Cain. We must ensure that he stands trial in the International Criminal Court in The Hague and that his fate ends up being identical to that of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who cooperated with the Nazis and has since been forgotten by the Palestinians.
We women must tell the “free people” around the world, whom Deif addressed in his speech, about Hamas’ cruelty to its own people. We must tell them about the fact that human rights are a marginal issue for Deif, used only to throw sand in the eyes of the international community in an effort to convince it that Hamas is a legitimate national liberation movement and not a terrorist organization. We must disseminate videos of the Palestinian activists who criticize Hamas, like Mohammed al-Taluli, and force the world to listen to them.
Al-Taluli addressed Hamas several years ago, and his quote is still highly relevant today: “Feel for us, think of us as your children. We don’t want the homeland, forget about the homeland. We don’t want to return to it. But regain your humanity, treat us like human beings. Bring back the love that has died in us. Bring back the day when we held hands together. Feel for the mother sitting in her destroyed home, feel for the brother whose sibling has died, feel for the father whose children have died … Isn’t it enough that your Palestinian identity is dead, without your humanity also being dead?”
We must convince the Palestinians that Deif doesn’t intend to give them a state — something he mentioned only once in the speech that was supposed to launch that revolutionary national event. He even pushed the martyrs and the wounded, who sacrificed themselves for liberation and the establishment of a state, to the sidelines, not to mention the female prisoners, whom he mentioned only once.
The regular influx of billions of dollars in cash from Qatar blinded Deif’s eyes and the eyes of those around him and turned them into corrupt hedonists. In wartime, they flee underground, to the tunnels they built for their own protection beneath the Gaza Strip. And in times of calm, they and their families live the good life above ground, either in Gaza or abroad.
In this war, Deif and Hamas’ military wing betrayed their own people in a particularly painful fashion. They didn’t arrange protection, electricity, water, food, medical care or even dignified burials for Gaza’s residents. One senior Hamas official, Moussa Abu Marzouk, wasn’t even embarrassed to say that the tunnels are meant to protect Hamas fighters only, and Gaza’s residents should seek help from Israel and the United Nations.
The Palestinians must copy the revolutionary discourse of their Arab brethren during the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011. Instead of shouting “Takbir” — God is great — and praising the rulers who oppress them, they must shout “get out” and replace all those who are busy moving money from the national coffers to their private accounts rather than ensuring a future for the people under their rule.
And as for us, the Israelis, we must insist that Deif and everyone else responsible for the massacre and rapes on October 7 not be part of any future arrangement.
First published in Haaretz, 20.02.2024