The focus on the governing entity, as opposed to Gazan society, is erringly reminiscent of the fallacy in the decades leading to the Holocaust.
The conventional wisdom around the turn of the 20th century was that while European society was becoming increasingly antisemitic, the European regimes were increasingly pro-Jewish, thus Jews were safe.
For example, in the 1895 mayoral elections in Vienna, the people elected a staunchly antisemitic mayor, Karl Lueger, but the Austrian-Hungarian Kaiser overruled the people’s choice – he would not allow a Jew-hater to be mayor of his empire’s capital.
The Jews celebrated the government’s decision and delved deeper into their sense of safety in Europe.
One man, Theodor Herzl, defied the Jewish establishment. He warned of a calamity about to happen: It’s not the European government, he argued, it’s the European people. “Even if we were as near to the hearts of princes as are their other subjects, they could not protect us,” he posited. “They would only feel popular hatred by showing us too much favor.”
The same discourse exists today: Twenty years of comprehensive Hamas indoctrination of the Gaza population, through schools, mosques, playgrounds, and the fabric of Gazan society, makes the people of Gaza the source of threat, regardless of who governs them.
Herzl understood that a “friendly mayor in Vienna” would not be able to fend off the masses’ hatred of Jews; such hatred would find an outlet. Similarly, an “acceptable regime in Gaza” would not be able to fend off the masses’ hatred of Jews and of the West. It, too, will find an outlet.
Herzl: Dogmatic minds cannot be changed
Another conception in Herzl’s time was that through education, European society would be reformed. Herzl mocked such “countering antisemitism” efforts, arguing that dogmatic minds cannot be changed. He even wrote to Germany’s first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: “There is no use in suddenly announcing in the newspaper that starting tomorrow, all people are equal.”
Determining that European Jew-hatred is incurable and lethal, and that the “governing regime” cannot stop a looming calamity, Herzl concluded that there is only one solution: relocation.
Such relocation would not only allow Jews to flee from the dangerous environment in Europe, but it would also allow them to transform: de-collectivize as miserable Jews, whose uniting factor is European prosecution (Judaism 2.0), and re-collectivize under a new ideology: Zionism (Judaism 3.0).
Similarly today, there is no use in a new entity governing Gaza to announce in the Gazan newspapers that Jews and Westerns should no longer be murdered.
Applying the lessons from the lead-up to the Holocaust to today’s situation in Gaza: It is not the government that is important, it is the people.
To be clear, it is not that people – Europeans then and Gazans now – are intrinsically evil. It is that no group of humans can sustain such intensive brainwashing and not be affected by it.
Indeed, when the Nazis took over Germany in the 1930s, they were able to build their propaganda machine on top of the widespread European antisemitic beliefs that were so entrenched in European society: Jewish capitalists control Vienna, they pollute humanity, and they starve Europeans.
Once the war was over, Germany went through a successful process of governmental de-Nazification.Some Western pundits today argue that just as Germans are now friends of the Jews, so will the Gazans be after a period of governmental de-Hamasification.
Such frivolous Western thinking is not only detached from Middle-Eastern realities, but it ignores the depth of historical developments.
Societal de-Hamasification
The decade of Nazi indoctrination was imposed upon a society that was already collectivized and had a strong autonomous ethos – one that had nothing to do with the Jews.
Bismarck created this collective in the 1870s when he unified Germany, taking advantage of centuries of German culture and continuous geographic presence. “Bismarck merely shook the tree which the visionaries had planted,” Herzl explained.
Therefore, through governmental de-Nazification, the German society in the 1950s was able to rely on the roots of that centuries-old German tree.
This is the exact opposite in Gaza. Hamas is the Gaza collectivization!
Until Hamas, Gazan society was de-collectivized by design. The guiding ethos was that most residents of Gaza are not Gazans – they are from Tel Aviv, Herzliya, and other areas of today’s Israel.
Relocation became the core ethos of Gazans: Sooner or later, you will leave the “night shelter” of Gaza and relocate back home, to today’s Israel.
This ethos was heavily funded by the West through UNRWA, EU-sponsored NGOs, and Western media.Unlike Bismarck’s tree in 1870 Germany, there was no tree in Gaza prior to 2005, there were no visionaries, and there was nothing planted.
In comes Hamas and collectivizes the society under new set of core values: Jihad against Jews and the West, murder, rape, and savagery.
Indeed, Hamas to Gazans is what Bismarck is to Germany.Just as the collective German tree that Bismarck shook remained intact long after Bismarck’s death, the collective Gazan tree that Hamas planted will exist long after Hamas is gone.
Therefore, unlike post-World War II Germany, when governmental de-Nazification was sufficient to bring in regional and global stability, in post-war Gaza there will be a need for a societal de-Hamasification in order to bring regional and global stability.
Such societal de-Hamasification can only be accomplished in the context of relocation.
Indeed, relocation would not only allow Gazans to flee from war and the uninhabitable environment in Gaza, but it would also allow them to de-collectivize: Rid of the uniting factor of hate, Jihad and murder, they could re-collectivize in their various new countries under a new narrative – for example, being pioneers blooming the Syrian and Jordanian desert, as discussed in my recent Jerusalem Post article.
The writer is author of the new book The Assault on Judaism: The Existential Threat Is Coming from the West. He is the chairman of the Judaism 3.0 think tank and author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism’s Transformation to Zionism (Judaism-Zionism.com). ■
