Why do Terrorists kill? Thoughts on Gaza
The latest outbreak of appalling violence in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sparked by a near unimaginably brutal terrorist atrocity when Hamas butchers slaughtered 1,300 Israeli citizens, including women, children and even babies, has stunned the world. This massacre has rightly been condemned in Britain by the most senior members of every major political party and provoked anguish world over. In a magnificent show of solidarity with (and empathy for) the victims, the Israeli people and Jews globally, scores of buildings worldwide have been cast in the colours of the Israeli flag.
The military response by the Israeli state has been swift, uncompromising hammer-blow that has already left 2,600 people dead. The long besieged Gaza Strip has now been entirely sealed off. Even the basic necessities of life — food, water and fuel — are being denied to Gaza’s 2.2 million population until Hamas releases all the Israeli hostages. Further, the Israeli military ordered over one million Gazans to flee their homes in Gazi City in under 24 hours. These are moves the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, claim constitute ‘collective punishment’.
The massacre and Israel’s response has been instantaneously weaponised by cynical commentators and politicians, right and left, to attack their domestic and international political opponents. Protestors waving Palestinian flags in London chant Antisemitic slogans while others have terrorised Jewish school children. For the pro-Palestinian groups, Israel is an evil apartheid state and the blame for all the violence in the conflict can be laid squarely at its feet. Israel’s defenders in the international community state that the country is entirely justified in defending itself — its current policy understandably, in the wake of horror, attracting only muted criticism from major Western politicians.
Such is the level of acrimony, that those who defend Israel’s right to defend itself and denounce Hamas’ terrorist attack as equivalent to 9/11 are described as genocide apologists. Meanwhile, those who reference Gazan casualties, such as the former British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, are accused of false ‘moral equivalency’. Others who complain about a lack of nuance in our discourse have been labelled as ‘shameless’ and labouring under a ‘moral sickness’. This strikes me as a natural emotional response, that attempts to qualify or contextualise sound like apologia and even victim blaming. Yet that response is a mistake in my opinion.
The fact is that context and nuance absolutely do matter. Hamas’ atrocious massacre of Israeli civilians did not occur in a vacuum outside of history and international politics. Hamas fighters are not monsters though their crimes are indeed monstrous. They are real people with extremely dangerous beliefs. It is incumbent upon us to try to understand why terrorists kill and why they gain support from ordinary Gazans, if future violence is to be averted. We must — however crass it may feel — try to see the world through their eyes.
First, we need to remember that the average median age in Gaza is just 18 and 65% of the population is under the age of 24. Some 40% are 14 years old or younger. This means that the vast majority of Gazans have lived behind the barbed-wire fence sealing them off from the wider world and under massive impoverishing sanctions for most of their short lives. This policy imposed by Israel and Egypt has led to the Gaza Strip being described as ‘the world’s largest open-air prison’.
Second, we need to understand that the lives led by Gazans are psychologically damaging. A 2020 study of childhood trauma in Gaza, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, found that 88.4% of children and adolescents have experienced personal trauma, 83.7% had witnessed trauma inflicted on others, and 88.3% had seen the demolition of property. The result of witnessing this violence is that 53.5% of those surveyed suffered from PTSD. A later study, following the 2021 Israel-Palestine crisis, found that the number of children suffering from trauma had increased to 91.4%.
Third, the economic and social consequences of Israel’s policy regarding Gaza have been devastating. Seven out of ten Gazans are refugees and many are rendered homeless following previous wars. 42% of Gazans are unemployed and among those aged between 15 and 29, that figure rises to 62%. 84% of the population requires humanitarian aid and 41% require food assistance. Their groundwater is undrinkable, fishermen are blocked from the vast majority of their waters, and electricity — prior to Israel cutting off fuel — was available for only two to four hours a day.
Fourth, and perhaps the worst, the death toll imposed by Israel’s periodic military offensives in Gaza. Israel, to maintain its own security, periodically begins “mowing the grass” — a crude euphemism for severely punishing Hamas in order to achieve a brief period of peace. The result has been that the ‘cycle of violence’, regardless of which side sparked the particular outbreak of killing, has disproportionately been inflicted on the citizens of Gaza. According to the NGO B`Tselem, The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territory, which collects data on the casualties of the conflict, between September 2000 and September 2023, some 1,330 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians only 449 of them being members of the Israeli military. By contrast, some 10,651 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military and civilians. Where Palestinians have killed 145 Israeli children, 2,270 Palestinian children have been killed.
It is important to recognise that, from the perspective of these young Gazans, Israel has been killing and injuring their friends and loved ones for as long as they can remember. A common refrain from Israeli politicians is that lethal military action is an unfortunate necessity; a measured response to the rockets fired from Gaza at Israeli settlements. As former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, put it in 2008,
Israel did everything in its power to fulfil the conditions of the calm in the south and enable normal life for its citizens in the communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip. The quiet that we offered was met with shelling. … In such a situation we had no alternative but to respond. We do not rejoice in battle but neither will we be deterred from it.
Yet data on the violence between Israel and Palestine from 2000 to 2008 shows that rarely were Gazans the aggressors. In fact, according to Professor Nancy Kanwisher, ‘79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when [an] Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day).’ But the ‘who started it’ debate, which spans many decades of history, is to miss the point. Palestinian children and teenagers, who are not responsible for what their elders or ancestors have done, have suffered at the hands of Israel and are therefore primed to hate the people they see as their oppressors and support violent resistance.
Once again, nothing excuses or mitigates the massacre unleashed by Hamas terrorists on Israeli civilians. The shocking brutality of this crime is unfathomable. Yet it is only by considering the context and history of the Israeli-Palestine conflict that can enable us to understand why young men and women are drawn to Hamas and prepared to obey such brutal orders. They have been traumatised, rendered unemployed, impoverished, hungry and grieving. They have periodically endured extreme violence their entire lives.
Gazans who see Israel as evil incarnate are drawn to Hamas, which promises them opportunity for armed resistance, vengeance and even paradise in the next life. Surely, the solution to the cycle of violence is to demonstrate to them that they are wrong about Israel and the merits of armed resistance? Yet, in the name of security, successive Israeli governments have and will continue to convince them that it is. The horrible irony is that, as the awful massacre of Jews by Hamas has proven, this Israeli approach makes its citizens less safe.
