Israel-Hamas war: Have Palestinians normalized genocide? - comment

Music lover Shani Louk, 22, a German-Israeli, was one of many women raped and brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the music festival near Re’im on October 7.

Her dead body was then carted into Gaza and paraded around its streets naked. A crowd of civilians spit on and hit her, mutilating her body further.

Author and journalist Douglas Murray referred to her story earlier this month when interviewed by television personality Piers Morgan about the possibility of peace with Palestinians in Gaza.

As he stood on the Gaza border, Murray said that it is “not true” that “there is a sort of peaceful Palestinian population in Gaza who would love a two-state solution and then a few bad apples in Hamas,” as he spoke of Louk’s story.

“Does that strike you as a placid population of peacenik types who are just desperately waiting for a two-state solution to be put back on the table for the millionth time in the last 70-something years?” Murray asked. “It doesn’t seem like that to me.”

When pressed that the Palestinians in the video of Louk’s tragedy only represent a few hundred people in a population of more than two million, Murray pointed out that no one was protesting the situation, asking his friends to stop, or saying they were doing anything wrong.

Murray said that he had seen the raw footage of the massacre, which was captured from Hamas body cameras, CCTVs, dashboard cameras, and more, and that what struck him most beyond the barbarism was the joy that the operatives felt as they killed and maimed Israelis. 

“Even the Nazis” who killed Jews during the Holocaust in World War II “were ashamed of what they did,” Murray said. “SS battalions who spent their days shooting Jews in the back of the head and pushing them into trenches had to get very, very drunk in the evening to forget what they had done. 

“If you look at the footage, the raw footage, [you] will see something that is at least as brutal as what the Nazis did, but here’s the difference: They did it with glee. They were deeply proud. 

“You see people trying to take the head off a young Israeli man with a shovel, and then calling his parents in Gaza and telling them, ‘Father, Father, I’ve killed 10 Jews with my own hands. Get Mother on the phone – I want to tell her how great a job her son has done.’”

The Palestinian people of Gaza elected Hamas in 2006 and have allowed the terrorist organization to remain in power, Murray said as he discounted the significance of the 2007 coup that followed in which the terror group forcibly seized power.

As Murray pointed out, when the Germans elected Adolf Hitler, most of the world took the view that the German people were responsible in some way, even though the Nazis forcibly seized power after that election.

Polls of Gaza residents done in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 attack show that Palestinians not only support Hamas but are proud of its actions in killing Jews.

Some 75% of Palestinians expressed varying degrees of support for the October 7 attack, with 59% saying they were “extremely” supportive, according to the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD), which recently polled 668 Palestinian adults in the southern Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Conversely, only 13% were against the attack, while the remaining respondents were either unsure or did not provide a response.

AWRAD said, “The poll’s sample includes all socioeconomic groups, ensuring equal representation of adult men and women, and is proportionately distributed across the West Bank and Gaza.”

Notably, the level of support appeared consistent across gender lines, as 75% of both men and women expressed support for the event, which included raping women and killing babies. Moreover, 98% of respondents said they felt “prouder of their identity as Palestinians” after October 7. 

That’s a pride for beheading Israelis and kidnapping innocent civilians. 

Palestinian civilians in Gaza took part in the October 7 massacre

Gazan civilians – people in civilian clothes, many of them unarmed – took part in the events of October 7, both in terms of looting and in at least some of the violence, according to multiple pieces of evidence that have emerged since the massacre. The exact numbers are unknown and hard to determine, since Hamas is a terrorist organization and not all of its operatives entered Israel in uniform. 

Videos and photographs, including pictures published by Reuters, show Palestinians in civilian clothes entering Israel and taking part in the violence. For example, footage emerged from Kibbutz Be’eri via the South First Responders Telegram group showing Palestinian civilians, accompanied by Hamas terrorists, flooding the community. They engaged in widespread looting, seizing whatever they could, while the terrorists carried out a brutal assault on the residents.

One clip shows more than 10 pickup trucks carrying Hamas terrorists arriving at Be’eri alongside dozens of civilians, some armed, who also came on motorcycles and bikes. 

Other reports from the South First Responders show civilians kidnapping Israelis and taking them into Gaza to serve as hostages for Hamas. There is also the well-known video of unarmed civilian men riding in the looted golf cart that transported 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Yafa Adar into Gaza. She was recently released as part of the hostage deal.

Moreover, the two little redheaded boys, Kfir and Ariel Bibas – the youngest only 10 months old – and their parents were not part of the recent prisoner exchange because Hamas doesn’t have them. 

Israel’s chief military spokesperson, R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari, said in a briefing that they were being held by a Palestinian faction other than Hamas. According to the Arabic spokesman for the IDF, Avichay Adraee, it is unclear where they are or in what state. If elections happened tomorrow, the Palestinians would likely re-elect Hamas in Gaza.

Hamas received a 76% approval rating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where voters oppose the Palestinian Authority. The United States hopes this governing body will one day rule Gaza. The PA received only a 10% positive rating, while 87% of respondents viewed it negatively. In contrast, the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad received a 93% approval rating in the West Bank and 72% in Gaza.

The Al Qassam Brigades, the terror arm of Hamas, got 95% approval in the West Bank and 78% in Gaza. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah’s military wing, received 88% in the West Bank and 70% in Gaza. Even Hezbollah in Lebanon had a 45% approval rating in the West Bank and Gaza.

These statistics oppose the ratings given to the US, United Kingdom, and Israel, with Palestinian respondents awarding these countries a 98% to 99% disapproval rating. 

WHEN ASKED about their preference for governing Gaza, 75% of respondents in the West Bank and 68% in Gaza expressed a desire for a national unity government comprising various Islamic groups, including Hamas. 

Essentially, a majority is inclined toward being governed by terrorists.

The Palestinians do not believe that the October 7 massacre was to free them or obtain a Palestinian state as Western media would like us to think. 

According to that poll, less than a third (29%) of people in Gaza and the West Bank (and only 25% in Gaza) even believe the war was to “free Palestine.” Only 18% said October 7 was to “break the siege on the Gaza Strip.” 

More people (35%) believed it was to “stop the violations of Aqsa” – meaning to stop Jews from praying on the Temple Mount.

When asked if they support a two-state solution, only 17% of respondents said yes, while 75% said they want “a Palestinian state from the river to the sea.”

When world leaders and international media outlets say that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people, the polls show otherwise. Peaceful Palestinians, at least when it comes to their relationship with Israel and the Jews, are few and far between.

Instead, a genocidal desire is fast becoming normalized. 

The writer is deputy CEO – strategy and innovation for The Jerusalem Post and a senior correspondent. She also co-hosts the Inside Israeli Innovation podcast.