If Hamas is allowed to survive, their web of terror will threaten us all

Not long after the Hamas onslaught of October 7 when Israel was preparing the way for its ground invasion in Gaza with heavy air bombardment, the world was gearing up. Not only for the ongoing mass rallies, poster and vandalism campaigns demonising and mocking Israel and Jews and praising Hamas either explicitly or in so many words, but with the more respectable arguments about how this is all a highly localised problem caused by “the occupation” of Palestinian land and general Israeli aggression.

I spoke to friends in Israel on the phone and they were uniformly horrified – and upset – by the coverage of events in the Anglosphere. The stinging injustice of rampant anti-Israel bias and spiteful misrepresentation of the facts in outlets like the BBC, Sky and CBS appalled them. But they were also shocked at the small-mindedness, the fundamental misunderstanding of the reality and the history by Western reporters and commentators. “What they don’t seem to get is that Hamas isn’t just our problem,” said my friend Daniela, who lives in Tel Aviv with her husband and three children. “Say they destroy us. What then? They’ll set about destroying you.”

“Hamas is your problem too” has since been repeated by Netanyahu and taken up outside Israel too. In Massachusetts last week visiting my parents, I saw billboards on the highway outside Boston with the same message.

But such an argument has carried little traction in a world dominated by media cultures that prefer to blame Israel for absolutely everything, even Hamas savagery; that legitimise by whatever means possible the harming and killing of Jews, and that exclude Jews from the rights and respect scrupulously policed where other minorities, such as trans people, are concerned. As the ongoing scandal at elite US universities makes clear, the Diversity and Inclusion regime works to protect and excuse terrible behaviour from certain minorities and to foster a culture of menace towards the most harmed minority in Western history. 

The wilful stupidity of the consensus that Hamas is Israel’s problem – which means Israel’s fault – and nothing to do with a sweeping and committed anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism was highlighted last week, when news emerged of a major Hamas plot to kill Jews in Europe. News that went widely unreported all day by many of the world’s most prominent news outlets.

It was an extraordinary story. Five people were arrested in Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands on Thursday after police foiled a plot that was, in the words of the Danish prime minister, “as serious as it gets”. German prosecutors said the group had orders to bring weapons from a cache in Europe to Berlin with the express intent of attacking Jewish institutions. Meanwhile, the Community Security Trust, the UK’s Jewish security advisory and analysis service, said that while there is no evidence yet that the plot has a British dimension, the implications were – obviously – sinister for Jews in Britain. 

Contrary to what the Hamas-apologists claim, this has never just been about Israel. Anti-Jewish fervour has always been central to the terror-based Palestinian “resistance struggle”. Even if you choose to ignore the Holocaust-celebrating placards at post October 7 pro-Palestine protests, it is commonplace in such circles to refer to “Jew” interchangeably with “Zionist” – often as a kind of vermin who should be eradicated. The news last week of Hamas expanding its operations to target Jews outside of Israel was only interesting in that it signalled a new global reach. And that makes it interesting – and worrying. The underreporting of this expansion by newspapers – the Telegraph excluded – beggars belief.

Crucially, it’s not just Jews who are in grave danger when groups like Hamas grow in strength and number. Anyone and everyone in the West are also targets, as Al-Qaeda showed on 9/11, the assorted jihadists who carried out 7/7, and the many dozens of Islamic terror attacks on the West since have shown. Israel is always the canary in the coal mine and the rest of the world ignores its perils and pain at its own risk.

The techniques of modern terrorism evolved from Palestinian attacks on Israel, from whence spread suicide bombing of civilians (begun in earnest on a bus in the Israeli city of Afula in 1994); axe and knife attacks in broad daylight on the street, and hitting civilians with cars or trucks. All of these techniques have characterised Islamist terror attacks in Europe, the UK since and the US. Unchecked, they will evolve further.

Groups bent on destroying the West by murdering large numbers and keeping us in a state of fear learn much from the Palestinian “struggle”. Hamas may be only one of a large gang of jihadi terrorist groups now operating here, but their butchery in Israel, and wily fighting since, in tunnels and behind civilian shields, plus their advanced use of technology, will be closely studied – and copied.

Allowing Hamas to win will be terrible for Israel. But it will also be terrible for the world, as we will be forced to confront when the next plot isn’t foiled.