_{The featured picture: Memorial Site Concentration Camp Dachau – Germany. Picture taken by the author on occasion of visiting the site May 2019, with two dearest American friends.}

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Every parent has seen this: A child in devious mood, quickly checking that it is not being watched, then hitting his or her sibling. The sibling being attacked yells for Mom or Dad. The parent rushing in, trying to find out what happened, and the attacker claiming “Mom, she started it, not me!” Bullies on schoolyards do the same: They immediately accuse the victim of having started the fight when caught.

As parents, we would join in the common experience that this is a typical phase within childhood development. If we are wise, we would undertake all efforts not to be manipulated into taking one child’s side. If we are able to clearly identify what happened, and who started it, we would work towards an understanding that action has consequences, that own behavior leads to accountabilty. We love them both. We would work hard helping our children to gain values of coexistence, rather than domination. We would learn how to explain the need for compromise, and that any compromise includes giving something away in order to share getting something. Myself being a parent, I remember this vividly. It can be absolutely unnerving being confronted with two children who are locked into a fight, not capable to give up, and becoming furious that Mom or Dad does not take their side. It takes a lot of patience and diplomatic skills to navigate through these situations until both children are ready for a compromise. In more than one case, I messed it up. The consequence was turmoil, protracted fights, and pain on all sides. But if successful, peace is reestablished quickly. And at some point during their development coming out of age, former children will look back at their fighting memories with smiles and jokes.

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Childish behavior? What does it have to do with the title of this blog entry?

Let me try to paint a larger picture before locking in on what, in another context, representatives of the United Nations have named actions “verging on pure evil“. With this wording AFP is quoting UN officials talking about the unimaginable suffering of Darfuri people again, twenty years after a genocide. They are at the brink of another one. I have written about it, here. Most of us don’t even see these news. We are transfixed by what is happening in Israel and the Palestine Territories. I want to write about action which has crossed the border into the realm of pure evil: The Hamas terror attack against Israel and Israeli civilians, October 07, 2023.

In order to create the link from childish “tit for tat” and “he started it, not me” kindergarden behavior to what appears to have exploded into fiery emotional antagonization making it difficult offering an argument calling for reason, I want to recall how used we have become to the application of this utterly childish behavior as a most devious tool of manipulation by adults, namely by adults who hold or held highest office, and how a cohort of followers is using this method for manipulating and controlling massive portions of entire societies. The trick is: Blame the other side, trick them into anger and hatred, and capitalize on it. After pointing this out, I will take it to its most recent extreme application: This time in the corner of terrorism. Because we are running the risk of being successfully blindfolded by the mastery of a plan coming straight from hell, emerging through the underground tunnels in Gaza.

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The 45th President of the United States brought this childish logic of always blaming others to perfection in each and every argument. When accused of bullying behavior, he would point to others having started it. When held accountable for own actions, he would point to others, faking stories, hammering out endless lies about these peoples’ own alleged evil. We have been through endless years where this person simply followed one rule: Escalation. On uncounted occasions we found and find ourselves in a reality where every day reveals another outrageous attack which was previously considered to be unthinkable. He is not alone in that, and I am not even talking about his followers, I am talking about other Heads of State, Presidents, Dictators, Autocrats. My argument is that this form of behavior has become mainstream, on a global level. Ruling people, manipulating people, controlling people, by inciting hate, anxiety, anger, and locking them into a fake narrative through lies which stop any bipartisan communication cold in its tracks. Once I am not willing to listen to people with other views, because I am told they are the enemies, I have successfully been locked into a world being solely controlled by these pied pipers.

However, like in the case of Nr 45 and others, we still underestimate them. We try to find reasons, we may ridicule, laugh, minimise, deny. I take a different approach: I assume that people like Nr 45 or others are not just deranged, or are stuck in childish behavior, or may suffer from mental conditions including narcissism and psychopathy making them incapable to act differently. They may be all that, but I do believe they act in cold blood. I believe that Nr 45 knows exactly what he is doing. Currently he is playing the story of facing prison “for the American people” to absolute perfection. It doesn’t matter that every Democrat is laughing at that silly argument. It does matter that this story locks up millions of other people in a scenario justifying to demolish democracy, and being intolerant to anyone different from their fascist, xenophobic and misogynistic thinking. I believe there is a good chance he may succeed again, and this is openly discussed in mainstream media. Which will open the doors of hell. Again. Never before in my view it has been more important to remember lessons of history. We are about to make horrible mistakes, once more.

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This modus operandi is not new, at all. Sect leaders do it. Dogmatic ideology and ultra-orthodox religion does it, within any faith I know. Hostage takers do it. Hitler did it. Children in insane family situations face the same, as victims. Rocker gangs, street gangs, mafia-type organisations, they all deploy these principles, partly or in full. And these are just a few examples, small and large. At the core, it is about mercilessly controlling others for the own benefit.

Terrorism and violent extremism is using the same approach. The list of contemporary examples is long and would stretch from Afghanistan to the Middle East, from East Africa to West Africa, I could name examples in the Carribean, in Middle, Central, and South America, in Europe, just from the list of country situations I have a personal experience with. Of course it would include Afghanistan, the Ukraine, and the history or even small contemporary pockets in the Balkans. Again, just examples. Do we pay attention to Africa?

But nothing leaves me more scared than what is happening since October 07, 2023, the day of a most horrific attack by Hamas against Israel and the Israeli people.

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Why is that?

It was Hamas who launched a terror attack from hell. It were Hamas terrorists who equipped themselves with GoPro cameras, livestreaming their hunt for Israelis hiding in horror. Lifestreaming how they maimed and raped and killed them. Amplifying the lifestreaming done by ISIS a thousand times larger. It were Hamas terrorists who deliberately bragged and documented their murderous attack on innocent Israeli citizens, claiming unspeakable atrocities in messages sent back to their families on social media channels.

For me, one question sits front and center: Why have they done that? And my answer is: In order to maximise blind emotions by Israeli citizens, in order instill hatred in the Jewish community all over the world, in order to derange a beginning hopeful dialogue between Israel and Arabic States, and in order to outrage international friends and supporters of the Jewish community. Reminded of 9/11, I am. At the same time, Hamas did this in order to be seen in the world of their sympathisers and supporters, to instill raw emotions of lust for more cruelties. They simply calculated that, within weeks, nobody would remember these pictures, because the world would be flooded by picures of dead Palestinian children.

Why?

There is only one answer possible: The sheer size of this attack, it’s careful long-term planning in utmost secrecy, and its military-style execution serves one brutally calculated purpose: To incite blind fury in the Israeli society. Hamas has done this for no other purpose than to provoke the most massive attack against Palestinians in the Gaza strip possible. Hamas’ calculus includes not only hundreds of Israeli hostages. It includes 2 million hostages in the form of Palestinian citizens who have no chance other than to live with probably the most sophisticated network of tunnels that the world has ever seen. Those tunnels do not serve as protection for the Palestinian people. They don’t serve as food storage for the population, or as shelters for them. These tunnels serve the purpose of a terror organisation, allowing fighters to move in security, rest between combat, storing huge amounts of weapons and military equipment (and food for the fighters), and deliberately placing the entrances of these tunnels into buildings used by civilians.

Hamas wants the Israeli military to overreact. Hamas wants to see as many Palestinian civilians being killed as possible. Israel, struggling with the pain of a terror attack and death tolls paling much since the Holocaust, now struggles with how to exercise the right of self-defense and taking at the same time all reasonable precaution to avoid civilian casualties in a situation where the other party to this war is using an entire population not as a shield, but as victims in a strategy aiming to blame Israel for violations of international law on armed conflict. Hamas, not Israel, is fundamentally violating the responsibility of any government to protect their own citizens. Hamas is leaving Palestinian citizens no choice but to be in the cross-hairs of IDF military action. The newsrooms are filled with stories of Israeli intelligence operatives calling Palestinian people hours before a planned strike, guiding them by telling which buildings have to be evacuated, and how much time is left. The newsrooms are not filled with stories how Hamas fighters lay down their weapons during any temporary silence of the guns, helping their population to get out of the combat zone. They simply don’t do that, because they need, and want, the pictures of Palestinian dead people, the pictures of overcrowded hospitals. They don’t want to show the entrances into the tunnel network under those hospitals.

This does not mean that Israel somehow can gain a moral benefit. It does not take Israels’ responsibilities away at all, as many in highest functions and being friends of Israel have stated, including highest officials in my own government, with mindblowing clarity and standing at Israel’s side. Germany has a historic responsibility, until today.

But it does mean that under no circumstances Hamas shall be allowed to successfully victimise itself, executing a long-term strategy exactly aiming at that. In this, there is the connection to the childish bully, and autocrats and would-be autocrats.

It does mean that there is a direct consequence of Hamas’s strategic and operational decisions for those Palestinanian casualties, in addition to the havoc they caused on the side of Israeli citizens. Every Palestinian citizen killed is being killed because of deliberate and calculated decisions from Hamas political and military commanders who want to see exactly this happening, rather than taking precautionary measures in order to adhere with their own obligation to protect the citizens of Gaza.

Hamas and their supporters will do everything to keep this fact in hiding, though in plain sight. Whether Israel exercises caution during a strike and casualties have been unavoidable and in compliance with international law, or whether there will be operations gone out of control, in each and every case Hamas will use these pictures for deflecting from its own accountability, and outmaneuvering Israel, finding herself in the most awful “Catch 22” situation imaginable. Each action is aiming at raising fury of Israelis, and every ultra-orthodox jew taking the law into his or her own hands will be used to contribute to the narrative that the evil is Israel.

That is the evil. And it started with this devilish plan executed by Hamas. For that, Hames needs to be held accountable. Like everyone else who violates international law, including the law of armed conflict. There is no other way. But this was carefully planned and executed by Hamas, including killing their own population through this calculus.

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Why am I so passionate about this?

In recent weeks I am confronted with a flood of passionate reactions. Many of which are entirely polarised. The list of reports of people demonstrating for the one cause or the other with peaceful means is endless, and global. The list of incidents of anti-semitic violence is horribly long in many countries. Anti-semitic sentiments are exploding. The list of demonstrations and actions in support of the Palestianian cause is including unacceptable violence, in places where this stokes yet another round of xenophobic reactions. Many countries experience this.

At the same time, I am witnessing an emotional energy in this affecting the day-to-day discussions of “ordinary” people exceeding by far anything I have witnessed in previous developments, like when the war in the Ukraine broke out. Most recently, it affected my own family. It feels like if one supports the Israeli case, only subdued mentioning of the suffering of innocent civilians on the Palestinian side minimises the risk of being suspected of supporting “their” cause. The same the other way round: Reminding of the fate of the Palestinian people seems not to be very compatible with, at the same time, expressing equal sympathies for Israeli victims.

Been there on so many other occasions of conflict. But this time it feels very explosive including in societies far away.

Sympathy and compassion for the suffering of innocent people is running the risk of becoming monopolised: Either one is on the Israeli side, or the Palestinian side. Very much the same way, demonstrations appear to focus on the one or the other narrative, or may be it’s the way how media is reporting about them. And the mantra of “Who started it?”, “Who is responsible for it?”, it often leads to fingerpointing towards the other side. A collective view appears to be difficult to argue.

I would dream of demonstrations in which Israeli and Palestianian victims, mourning their loved ones, stand in for the protection of their human rights together. And where Hamas is isolated. Punched out. By both sides. Accused of the sheer monstrosity of their decision how to set the world on fire. And where more than it already is happening, Israeli voices can be heard how they desperately try to exercise caution. And other voices making it clear that there is no space for human rights violations.

And above all, that there is no space for collective responsibility of both peoples for actions of individuals, or in the case of the Palestinian people, a terror organisation. That both people have a right and will to co-exist.

It was this discussion that Hamas wants to eradicate. Because Hamas wants to eradicate the State of Israel. To achieve this, they are ready to kill their own children.

I mourn every innocent victim of this endless cycle of putting the blame on others, including through a recent terror attack from hell’s underbelly. I wish we retain an ability to listen to each other, and to cultivate an attitude where I first and foremost look at my own accountability, before talking about the accountability of others.

That’s my yardstick.