By Bret Stephens / The New York Times
The world should remember the name of Odai Al-Rubai. The 22-year-old Palestinian man joined protests in the Gaza Strip last week to demand an end to 18 years of Hamas’ violent misrule in the territory.
Demonstrators could be heard shouting, “Out, out, Hamas get out,” and “Hamas are terrorists,” while displaying banners saying “Hamas does not represent us.” In retaliation, Al-Rubai’s family says, he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by members of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades. Then his body was dumped in front of the family home.
Did the “Free Palestine” protesters of Columbia, UCLA and other campuses gather to pause for a moment of silence for Al-Rubai? And was there an additional prayer for the recovery of Hussam al-Majdalawi, another dissident whose views reportedly got him kidnapped by Hamas, shot in the legs and left in a square as an example to others?
Last week’s protests are not the first time that Palestinians in Gaza have tried to rise against Hamas: There were also major protests in 2019 that were bloodily suppressed yet went almost unreported in Western media. Some of us have been writing about the plight of Palestinians under their own rulers for decades — the struggle of Palestinian journalists to write freely; the tragedy of gay Palestinians seeking to live freely — only to be met with a collective yawn.
For too many, including those who call themselves “pro-Palestinian,” Palestinian misery seems to matter only when the blame can be pinned on Israel.
The difference now is that Hamas may no longer be able to deploy its full apparatus of repression, at least not while it must spend much of its time hiding underground from Israeli strikes. Those attacks are both the impetus and the means by which people in Gaza are demanding their freedom: impetus, because a growing number of Palestinians in the territory recognize that there will be no end to wars with Israel so long as Hamas continues to drag them into those wars; means, because it’s only on account of Israeli attacks on Hamas that the protesters stand a chance of overthrowing that tyrannical regime.
And what a tyranny it has been. Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 massacres and Hamas’ leader in Gaza until he was killed last year, rose through the ranks by killing other Palestinians he suspected of disloyalty. Once in power, he set up a Stasi-like network of domestic surveillance and torture chambers. Sinwar also described the thousands of civilians in Gaza killed in the conflict as “necessary sacrifices” to his cause. Images of muscled Hamas fighters at hostage-handover ceremonies are further evidence that the group’s leaders divert food aid to themselves at the expense of hungry Palestinians.
Whatever else that is, it is not a route to a free Gaza, much less a free Palestine. That concept of freedom might be better exemplified by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, another Third World death cult that promised liberation and promoted slaughter; and that came with its own prominent apologists on American college campuses.
The real route to freeing Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank, must begin with the elimination of Hamas as a military force, something that, for now, only Israel has the power and the will to accomplish. Among other necessaries will be Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor separating Gaza from Egypt, to ensure that Hamas can’t resupply itself with weapons. Longer term, an Arab mandate for Gaza, complete with a security force from moderate Arab states, may be the best solution for preventing the resurgence of Hamas and avoiding the need for a long-term Israeli reoccupation of most of the territory.
But even that won’t work if a broad majority of Palestinians isn’t willing to unshackle themselves from Hamas’ political and ideological grip. In that sense, it isn’t enough for Palestinians in Gaza to revolt against the group for being the prime instigator and perpetuator of the last 18 months of war and misery, a fact the protesters in Gaza seem to understand far better than their mindless champions abroad.
What matters even more than overthrowing Hamas is overcoming the mentality of the so-called Resistance on which movements such as Hamas (but not only Hamas) were built. If the core Palestinian demand is not the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel but rather of one in place of Israel, then the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is bound to continue.
For Palestinians, that will mean not only abandoning terrorism or guerrilla warfare but also the more insidious forms of seeking Israel’s destruction, such as the spurious call for a “right of return” for the descendants of Palestinian refugees; a right whose main purpose is to swamp Israel demographically so that it will no longer be able to maintain a Jewish majority.
As for Israelis, last week’s protests represent both a hope as well as a challenge. Hope: Ultimately, the protests suggest the possibility that, eventually, an overwhelming majority of Palestinians will never again allow themselves to be ruled by revanchist tyrants of any shade. Challenge: If and when that happens, there will be no plausible argument against a Palestinian state.
The sooner Hamas is defeated, the sooner the day might come.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times, c.2025.
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