No Hamas, you don't attack a music fest: Palestinians lost perception war with reign of terror

Amid the onslaught of stories of death, deception and brutalities by Hamas terrorists in Israel, this journalist texted one of the survivors of the Re'im music festival massacre. The event targeted by Hamas on October 7 was an open-air psychedelic trance festival, organised to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, near the Re'im kibbutz area close to Gaza Strip.

According to eyewitnesses, the terrorists emerged from pickup trucks bearing Hamas military markings. Some landed on paragliders. 

In the indiscriminate shooting that followed, about 260 were killed. 

Young women were sexually assaulted. Several kidnapped.

In the visuals released online later by Hamas-affiliated social media accounts, one could see women paraded through streets, blood streaming down from between their legs.

"Hamas must be erased from this world. Since the end of Nazism, there was never a thing as evil as them," Guy Danon, one of the survivors of the music festival massacre, told me over Instagram. 

"Palestine deserves to live peacefully and free from Hamas," Danon added. 

Hours before texting Danon, a story of Israeli musician parents killed while shielding their son from Hamas' onslaught, was among the most read news items on the WION website. 

Shlomi Mathias (R) plays the guitar as his wife, Debbie ‘Shahar’ Mathias, laughs next to him. The two died while shielding their son Rotem (16) from Hamas' gunfire | AP

They were the family of a music teacher father and singer-songwriter mother, who had plans to attend a Bruno Mars concert in Tel Aviv the following day. The 16-year-old Rotem Mathias survived as his parents' bodies acted as shields to keep him alive amid a barrage of gunfire from Hamas terrorists.

These stories of survival reflect how the legitimate cause of a sovereign Palestinian homeland is losing the perception battle, courtesy the indiscriminate onslaught by Hamas on innocent Israeli civilians, from babies to youngsters to the elderly. 

Also read | Israel Vs Hamas: Reports of Israeli babies being massacred create shockwaves

The retaliation from Israel has been deemed as disproportionate by many in and beyond West Asia, with scores of civilians in Gaza becoming nothing but collateral damage in hardliner Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's campaign to decimate Hamas. 

As India has often said, albeit in a different context related to its persistent tensions with Pakistan, terror and talks cannot occur side by side. Hamas, after morphing itself from a quasi-militant-political outfit into a full-fledged terror machine, is simply settling the score of an ethno-religious rivalry with a territorially assertive Jewish state. 

As an outgrowth of Muslim Brotherhood's Palestinian branch, Hamas has been the de-facto governing body in the Gaza Strip since 2007 when it ousted the Palestinian Authority from power. Since then, a total of seven reconciliation efforts have failed. Gaza faces blockade from both Israel and Egypt due to purported security concerns.

This is exactly why Palestinians should decouple the movement for homeland from terrorism perpetrated by the likes of Hamas.

For the state of Palestine to exist, the proxies of terror such as Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah must be de-legitimised, dismantled and decimated. 

The latter two actions -- dismantling and decimation -- may partly occur by the actions of its primary victim (which in this case is Israel) but the act of de-legitimising terror for the pursuance of territorial sovereignty must take place from the side of Palestinians themselves. 

While the Arab Spring of 2010s inspired pro-democracy demonstrations in both the West Bank and Gaza by Palestinians fed up with the years-long strife between Hamas and Fatah factions, the latter was virtually expelled from Gaza after Hamas ousted them in 2007 in a virtual coup. 

In March 2018, Hamas was accused by Palestinian Authority of leading an assassination attempt on the then-Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. 

With Hamas occupying the centre of Israel-Palestine conflict, the absence of a political process to achieve a viable two-state solution continues to be the biggest impediment to the peaceful settlement of the Palestine question. 

For the scope of that settlement to emerge, Israel must win its war against terror in Gaza.

One may call Israel an occupying force, and list out all the occasions when its security forces targeted innocent Palestinian civilians. But all that amounted to nothing on a Saturday morning of mayhem, when visuals of youth running helter-skelter from the music festival amid the reign of terror shook the conscience of the world.

No Hamas, you don't attack a music festival to get support for your cause. You don't destroy unarmed families cowering in fear to legitimise your methods.

Children watch as civil defence responders search for victims in the rubble of a building after an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 13, 2023 | AFP

Because today's internet-mediated wars are not just about weapons. It's about perception.

And you, Hamas, have destroyed the aspirations of millions of Palestinians, and legitimised the ongoing counter-assault by Israel, giving it a free cheque in the eyes of international community, to avenge your blood-thirsty rampage.

October 7 was your miscalculation. 

It might end your history as a player in the Palestinian question.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.) 

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