Jean E. Rosenfeld PhD is an historian of religion and violence and a scholar of religious terrorism and the editor of Terrorism, Identity, and Legitimacy: The Four Waves theory and political violence (Routledge, NY: 2011)
Letter to the Editor of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser “SETTING THE HISTORICAL AND ETHICAL RECORD STRAIGHT”
I am a historian and an educator by profession, so I hope you will understand why I am objecting to the Island Voices column printed in the Star on October 24.
(Below I copied a short report from The Times of Israel )that was repeated in Al Jazeera without context: The appropriate context is that Gallant was referring to Hamas terrorists, not to the Palestinians in Gaza. (See quote below from Huffington Post),
which supplies the appropriate context.
Given, Yoav Gallant is a hardliner. (Note: Benny Gantz and the head of the Armed Forces were brought into Netanyahu’s regime as a “coalition” to wield moderating influence over Gallant.) There has been a pause on the plan for the IDF to enter Gaza, and Israel has followed Judaism’s rules of war (siege of a city, specifically);
–to leave a “side” of a besieged city for civilians to escape,
–to determine first if the city can be captured without laying siege,
–to send emissaries and open negotiations before laying siege.
(source: Rabbi Reuven Kimmelman’s chapter in Margo Kitts’ edited collection, Religion and War, 2023)
Note also that the traditional view of just war in Judaism (which informs the idea of just war in Christianity) also demands that Jews be militarily prepared to defend themselves against aggression. Opening negotiations via Qatar, warning civilians to evacuate, allowing supplies for civilians via Egypt–these are attempts of Israel to follow rules of war. However, the cutting off of food, water, fuel, etc. does violate the fourth rule for laying siege to a city. But the impediment to allowing in supplies via the Egyptian border at the Rafah Crossing has as much to do with Hamas and Egypt as Israel. Hamas does not care.
The column by Mililani Trask, George Hudes, and Dawn Morais Webster, (“Value common humanity over raw power”) was careless in its statements and use of rhetoric, serving only to mislead and inflame, because: Hamas’s rules of war follow the jihadist Rx, which is total, suicidal war against non-Muslims, Jews, and those considered Takfir, i.e. any Muslims who aid the enemy. Their “morality of terrorism” tracks with that of Al Qaida (in India and Somalia), who are supporting this “Al Aqsa Flood” attack on Israeli civilians. Hamas is attempting to keep Gazans in North Gaza. Hamas is using hostages and civilians as shields. Hamas does not follow civilized rules of war. It celebrates martyrdom for its soldiers as well as the civilians of Gaza. Its source for the rules of war is a thirteenth-century Muslim cleric favored by ISIS and Al Qaida.
Trask, et al, do not temper their inflammatory statements with context or truth about Palestinian governance. Framing the conflict as “colonialists” against the “colonized” is fraudulent. I wrote and published a researched dissertation on colonialism in New Zealand (which applies to colonialism in Hawaii, as well) and I have published analyses on nativist millennialism (movements that oppose colonialism). in an Oxford handbook. The conflict in Israel is between two indigenous groups who belong to the land that conforms to the borders of the former Kingdom of Israel, not a conflict between Jewish “invaders” and “indigenous” Palestinians. Israel was conquered definitively by Rome in ca. 136 CE., but Jews have always lived in the land under the dominion of Byzantine and Muslim rulers, nevertheless.. Arabs were apportioned a state in 1948 and rejected it. Jordan was also created out of the Ottoman Empire for Arabs. The Jewish state was created on a small sliver of land as well. In fact, several Mulsim states, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq were formed anew out of the defeated Axis power, the Ottoman Empire after WWI.
Hamas planned this current operation with three asymmetrical jihadist allies: Hezbollah, PIJ, and PFLP, so as to attack Israel from all sides, if necessary. Since 1948 Arab extremists have continually tried to eradicate Israel from the map and throw Jews into eternal diaspora. This constitutes a “state of war,” not a conflict between “oppressors” and “oppressed.”
Twenty percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinians. That “diversity” would never obtain in a Palestinian state under Hamas. Terrorist groups still operate out of the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas is recalcitrant.
So the war of competing narratives continues, but objective analysis yields the conclusion that there is no moral equivalency between Hamas and the Israelis, and that Hamas (who resemble the Taliban in many respects) cannot be allowed to govern anyone or threaten Israel again. I believe and have written that Israel should first open negotiations and should separate civilians from Hamas as much as they can before any urban warfare incursion, because otherwise casualties will be terrible for all three parties, Gazans, IDF, and hostages. So far, the US, the UN and allies, and the coalition partners to Netanyahu seem to have delayed any type of “revenge” incursion.
We should not, in the meantime, contribute to the “information warfare” that inflames the conflict by broadcasting half-truths and serious sins of historical omission. History, context, careful sourcing deserve as much space as this inflammatory
piece of writing by Trask, Hudes, and Webster.
Jean E. Rosenfeld PhD
Religious Confrontations Play by different Rules
On May 7, 1996, I was called by The Critical Incident Response Group of the FBI about an armed confrontation with an anti-government group called the Justus Freemen at a farm near Jordan, Montana. They asked me to interpret a threat one of the Freemen in the farmhouse made. With the Freemen inside the farmhouse were a woman and her two young daughters. The FBI considered the children to be “hostages” and, after the Waco standoff, which had resulted in the death of children and the Oklahoma City bombing, CIRG was ready to try a new approach suggested by scholars of religious behavior. For the next five weeks
I worked with two of my colleagues to advise the DOJ about how to resist pressure from the media and public to assault the farmhouse. After an 81 day standoff, the Freemen surrendered, thanks to the FBI’s avoidance of overwhelming force.
I published an analysis of the Freemen standoff and how it was resolved by an approach that factored in their belief system. The FBI, military forces, and political authorities approach violent groups as they would criminals, not fanatics. They are generally unfamiliar with how fanatics think and act, their trigger points, motivations, and willingness to die for their beliefs.
Small-scale incidents of conflict and violence involving children, such as the Jonestown, Solar Temple suicides, Waco, the Freemen, can inform us about how to approach large-scale incidents of terrorism and war that are fueled by ideological worldviews.
The HAMAS terror assault and hostage incident is one such case. Like other religious groups, HAMAS is motivated to achieve its “ultimate concern”—that which gives them a reason to live or to die beyond any other motivation. In the case of HAMAS the ultimate concern is to reclaim the land occupied by Jews who have “colonized it” and to do so by eliminating Jewish “oppressors.” Terror tactics are not amenable to conventional rules of conduct, but conform to an aberrant “morality of terrorism” that prioritizes the ultimate concern above the lives of non-combatants. Any war against a group that will die, not accept defeat, and is willing to kill their own children, as well as the enemy’s innocents, cannot be won by ordinary tactics that do not take an ultimate mindset into consideration.
What then is the optimal way to respond to the “Al-Aqsa” war of HAMAS against the “Iron Swords” response of Israel?
Israel was defeated in the first battle of this war, taken by surprise, and suffered terrible casualties. Securing the hostages must be Israel’s first priority, not the military response. Israel has to give up something meaningful to HAMAS in order to open a negotiation for hostages—ideally through a third party that speaks the same ideological language as the hostage takers. This will take time.
Secondly, Israel must secure its own national security by securing all its borders and using all its intelligence to determine where its enemy targets—limited to the perpetrators in HAMAS and its allied groups: PIJ, PFLP, and Hezbollah—are located. Any military invasion of Gaza should not take place until negotiations open. What then takes place on the battlefield becomes a function of the negotiation, not vice-versa. When the FBI gave priority to its field commanders over its negotiation team, children died at Waco. When it prioritized its negotiators above its field commanders and gave non-violent initiatives more time, it resolved the crisis without loss of life.
To invade Gaza while 500,000 civilians remain on the potential battlefield, among whom 30,000 terrorists can disperse themselves, is to hazard an unacceptable number of casualties among both hostages and soldiers sent into urban combat, as well as civilians. Israel can afford to wait. It needs to provide for a half million displaced Gazans near the Egyptian border, negotiate for the evacuation of another half million from Gaza with HAMAS, and gain the intervention of Arab states whose help they need to resolve the crisis, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. In the meantime, Israel can open negotiations, secure its borders, gather intelligence, and continue bombing specific HAMAS targets in Gaza City.
The Israelis need time to counter HAMAS’s narrative that the terrorists are the victims of “Zionists” who rule an “apartheid state.” HAMAS has never accepted the existence of Israel. Jews are as much “people of the land” as are the Palestinians, who rejected the state established by the British Mandate for their people in 1948. A condition of war with Israel has prevailed since that time. Israel has endured a state of perpetual war since it was attacked by the Arab League in 1948.
Negotiations for hostages, a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia, the assistance of Egypt and Qatar, the safety of the population of Gaza are more important objectives than an invasion of Gaza City. Gaza City is currently under de facto siege and time is not on its side. It is better to use time going forward to obtain a more lasting outcome than to spend it in a bloody incursion that may destabilize the Middle East, advance the terrorist narrative, and obtain a pyrrhic victory for the Israeli Defense Forces.
Jean E. Rosenfeld PhD
Author:
“The Justus Freemen Standoff: The importance of the analysis of religion in avoiding violent outcomes.”
“A Brief History of Millennialism and Suggestions for a New Paradigm for Use in Critical Incidents.”
In Catherine Wessinger, ed.: Millennialism, Persecution, & Violence: Historical cases (Syracuse U. Press: 2000).
Blitzkrieg
We have not taught the lessons of World War II to subsequent generations. Most Americans cannot define fascism; thus they cannot identify fascism in action and are not prepared to defend against it. Today, we are enduring the rise of fascism once again from the unfinished business of World War II. The USSR absorbed eastern European nations after the defeat of National Socialism. The largest of their satellites, Ukraine, gained its freedom through the Maidan protests and deposed Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Russia retaliated byinvading Crimea and attempting a takeover of Donetsk and Luhansk, regions on Ukraine’s border with Russia. In 2022 Russia executed a Blitzkrieg—reminiscent of Hitler’s invasion of Poland—against Ukraine, which, thankfully, failed to take Kyiv.
What is happening today in Ukraine and Israel primarily, but also in Russia’s southern sphere of influence in the Balkan states, resembles what happened after the Weimar Republic of Germany failed and Hitler became the Chancellor of the Third Reich. Russia now, like Germany then, is a power with aspirations to control the Eurasian continent from Vladivostok to Dublin. Vladimir Putin has called the fall of the USSR the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century. He believes that the United States humiliated Russia by weakening its ability to recover from sudden decline marked by a rise in mortality and hardship in the 1990s. Two days before HAMAS executed its terrorist attack on Israeli civilians next to Gaza’s border, Putin gave a speech at Russia’s annual Valdai Discussion Club—a major propaganda event—that reiterated his vision of “Eurasianism.” Russia’s proto-fascist plan to recruit unaligned nations to replace American “hegemony” with a “new world order” of “multipolarity.”
“Multipolarity” is doublespeak for the replacement of the dollar as the world’s currency, the control over trade routes in the South China Sea, the military development of the Arctic, the establishment of trade and geopolitical control over the Pacific Island region, Africa, and Latin America, and the eradication of the United States’ influence in world affairs.
Unfortunately, the word is now being adopted by American journalists, such as Noah Smith and David Leonhardt, without their realizing that it is an enticement to the defeat of the West in a war against democracy.
We are, I believe, in a hybrid war with Russia. Like the Cold War it is marked by hot wars in vulnerable regions, blitzkriegs against allies of the West, such as Ukraine and Israel, and by the use of a weaponized Internet to spread chaos and division within the United States and its allies. In this war social media is a force multiplier. The ability to undermine expertise, manipulate images, spread disinformation, and polarize a population advances the chaos that is essential to deposing the Pax Americana and replacing it with “multipolarity.”
Ignorance of Putin’s vision, Russia’s expansionist narrative, the impact of neo-fascism, the resort to “rapid action through time” in the form of blitzkrieg against Ukraine and Israel, the destabilization of politics in the United States, and the pragmatic alliance with China indicate we are involved in a new kind of global war. Unless we understand this, we cannot effectively respond to Putin’s plan.
Israel was attacked on the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, on Putin’s seventy-first birthday, and the Jewish New Year (Simchat Torah marks the end of the yearly reading of the Torah/Books of Moses). This is not a coincidence. HAMAS is creating a new calendar of dates that resonate with its adherents. Al Qaida compared the attack on Israel with the Battle of Khaybar in 628 when Mohammad’s army eradicated rebel Jewish tribes in Medina.
Henry Kissinger warned in 2018 that these “individual crises” are not the result of coincidence. “The traditional patterns of great power rivalry are returning,” he stated. Russia is a neo-fascist, expansionist state with imperial dreams. We have been here before.
Jean E. Rosenfeld PhD
