A good friend asked me recently why I seem to believe what the Israelis tell us about their war in Gaza and discount what Hamas tells us. It's a fair question. Here are eight reasons why I tend to give the Israelis the benefit of the doubt and distrust Hamas:
1. Hamas has repeatedly lied in the past. For example, it has lied about the use to which it was putting foreign aid. It lied about the damage done to the Al-Ahli hospital, claiming it was targeted by the Israelis when they knew it was bombed by their own errant artillery.
2. The Hadiths encourage Muslims to lie to infidels, especially in time of war. According to the authoritative Arabic text, Al-Taqiyya Fi Al-Islam: “Taqiyya [deception] is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it. We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream...Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.”
Of course, it's possible that the Israelis are lying as well, but we have pretty conclusive proof that Hamas has lied about Israeli massacres. If we're to believe that the Israelis are dissembling, conclusive examples of it need to be offered. Moreover, we need to ask the common sense question, when Israel is accused of deliberately bombing a hospital or gratuitously opening fire on civilians trying to access food aid, what benefit there would be to Israel in doing so. There's considerable benefit to Hamas in trying to persuade the world that Israel has committed war crimes, but no benefit to Israel in actually committing those crimes.
3. Hamas uses its own people, including children, as human shields. Those who have so little regard for the lives of their own people can hardly expect the respect from others upon which trust is based.
4. Hamas, including many Gazan civilians, reveled in the slaughter of Israeli citizens. October 7th was an orgy of barbarism and savagery. People who would perpetrate such horror, and those who approve of it, do not deserve the trust of civilized people.
5. Hamas runs schools in Gaza, called madrasas, which inculcate into their children a hatred of Jews. The pronouncements of a society based on hate are not credible, at least not with me.
6. Repeatedly, journalists whose reporting from Gaza seems to favor Hamas have been found to be in the employ of Hamas.
7. Israel is an open, democratic society with a vibrant free press, a formidable political opposition, and a history of calling out its leaders when they transgress liberal values. Hamas, on the other hand, is a closed society with no free press, no history of permitting dissent, and no history of liberal values.
8. Hamas has sworn to destroy the state of Israel. Crediting anything Hamas says is like crediting anything Vladimir Putin says.
The question of credibility was put to me in the context of claims of famine in Gaza. Whether there's actually famine in Gaza or not, it's clear that any suffering could end today if Hamas would lay down their arms and leave the Gaza Strip. The miserable conditions that prevail in Gaza have come about because Hamas initiated a war with Israel on October 7th, 2023, and the misery persists because Hamas refuses to stop fighting and release their hostages.
Somewhat relatedly, there's more than a hint of a double standard in the world's willingness to condemn Israel for whatever misfortune befalls Gazan civilians.
After all, the world didn't much care when Hafiz al-Assad of Syria killed between 10,000 and 25,000 of his countrymen in the city of Hama in 1982. Nor was there an outcry against the Algerian government in 1991 when it slaughtered some 80,000 Algerians, most of whom were civilians. And where are the impassioned speeches at the U.N. and reports on our nightly news about the murders by Muslims of at least 52,250 Christians in Nigeria since 2009?
Is the salient difference that in each case the murderers were, or are, Muslims, but in the present case Israeli Jews are inflicting the damage?
A final thought: Imagine that the roles were reversed and Hamas had the military might of Israel and Israel was as weak as Hamas. How might we expect Hamas to behave toward starving Israelis? Would the world care? Would Hamas be careful to give warnings about their bombing? Would they go to the trouble of moving large populations around to keep them out of the line of fire? Would they go to the expense of shipping food to the hungry Israelis? Would they care what the rest of the world said? Would the rest of the world say anything?
Actually, their own rhetoric tells us what they'd do - they'd push every last Israeli into the sea. And many in Europe and the U.S., in our universities especially, would cheer.
