Since at least 2011, Bassem Tamimi, a resident of the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, has organized regular “non-violent” protests in which women and children—including Tamimi’s own—taunt, threaten, and sometimes physically attack Israeli soldiers stationed nearby. The goal is to produce footage of the IDF manhandling unarmed women and children. When Israel offered to provide the village with access to a nearby spring, as demanded in Tamimi’s original complaint, he led the village in rejecting the offer. Despite his own support for terrorism, Tamimi is eagerly abetted by Amnesty International. Petra Marquardt-Bigman writes:

The goal of the Tamimis’ activism is the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state—and Bassem Tamimi had spelled this out very clearly by the time Amnesty announced its support for the Tamimis and their village at the end of 2013. Amnesty International may feel itself justified in designating Nabi Saleh a “community-at-risk,” but the risk is largely a consequence of the Tamimis’ longstanding quest to trigger a “third intifada” in order to eliminate the Middle East’s most successful modern state. It is shocking to see that this is a goal Amnesty apparently deems worth supporting.

Moreover, while the Tamimis may pay lip service to non-violence, their social-media activity shows all too clearly that they harbor intense hatred for Jews and that they are only too willing to glorify and incite murderous terror attacks. With Israelis now living with the hourly fear of random knife attacks, car rammings, bombings, and shootings, the virtual hatred pushed by the Tamimis and their allies has become frighteningly physical.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.