Ask the Harvard students who created the offending social-media post what cause they’re supporting, and they might say something about “Palestinian rights,” or “justice in Palestine.” But Hamas is not interested in Palestinian rights, and its mission is a religious one, to which the barbarism displayed on October 7 is essential. Alvin Rosenfeld writes:
The carnage carried out on that day, far from being a byproduct of war, was a religiously sanctioned, orgiastic display of unrestrained Jew-hatred. One cannot begin to understand it if one ignores the Hamas Charter and other Islamist teachings that make Hamas the organization it is and inspires it to do what it does.
As a result of their success in invading Israel on October 7 and killing and capturing so many Jews, Hamas has incited the passions of many in the broader Arab and Muslim worlds and, alarmingly, well beyond. In doing so, it has made emphatic the Islamist reading of the Arab-Israeli conflict as essentially a Muslim-Jewish conflict. Most people in the West view the problem as basically political and territorial in nature. That is true, but only in part. As represented by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizballah, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Islamic Republic of Iran (the sponsor of all the others), it is also religious, and at its heart of hearts there resides an annihilationist fantasy of killing Jews and bringing an end to the Jewish state.
Hamas and its allies are not looking for a two-state solution but a repeat of the Final Solution. Their brutally successful killing spree on October 7 was an extravagant rehearsal for that larger goal, a genocidal one.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/longing-for-auschwitz