We need to talk about the Gaza Strip. The state of distress there is real, the result of undrinkable water, a mere four hours of electricity a day, growing morbidity and unemployment, and a health care system on the verge of collapse. Poverty is on the rise and tens of thousands of people have been imprisoned for financial debts. Desperation is palpable as more and more Gazans commit suicide or illegally cross into Israel for free meals in prison.
We need to talk about Gaza so that this powder keg does not explode in our faces, but also to jog our terribly short memories and end the self-flagellation that permeates the discourse on Gaza and makes it appear as if the poison is homegrown and the burden is on our shoulders.
Let us go back to 2009, when then-Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal spoke these formative words immediately after Operation Cast Lead: "Outwardly, the visible image in Gaza is one of talk of peace and construction, but the hidden image is that most of the money and the efforts are directed to military preparations. … We are working for the resistance."
Almost a decade has passed, and what is transpiring in Gaza is no longer hidden from view. Hamas' strategic priorities remain the same: the sacrifice of the population's needs in favor of building up the military, including diverting funds and resources donated by the international community for the rehabilitation of Gaza to terrorist efforts instead.
To learn just who is responsible for dragging Gaza's 1.8 million residents into the swamp in which they are now up to their necks, we must follow the "pipes" through which the aid money has flowed. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been placed into the building of missile systems, rockets and terror tunnels, instead of going to hospitals, food, medicine, civil infrastructure, home renovations and creating employment opportunities. A fortune has also been spent on formally educating children to hate Israel and the Jews.
While this is mostly done out in the open, it is also done through theft: A manager at the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency and a senior official from World Vision International, both aid agencies, have been accused of taking millions of dollars in humanitarian aid and transferring the money to the operational arm of Hamas. They are not alone.
We are not the ones who spilled this blood. When Hamas murderers wail about the fate of Gaza and its residents and point the finger at us, we must remember and remind others: Hamas, just like the Nazis, raised the banner of exterminating Jews for being Jewish. In the refugee camps and the alleys, where poverty rules, Hamas has dedicated years to the culture of death. During Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Hamas turned women and children into bulletproof vests and sent them to their deaths. Now, in the name of the same insane ideology for which they dragged the population of Gaza into recurring conflicts with Israel, Hamas is prioritizing its military build-up and abandoning its people to poverty, disease and hunger.
The same Hamas that just a few years ago placed its fighters inside children's bedrooms, kindergartens, schools, and UNRWA facilities now says it has "concerns" for its population. It set up its rocket launchers in mosques and educational facilities and next to homes. It did so openly, without shame, and announced this was its path, the path of "death for Allah." As Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hamad described it, "Death for the Palestinian people has become an industry in which women and everyone on this earth excel. The elderly, the jihad warriors, the children excel in this. … We aspire to death as you aspire to life."
It was a lie then, just as it is a lie now. Most people in Gaza aspire to life. They are held hostage by a terrorist organization, which by following its declared path, has brought them to the edge of the abyss.
