In the waning days of his first, and possibly last, term as president, Joe Biden is understandably looking to secure his legacy. As recent events have made clear, he pins a great deal of hope on being the man to bring peace at last to the Middle East. To foster this, he has been leaning into his brand as an elder statesman, dispensing advice that he considers both wise and sensible. It is in that spirit that he recently tweeted:
“I won't mince words. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. And Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. In fact, they're also suffering as a result of Hamas' terrorism. We need to be clear-eyed about that reality.”
Compared with other questionable statements he’s made of late, it scarcely deserves a mention. But when the leader of the free world makes a claim, it merits further inquiry. In particular, it brings to mind a certain question. If the Palestinian Arabs are not Hamas, who are they?
To be sure, Biden is not the first to make such a claim. In the early days of the war, moderates filled social media with such slogans as “Free Hamas from Gaza.” Celebrities trying to find an unoffensive middle ground are quick to separate Hamas from civilian citizens of Gaza. It’s a very understandable desire. If the Palestinian Arabs are not Hamas, that carries with it two very important implications.
First, it means that the citizens of Gaza are innocent victims of the war, and should be treated as such. Instead of there being 134 hostages remaining in captivity in the Gaza Strip, there would be over two million, and the same heroic effort to liberate them should be made as has been done for Israel’s own people.
Moreover, if they are in fact innocent victims, Israel must take this into consideration when planning any future response. To date, Israel has gone above and beyond in limiting civilian causalities, even at the cost of their own soldiers. But if every civilian is a hostage, an entirely new paradigm comes into play.
Secondly, it means that Israel has a viable partner for peace. As this war has made clear to most Israelis, the two-state solution, never viable to begin with, is dead and buried. There is simply no second party to negotiate peace with. Yet even now the United States and Europe cling to long discarded dreams that there is another side with whom to bargain. And if the Palestinian Arabs are indeed a peaceful and separate group, they represent a viable and obtainable peace partner in future negotiations, and any two-state solution becomes once more a possibility.
With so much at stake, the President’s comments are certainly worth investigating. Especially with so much evidence to contradict them.
Israel had only recently left the Gaza Strip when the first legislative elections on 25 January 2006 Hamas won by an overwhelming majority of the vote. After the takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas on 14 June 2007, where Hamas executed its Fatah rivals (some by pushing them off rooftops) and claimed themselves as the sole legitimate government of the Palestinian National Authority, the normal citizens of Gaza happily went along with the changes.
But of course, in our early days, we all make poor decisions that we later come to regret. And perhaps it could be that the good citizens of the Gaza Strip, after so long under Hama’s brutal rule, recognized the error of their ways and repented their rash choices. The most recent PCPSR poll of Palestinian Arabs puts these theories to rest. The pool showed that 72% of all Palestinian Arabss supported the October 7 attacks.
More disturbing still, in the "moderate" 'West Bank', the number was 82%, a nearly 7-1 ratio over those opposed to mass murder and rape. in fact, in the 'West Bank', 85% of Palestinian Arabs are satisfied with how Hamas has been conducting itself since the war began.
Also worrisome is that a Hamas presidential candidate would win over Mahmoud Abbas by a nearly 5-1 margin if there were elections today. 60% of those who have an opinion support Hamas as a political party over all other parties combined. It seems that not only are the citizens of Gaza stratified customers, but the rest of the Palestinian Arab world is interested in importing the product.
But then again, these are just polls and actions do speak louder than words. So the actions of the average Gazan are well worth looking into, particularly their actions on October 7th. Hamas spent years creating the most complex system of tunnels the world has ever seen, massively larger than the entire London Underground.
It seems highly unlikely that such work could have gone unnoticed and indeed It was done in the open. Findings show that tunnels appeared as part of the building’s original blueprints. Including Shifa Hospital and the UNRWA headquarters. These tunnels were also dug under schools and even private homes.
Weapons were also found stashed in countless houses. If your government is building a vast underground tunnel system under your house and hiding RPGs under your bed, it seems likely that you might notice that something was going on. And the most recently reports find that 40-50% of Gazan citizens did know - not only about the tunnel network but about their intended use prior to the attack.
On the day of the program itself, it was the average non-Hamas citizens who followed Hamas terrorists into Israel, they made up the members of the third wave of the massacre. It has now been shown that these same Gazans who we are told are not Hamas, were not only complacent but active participants in all the types of unbelievable horrors that occurred that day.
And after the initial horrors had passed, it was these Palestinian Arab 'civilians' who took hostages, many of whom have still not been returned, some of whom are dead. When one hostage escaped, it was these none-soldiers who captured him and returned him to his capturers.
It’s hard to say that Palestinian Arabs are hostages of Hamas. How many hostages have hostages of their own?
It would seem that based on all the evidence, if Hamas and the Palestinian Arabs are different, it is a difference without a distinction Thus far, no other alternative has presented itself.
Where are the Gazan activists loudly denouncing Hamas?
Where are the protesters taking to the streets calling for the terror group to be overthrown?
Where is any voice issuing from Gaza that refutes anything related to Hamas’ actions?
To be fair, it could be argued that standing against Hamas is deadly. But this has been the case outside of Gaza as well during this war. The world over, Palestinian Arab protestors are quick and vocal to denounce Israel, but nary a word about their Hamas oppressors. Where is the international Palestinian community standing up and showing that they are different?
Who, then, according to Biden, are the Palestinian Arabs? The world may never know. The president has never given an answer. He is apparently content to define something by what it’s not. Perhaps he simply doesn’t know the answer himself.
More likely, the president is willfully turning a blind eye to the answer. It’s an answer that most Palestinian Arabs have made irrefutably clear. That what they want is the genocide of Jews and the total destruction of Israel.
Just as the president can claim that Palestinians are not Hamas, he might claim that I am not an ornithologist. But I do know that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is very likely a duck.
Ilan Goodman is a museum collections professional and exhibition curator. He also serves as a rabbi and educator. He made Aliyah to Israel in 2011 and lives with his wife and children in Beit Shemesh.