Unspoken Truths About Gaza By Philip Carl Salzman

PJ Media : A popular myth about Gaza is that in control is a radical jihadist terrorist group called Hamas that suppresses a moderate citizenry who must not be blamed for Hamas terrorism.

This myth is wishful thinking by those who want to limit responsibility for terrorist extremism to a small group and to exonerate the majority of Gazans, so as to undermine Israel even in the face of attack.  

The truth is that the citizenry of Gaza elected Hamas as their leaders and rulers. Palestinian opinion surveys in Dec. 2023 have found that the majority of Gazans strongly supported Hamas, and were enthusiastic about the Hamas invasion of Israel and its atrocities against Israelis. In any future election, Gazans favored Hamas heavily against any rival, while Palestinians of Judea and Samaria favor Hamas even more heavily. By Feb. 2025, support for Hamas had fallen both in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, perhaps due to Hamas military defeats and the destruction in Gaza. 

Gazans are raised in their families, schools, and religious services with a unified message: Muslims are God’s children and Jews are enemies of God. Gazans are taught that for God’s will to be done, Muslims will have to kill the Jews. Gazans believe that their sacred duty is to kill Jews and to cleanse the region of Jews altogether. This is integral to Gazan culture and Palestinian culture more generally. Hamas has enshrined this objective in its founding charter, where it promises to kill all Jews in the world. 

Even given this general commitment toward attacking Jews, Palestinian objections to Israel are also more specific, and fall into three categories. First, because Islam is the true faith, Muslims must be superior to all other people. While infidels may be killed, enslaved, kidnapped or pay, or released, according to the preference of the Muslims involved, “people of the book,” Jews and Christians, must be offered an official, formal status of inferiority, dhimma, and pay a tax, jizya, to keep their lives. Israeli Jews neither accept an inferior status nor pay the tax, and thus are disobedient to Islam, violating its requirements.

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