What more will we see?

The shock effect that Hamas's Al-Aqsa Flood operation, launched on the morning of Saturday, October 7, has created not only in Israel but across the whole world continues. As the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam units, who infiltrated, or rather plunged, deep into Israel from 22 separate points, inflicted on Israel a rout unseen in its history, they also, in the words of a Hamas spokesman, made the whole world bite its fingers. In fact, for the whole world the first effect of the event is similar to that in Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis. You know, when the hero of the story, Gregor Samsa, wakes one morning from troubled dreams, he finds himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. This time, those who have woken up find, perhaps not themselves, but the state of Israel, which for so long appeared to the whole world as a giant of war, technology, intelligence and power, transformed into a paper tiger. Of course this transformation will also affect their views of themselves.

Those impassable Israeli security walls, barbed wire and trenches were crossed in a few minutes, and Israeli territory, which no one without tight controls and security clearances could enter, became the scene of images in which thousands of Qassam Brigades soldiers and volunteer Palestinians entered at their leisure, while Israeli soldiers or settlers fled before them like scattered chicks.

Israel, which since its founding has operated its power, intelligence and martial skills across the whole region like a machine of fear, was defeated by a technology that started out from stove pipes. Of course, what it was defeated by is not merely a stove pipe, or to whatever degree it has been developed. Facing it is a faith that does not bow to all its power, its technology and its occupying cruelties. What it was defeated by is that faith itself.

In the eyes of the people of Gaza, whom it had kept under siege for 16 years, to whom it allowed no gram of bread, medicine or any other supply to enter without permission, whose men, women and children, honor, beliefs and sacred values it had humiliated, it could not escape for even a moment seeing a resolve of resistance that never bowed. That resolve was always its nightmare, and today that nightmare has come true.

The founding purpose and political strategy of Hamas was in fact the continuity of this resistance, an organization absorbed in faith but equally rational, and a response to Zionism commensurate with its own power. Yes, the intifadas began with stones, with whatever they had in their hands, but this did not mean that they would content themselves with what they had. Just as David struck Goliath with force right in the middle of his eye, Hamas worked very hard on developing the technique and power to take aim at Israel's eye and strike it there.

In 2021 Hamas had in fact made clear that it had acquired the skill to turn the legendary Israeli Iron Dome into a sieve. And ever since then it had also been warning Israel that this skill was not a bluff, and that if it did not watch its step it should be prepared to live through many times over what it had made the Palestinians live through.

Until now Hamas had carried out all its actions as a retaliation, a reaction, as asymmetrical as possible, to Israel's attacks. With Al-Aqsa Flood, for the first time, it took the initiative itself and attacked Israel. It made Israel live through, by its own hand, the nightmare that Gaza lives every night.

Yes, despite all this noise, this is in fact the summary of the event. Even if the friends of the US and Israel suddenly went into "poor Israel against the barbaric Hamas attacks" mode, the essence of the matter is that for the first time Israel has lived through a part of what it has made the Palestinian people live through. The people of Gaza, under siege for 16 years, are deprived of the most basic human living conditions. On the occupied lands, meanwhile, the homes, lands and fields of Palestinian families are handed over as a free gift to Zionist settlers brought from one part of the world or another with a thousand and one promises, and the settlers are settled there. Every kind of aggression and humiliation is deemed fit for the Palestinians who resist this. Instead of building a security wall around the settlement to protect the settlers, security walls are built around the Palestinian neighborhoods surrounding it, and the Palestinians are subjected to conditions resembling an open-air prison. At the checkpoints set up between two streets that a person has to pass to go from his own house to his neighbor's house, he is kept waiting for hours, in an attempt to make him sick of life.

Israel carries out whatever operations it wants against Palestinians whenever it wants. In the course of this, on average one or two Palestinians lose their lives every day to random fire opened on those who resist the violence it displays. In the clashes that ensue, dozens of Palestinians are arrested each time.

Then of course there are the attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. With these attacks the Israelis, who disregard the sacred values of Muslims, have step by step turned the occupation of Al-Aqsa into a de facto situation. And with the courage they took from Trump, they tried to complete this de facto situation by ignoring the Muslim resistance facing them.

Israel has not recognized or implemented any decision of the UN. Because it believed in its power and believed that its power was sufficient for everything. The more it believed that there was no power that could stop it, the more spoiled and reckless it became. The worst of it is that some Muslim countries too believe in this power of its. The new relations that Islamic countries have in recent years, under the name of "normalization," entered into with Israel, amounting to a kind of pledge of allegiance, are influenced by the myth that Israel is invincible and the dominant power, but in doing so they did not realize that they were feeding that myth even more.

Today's world order brings this plain fact fully to light: being right in any cause, even being right from earth to sky, is not enough for you in even the simplest case, and does not save you from an injustice you suffer. Proving that you are right is not done through cases and files. You must also have power and, when necessary, take your right yourself.

In Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan waited in vain for years for the international community to confirm that its occupied lands belonged to it and, as a result, to return them. When it gathered its power, it showed by its own power that it was right, and took its right.

Even if the occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel is confirmed by the UN, and indeed by the whole international community, no one dares to confront Israel to take the Palestinians' right. The Palestinian Muslims, in a cause in which they are right, were forced to show their power in order to take their right themselves, and they showed it.

Now not only Israel but the whole world will definitely be a completely different world after October 7. This will have very comprehensive effects. We will keep watching.

THOSE WHO CALLED US ARAB-LOVERS TURN OUT TO BE ISRAEL-LOVERS

How all of those who accosted us as "Arab-lovers" in the recent xenophobia debates have, as a result of Hamas's operation, turned out plain as day to be lustful "Israel-lovers." It turns out their hostility toward Syrians, refugees and Arabs was out of love for Israel. It is no coincidence that the Kurdish racist and Turkish racist camps have united in Israel-loving and in opposition to Hamas. The lines have thus become clear.

We said it, didn't we: what more will we see? We will certainly see that this event is the starter of very big changes.