As Pharaoh's fear of Moses did not avail him against his fate

The valiant men of Gaza, who have been under an inhuman siege for 16 years, inflicted on Israel the most shameful defeat it could ever see in its history in the operation they launched 7 days ago. On Israel, the state of those who consider themselves the most superior, most privileged, noblest-blooded people in the world, planted like a knife in the heart of the Middle East. On Israel, whose equipment has been constantly updated since the day of its founding with the privileges and support granted by the international order, above all the United States, and with the highest defensive and offensive technologies the world can reach. On Israel, the super defense and war machine for which the possibility of defeat, of its defenses being pierced, or of the risk of being attacked could not even be imagined. On Israel, which was so secure that even if its surroundings burned to ashes, not a thousand sparks would reach its land.

Israel sold this perception of security to the settlers it gathered and brought from every part of the world. The settlers consist of Jews who, in the countries where they already lived, had no security or livelihood problems at all. In today's world no one can so much as lay a finger on them. They live with privileges even in the countries where they reside. And as if these privileges were not enough, we are now talking about settlers who forcibly drive Palestinians living on occupied land out of their homes and seize their places.

This is a situation that cannot be passed over in a single sentence. Have you ever faced a raid in the middle of the night, in which people burst into the house where you live with your wife and children and say this house is now ours, gather up your belongings and get lost? God forbid, but can you even imagine it for a single moment? The terror of settlement in Israel has been going on systematically like this since 1948.

Gaza consists of camps where people forcibly expelled from their homes and lands have gathered. The original natives now make up a very small share of its total population. They long to return one day to the lands and homes from which they were forcibly expelled, but in any case they have nowhere else to go from Gaza. Yet the occupying terrorist state has not let them have any peace even in Gaza. The siege of 16 years is also an expression of Israel's fear of the people of Gaza, but by keeping the one it fears constantly under coercion and pressure, it calculates that this will avail against its fear's fatal end. The terror of the coward becomes all the more terrifying, all the more inhuman. It besieges and imprisons because it is afraid, it kills because it is afraid, and, calculating that the child will one day grow up and stand against it, it does not shrink from killing children, babies in their cradles, even babies in their mothers' wombs.

Yet they have drawn not the slightest lesson from the life of Moses, to whom they claim to belong. Moses was Pharaoh's fear, and he became his doom. Pharaoh, who learned of Moses' coming through prophecy, thought he could escape his doom by slaughtering the male children of the Children of Israel. Yet Moses was the rod of God that would descend upon Pharaoh, and when its descent became inevitable, he would come out from inside Moses' own palace and come down upon his head.

Israel's fear of the men of Gaza too, and whatever measures it has taken or will take out of this fear, will not avail against its doom. The operation the men of Gaza launched 7 days ago showed the entire world that a people will not give up its freedom even if the armies of the world unite, and that the price of freedom can be measured by nothing else. The operation they undertook with their extremely limited means against the world's most powerful defense apparatus was, in the full sense of the words, valiant and heroic.

Let us underline this in particular. It is an observation by Marcuse, the Jewish philosopher of the Frankfurt School: to the degree that defense technologies have developed, the concept of heroism in wars has ceased to be mentioned at all. What wins the war is not the courage, nobility, skill and heroism of the fighter, but only technology. We might perhaps put this more simply as "the rifle was invented and manliness was spoiled." But Marcuse's statement means that heroism ceases to be a matter especially where technology has become more sophisticated and can cause high casualties without taking any risk.

Truth be told, this theory has reached the point of collapse in the freedom will of the resisters, in the resistance of the men of Gaza in particular. The men of Gaza showed heroism with the weapons they produced with the most limited means possible, and they showed a truly different heroism by displaying the courage and skill to use those weapons against the world's most integrated defense system. But they have no enemy facing them that can answer them with the same heroism.

In resisting, Israel never took any risk and did not hesitate to deploy the high-massacre technologies at its disposal against children, the elderly and civilians alike. Whatever it does, even if it turns Gaza upside down and leaves not a stone upon a stone, it will not be able to cover up the fact that it has been defeated and disgraced. The power it displays is not its own power but the power of technology. The high-massacre techniques it now resorts to in rage only show its cowardice and its disgrace.

As if its bestial capacity for killing were not enough, its big brother the United States rushes to its aid. It runs to Israel's assistance with a warship. What kind of fear is this? What kind of disgrace is this? Does it not trust enough the weapons it already has? What additional power will the United States add to Israel? Everyone knows that it is Israel that has been oppressing for years, doing injustice, killing children, spreading real terror. Since the American warships have come to support Israel against the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam brigades, who for the first time showed the skill to respond properly, and in a way that was not at all symmetrical, the fear is much greater than we thought. How many bullets, how many bombs, how many air raids does it take, I wonder, to kill a child born to destroy Pharaoh and Pharaonism?

It is clear that they saw a dream, a nightmare, that even we cannot see. In haste they are gathering their warships, their armies, their media support units, their whispering agents planted long ago in Muslim countries.

What we see is that God's promise will surely come true. We did not see it in a dream; He wrote it plainly in His Book, and we believe in it: "Those men to whom people said, 'The people have gathered against you with all their forces, so fear them,' and it only increased their faith, and they said, 'God is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs'" (Al Imran, 173).

From this hour on, there is no point in anyone's straining their mind and strategy trying to instill fear in the men of Hamas, whom death does not frighten and who frighten death. Whether they die, they have won; whether they live, they have won. Let us look to our own state. Peace be upon the valiant who take God as their Guardian.