The "day after" is a nightmare more for Israel than for Gaza

The fact that the hall, which had looked full as the genocidal barbarian Netanyahu took the podium to speak at the UN General Assembly, suddenly began emptying out in protest is world public opinion's clearest message against the barbarity the genocidal Israel has displayed for two years. Last year, from the same podium, Netanyahu had again read to his listeners, in his most arrogant and insolent manner, a Zionist manifesto, redefining and classifying friendly and hostile countries as he saw them. The interesting thing is that nearly all of the countries he had placed in the friend category last year turned their backs on his speech and showed their reaction by leaving the hall...

Of the two goals he declared in the barbaric aggression he launched after 7 October, he is at the end of two years once again very far. His first goal was to rescue the hostages. He has not rescued a single hostage other than those Hamas released as a result of agreements. Moreover, it is now quite evident that he is waging a war that disregards the lives of the hostages.

Israel's second goal was to destroy Hamas. Perhaps he killed almost all of Hamas's known leadership cadres, but although its leaders were killed, the Hamas movement has grown even larger. Today Hamas, with the same activity as on the first day, still continues to make the occupying forces pay dearly. The many Hamas mujahideen who are killed are immediately replaced by new ones, Hamas displays, in a complete show of strength, the capacity to draw many more volunteer members into the field during the war, and moreover without having lost anything of its fighting ability.

Hamas does not come to an end by killing; on the contrary, the relaxed attitude they show toward death and the way new ones eagerly take the place of those killed reveal a force of resistance without parallel in the world. This is not a force to be pitied; it is a force that, standing before the oppressor, not bowing to the oppressor, keeps hopes alive as the resounding voice of truth. That the same staff minds and fighting abilities immediately take the place of killed leaders reveals Hamas's interesting and unparalleled capacity for raising leaders. How many movements in the world have been able to bring forth new ones immediately after so many tiers of leadership were killed?

Even those of Hamas's leaders who were killed, through the manner of their killing, become a far stronger symbolic threat than in the moments they lived. The leaders of the movement, the way Yahya Sinwar went toward death, the manner of death of Muhammad Deif, Ismail Haniyeh and all the other leading names become legends that humiliate the enemy, like forests planted in the spirit of resistance. Heroisms of a kind the history of the world's revolutions and resistances has not witnessed level to the ground every story Israel relies on.

The Holocaust story no longer convinces anyone of Israel's rightness, its victimhood and its status as wronged. On the contrary, Yahya Sinwar's throwing of the stick he held with his left hand because his right hand had been severed, like the Staff of Moses, inspires not giving up, and trusting in Allah. In your tightest moment, in the moment you are most besieged and cornered, even before giving your last breath, you have a stone to throw at the enemy, with which to stone the devil. You cannot decide whether that stone will be effective. It falls to you to throw that stone; it belongs to Allah to bring that stone to its target through your sincerity, steadfastness and insistence. Indeed, Yahya's stick, which at first glance was thought to reach nowhere, long ago reached where it would reach, swallowed the media serpents it would swallow, split the seas it would split, and frightened the base men it would frighten.

Yahya Sinwar had goals and foresights that he put forward when entering the Al-Aqsa Flood, and it is seen with astonishment that he is approaching those goals step by step. First of all, his being killed, his martyrdom on this road was not far from his foresight. He had even said that he regarded being killed on this road as a favor from his enemies to him. But more importantly, he had said that with this war he would undertake, he would make the Zionist enemy experience a rout it had never experienced since the day it was founded.

This rout would bring with it isolation, loneliness and being cursed throughout the world. At the time Yahya Sinwar uttered these words, Israel was in a state in which it was displaying the most successful diplomatic performances of its history. Even Arab-Muslim countries were in a race to normalize with Israel. Indeed, its relations with Türkiye too had advanced to the point of planning mutual visits and political-commercial cooperation agreements. While Israel displayed this performance in international relations all over the world, internally, in the West Bank, it continued its customary seizures of settlements, continued its systematic attacks on Jerusalem, and continued its blockade of Gaza. The fact that Islamic countries, and even Türkiye, had opened new pages of relations with Israel did not restrain Israel from these aggressions, and in effect normalized continuing the two together.

Yet precisely in such an environment Yahya Sinwar declared his war goals that could be seen as impossible, and today, although he himself is dead, those goals are being realized one by one. Today Israel is seen as genocidal all over the world. Its friends are abandoning it one by one. Israeli citizens are not welcomed anywhere in the world; they are exposed to random reactions and protests. Israeli aggression has made life considerably harder for all Jews everywhere in the world. The shield of anti-Semitism is no longer enough to stop any criticism, or even attack. The Israeli administration has fallen to a level where it is hated all over the world, where cooperating with it is avoided, where even appearing in the same photo frame with it is shunned.

These days we are very close to a ceasefire in Gaza. In these ceasefire talks there is a "day after" scenario that sticks in everyone's mind. The calculations generally revolve around what will happen to Hamas in Gaza the day after, whether it will lay down its arms or have its arms taken from it. Of course no one asks how Israel, which has been unable to take its weapons from Hamas by fighting for two years, or anyone else, could do this. There are also sincere people who worry on Hamas's behalf that there is another game behind the ceasefire or the recognition of Palestine.

In fact, in the light of Yahya Sinwar's goals that have been realized, what we should draw attention to is that the one who should be worried about the "day after" is not Hamas or Palestine but Israel.

Whatever role or fate may be desired for Hamas the day after, what kind of place an isolated Israel grappling with the accusation of genocide will have within the international community will be a far more interesting and instructive subject.

"The day after," Israel will be able to do nothing other than to account for the injustices and crimes of this war, to try to clear the stigma of guilt that these crimes have stamped on it, and to defend itself.