US Justice Department announces terrorism in the Middle East charges against Hamas leaders. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and others were charged for planning, supporting, and perpetrating Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. He added: With the support of the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah, they were trying to destroy Israel and kill civilians.
This is the first official action of the US government against Yahya Sinwar, who was the head of the Hamas organization inside Gaza at the time of the October 7th attack last year and is considered the mastermind of this bloody attack.
It seems that two points are important regarding this decision.
First: The decision about terrorism in the Middle East was taken when the bodies of 6 hostages were recently found in a tunnel in Gaza. It seems that the killing of more than 40,000 Palestinian people is not a convincing reason for the US Department of Justice to take effective action.
The lives of these 6 people must have been more important than those of 40,000 people. However, everyone knows that actions like this are more advertising. Maybe it will have an impact on the US election campaign.
Second: For a long time, the United Nations and especially the Human Rights Security Council have not only had no impact on international relations but have also not received much attention in the news.
It seems that the decisions of the United States government are the dominant voice in the international space, so the current conditions of international relations can be considered as a result of the performance of this government.
I want to talk about some windows. This type of window has different shapes; each shape determines how we look at the world. From the perspective of each window, things mean something. Things may have a positive meaning from one window, while, it has a completely negative meaning if we look at it from another window.
The performance of political actors is also affected by these windows. Every government or political activist looks at the world from a specific window, so the things in the world for governments can be different depending on their window of vision.
Let’s look together at the Gaza and Israel crisis through the window that the US government looks at the world. Then let’s ask if there is no other way of looking at the world that can be used to prevent the killing of so many people.
On October 7, 2023, Islamists attacked Israel and brutally killed people. In response to this action, the Israeli government attacks the Gaza Strip and kills 40,000 people to destroy the Islamist Hamas. All this time, the political agents of the American government implicitly declared their support for Israel’s actions, and their military agents have been lurking in a corner of the Middle East so that no action will be taken against Israel by the religious government of Iran.
It is very likely that if this happened elsewhere؛ in East Asia, Africa, or South America, The US‘s performance would NOT have been different. If we look at the world through the window of the US government, the logic of this kind of operation is not so complicated: the world is made up of several countries.
To accumulate benefits, it is possible to have good relations with some of these countries and to put pressure on others that disturb the interests of the United States. When there is a conflict between political forces, verbal and financial support is given to the desired forces, and the opposing forces are put under pressure with economic sanctions.
In this way, without military conflict, the process of providing benefits will continue, and during the election season, there will be no cash for belligerence or possible military casualties. On the surface, everything looks normal and any reasonable person would approve of the view from this window. But there is a drawback. More than 40,000 people have been killed for looking out of this window in the last few months in a corner of the world.
From which window can we look at the world without witnessing tragedies such as terrorism in the Middle East?
In the 20th century, humanity gained an experience that created a window to look at the world so that we no longer witness tragedies like World War II. The formation of ideological governments like fascism and Nazism and the consequent killing of millions of people in Europe convinced the international powers that to prevent such tragedies, it is necessary to establish International institutions such as the United Nations.
Humanity paid a heavy price to find out that, has to establish preventive and monitoring institutions based on the charter of human rights, regardless of religion or race to prevent repeating those disasters. In the 20th century, humanity was able to create a window called “human rights” from which the possibility of mass killing of people decreased. Now we want to look at the Gaza-Israel crisis from the “human rights” window.
From the view of the previous window, political forces were merely actors (mainly governments) who interact to accumulate their interests in the international space. From the view of the “human rights” window, political forces are not seen only as self-interested actors.
Rather, each force has an identity that causes a significant impact on how to interact and behave. From this view, when we look at the Gaza crisis, it is no longer just two political forces, Hamas and the Israeli government, that some other forces see their interests in being with Hamas and others in being with Israel. From this view, what is important is the identity of these political forces.
On the one hand, there is the Islamist group Hamas, which, like other Islamist groups, seeks to destroy modern civilization considers sovereignty to belong to God, and considers man as a servant who has no choice but to follow God’s commands. This group believes the land of Palestine is a gift to Muslims and considers itself obliged to fight against any non-Islamic government.
On the other hand, we see the Zionist regime, which seeks to shape the country of the “chosen people” in the “promised land”. Look at these words of Netanyahu in the United States Congress: “Don’t you know that the land of Israel is where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob prayed? Don’t you know there is a place where David and Solomon ruled? For nearly four thousand years, the land of Israel has been the home of the Jewish people. It has always been our home and it will always be our home”.
Hearing such statements in the land of freedom in the 21st century is unbelievable. This level of ridiculousness is unfortunate. Now it is seen that the killing of 40,000 people was caused by the conflict between two political and religious forces that do not value humans. Both sides of the war are groups that are influenced by religious beliefs and are capable of any criminal act and terrorism in the Middle East.
By this view, it is impossible to take a position on this crisis based on material interests. Looking through the window of “human rights” dictates that groups that categorize people based on religious beliefs should be confronted so they can’t harm people. If looking at Hamas and Israel through the window of human rights in the past years, perhaps the tragedy in Gaza would not have happened today.
Hamas is an Islamist group supported by certain governments. As long as these supports are not cut off, we should not expect that the anti-human rights activities of this Islamist group will stop. On the other hand, how long does the world want to tolerate the continuation of human disasters under the pretext of the “promised land” and “chosen people” narrative? Isn’t it time to think of a solution so that the people living in that land, regardless of any religion or belief (Jewish, Islamic, Christian) have the opportunity to establish their non-religious democratic government?
Humans must restore the United Nations to its rightful place. A position that, by the power to guarantee implementation, makes any decision based on the Charter of Human Rights. Otherwise, we will witness the killing of humans anywhere in the world.
