Letter to a Hamas Young Man
Yes, you did it
Editorial note: This story includes sensitive and triggering content.
I’m talking to you in the golf cart, the smiling bearded guy in the YouTube video, sitting on the naked body of a lithe, teen-age girl, the one you just raped. Her legs are askew and bent at odd angles. You’re the one yelling, “Allahu Akbar,” or maybe it’s your buddies in the cart, but it doesn’t matter. The girl was gang-raped and slaughtered, or possibly the reverse, meaning you killed her first, then the bunch of you had sex with a corpse. I think you took a selfie, too.
How were you greeted when you came home, your pants and underwear drenched in your many victims’ blood? With balloons? Were you showered with candies and sprayed with kisses, greeted as a hero? But you’re no hero, as you already suspect, no matter how much applause you garner. You know what it’s like in Gaza, and how eight tenths of your suffering has nothing to do with Israel. You know your true jailors, and won’t confront them. So instead you go at my people like a hyena with no manners.
And I love Israelis. I love watching them walk in the streets, the hippie Hassid playing his guitar, Mustafa at the shuk who tells me not to worry and pay him the rest tomorrow, the lady in pink grating bread for the pigeons like her life depends upon it, all the newlyweds from the hareidi and Arab sectors, walkI wish I had the privilege of being with them now. In fact, ever since the pogrom, you’ve made a bigger Zionist out of me.
Well, not just you, but when I see the mindless demonstrating by college kids
The thought of you has been waking me in the middle of the night. Can’t get you out of my head, lungs or marrow. My belly muscles weirdly contract. The horror registers in my body as a war not only against Jews but women everywhere. Yes, I’m talking to you in the golf cart, but also to the guy who emailed his parents back in Gaza: “Look at the pictures I sent to your Whatsapp. I killed ten. I have Jewish blood on my hands. I hope you are proud of me” or the guy who bashed a five year old girl’s brains against the wall, or one who chopped off a toddler’s fingers, or tied up women and children before burning them alive.
FYI: I had left Israel just two days before the massacre. Visiting friends, family, places of worship. If I’d ventured down South, you would’ve gone after me, too. All I am to you is an It, worse than an It, more like a disease-carrying rat whose entire species must be wiped out.
How did you keep going all those hours, without eating or sleeping, so calmly and efficiently killing? Was it the glory, the promise of martyrdom, knowing that if you die, streets will be named after you and your parents handsomely provided for? Or more prosaically, was it the $10k and an apartment your scummy leaders bribed you with, for any hostage you hauled to Gaza? Or maybe you did it just because…you could. The massacre was its own reward, the joy of killing Jews, a chance to prove your manhood and relevance through butchery and sexual conquest.
They found pills in the pockets of your fellow terrorists, the dead ones. Maybe you took some, too. Captagon, the poor man’s cocaine, popular in the mid-east for inducing alertness, calm and indifference, numbing the conscience to more effectively slaughter. Syria has made a big industry out of it. Strangely, those pills gave me a sliver of hope. Maybe you needed the Captagon to go full ahead with the butchery. Some do get squeamish when faced with disemboweling a fetus from a woman’s stomach. More likely you would’ve gone ahead without the pills, just not quite as effectively.
You in the golf cart, listen to me. I know you’re feeling all manly and exhilarated right now, still under the glow of the recent massacre, but give it a week. Soon you’ll be squirming, denying, your Hamas frat boy smile wearing thin. The terrorist who three weeks ago sent a selfie of his murderous exploits to his whole list, is now backing off, saying: it was AI. The Israelis did it. It’s Orwellian — the pure celebration of the massacre of my people, and the simultaneous denial that you did it. But you did it.
The other day I met some of your cohorts on Youtube. Six of them were captured, interviewed, interrogated by Israel.
How wholesome they seemed, even the bearded guy in the white T shirt, faintly streaked with blood, although one did spook me out. Him with the smooth baby cheeks, who has the kind of goatee beard the devil would wear. He sounded and looked sane, that is Western, but something in his eyes scared me. I wonder how many toddlers he beheaded.
Five out of six killers looked the interrogator in the eye, described what happened on October 7, with no sense of remorse. Their euphemisms for murder sent shudders through me: “We infiltrated,” “Yes, we went in,” “We were told to cleanse the place,” “we finished the job.” Instead of, “We shot the man while he was watering his plants.”
Young Hamas man in the golf car, there are no euphemisms for what you and your co-religionists did.
The interview went on. None admitted that their leaders instructed them to rape, burn, torture, and kill. One terrorist finally mumbled, “They — the leaders — said we could do what we want.”
The sixth killer caught my attention. He wore a blue shirt, was the least attractive and the most Hamas-looking, and the oldest, though still with a full head of black hair.
He would only admit to killing one old woman, and even that only after the interrogator pushed and cornered him. When the interviewer asked the Hamas guy, where did you shoot her, the killer’s face contorted, lacerated with self-disgust. In the shoulder, he mumbled, and turned away, grimacing, cringing. He was the only one that seemed cognizant of what he’d done, and couldn’t look the interrogator in the eye. If someone ever wondered what expressions people wear in hell, it would be his countenance. I didn’t think I could pity a butcher of my people, of any people, but looking at him, I did.
No pity for you, though, in the golf cart, with the selfie and sitting atop the beautiful nude dead teen-ager, the Alahu Akbars and the gloating excitement splayed on your face.
One other young Hamas man stood out, a boy man with a pale bewildered face and short beard, who honest to goodness looked like a religious settler in army uniform. And by the way, none of you looked like bloodthirsty baboons. Many of you looked Israeli.
At the very end of the interrogation, the Hamasnik said, “We were fooled. Tricked and fooled.”
He wasn’t referring to Israel but to his own leaders. He looked dazed, betrayed. He said he was tricked by his leaders who sent them into war, just left them there stranded in Israel. He talked about his “leaders” who remain safely esconced in their palaces with their families in Turkey or Qatar, and their bank accounts of 2.5 billion — all courtesy of humanitarian aid.
I wonder, you in the golf cart, if you feel tricked, too. Did you ever get that apartment and 10K? I’ve got an idea for you. Try directing your fury at your leaders who are only too happy for you to die and Gazan babies to die — those photo ops generate serious humanitarian bucks and cash, which go straight into their pockets, not yours. There’s a slogan making the rounds in Gaza these days: There’s no business like resistance business.
It’s an old story. Older men tricking younger ones to go off to battle and die for goals that never align with yours. The great seduction.
I don’t know why I keep trying to understand you, find a way to talk to you. You’re destroyed. You don’t even have any religion left. Your own Allah is grossed out by you and angry that you besmirched His name. You have to live with what you did the rest of your life. You killed innocent people. There’s no way that can be normalized. It won’t be white washed and laundered with the idea that violence has been done to you, and therefore beheadings must be seen in context.
Under different circumstances, a different education, you might’ve become a stage manager, a special ed teacher, a physical therapist. Instead, look at you. You’ve already killed yourself. It’s your own funeral. Every time you kiss your wife, you will see the blood of the young, old and middle-aged women you slaughtered, because guess what? Captagon numbs you in the moment, but what about when the memories come flooding back? When you hold your first child, when you diaper him, you’ll remember the feel of an infant’s skin that has been charred and burned, you’ll hear their screams forever. Welcome to the hell you created for yourself.
So why am I talking to you?
Actually I’m not talking to you but to someone else. I’m thinking of those young boys, the copy-cats who will be coming after you. A whole new generation of Kindergarteners and first graders raised on cartoons and nursery rhymes that inspire the obscenities you committed. Kids who see the honor and money bestowed on the unholy martyrs, the hospitals and schools crowned with their names. Even two year olds are fed nursery rhymes about the joy of killing Jews.
But I’m not ready to write them off, to ignore these boys, future dupes, just like yourself. You don’t consider yourself real and in a way have no pity for yourself, but maybe, maybe you can muster pity for these boys, your future sons. Because, honestly, in your heart of hearts, would you want them to become like…you?
Illuminating links:
Check out interviews with Gazans from all walks of life, using video animation in lieu of the speakers’ visages to protect their identities. Whispered in Gaza — The Center for Peace Communications (peacecomms.org)
Read David French’s article in the New York Times that explains clearly and non-partisan-lly the legality of Israel’s military response. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/opinion/gaza-israel-war-morals.html)
For those interested in the origins of Israel’s statehood, read Alan Dershowitz: kiyum-dershowitz.pdf (jcpa.org)
