Attacks on civilians can never be justified

A DELUSION is an unshakable belief in something that’s untrue. You could call the Israeli government right-wing and even extremists, and the status quo highly problematic (and take a non-binary approach) but you cannot call the murder of 260 innocent civilians at an outdoor dance party, and the taking of hostages at the Nova Peace Festival, over the weekend, the result of a “just cause”.

During apartheid, if there was any doubt as to the modus of our struggle, we could point to a Freedom Charter, a secular document outlining human rights as the basis for our resistance. There is no similar document in existence among any of the opposing parties – neither Fatah nor Hamas. At no point during our struggle did any cleric or religious authority provide a blank cheque. The ends do not justify the means here.

It is not helpful to bemoan Islamic fundamentalism, but in the same breath to continue to pursue equivocation after equivocation, the likes of which are demonstrated by a Hamas spokesperson on Sky News claiming that “no civilians have been killed by Hamas” over the weekend because the organisation has redefined civilians as “enemy combatants”.

Shani Louk, a German-Israeli tattoo artist, captured at the Nova Sukkot Peace Festival, whose body was paraded naked through the streets of Gaza, is an example of the depravity of a political movement which until 2017 saw its goal as the '“elimination of all Jews wherever they may be found, and subsequently “all Zionists”. The attack on an outdoor music festival has demonstrated this group is the equivalent of Isis in outlook, banning electronic music festivals within Gaza, imprisoning LGBT people, and reducing the status of women.