Yesterday we saw horrific images being streamed from Gaza once more, as Hamas conducted another hostage release circus. Some will try to deceive you into believing that the creation of Hamas – and its actions – are somehow the fault of Israeli behaviour. A trip back to 1931 and a group called the Black Hand will show you otherwise.
‘This did not start on October 7’
Let’s face it, because Arabs have been fighting the Jews in the Judean region for well over a century, they have had a long time to come up with multiple excuses. After all, if they publicly owned the true reasons for the violence – Islamic supremacy, Jihad, and rabid antisemitism, this would not find much public support in progressive circles in the west.
So when 1000s of terrorists crossed from Gaza into Israel on October 7 to commit unspeakable atrocities and genocide against a Jewish population, it did not take long for activists and antisemitic NGOs to come out batting for the well-oiled and fictional Palestinian narrative:
The argument put forward by the anti-Israel propaganda machine is simple. They paint the Oct 7 slaughter as a normal or inevitable reaction to Israeli behaviour (victim blaming) – taking it all the way back to 1948 and a founding myth of the Palestinian narrative – the ‘Nakba’.
A trip back to the Black Hand of 1931
So to properly understand the genocidal motivations of Oct 7, we need to step away from the well-oiled excuses, and travel back to 1931. There was no Israel to blame, and the British – who held the international mandate for Palestine – were moving forward with a ‘one state for all’ policy. The Jewish community was still reeling from the brutal massacres of 1929 and Jewish immigration had almost stagnated.
Late evening on Easter Sunday, April 5 1931, a group of Jewish residents of Kibbutz Yagur were returning from their work at a Nesher cement factory when their vehicle was ambushed. Yaakov Zamir, Shmuel Dishel and Hinda Fishman were all murdered by the terrorists. Four other Jews were injured.
Palestine Bulletin April 7 1931
These attacks were not claimed, and no excuses were put forward for the murders. What excuse could they give? Everyone knew these were terrorist attacks committed by Islamic fundamentalists against innocent Jews, just because they were Jews. At the time there were sporadic attacks against Jews across the mandate area, but the British (not wanting to admit the trouble they were in) tried to write them off as unconnected attacks by ‘lone wolves’.
Then late on Sunday January 17 1932, a farmer Josef Burstein was shot in the head outside his own home in Balfouria (near Afula).
Palestine Bulletin 19 January 1932
Seven weeks later on Sunday March 6 1932, Schmuel Guterman was shot and killed in Kfar Hassidim. He was sitting in his home, when bullets were fired through his window.
Palestine Bulletin, 7 March 1932
It began to be clear these were acts of an organised group which was targeting and murdering Jews. In early 1932 bombs were thrown in three separate attacks at Jewish targets in Haifa, and late on Saturday March 30, two more Jews were injured at Kfar Yehezkel when shots were fired through a window at a family gathered around a dinner table.
Then on 22 December 1932, a grenade was thrown into the house of Yosef Yacoubi in Nahalal, killing him and his nine-year-old son David.
Palestine Post 28 December, 1932
The Black Hand
These attacks were being carried out by a terrorist band called the Black Hand. It had its roots in the 1929 massacres, but its base of power was in the north rather than around Jerusalem or Hebron. It was a Jihadist terror group that consisted of several hundred men. They were split into small cells, were often unaware of each other and operated independently.
The goal was eliminationist – to eradicate the Jews from holy Muslim soil – and then to set up a pure Islamic state in the region. These men were hand-picked, paid, and armed by an extremist hate-preacher based in Haifa. His name was Izz ad-Din al-Qassam.
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was not a Palestinian. He was born in the Ottoman district of Jableh, a Mediterranean coastal town in the north of Syria in 1882. His father and grandfather were religious notables, and his grandfather had moved to Syria from Iraq.
As a young man al-Qassam immersed himself in extremist Islamic ideology in Egypt. His Islamic ideology was Jihadist, violent and eliminationist. Upon his return to Syria he actively fought the French – until they sought his arrest for murder. Seeking somewhere to hide – there was no better place than the new British Mandate of Palestine – with its porous borders. He did what many Arabs did at the time – and moved there – his descendants are now all considered ‘indigenous Palestinians’.
al-Qassam opposed all forms of secularism and Arab nationalism in Palestinian Arab society. He was part of a Jihadist struggle to rid the region of anything that challenged Islamist supremacy. His goal was an Islamic state, and living in Haifa his target were the Jews. He preached his hatred to poorer local families and began to recruit for his Black Hand terror gang from amongst them.
The 1935 ending
And so it went on. Until in November 1935 a British Jewish police officer, Moshe Rosenfeld went out to chase a gang who had been stealing citrus from a local grove. Rosenfeld’s local family history pre-dated the mandate. He had been born in Menahemia while the area was still under Ottoman rule, and his grandfather had helped found Rosh Pina in the early 1880s.
He was murdered by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam and his gang. His body was found near a cave at the foot of Mount Gilboa. He had been shot three times.
Palestine Post 8 Nov 1935
A week later, the British tracked and surrounded the terrorist gang – killing four in the shootout – including the leader, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam.
Palestine Post 21 November 1935
Qassamiyun and the Kaffiyeh
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was a violent Jihadist – a terrorist extremist – and in life was a failure. He managed to raise terror for a while, killed a few Jews, and was then eliminated. But his message of Jihad was set to continue. Because of the timing of his death – a year before the great Arab revolt – there was a need of heroes for the new Jihad. The Arab paper ‘Falastin’ reported that the last words of al-Qassam were a call for a fight to the death and religious Jihad. Al-Qassam told his men not to surrender and to die as martyrs. A myth was being born.
Falastin 21 November 1935
In 1936 when the violent Arab revolt began, many of the terrorists began to identify themselves as ‘Qassamiyun’, or ‘Qassamites’. And to shield their identity, these terrorists began to wear a symbolic scarf covering – the Keffiyeh.
It is therefore no surprise that when the Jihadist movement Hamas was created, with its fundamental eliminationist ideology, the name given to those who set out to kill the Jews was the ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades’. This is the name of the Hamas ‘military arm’. When they developed rockets to randomly fire at Jewish civilians – they called them ‘Qassam rockets’.
It was their choice to name themselves after a man who set out to randomly kill Jews as part of his Jihad, and Hamas is simply following in his footsteps. His goal is their goal. This Jihad has nothing to do with human rights, or even Palestinian self-determination, that is all a front to con the west into supporting genocide. Their goal is all about Islamic purity and killing Jews. Just as it was in 1931.
Jihad
October 7 was a continuation of a genocidal Jihad. The sanctions on Gaza, the checkpoints, the lack of a Palestinian state – are not the cause of the violence – they are an inevitable response to a violent religious ideology that is eliminationist to its core.
Hamas wrote its own charter and picked out its own heroes based on what was already central to the eliminationist movement. When faced with organisational questions – Hamas sought answers from jihadist history books. The original al-Qassam brigades were formed just like the Black Hand – disconnected secretive cells intent on kidnapping and killing Jews. Hamas was shaped by a violent hate preacher from an Iraqi family who was intent on Jihad. A man who was killing Jews long before all the new excuses were created. He did not even have to be Palestinian – because Palestinian nationalism was just created as a useful part of the Jihadist arsenal.
To these people western concepts of borders and nationalisms are alien. What al-Qassam wanted was a pan-Islamic empire, based on Sharia law, and he knew he needed to eradicate any attempt at Jewish self-determination to achieve it. Today his Jihadist message is blindly carried throughout the west by dumbed down ‘progressives’ singing ‘from the river to the sea’ or sharing Hamas propaganda on TikTok. So for once Amnesty International actually have it right (but for all the wrong reasons) – this most certainly did not start on October 7.
{Reposted from the author’s blog}
