Analysis of Gaza War, Pro-Hamas Protests at Universities, and Possibility of a 2-State Solution
By Victor Sperandeo with the Curmudgeon

Backgrounder:

The tragic war in Gaza was initiated by Hamas’ barbaric attack in Israel on October 7^th (Simchat Torah- the most joyous holiday in the Jewish calendar). It wasn’t only against Israeli’s or Jews, but any human being who happened to be there that day. For example, Hamas kidnapped 32 Thai workers and killed many more from other countries.

After Israel retaliated by invading Gaza to destroy Hamas’ military wing (its political leadership has been in Qatar since 2012), there were worldwide condemnations of Israel with false accusations of genocide, oppression, and apartheid in Gaza.

That’s truly astonishing as Israel was defending itself against an existentialist threat by Hamas to eradicate the Jewish state.

Another shocker was that many elite college students took the side of Hamas. Protests, vigils, and demonstrations on campus since the October 7^th Hamas attack have been characterized by displays of shocking ignorance. Students call for Palestine to be free from “the river to the sea,” but few know which river or which sea. They shout about Israel’s oppression and genocide without considering how such terms might apply to the Hamas regime they seek to defend.

In our opinion, this ignorance had to come from fake news on social media (especially TikTok) and the brainwashing of these students by the left leaning [1.] university professors. We covered that thoroughly in this Curmudgeon post.

Note 1. Left-leaning economic beliefs range from Keynesian economics and the welfare state through industrial democracy and the social market to the nationalization of the economy and central planning, to the anarcho-syndicalist advocacy of a council-based and self-managed anarchist communism.

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University Presidents Fail to Condemn Genocide of Jews:

On December 5^th, during a U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing of antisemitism on college campuses, leaders of Harvard, M.I.T. and Penn which evaded questions about whether students should be disciplined if they call for the genocide of Jews. U.S. House Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, repeatedly asked the presidents of M.I.T., Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania if calling for the genocide of Jews violated the code of conduct at their schools and that students that did so should be disciplined. They tried to evade answering the question invoking “free speech” as an excuse.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of speech. It also protects freedom of religion, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the government.

However, free speech does not in any way excuse the context of promoting GENOCIDE! Certainly, people can protest for a cause, but not for the death of an ethnic/religious group of people.

Here’s what CNN’s Fareed Zakaria said about the three university presidents indecisive response to the genocide question. And a message from an Israel youth ambassador.

“Calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” said Andrew Bates, White House Deputy Press Secretary.

We’ll now delve deeper into the increase in antisemitism and false claims of Israeli genocide and apartheid.

Specious Claims of Apartheid, Oppression and Genocide:

The context of this issue was twisted from Israel’s right of self-defense to preserve its existence as a Jewish state into the made up claims of “apartheid, oppression, and genocide” by Israel in Gaza.

That narrative was mistakenly used to justify Hamas’ October 7^th attack and to condemn Israel’s retaliation in Gaza in an attempt to destroy Hamas. Let’s examine the facts:

1. Israel evicted its residents, dismantled settlements, and totally exited the Gaza strip in September 2005. It ceded control of the strip to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was envisioned as an interim organization to administer a limited form of Palestinian self-governance. That didn’t last very long. The residents of Gaza voted for Hamas in the January 25, 2006 elections, because they believed the PA was corrupt. There have not been any elections in Gaza since then!

A civil war between Hamas and the PA ensued. The period from March to December 2006 was marked by tensions between those factions when PA commanders refused to take orders from the Hamas-led government in Gaza. Tensions further grew between the two Palestinian factions after they failed to reach a deal to share government power. Israel was not involved in that dispute.

-->So how could Israel be guilty of apartheid or oppression in Gaza when they had absolutely no presence in the Gaza strip?

2. Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. Was Israel guilty of that in Gaza?

“Self-defense” by Israel to preserve its existence by seeking to destroy Hamas in Gaza was said to be “genocide” of the Palestinians in Gaza. That despite IDF robocalls and dropping leaflets that urged North Gaza residents to move to the south. According to Al Jazeera, 1.9M Gaza residents or 85% of the population took that advice and were unfortunately displaced.

Importantly, Hamas uses civilians as human shields by locating its command centers and bunkers underneath hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, and even mosques. U.S. intelligence has corroborated this assertion and here’s proof:

The IDF recently uncovered a massive Hamas weapons arsenal inside a civilian building. More than 30,000 explosives have now been seized by the IDF since the operation began. CNN reports that among the weapons found were "explosive belts adapted for children."

The IDF also released a video it obtained by seizing intelligence from Hamas computers showing young children being trained how to use military rifles. You can watch it here.

3. Who are the groups/entities responsible for the anti-Israel propaganda campaign and hatred of the Jewish people? It’s the same people that support Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis.

• Radical Islamic leaders of Iran -the world’s biggest state sponsor of Islamic terrorist organizations- and Qatar -which donated over $3 billion in unreported funds to colleges to promote anti-semitism.
• Communists who wish to overthrow the U.S. government and other free capitalistic democratic nations. These include the Chinese Communist party, Council for Foreign Relations, and the World Economic Forum.
• Antisemites often referred to as nazis, skin heads or the far right movement.
• “Useful idiots” who preach propaganda and university professors who they teach their students (18–24-year-olds) that the Jews are bad because they are successful capitalists, among other reasons. The universities that allow this are bought (i.e. corrupted) by donations from wealthy Arab nations. “Elite universities are highly financed incubators of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism,” Alan Dershowitz said in a Twitter/X video.

Are Arab Countries for or Against Israel?

It’s very disappointing that the Arab countries which have normalized relations with Israel- Egypt, Jordan, and the Abrahamic Accord Arab states (the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan) - have not condemned Hamas or supported Israel in the Gaza war. Neither has Saudi Arabia, which was in negotiations with the U.S. to establish diplomatic relations with Israel before the October 7^th Hamas attack.

Instead, a November 11^th joint Islamic-Arab summit in Riyadh urged the International Criminal Court to investigate "war crimes and crimes against humanity that Israel is committing" in the Palestinian territories, according to a final communique. Saudi Arabia Prince Mohammed affirmed the kingdom's "condemnation and categorical rejection of this barbaric war against our brothers in Palestine."

Incredible Poll Results:

The majority (51%) of Americans aged 18-24 think Israel should be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians, according to a Harris-Harvard poll. Only 32% said they believed in a two-state solution, and just 17% said other Arab states should be asked to absorb Palestinian populations.

That percentage was in stark contrast to other age groups, which all dramatically preferred a two-state solution. Just 4% of Americans 65 and over said they felt Israel should be ended.

“These individuals siding with evil over democracy should be a wake-up call,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) told the NY Post. “Ideological rot among young Americans, driven by woke values and victim culture, has gotten so bad they’ve convinced themselves to sympathize with actual terrorists who hate America,” he added.

Reminder: Civilians Die in Wars!

Recall the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan (residents were also warned with pamphlets to leave) and the U.S. and UK bombing of Dresden Germany in World War II. Also, an estimated 2M Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian civilians were killed during the Vietnam war.

It should be noted that when the so-called justification of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (which did not exist). Yet estimates of the number of Iraq War casualties range from 151,000 violent deaths as of June 2006 (per the Iraq Family Health Survey) to 1,033,000 excess deaths (per the 2007 Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey).

The death of more than 500,000 dead Iraqi children (more than Hiroshima) was "a very hard choice, but the price-we think the price is worth it," said the late Madelyn Albright during a 60 Minutes interview which you can watch on X (Twitter).

Victor’s Conclusions:

The self-defense of Israel by attacking Hamas, which lives and hides behind the Palestinian civilians is not genocide! The intent was not to harm anyone other than the Hamas military members. However, huge collateral damage was unavoidable since Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields.

Here are a few important questions to ponder:

1. Why did several Arab nations (Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan) recognize and make peace with Israel, but not Hamas?

2. Why isn’t Hamas accused of genocide since it wants to destroy Israel and kill all Jews? From the Hamas charter:

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

Article 12 of the Charter links the exclusive Muslim right to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River with the religious obligation incumbent upon all Muslims to wage a war of religious purification. “Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy becomes the individual duty of every Moslem [sic], male or female”—a point later reiterated in Articles 14 and 15.

3. Why don’t Islamic states object that Hamas’ charter violates the Quran:

The Quran mentions the Torah (Tawrah) 18 times and confirms that it is the word of God. The Torah is also described as a work that supported the Quran and a guide from Allah.

The Quran specifies that the Land of Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, that God Himself gave that Land to them as heritage and ordered them to live therein. [17.104] "Pharoah sought to scare them [the Israelites] out of the land [of Israel]: but We [Allah] drowned him [Pharoah] together with all who were with him. Then We [Allah] said to the Israelites: 'Dwell in this land [the Land of Israel]. When the promise of the hereafter [End of Days] comes to be fulfilled, We [Allah] shall assemble you [the Israelites] all together [in the Land of Israel]."

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Possibility of a 2-State Solution:

A two-state solution (Israel and Palestinian states living peacefully, side by side) would only be possible if Hamas is gone. Otherwise, mass murders of Israeli’s will never stop! That is a call for Israel’s self-defense and existence- not genocide. Nor is it oppression when Gaza residents must leave their homes because they’re being used as human shields by Hamas.

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End Quotes:

Deceased PLO leader Yasser Arafat best expressed the goals of Hamas, whose leaders Ismail Haniyeh (in Qatar) and Yahya Sinwar (in Gaza) mindsets and hatred are even worse than Arafat’s. Here are a few selected Arafat quotes:

“We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.”

“Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations…”

“We will not bend or fail until the blood of every last Jew from the youngest child to the oldest elder is spilt to redeem our land!”

“We shall never stop until we can go back home and Israel is destroyed... The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromises or mediations... the goal of this violence is the elimination of Zionism from Palestine in all its political, economic and military aspects... We don't want peace, we want victory. Peace for us means Israel's destruction and nothing else.”

Yasser Arafat was the President of the Palestinian National Authority and Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), died unexpectedly on Novembers 11, 2004, 75 years of age, after a short period of illness.

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References:

We’ve previously covered this important geopolitical topic in recent posts:

Curmudgeon: Will the Gaza War Expand to a Regional Conflict: US and Israel versus Iran and Russia?

Sperandeo/Curmudgeon: Anti-Semitic Behavior, False Claims of Genocide

Curmudgeon/Sperandeo: Markets Face Additional Risks as Gaza War Enters New Phase

Curmudgeon/Sperandeo Update on Israel-Gaza War, Huge Geopolitical Risks, and Impact on the Markets

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Tribute to the Aden Sisters:

We’d like to acknowledge the great work and support of Mary Anne and Pamela Aden, publishers of the highly acclaimed Aden Forecast (a monthly 12-page investment newsletter) since 1982. They are truly objective in their analysis of all the major markets, with special emphasis on precious metals, currencies, domestic and international stock markets, and natural resources. Here’s a chart from their latest update:

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Be well, keep active, and try to be objective in this age of disinformation and propaganda campaigns. Till next time….

The Curmudgeon
ajwdct@gmail.com

Follow the Curmudgeon on Twitter @ajwdct247

Curmudgeon is a retired investment professional.  He has been involved in financial markets since 1968 (yes, he cut his teeth on the 1968-1974 bear market), became an SEC Registered Investment Advisor in 1995, and received the Chartered Financial Analyst designation from AIMR (now CFA Institute) in 1996.  He managed hedged equity and alternative (non-correlated) investment accounts for clients from 1992-2005.

Victor Sperandeo is a historian, economist and financial innovator who has re-invented himself and the companies he's owned (since 1971) to profit in the ever changing and arcane world of markets, economies, and government policies.  Victor started his Wall Street career in 1966 and began trading for a living in 1968. As President and CEO of Alpha Financial Technologies LLC, Sperandeo oversees the firm's research and development platform, which is used to create innovative solutions for different futures markets, risk parameters and other factors.

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