The crimes of Mohammed Deif

There were not one, but two assassination attempts last Saturday. By far the best known was the bid to murder former US president Donald Trump. On the same day, however, Israel tried to kill two Hamas leaders. It succeeded in killing one, but the fate of the other is less certain.

Thomas Matthew Crooks’s attempt to shoot Trump was a heinous assault on the democratic process. Crooks’s motivation may never be certain, but his action represented an attempt to deny the right of millions of Americans to vote for Trump. In contrast, Israel’s air strike on a compound in Khan Younis in Gaza was a desperate act in an existential war.

The targets were Mohammed Deif and Rafa Salama, two senior figures in Hamas, an organisation that has killed many Israelis and that has pledged to destroy the Jewish State completely. As it stands, Salama is almost certainly dead – even Hamas has confirmed it. But the fate of Deif, who has survived several assassination attempts in the past, is still unknown. Hamas maintains he is alive, but has provided no evidence. Deif is (or was) the head of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas. Salama was the head of its Khan Younis brigade.

Anyone relying on the mainstream-media coverage of the attempted assassination would get a grossly one-sided view of what happened. It was widely reported that Israel killed at least 90 people in what was the designated humanitarian zone of al-Mawasi, near Khan Younis. The implication here is that the vast majority of those killed in the strike were civilians. This impression would have been reinforced by pictures on television, since camera crews in Gaza are not allowed to film Hamas casualties – something that Western media outlets do not often disclose.

The Western media also typically fail to ask the most blindingly obvious questions, such as why were senior Hamas leaders hiding among civilians? And doesn’t that mean they share at least some, if not all, of the responsibility for any civilian deaths? It seems like a textbook example of Hamas using the Gazan people as human shields.

In any case, the Israeli version of events is completely different. Israel says that Hamas’s leaders were surrounded by their associates in a fenced-off area within the villa. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had been watching the compound for weeks, waiting for Deif to turn up. When Israel did eventually launch its strikes, a large number of those killed were, in the Israeli account, Hamas terrorists.

So why has Mohammed Deif become so significant? Why has Israel made so many attempts to assassinate him? From the 1990s onwards, he was responsible for numerous lethal attacks on Israelis, including a wave of suicide bombings. He also played a key role in transforming Hamas from a small-scale terrorist outfit to a paramilitary force with land, sea and air capabilities. That made him one of the main architects of the 7 October pogrom in southern Israel, during which about 1,200 people, mostly Jews, were slaughtered.

Even those who doubt Israel’s account of its assassination attempt cannot question Deif’s murderous intent towards Jews. On 7 October, after declaring the start of ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge’, Deif quoted the Koran in relation to what he called the ‘criminal enemy’ – in other words, Jews. ‘Kill them wherever you may find them’, he said.

Even when talking about Israelis living in pre-1967 Israel (that is, excluding the West Bank), he called on the Palestinian population to ‘torch the earth under the feet of the plundering occupiers – kill, burn, destroy and shut down roads’.

Hamas leaders have restated this aim of murdering Jews time and again. Last month, Hamas’s Lebanon representative, Ahmad Abd Al-Hadi, said in a TV interview that, ‘If we could go back in time, we would carry out the 7 October attacks again’. Indeed, even in anti-Israel protests in London and elsewhere across the West there are some Hamas supporters who openly celebrate the atrocities of 7 October. (Deif himself was once glowingly profiled by the British leftists of Novara Media in 2014.)

Deif’s role in bringing misery to the Palestinians should also not be underestimated. Israeli retribution for the 7 October slaughter was inevitable. However, Hamas leaders felt relatively safe as they have been able to shelter in the extensive underground tunnel network developed by Deif. Ordinary Gazans are forbidden from entering these shelters. This effectively turned the civilian population into human shields on a massive scale. Ultimately, the war in Gaza could have ended long ago if Hamas leaders surrendered and released their Israeli hostages. Neither Israel nor the people of Gaza wanted this terrible conflict.

Israel’s assassination attempt was fully justified. Deif played a key part in waging a murderous war against the Jewish people, as well as in causing Palestinians untold suffering. Israel may often be smeared as a ‘genocidal’ state, but Hamas and its Islamist allies are the true force for genocide here.

PS - 1 August. The Israeli military has officially confirmed it was behind the assassination of Deif.