Jews, Muslims and Christians want peace, but not at the expense of their annihilation

Germany’s Dachau Concentration Camp opened in 1933 as the first of thousands of concentration and death camps built by Nazi Germany to kill 6 million Jews and others the Third Reich detested. Two words, in several languages, are mounted on a memorial wall: Never Again.

Which brings us today to Hamas, and its patron, Iran.

“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” – From Article 13, Hamas Covenant, Aug. 18, 1988.

“Iran’s supreme leader on Friday called Israel a ‘cancerous tumor’ that ‘will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed’ in an annual speech in support of the Palestinians, renewing threats against Iran’s archenemy in the Middle East.” – Associated Press, May 22, 2020.

“You cannot negotiate peace with someone who has come to kill you.” – Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel 1969 – 1974.

Hamas attack on Israel was brutal but united faith communities

In the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, Hamas terrorists slaughtered hundreds of people at a music festival and entered homes to kill others. Women were raped, babies were murdered, and men and women – including a grandmother and survivor of the Holocaust – were kidnapped to be held as hostages.

An Oct. 9 Associated Press story detailed elements of the attack: “Videos compiled by Israeli first responders and posted to the social media site Telegram show armed men plunging into the panicked crowd, mowing down fleeing revelers with bursts of automatic fire. Many victims were shot in the back as they ran.

“Israeli communities on either side of the festival grounds also came under attack, with Hamas gunmen abducting dozens of men, women and children — including elderly and disabled people — and killing scores of others in Saturday’s unprecedented surprise attack.”

In Knoxville, the Knoxville Jewish Alliance, in a posting on its website about the terrorist attack said, “Israel will prevail and the Jewish people will stand together as we always do.”

When the Oct. 7 attack occurred, a group of First Baptist Church of Knoxville members in Israel on a pilgrimage when a missile – one of thousands fired by Hamas - landed only a few miles from their hotel. Bruce McDougal, the church’s senior pastor, told WATE-TV, he went to the hotel lobby to find out what was happening. He learned the hotel had safe rooms.

“There’s always this kind of heightened sense of this possibility of violence, so there is always a plan,” McDougal said. “There are great preparations made to keep people safe.”

But, for the victims of murder and kidnapping, not safe enough.

There remain many questions about how Hamas carried out this attack

Pro-Israeli and pro-Hamas protests celebrating the attacks are taking place in various parts of the country and the world – including Tennessee. In Tennessee, House Speaker Cameron Sexton was upset to see Hamas sympathies at the University of Memphis, as he said to KWAM radio: “It’s small groups, but they’re siding with terrorists,” he told KWAM, adding he never thought he’d see college students ‘rejoicing over the death of a country.”

As always, Israel is striking back - as Hamas surely knew, and perhaps hoped it would inflame Muslims worldwide against Israel. The arguments over responsibility are reverberating throughout the Middle East and the world.

Concern is expressed for civilians in Gaza, but Hamas isn’t concerned about their welfare. Furthermore, if Gaza is the shut-off, cut-off, Israel-barricaded island it’s said to be, how were thousands of Iranian missiles and masses of other armament brought into the country?

The finger-pointing is inevitable and unending. There are calls for negotiation. But how does Israel negotiate with people who perpetrate the atrocities Hamas committed on Oct. 7, and with an organization that has in its covenant that “Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

How do you talk to a terrorist organization that says holy war is the only answer?

How do you negotiate with someone whose only goal, only purpose, is to kill you?

Jews or Muslims, Americans or Palestinians, Iranians, or Israelis, are almost universally of the same mind: they want peace, to live productive and successful lives, and they want their children to grow up safely and well. But it doesn’t take many people, or many governments, with violent intentions to burn down everyone’s hopes.

Amid the recriminations, there is a point of certainty for Israelis that exists as an article of faith: "Never again!"

George Korda is a political analyst for WATE-TV, hosts “State Your Case” from noon to 2 p.m. Sundays on WOKI-FM Newstalk 98.7 and is president of Korda Communications, a public relations and communications consulting firm.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Israel war: Work for peace for peacemakers, not for Hamas terrorists