The War in Gaza: It’s Not About Hamas. It’s About Demographics

By Mike Whitney
December 16, 2023

We’ve been told repeatedly that the goal of Israel’s operation in Gaza is to “defeat Hamas”. But is that true? We don’t think it is. We don’t think that any reasonable person would attempt to eradicate a militant organization by laying to waste vast swaths of the country while killing tens of thousands of innocent people. That is not how one garners support for one’s cause nor is it an effective strategy for defeating the enemy. Instead, it is a policy that is guaranteed to horrify allies and critics alike greatly undermining the operation’s chances of success. And that’s why we don’t believe that Israel’s attack on Gaza has anything to do with Hamas. We think it’s a smokescreen that’s being used to divert attention from the real objectives of the campaign.

And, what might those “real objectives” be?

The real objectives relate to an issue that is never discussed in the media, but is the primary factor driving events. Demographics.

As we all know, Israel’s long-term plan is to incorporate Gaza and the West Bank into Greater Israel. They want to control all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The problem is, however, that if they annex the occupied territories without disposing of the people, then the Palestinian population will equal or exceed that of the Jews which would lead to the demise of the Jewish state. That is the basic problem in a nutshell. Check out this article that helps to explain what’s going on:

“Demography is a matter of national security in Israel and a key indicator for Israeli-Palestinian relations and their outlook: demographic trends in Israel are rapidly shifting and this will impact prospects for violence and conflict resolution.

As of late 2022, over seven million Israelis lived in Israel and the West Bank, and seven million Palestinians lived in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel and East Jerusalem, a somehow integrated region referred to as “Greater Israel” by Jewish right-wing activists …

A demographic bomb is already ticking. Israeli Jews experience an existential fear to be outgrown by the Palestinian population, and this is further instrumentalized by right-wing nationalist political entrepreneurs. Demography lies at the core of the territorial dispute between Jews and Arabs, as the two nations are waging a major war on numbers, aimed at weaponizing fertility rates to turn them into a predictive assumption of victory.

As the current Israeli right-wing government is laying the ground for the de facto annexation of the West Bank’s Area C, demography has been one of the tools employed to reassure the Jewish public opinion that Judea and Samaria could still be integrated into Israel, while keeping a Jewish demographic majority. However, demography remains a struggle for survival and an uphill battle for Israel. This is especially true if Israel were to progress with the Palestinian Area C annexation. Israel: A Demographic Ticking Bomb in Today’s One-State Reality”, Aspenia

As an American, diversity might not seem like such a big deal. But to many Israelis, it’s pure strychnine. Zionists, in particular, see growth in the Arab population as a “demographic time-bomb” that threatens the future of the Jewish state. And that’s what the Gaza fracas is really all about; getting rid of the people but keeping the land. In fact, the last 75 years of conflict can be reduced to just 8 words, “They want the land, but not the people.” Here’s more from the Times of Israel:

“Jewish people make up less than 47 percent of all those living west of the Jordan River, an Israeli demographer warned Tuesday, claiming that most of the Israeli population is unaware of the democratic peril the country is sliding into by possibly becoming a ruling minority in the area.

Arnon Soffer, a professor of geography at Haifa University, told Army Radio Tuesday that in addition to the Jewish and Arab populations, he reached his figures by taking into consideration the hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish people residing in Israel who are not citizens.

According to Soffer, there are 7.45 million Jews and others along with 7.53 million Arab Israelis and Palestinians living in what he termed the Land of Israel, meaning Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza Strip. When the number of non-Israeli nationals is taken into consideration, it leaves the Jewish proportion at between 46% and 47% of the total, he claimed.

According to Israel’s official Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2021, 9.449 million people live in Israel (including Israelis in West Bank settlements). Of those, 6.982 million (74 percent) are Jewish, 1.99 million (21%) are Arab and 472,000 (5%) are neither…. The Palestinian Bureau of Statistics puts the West Bank Palestinian population at a little over 3 million, and the Gaza population at just over 2 million.

Soffer explained to Army Radio that although the birthrate has been higher among the Jewish population in recent years, so too is the death rate, meaning the Arab population, which is far younger on average than the Jewish population, is growing faster. Jews now a 47% minority in Israel and the territories, demographer says, The Times of Israel”

Imagine, for a minute, that you posted a number of articles on your social media sites that said you thought there were too many blacks or Asians in America. How long do you think it would take before you were either shadow-banned, censored or buried under an avalanche of death threats? But when we look at the contents of the article above, we see that a major newspaper in Israel breezily publishes an article which states in stark terms that the country faces “democratic peril” because there are too many Arabs in the areas earmarked for future annexation. How is that not racism?

But this is how the issue is discussed in Israel. Demographics are considered a national security issue, an existential issue, and an issue that will decide the future of the Jewish State. Is it any wonder why the reaction has been so extreme? Is it any wonder why people refer to the fact that there is a large population of Palestinians in Palestine as the “Arab problem”? And, of course, once the indigenous population is regarded as a “problem”, then it is incumbent on the political leaders to conjure-up a solution.

So, what exactly is the solution to the Arab problem?

Why fewer Arabs, of course. Which is why the idea of expelling the Palestinians has a long pedigree in Zionist thinking dating back a full five decades before the establishment of the Jewish state. As it happens, the Arabs were always a problem even when the Jews represented less than 10 percent of the population. Go figure? Check out this comment by the ideological father of political Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, who wrote the following:

““We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

Shockingly, Herzl wrote those words in 1895, 50 years before Israel declared its statehood. And many of the Zionist leaders who followed him shared that same world view, like Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion who said:

“You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund’s] activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin.” He concluded: “Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale.” (1948)

And here’s Ben-Gurion again in 1938: “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”

See how far back this line of reasoning goes? The Zionists were tweaking their ethnic cleansing plans long before Israel had even become a state. And for good reason. They knew that the numbers did not support the prospects for an enduring Jewish State. The only way to square the circle was through compulsory resettlement, otherwise known as “transfer.” And while that policy might have been repugnant to a great many Jews, a far larger number undoubtedly believed it was a cruel necessity. The preservation of the Jewish State became the highest value permitting behavior that would otherwise be disparaged as unacceptable and immoral. Here’s how Ben Shapiro summed it up in an essay titled “Transfer is Not a Dirty Word”:

“The time for half measures has passed…. Some have rightly suggested that Israel be allowed to decapitate the terrorist leadership of the Palestinian Authority. But this, too, is only a half measure. The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership.…

Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It’s an ugly solution, but it is the only solution. And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum….

The Jews don’t realize that expelling a hostile population is a commonly used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements. There are no gas chambers here. It’s not genocide; it’s transfer….

It’s time to stop being squeamish. Jews are not Nazis. Transfer is not genocide. And anything else isn’t a solution. Transfer is Not a Dirty Word, Narkive”

The importance of the Shapiro piece can’t be overstated. First, he explicitly links the future viability of the Jewish state to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Second, he acknowledges that transfer is “an ugly solution”, but supports the policy as a necessary evil. And, third, he justifies the implementation of the mass expulsion by putting the entire Palestinian population into the same category as the terrorists. (“The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership.”) So, in essence, Shapiro is making our case for us. He is candidly admitting that the only policy that will preserve the Jewish state is ethnic cleansing. And judging by developments on the ground, we must assume the Netanyahu government arrived at the same conclusion. The people of Gaza are being bombed, starved and terrorized all with the explicit aim of herding them in the direction of the southern border where they will be forced at gunpoint to flee their historic homeland.

Bottom line: The strategic objectives of the Israeli operation in Gaza are entirely different than the stated goal of defeating Hamas. All of the land west of the Jordan River is now being cleared of its native occupants so it can be incorporated into Greater Israel while maintaining a sizable Jewish majority. The demonizing of the Palestinian people –which casts the victims of this onslaught as the perpetrators– is intended to conceal the underlying policy that is based on racial discrimination. There is no doubt that if the Arabs in Gaza were of Jewish descent, they would be spared the genocide they face today.

Additional reading:

The proposal, which reportedly has support from senior officials in both parties, calls on the US to condition foreign aid to Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, and Turkey on those countries accepting a certain number of refugees

  • Israel’s Intelligence Minister Proposes the ‘Resettlement’ of Palestinians Outside Gaza, antiwar.comLast month, a leaked document drafted by Gamliel’s Intelligence Ministry proposed pushing all 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza into Egypt, making clear the Netanyahu government is considering the complete ethnic cleansing of the Strip. But Egypt has refused to take in any Palestinian refugees, making Israeli officials seek other alternatives, such as Gazans being absorbed by the West.

In an Op-Ed titled “Let’s Not be Intimidated by the World,” Israeli ret. Major General Giora Eiland argues that all Palestinians in Gaza are legitimate targets and that even a “severe epidemic” in Gaza will “bring victory closer.”

(Excerpt) Transfer” in Zionist Thinking
From the earliest days of modern political Zionism, its advocates grappled with the problem of creating a Jewish majority state in a part of the world where Palestinian Arabs were the overwhelming majority of the population. For many, the solution became known as “transfer,” a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.

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