I am blessed to have my choice of two bomb shelters, each located about 30 meters from my front door. And if I don’t have time to make it to one of them when a siren sounds, I can rest easy knowing that when my house was built in the Golan by the government some forty years ago, it was constructed of bomb shelter-grade concrete. While this makes hanging pictures a serious undertaking, it is comforting to know that in a pinch, any rockets fired from Syria have to pass through two layers of half-meter-thick concrete in order to threaten my family.

I was thinking about this and feeling sorry for the poor people in Gaza who do not have bomb shelters. I am blessed to have a government that cares enough about its citizens to build such sturdy bomb shelters. People in Gaza are not so fortunate.

I suddenly realized that this was not true. Hamas had taken all of the humanitarian assistance sent by foreign governments and used it to build terror tunnels, heavily fortified and deep underground.

And then it hit me.

There is little (if any) difference between a terror tunnel and a bomb shelter. If the Gazans had entered the tunnels when the IDF began its air assault, they would have been protected. So why didn’t they enter the tunnels?

It has been estimated that Hamas constructed 300 miles of tunnels running up to 200 feet deep underneath Gaza. This surely would have saved many, if not all of the Gazans from the IDF bombs. Israel has been criticized for not providing Gaza with food, water, and fuel. This criticism is patently absurd as no country in history has been expected to provide for the enemy during a war. In addition, on October 7, Hamas destroyed the border crossing making it impossible for Israel to provide any aid. The Rafah Border Crossing in Egypt was open but the Egyptian government refused to allow hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.

And while the Gazan people suffered, Hamas had plenty of food, water, and fuel in its tunnels. While Gaza’s civilians sat in darkness above ground, Hamas terrorists sat in their comfortable tunnels.

The tragic truth that none dare utter is that Hamas did not allow the civilians of Gaza to enter the tunnels. Hamas is not a Palestinian nationalist movement. Hamas, as its charter explicitly states, is dedicated to the murder of every Jew in existence. Were Hamas a nationalist endeavor, it would protect its people. But the left-wing narrative is ruled by the religion of victimhood. If Palestinians were referred to as Arabs, as they were before 1967, they would be identified with the more than 22 other Arab countries, many wealthy and powerful, that dominate the region. If Hamas operated as a normal government, it would protect its civilians by acting in a sane and reasonable manner. Instead, Hamas fires rockets into Israel’s cities even if a large percentage of these rockets land inside Gaza and kill Palestinians. Hamas launches murderous terrorist attacks even if it means more Palestinians are killed than Israelis. This is all, in an attempt to goad Israel into reacting. This provides Hamas with a supply of dead Palestinians, maintaining the facade of victimhood.

This was explicitly stated by Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the terrorist group’s politburo in Qatar.

“Hamas’s goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such,” said al-Hayya. “Hamas, the Qassam and the resistance woke the world up from its deep sleep and showed that this issue must remain on the table.”

He added: “This battle was not because we wanted fuel or laborers. It did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation.”

Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told Lebanon’s LBC TV on Oct. 24 that the attacks would continue no matter how many Gazans died as a result. 

“Will we have to pay a price?,” Hamad asked.  “Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.”

And there it is, stated explicitly. The Palestinians glorify death and martyrs are praised with the lofty title of ‘shahid’. 

Jews make the desert bloom. Palestinians spend money on tunnels that they believe would be desecrated if used as life-saving bomb shelters. And this is the cause that liberals have taken up. In the liberal mindset, the world is divided in two: righteous victims and evil oppressors. In this framework, no one is more righteous than the dead, even if he is guilty of his own death.  In this manner, liberalism is a death cult.