Editor's Note: Elihu Richter is a
retired head of the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at
the Hebrew University School of Public Health and is the founder of
the Jerusalem Center for Genocide Prevention.
As a doctor who spent a lifetime of work in epidemiology and
environmental medicine, I have extensive experience thinking about how
external factors drive public health outcomes – preventable disease
and premature death.
I have studied and recommended reductions in pesticide use, the
deployment of speed cameras, and removal of lead from contaminated
flour mills, and household exposure to tobacco smoke in children among
other areas of focus.
Much of this work occurred in the West Bank and Gaza. That
experience has much to say about the catastrophe we have witnessed in
Israel and Gaza, and which we risk reoccurring, if we do not address
the intergenerational incitement and murderous intent in the
Palestinian world.
As an epidemiologist with significant work studying genocide and
incitement, I see indoctrination in genocidal ideology as a form of
hazardous exposure with toxic effects on all age groups, but with
specifically dangerous impacts on the young. Exposure to such
incitement can be likened to frequent and high-dosage exposure to
poisons like lead, PCBs, asbestos, and tobacco smoke. The impacts are
both immediate and long-lasting. We should act accordingly.
October 7 as An Epidemiological Event
It's critical that we see the Hamas attacks of October 7 and the
resulting war in Gaza not just as a geostrategic milestone event but
also as an incident in environmental medicine with impacts on both
Israeli and Palestinian lives.
The barbaric attacks on Israel were systematic. For one day, Hamas
waged total war, raping, murdering and kidnapping, and setting out to
make Israel’s Gaza envelope communities uninhabitable, which many now
are.
Israel has responded by defending itself and seeking to defeat
Hamas militarily. For Gaza, this has been an epidemiological
catastrophe. Whatever Gaza once was, it no longer is – and more
destruction is surely coming if Hamas does not surrender.
While some in the public health and humanitarian community blame
Israel for this destruction, that would be a mistake.
The predicate for all of the public health losses –of life, medical
infrastructure, safe water, homes – was the ideology which made
Israel’s military action inevitable.
Not Poisoned Wells, but Poisoned Minds
In a disease model, we must look for the disease, not the symptoms
of the disease, if we are to heal the patient. The same is true in
epidemiology: We must identify the content and effect of toxic
exposure. The most famous such epidemiological discovery came in 1854,
when John Snow deduced that a cholera epidemic in London could be
linked to a single water pump on Broad Street.
In this case, we are not looking for a contaminated well. We are
looking for contaminated minds: The contaminant is the ideology of
Hamas. Hamas and its enablers have indoctrinated all Gazans in this
ideology, from cradle to grave. Many of the thousands who came across
the border to murder, rape and loot on October 7 were not only
uniformed and trained Hamas terrorists, but ordinary Gazans who joined
in on the genocidal massacre.
They were motivated to commit murder and rape by what they were
taught at home, at school, at mosques, in the streets and on social
media. If they had no formal training to kill, they didn’t need
any.
It is rare that a society becomes so sick to the core that mass
murder becomes a socially acceptable norm. Hamas terrorists bragged to
their parents. They were greeted as conquering heroes and were
eligible for large cash awards and free apartments. This is a culture
in which genocidal massacre is celebrated.
Critics of Israel’s offensive into Gaza say it will only create
more supporters for Hamas. That is absurd. Gaza already is dominated
by intergenerational indoctrination of an extreme version of jihadist
Islam.
It is critical that we recall Gregory Stanton’s seminal “Ten
Stages of Genocide” speaks to this issue specifically. Genocide
follows a distinct pattern, from classification of the enemy to
symbolization of the enemy, to discrimination, dehumanization,
organization, polarization, preparation, persecution, extermination
and finally, denial.
Just as Palestinian society has been shaped by an ideology of
genocide, it is also not destined to serve the cause of genocide. This
was not inevitable. There are many traditional and religious societies
in the Arab world similar to Palestinian Arabs which do not engage in
any of the kind of genocidal or pre-genocidal steps of
Hamas.
Destroying Hamas is Not Enough
If the problem is man-made, then the solution will be man-made.
First, let us dispense with the fiction that destroying Hamas's
hardware, its fortifications above ground, and its tunnels underground
is sufficient.
If Israel exits Gaza only having killed Hamas operatives and
destroying Hamas infrastructure, it will have achieved very little of
lasting value. It must take on the hard work of removing
genocide-indoctrination and incitement.
Like any epidemiological matter of any consequence, this will take
many years. Most public health scourges of the previous two centuries
– typhoid, cholera, H1N1 flu, HIV/AIDS – took many years, considerable
resources and a generational commitment of the entire medical and
policymaker community.
There is, however, a model for this process, and it comes from
America and its allies as they sought to denazify Germany and to
pacify Japan after World War II. These efforts were comprehensive and
driven by military dominance.
In Germany, the process included the Nuremberg trials, which did
much to expose the world – and Germany – to the truths of the Nazi
genocide program. But it wasn’t enough.
The process was not perfect. Many former Nazis avoided punishment;
some innocent Germans were unfairly accused. The Allied forces
confiscated all media – including school textbooks – that would
contribute to Nazism or militarism. Art extolling Nazism was similarly
banned and shunted aside. This was not a libertarian exercise.
But it succeeded. Germany had, at that point, emerged from roughly
a century of bellicose militarism and deep antisemitism. It had
started two world wars and an industrial-scale program of genocide.
Few believed it could ever be anything but a source of human misery in
the heart of Europe.
The Germany of today – peaceful, global and prosperous – would have
seemed to be a mirage. In fact, General Eisenhower predicted the
deNazification of Germany would take
50 years.
In Japan, too, the efforts were monumental. Japan had been a
militant and bellicose society, with deep racial animus towards its
neighbors and the West, for several centuries. Not only were its
military and military industries disbanded, but outward signs of
patriotism were banned in public life, including schools.
Massive other changes, including the introduction of a
parliamentary democracy, the political rights of women and basic free
speech rights, were enshrined in its new constitution. Again, as in
Germany, textbooks were censored and control over schools was strictly
regulated.
Indoctrination
Which brings us to Gaza in particular, and Palestinian nihilism in
general. This work must begin first, and with Palestinian children
both in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas, like the Palestinian Authority,
values its control over children, as does any culture of
indoctrination because it needs a large ever-renewable pool of morally
pliable recruits
This was particularly valuable to Stalin’s commissars, Mao’s
revolutionaries, Nazi Germany, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
Schools, youth clubs, summer camps and other institutions of
child-rearing become instruments of hate. Textbooks signal what
children are supposed to think. Other vectors of the
genocide-pathology include children’s television, social media, and
children’s songs and rhymes.
All of it is shaped and engineered to produce generations who see a
specific enemy of the state as subhuman requiring eradication. Again,
Stanton’s model applies: In Palestinian textbooks, provided by the
Palestinian Authority in both the West Bank and Gaza, the citizens are
already being prepared for genocide’s first four steps. The
Palestinian textbooks are
as bad as ever, according to EU authorities.
Incentivization
Then, our attention must turn to civil society. All systems of
genocide incitement create a culture of compliance. Personal space,
freedom and autonomy are eliminated. Through coercion, direction,
intimidation, and harsh systems of reward and punishment, messages of
hate became ordinary thoughts and actions that are criminal and
immoral. This is Stanton’s fifth, sixth and seventh stages.
In the case of Gaza, the ideology of Hamas has been enabled by
UNRWA (UN Relief and Work Agency) schools, summer camps and a wide
variety of social programs, including some tied to health care
institutions. UNRWA is staffed by Hamas's sympathizers and enforcers
who amplify hate. UNRWA schools adhere to Jihadist indoctrination,
employ Hamas members as commissars to enforce ideological conformity,
and create each year a large cadre of students willing to sacrifice
themselves in order to kill more Jews. As with Nazi Germany, Hamas has
many willing executioners – as we saw on October 7.
The reward-and-punishment system enforced in Gaza and the West Bank
includes stipends given to terrorists or their surviving families for
attacks – stipends paid for through international aid to Palestinian
organizations including the Palestinian Authority.
All those organizations and nations that are willing or unwitting
parties to such “pay for slay” programs – Qatar, the United Nations,
Canada, the United States, and several European nations and
organizations -- must confront the epidemiological implications. They
are actually hurting the people they aim to help.
Confronting the Foundations
As with the denazification of Germany after World War II, willing
parties must take over Gaza’s legal, educational, political,
religious, and cultural institutions or reestablish them under new
direction and with new governance.
Schools in particular will require substantial reform, with new
textbooks and curricula free from Palestinian Authority control or
oversight, rigorous programs focused on dignity and respect for the
other in line with Muslim teachings focused on charity, kindness and
self-improvement (rather than a suicidal ideology of martyrdom on
behalf of a political entity).
The process for de-hamasification must begin immediately. Convoys
of food, water and other necessary supplies has the perverse effect of
resupplying not just Hamas but sustaining its ideological grip over
Gaza and causing still more harm to the public. All relief aid that
goes into Gaza must be linked to programs to change mindsets. That
will require new humanitarian organizations who pledge to end
incitement as a part of their public health mission.
Any program of de-hamasification must be undertaken with special
awareness of the character of the conservative and religious nature of
Palestinian society – it would be foolish to expect a society that is
deeply religious and traditional to embrace any of the conventions of
a liberal Western secular nation like Germany or see it as a
model.
In fact, the most difficult part of de-hamasification will be to
decouple Islamic theology and Muslim cultural norms from Hamas and its
leadership. But it is possible. For leadership and guidance to promote
basic tolerance and moderation, within the texts and the traditions of
Islam, we must consult with moderate Islamic theologians and
philosophers.
One good example is Wasatia, the movement founded by Professor
Mohammad Dajani. The Abraham Accords can serve as the political
framework for promoting de-hamasification in Gaza and doing the same
in the Palestinian Authority. And the US’s own work in
de-Baathification of Iraq may prove instructive.
Some Islamic nations, notably Saudi Arabia, have long sponsored and
run counter-indoctrination
programs of their own to reverse the effects of exposure to the
toxic messages of radical Islamist ideologies. These programs have a
solid record of restoring individuals to society. But Saudi efforts
are not consistent; the nation’s textbooks continue to promote
intolerance and bigotry, especially towards Shia and Sufi Islamic
traditions, as well as Christianity and Judaism.
Other models exist. The
Carter Center in Atlanta has researched how to counter the
indoctrination efforts of ISIS during its rise and years of control
over schools in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. ISIS, like Hamas,
concentrated efforts on promoting its
genocidal ideology in school curriculum. This curriculum has been
studied by public health experts who correctly appreciate its
doctrinal character. The effort to remove ISIS ideology in Arab and
Muslim nations is ongoing, but clearly is working – and we must
include those nations and organizations in the effort to dehamasify
Gaza. Their expertise will be critical.
There will be inevitable efforts to revivify Hamas in fresh garb.
This must be resisted at every step. It must be stopped not only
because of the danger Hamasism represents to Israel, but what it means
to Palestinians. Every genocidal regime has been ruined by its own
militancy and forced to confront the sources of its pain. This may
happen in Gaza one day; but it will only happen if Gaza’s Palestinians
are allowed to break free from the industrial level of ideological
contamination that Hamas and Iran’s mullahs have been emitting for
decades.