Following the signing of January’s ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, one of the questions consistently asked by many Canadian news media outlets is who will rebuild the Gaza Strip after the war is over, what are the costs involved and who will pay for it.
A February 6 video report for CTV News interviewed local Palestinians in Canada for their condemnation of US President Donald Trump’s peace proposal for Gaza, a February 18 article for Global News highlighted the economic cost of rebuilding damaged buildings in Gaza, while commentators in The Toronto Star and Le Journal de Montreal, talked of the cost in rebuilding Gaza in the coming years.
Click below to watch the full segment:
However, what has been largely overlooked by these and other news outlets is that in all the focus on the reconstruction of Gaza, very little has been acknowledged about the direct culpability of Hamas.
Hamas, the fundamentalist Palestinian Islamic terrorist group, did more than begin the war with Israel on October 7, 2023, with its mass killings, rapes and tortures in southern Israel. By taking some 250 hostages from Israel and continuing to hold them for more than 16 months – with reports of physical, sexual and psychological abuse, summary executions and clear evidence of starvation – Hamas deliberately kept the war going, no matter the cost to the people of Gaza.
And yet, Hamas has, by and large, been given a free pass in many corners of the Canadian news media.
A February 19 article for CBC News entitled: “More than $50 billion US needed to rebuild devastated Gaza Strip: World Bank joint report,” reported on a study from the World Bank which itemized the financial cost in rebuilding the coastal territory.
While there is no inherent problem in reviewing the financial and logistical issues related to rebuilding, no mention was made of Hamas’ direct culpability in bringing ruin to its own territory, beyond a passing mention to how the Hamas-Israel war began. Nor any mention made of the responsibility of Iran and Qatar, rogue regimes and state-sponsors of terrorism, which bankrolled Hamas’s genocidal massacres.
Beyond largely minimizing Hamas’ role in starting and perpetuating the war, such discussions are invariably short-sighted, offering no long-term perspective. Without fundamental changes, as long as Hamas remains in charge of a large part of Gaza, the group will – as its charter maintains – seek the destruction of Israel.
Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War Two, large parts of Germany were ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union, and Germans living in those areas were expelled elsewhere. More importantly, a process known as ‘denazification’ took place, which meant the removal of Nazis and Nazi influence from public life.
Without such a deradicalization process taking place in Gaza, Hamas will remain, if not in power, then surely in an influential position to be able to help incite hatred and foment terrorism against Israel. If that is permitted, then the subsequent war with Israel will not be a matter of if, but when Hamas decides to launch its next massacre against the Jewish State and Jewish people.
Consequently, Canadian news media outlets, beyond fixating on the financial cost in rebuilding Gaza, or in incessantly interviewing self-described Palestinians in Canada for their condemnations of the Trump peace plan, would do well to bring to the fore the need to pursue a denazification-style process in Gaza so that Gazans and Israelis alike may one day see a future free of the deleterious influence of Hamas and other extremist terrorist groups.
