By Mohamed SR. Nisthar –

Mohamed SR Nisthar

You might accept the meaning of this title with a simple “Yes” without raising a single question. Yet, when it comes to the subject that follows, I believe you’ll want to explore the reasons and implications rather than settling for such an easy assent.

On October 7, 2025, it will be two years since Hamas launched its 2023 attack on Israel, a day that deserves no celebration. Over a thousand people, men, women, and children were killed, and hundreds taken hostage. To dismiss that tragedy as just another violent episode would be a grave moral failure, for it was undeniably an act of terrorism.

Those who recognize my name and the faith it represents particularly many among my fellow believers, may hasten to brand me as a product of Western brainwashing, or a servant of Israel. I can already foresee such baseless accusations being hurled my way. And I also expect raised eyebrows when I say that my stance is grounded not in politics, but in the ethical teachings of my own scriptures.

War may indeed be an inherent human trait, yet it must never take the form of aggression. It can only be justified as a means of self-defence armed must not be killed; no one should be taken as a prisoner of war or held hostage; and public facilities essential to civilian life must never be targeted. Therefore, the events of October 7, 2023, can only be described as terrorism — nothing more, nothing less.

Even so, I cannot accept that this one attack alone suffices to label Hamas entirely as a terrorist organization.

My reasoning rests upon United Nations Security Council Resolution A/RRS/38/17 (1983), which affirms that a people under foreign occupation possess the right to self-determination, and, if necessary, the right to pursue it through armed struggle. The Palestinians, being an occupied people, are therefore entitled to bear arms in resistance. Since Hamas represents Palestinians, they too share that right.

Of course, Israel’s supporters and those afflicted by Islamophobia will rush to call me a sympathizer of terror, an enemy of humanity, a propagandist against Israel’s existence, or an anti-Semite. But such words are empty of substance.

For many Jewish historians, political scientists, and sociologists , notably Prof. Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein, Avi Shlaim, and Jerry David Sachs, have shown through meticulous research that Israel is essentially a colonial enterprise, established by illegal Zionist settlers transplanted from Europe into Palestine through deliberate design. According to these scholars, such a state cannot claim a lawful right of self-defence. They maintain that those settlers ought to return to the lands of their origin (Europe).

Even Orthodox Jews, based on their own religious doctrines, insist that Jews are forbidden to create a nation-state of their own anywhere in the world. They may live as citizens within other nations, but not as rulers over one.

And yet, despite these moral and theological objections, the practical reality of today’s world is that a sovereign Israel exists beside what should have been a sovereign Palestine. There is no room here either for the dream of a Greater Israel, or for the equally impossible claim of a Palestine stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

In this context, the President of the United States has proposed a 20-point peace plan. Whether this is merely a temporary ceasefire or a genuine blueprint for lasting peace remains to be seen. Reports suggest that discussions will soon take place in Egypt, involving Hamas representatives, members of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government, and Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former President Donald Trump.

The brutal conflict that has raged for two years must be brought to an end. Prisoners on both sides must be released. The famine deaths in Gaza must cease. On these humanitarian grounds, no person of conscience can disagree.

Yet, as Palestinian political thinkers lament, “We cannot drink honey mixed with poison”. Their despair is not without cause — it is the bitterness of a people deceived time and again.

From 1967 to 1989, Israel failed to implement even one of the 131 UN Security Council resolutions passed during that period, and ignored all 45 condemnations issued against it. The two-state solution, once accepted at Oslo, now lies abandoned in the rubble of mutual accusation.

Former U.S. President Joe Biden once declared: “If Israel did not exist in the Middle East, the United States would have to create one — for the sake of its own interests.”

This single statement reveals that Israel exists as a vassal state of the U.S., its survival maintained at the expense of the Palestinians. And Netanyahu’s chilling words “There has never been a country called Palestine, and there never will be” have pushed the Palestinians into despair deeper than ever before.

Thus, if Trump’s plan is imposed rather than accepted, it will not serve peace. It will serve only to fulfil Trump’s dream of a Nobel Peace Prize, to offer Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister and a war criminal, a high-paid diplomatic post, and to grant Jared Kushner a 999-year commercial lease under the guise of peace-building.

It will do nothing to restore peace to the region, nothing to grant Palestinians a free and dignified homeland, and nothing to ensure that Israelis may live without fear.

And so, I reaffirm my title:

Truly, it is a Strange World.