Category Archives: War Between Israel and Hamas

You started it

2018 Trip to Iceland, Political Violence, War Between Israel and Hamas

A good friend of mine said Hamas was more to blame than Israel in their latest dispute because they started this current fight?  Is he right?

I suspect a lot of people would agree with him. After all, it was the common defense we used when growing up and our father or mother told us to stop fighting. ‘But he started it,’ we would shout out. We thought that was a good defense, but our parents rarely accepted it. Why was that?

In the current war in Gaza between Hamas, reputedly on behalf of the Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas launched a vicious attack against Israel about 2 weeks ago. So, you could say Hamas started it, but is it really that simple?

I don’t believe it is that simple, because really this dispute between Palestinians and Jews started 75 years ago, or earlier, right after the state of Israel was declared in 1948 and during that long history a lot has happened. Both sides have often acted badly. Frankly I have a lot of trouble figuring out which side is worse.

The recent brutal violence by Hamas was brutal beyond my imagination.  The retaliation by Israel has also been horrific.  As Democratic strategist Paul Gegala said,

“The violence was so barbaric that 14 days later, 200 of the 1,400 bodies can still not be identified. That is how savagely mutilated they were.”

As a result of the Israeli bombing and complete siege of Gaza  the crowded hospitals are running out of medicine, the fuel for generators in those hospitals needed for light and equipment is often insufficient and may soon run out, and physicians are forced to perform surgeries using sewing needles and patients are given vinegar as disinfectant and nothing for pain. No anesthetics in some cases. Think about that. Surgeries without anesthesia.

Recently, Israel has allowed some  paltry  supplies  of medicines to trickle in that are wholly inadequate for a population of about 2 million people under siege.

I am not saying the two sides are equivalent. I am just saying that  weighing the atrocities against each other is not that simple. Neither is it sufficient to say who started it all. That is impossible to untangle. Unfortunately, war and terrorism are ugly, and sometimes it’s is very difficult to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys.

 You pick which side you want to cheer for.

A Big Problem in the Middle East

Political Violence, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

There is a big problem right now in the Middle East and it is not just that Israelis and Palestinians are pummelling each other in a  brutal mayhem.  The fundamental problem is that both sides are de-humanizing each other. They are both to blame. As Hussein Ibish, an Arab Middle East scholar, said on CBS’s Sunday Morning:

“Nothing can excuse the terrorist rampage committed by Hamas. They murdered hundreds of Israelis and made no preparations for the 2 million people of Gaza to survive the inevitable retaliation. Israel is responsible for avoidable civilian deaths and for cutting off all basic necessities for the Gaza Palestinians now under collective attack. Civilian deaths could easily rise into the tens of thousands. How did it come to this?

 

The history is long a disputed. Yet today a structurally unsustainable inherently explosive situation prevails. In the territories controlled by Israel since 1967 there are roughly equal numbers of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Muslims and Christians. All 7 million Jewish Israelis have citizenship and full human and legal rights as do the 1 million Palestinians citizens of Israel. But the 5 million Palestinians under occupation don’t.

 

In a world made up of states and their citizens the stateless Palestinians are unique because they have no citizenship in Israel and yet, no state of their own. The occupation forces Israelis and Palestinians into a toxic relationship of dominance and subordination. This unnatural relationship insures periodic outbreaks of atrocious violence.

 

The conflict involves individual and group malice on both sides. But structures of violence are hard-wired into any relationship defined by the control of one people by another in a contest for land and power. Israelis and Palestinians must stop dehumanizing each other.

 

Hams killed Israelis indiscriminately. Israel says it is confronting “human animals” in Gaza. People treated like animals sometimes act like animals. It’s a self-reinforcing shared pathology. Israelis and Palestinians must rehumanize each other and eventually cooperate in replacing the violent occupation and resistance with genuine coexistence. That can only be sustained between equals. Humans who respect each other’s full humanity recognizing that we are all no better and no worse than each other.”

 

The Israelis and Palestinians can continue their current relationship. Both have good reasons to do that, but then both parties must recognize that continuing in the way they are doing will ensure nothing better will happen. By now it is obvious to everyone that neither side will beat the other into submission. That status quo will ensure endless pain.  Then both sides will be deciding that they want the killing of women, children, the elderly, and civilians to continue.

But both sides must realize there is a better way.