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.
Expecting someone to choose which side is in the wrong is a sort of trolley problem here. Both choices are horrific. Rather, one should be asking questions like “Why is the violence ongoing, and what can be done to reduce it?”
Likewise, it is nonsense to point a finger at “who started it” because the answer is completely dependent on which incident or what year you base the question. Both sides “start it” at various times. Again, we should ask the question “Why?” and try to get our leaders to work from there.
You have explained it very well. Thanks