...in Israel today.
That's from 2012, by the way. Same shit. Different day.
I don't see a point in writing a deeper dive into this Gaza-Israel disaster than I already have multiple times.
Here, back in 2006 (and the other three parts of that series are worth a look, because I was a fun read back in those days. Glib and snarky, but funny...)
And here and here, the last time a bunch of people died in and around Gaza in 2012.
Here's my conclusion from 2012:
"Now I'm more than willing to own my own country's atrocities and vileness in genociding the pre-1492 residents of the place I live. If a native American "terrorist" organization started rocketing North Portland and blowing up Tri-MET buses I'd shake my head in grim sympathy - before arming up to exterminate them like vermin. In that fight I'd completely understand WHY my enemies were fighting, and at the same time understand that there was no middle ground there; we both wanted exactly the same thing, and for them to win I and mine would HAVE to lose. And I'd choose for their women and kids to die rather than mine.
But at the same time, I'd also understand that that would make me a monster. I wouldn't make excuses for myself. I would be doing wrong, and willingly, because that's the nature of colonialism.
The very nature of Israel and its situation in the Middle East makes for monstrous choices.
But here's the thing; as a citizen of the U.S. I don't HAVE to make a choice. I can blithely wish a curse on both the houses in this colonial mess. I can wish that everyone involved in the business had made better choices. I can wish that Truman had offered Utah to the Zionists. I can wish that David Balfour had choked on a kipper at the age of 16. I can wish a lot of things, and none of them will made a half-damn's worth of difference."
In the ensuing decade nothing has changed.
In the decade to come nothing will change, either.
Last night my Bride asked me "They can't possibly win, right? What does Hamas expect? And why now? "
Here's my guess.
1) I think that the Arab residents of the former Ottoman province of Palestine see that their Muslim co-religionists are wearying of the endless expenditure of blood and treasure on the Palestinian bloody shirt. The Saudis are cozying up to Israel. The Syrians and Egyptians have their own problems to worry about. The old grievances are losing their appeal, so...
2) I think that Hamas see this as a sort of grand scale suicide/martyrdom - dying on their feet rather than living on their knees - AND the chance to hand the Israeli government their Own Personal Atrocity; a Warsaw Ghetto that will help make more anti-Israeli warriors.
My friend says that the whole Occupation is a horror for the way it exposes and destroys one of the most comforting tropes of many American Jews; that there is something uniquely thoughtful about Judaism that makes it resistant or even immune to the sorts of Inquisition/Crusade/Pogrom sort of evils. As he points out, what the apartheid state of 2023 Israel makes clear is that the difference was just that prior to 1967 organized Judaism simply lacked the opportunity.
And I think this is a chance for Hamas to goad Netanyahu's Israel into a Final Palestinian Solution that will stain it the way the original stained the Nazis. Before Treblinka there were fascists. But after Treblinka and Auschwitz and the sonderkommandos? No. Nazism became a uniquely awful evil. The taint of genocide could never be removed.
And Hamas wants to paste that label on Israel. Along with the satisfaction of killing as many Israelis was they can.
Is that insane and pointless bloodshed?
Ohfuckyes.
Is that just another day in the nightmare that is the eastern Levant?
Ohfuckyes, too.
As I saw when I looked out over this field of blood 17 years - and eleven years - ago, I see no "good" outcome here. The horrific conclusion was written...back in 1917 when Arthur Balfour promised away a piece of the Ottoman Empire he had no right to speak for...or in 1948, when Harry Truman jumped in and wrote a check that my country has been paying on for more than half a century.
And I still don't.
"Ruin and merciless hatred..."
3 comments:
Right on the nose from my perspective. When it happens, this will be the starting location for the war which finishes mankind.
I think I agree with you, as well as with your later post. There are people and organizations here that don't really want the problem to be resolved, only flexed one way or the other to their short or long term advantage.
It's early days yet but I don't see this becoming a wider war or the End of Days; just a spasm prolonging the situation that's been in effect the last long while, making it worse but not essentially changing it.
Hamas will probably get their photo op, meantime I don't see the IDF going into Gaza with a lot of bayonets... from what I know of urban warfare, Gaza city could gulp down whole divisions and ask for more, and we haven't even started in on the tunnel networks.
So stand back and let the cannon-cockers and zoomies have at it, from a great height and distance, while the city gets thirstier and hungrier in the dark.
Stjohnspock: I don't agree on the latter; see my reply below.
Brian; I think they'd love to resolve it...IF they could do it their way. The problem is they can't, and so it profits them more to keep the pot boiling.
I agree on this not being Armageddon. Only the Christian theology hold with that, anyway, and that's part of the problem - if anyone outside the real zealots thought that "some damn thing in the former Ottoman Palestine" would precipitate WW3? There'd be a damn near unstoppable momentum to put an end to it (one reason the EU got into the former Yugoslavia - bad juju there!).
But it isn't. It's one small nation versus a group of powerless stateless people. The actual fighting harms only those poor sad bastards caught up in it unless the Great Powers step in, and no Great Power has stepped in to the aid of the Palestinians. Ever.
So there IS no peace; trying to deal for it has proved impossible and nobody wants to try and step in to force it.
As far as the coming Israeli invasion, though...the wild card is the prisoners held by Hamas. I don't see how Israel just blows the living hell out of Gaza, mommies and kiddies and Hamas and prisoners. They're going to have to at least try and rescue as many as they can. And that's going to be brutally savage. That's where I think Hamas gets the Warsaw Kid photo.
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