As we all know, several thousand Gaza Hamas fighters bulldozed their way through an Israeli security fence on October 7, 2023, and committed some of the most barbaric crimes against humanity not seen since Cambodia, Rwanda, and the Holocaust.
More than 1400 Israelis died, most of them civilians, some slaughtered in nearby fields while celebrating the ending of Sukkot, an annual fall event in the Jewish calendar; others, in their beds on nearby kibbutzim. Reports are that Hamas insurgents raped, pillaged, and slaughtered even children, including babies. More than 200 civilians and soldiers were taken hostage, including citizens of other countries. Israeli wounded stands at 4600.
The Israeli response has been unceasingly withering in Gaza, Prime Minister Netanyahu declaring war on Hamas, calling up 300,000 reservists, bombing Gaza’s civilian infrastructure daily, and ordering one million Gaza civilians to evacuate to southern Gaza.
A land invasion of Gaza by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is anticipated. They will face up to 50,000 Hamas fighters, dispersed in a labyrinthian tunnel weave, threatening a Stalingrad consequence of casualties in house-to-house fighting. American pressure has slowed any launching of an immediate invasion, but not halted the daily bombing, killing 700 civilians in the last twenty-four hours, half of them women and children.
Hezbollah, to the north in Lebanon, have been firing rockets into nearby Israeli border towns, forcing their evacuation and possibly opening a second front in a dangerously escalating Middle East conflict. Iran has pledged to intervene if Israel launches a land invasion of Gaza.
In the meantime, the death toll of Gaza civilians now exceeds 5,000, including more than 2000 children, the cut off of food, water, and energy to Gaza, the forestalling of shipments of humanitarian aid from Egypt, which threatens the closure of hospitals treating thousands of wounded civilians. Mass starvation and disease looms as an aftermath, Israel insisting that hostages be released, despite international calls for restraint and observance of humanitarian values.
Recently, a Christian hospital in Gaza came under rocket attack, killing 500 people among those taking shelter. International intelligence indicates it was an errant Hamas rocket that caused this tragedy. Nonetheless, the World Health Organization has documented 171 Israeli attacks on health care in the occupied Palestinian territory,” killing 473 health workers.
As I write, unrest continues on the West Bank, with some 100 Arab protestors killed. A pending historic security alliance has been withdrawn by the Saudis and Israel’s peaceful relationship with Jordan has been strained. Settler crimes against West Bank farmers have been chronicled over the years, with killing of livestock, destruction of olive groves, and slaying of those who resist.
The U.S. response has been typical, Biden ordering two aircraft carriers into the gulf and threatening to intervene should Hezbollah open a second front.
It has called for a two state settlement for many years, yet overlooked Israeli intransigence. It gives $3 billion in aid annually to Israel and recently concluded a $37 billion loan agreement in military aid. Israel will have access to the F-35, the world’s most advanced fighter jet.
At home, dissenters are regaled as antisemitic. Many, including Democrats, have called for disbandment of Palestinian student campus organizations and denounced the growing Leftist faction in the Democratic Party that includes Bernie Sanders. Frenzied Republicans, increasingly resistant to continuing aid to Ukraine, have no difficulty supporting huge expenditures to Israel. Lindsey Graham says, “Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place!”
There is, in short, a context for Arab and Palestinian resentment and outburst.
We seem to have learned nothing from the rage that lay behind the 9/11 horror. We began two long wars, fought by America’s poor White and Blacks. We lost both. Did Vietnam teach us nothing?
Do we lust for another war? Have we forgotten George Washington’s warning to avoid “entangling alliances”? “The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave” (Farewell Address).
UN secretary-general António Guterres speaks for me: “Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” He likewise condemned Hamas: “No injustice to the Palestinians justifies the appalling attacks by Hamas.”
The Israeli response to Guterres? “Due to his remarks we will refuse to issue visas to UN representatives” (Gilad Erdan, Israel ambassador to the UN). “The time has come to teach them a lesson. Guterres should resign.”
Hamas was elected to power in 2006. There have been no elections since. Does “Israel’s right to defend itself” (Biden) justify its war on Gaza civilians, half of whom are children?
Ultimately an apartheid Israel will reap its own folly. Israel’s growing Arab population will soon outnumber Israelis. It will become a South Africa before Nelson Mandela’s victorious crusade for a liberated biracial nation enjoying equity.
-rj
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Brimmings: up from the well 
H knew the people of Gaza would bear the brunt…. I don’t get it.
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