"Enough of blood and tears"...that was 1993, today is something infinitely worse
Now Hamas has made more blood and tears inevitable once again
Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.
Terry Pratchett
Like many of us, I’ve watched events in Israel with horror and outrage. While there are no 100% certainties in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (both sides have plenty to answer for), there can be no excuse for the terror attack Hamas carried out on what’s coming to be known as Israel’s 9/11.
As I write this, the scope and breadth of the atrocities carried out by Hamas are beginning to come to light. What were initially suspected to be fantastical tales of unimaginable barbarity appear to be true.
Officials from Israel, the United States, Europe and the United Nations have condemned the violence in the starkest terms, with the U.N. secretary general saying, “Nothing can justify these acts of terror and the killing, maiming and abduction of civilians.”
The evidence emerging from Israeli sites near Gaza is being found by the authorities, emergency workers and survivors tentatively returning to their homes. It includes security camera footage and cellphone videos, photographs from residents and professionals, and the accounts of witnesses who survived the initial attacks.
We live in an age when atrocities, like anything, are easily captured on video, and much of what happened on that terrible early Saturday morning lives on in video footage, photographs, and witness accounts of survivors. The savagery with which the attacks were carried out were both breathtaking and sickening.
Much of the killing and butchery served no military purpose, but then Hamas isn’t an army. It’s the terrorist arm of an organization whose stated purpose is to destroy Israel and drive the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea.
And the killing was indiscriminate. Hamas fighters weren’t just looking to kill Jews; they wanted to kill anyone and everyone unfortunate to cross their path. As of this writing, the dead include people from 23 countries (that may be higher as of this morning), including, at last count, 22 Americans.
What happened on 10/7 wasn’t about Hamas attacking Israel, but rather about Hamas killing everyone they could. I saw one video of a man hiding behind a car when a Hamas fighter calmly approached him and put a bullet in the back of his head. Why? There was no reason, nor is there a defense for the cold-blooded execution of a non-combatant. That contravenes every law of war agreed upon by the civilized world.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Hamas doesn’t respect the laws of war and certainly isn’t part of the civilized world. As far as they’re concerned, anyone on Israeli soil, combatant or not, Israeli citizen or not, deserves to die simply for being there.
There is already talk of what potential war crimes have been committed by Hamas fighters in Israel, but that presumes that Hamas is a conventional army fighting by the accepted rules of war. They are neither and understand only the language of terrorism and death. There is no middle ground.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that neither recognizes nor respects the rules of war. It will execute civilian captives because it can. It will torture civilians because that suits its purpose. It will do whatever it needs or wants to because it recognizes no rules or limitations.
Does that mean the Israeli Army has the right to carry the fight to Hamas in the same manner Hamas brought it to Israel? That’s a legitimate question, but I believe the Israelis should not and must not descend to the same level of savagery as the terrorists they’re fighting. Savagery in opposition to savagery will only justify Hamas’ tactics, with the real losers being the civilians inevitably caught in the middle.
The Israelis, who justifiably want to grind Hamas into dust, must do so while being careful not to destroy the civilian population of Gaza. Hamas has exploited the Gaza Strip, the most densely populated piece of real estate on the planet, to their advantage, while using the civilian population as human shields. Israel must not go through Palestinian civilians to destroy Hamas. They must find a way to preserve the civilian population without it becoming collateral damage as a result of the understandable Israeli bloodlust and desire for vengeance.
The answer to senseless death and suffering is never yet more senseless death and suffering. Yet that promises to be precisely the fate of the two million-plus souls who call Gaza City home. With nowhere to go and the Gaza Strip sealed off, Gaza City’s sole electrical generating plant has already run out of fuel. That means no electricity and no power for the city’s hospitals. It takes no leap of imagination to understand what that means for the sick and infirm.
No food or supplies will be allowed into Gaza, and a city that’s a major humanitarian crisis under the best of circumstances will be far worse off than it has been. Now it appears Israel is planning a ground campaign in Gaza, something that has the potential to be a bloodbath for Israel, Hamas, and the civilian population.
I know many Israelis want to see Gaza flattened, but how do you do that to a city of two million people, most of whom don’t support Hamas? If Israel reduces Gaza to rubble, how does it plan to support the civilians left to deal with the aftermath? You can’t bomb a city back to the Stone Age and leave two million people to fend for themselves- especially when that was a challenge before 10/7.
Of course, Israel has no choice but to respond militarily. The 10/7 attack is rightfully being seen as threatening the Jewish state’s very existence, and Israel’s ultra-Right-wing government has only one option- hit back at those who struck Israel.
Nadav Eyal, as Israeli author and senior columnist with the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, predicted in an interview that the attack would transform the country further. “This event was a national trauma. It’s like 9/11 but frankly bigger,” he said. “We have dozens of people who are abducted — civilians.”
Eyal said that, no matter the country's divisions, Israel would respond militarily. “This really forces Israel to react with the utmost force,” he added. “There is a consensus with the Israeli public and the political sphere that this changes everything in the region and for Israelis.”
As happened in this country after 9/11, internal differences within Israel have, for the moment, been put aside in the face of a common enemy. Everyone recognizes the need to pull together to defeat Hamas. Israelis understand the threat they face. They know nothing else will matter if the country doesn’t respond in a united manner.
But what about the children of Gaza? They’re caught in the middle, and Bibi Netanyahu knows it. Of course, he can go a long way toward showing the Israeli Army are not the monsters Hamas has demonstrated itself to be by allowing women and children to be evacuated from the Gaza Strip. Or he can refuse and enable them to be incinerated like the monster most Palestinians and, frankly, many in the West suspect him to be.
It would not be incorrect to assume that this will not end well for anyone involved, but Hamas didn’t need to start this fight. They didn’t need to choose to kill indiscriminately- but they did, and the Jews, with a long history of pogroms and anti-Semitic violence behind them, aren’t about to sit back.
What the Gaza Strip will look like when all is said and done is anyone’s guess. For those so inclined, I’d suggest you pray for peace and reconciliation and for cooler heads to prevail.
From where I sit, though, I have a difficult time seeing any of that happening. I’ve spent enough time in the Middle East to understand that vengeance isn’t a dish best served cold but from the barrel of a gun or a howitzer.
Same as it ever was.
Once upon a time- September 1993- Yassir Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman, signed a framework agreement for peace with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It had seemed almost impossible that Arafat, whose PLO had promised to drive Israel into the Mediterranean Sea, and Rabin, who’d fought too many battles against Arab armies, would ever agree on anything.
Yet there they were, signatories to an historic agreement at the White House that seemed to promise, if not peace in our time, at least hope for better days ahead.
“We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today in a loud and a clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough!” declared Rabin, the 71-year-old former general who barely allowed a single smile to cross his face during the emotion-laden, hourlong ceremony.
“The battle for peace,” responded Arafat, wearing an olive dress uniform and his trademark black-and-white kaffiyeh, “is the most difficult battle of our lives. It deserves our utmost efforts because the land of peace, the land of peace yearns for a just and comprehensive peace.”
Both sides recalled the generations of sorrow and bloodshed that preceded the historic ceremony and pledged to press forward with the diplomatic tasks that remain, calling upon the United States and other nations to aid in the process of turning the theoretical framework into concrete results for Israel and the Palestinians.
A day that foretold so many possibilities for a brighter and more peaceful future was, sadly, the high point. That “just and comprehensive peace” never came saw the light of day. That, sadly, was due to a surfeit of mutual distrust and the agenda of those who couldn’t stomach the idea of peace with those they loathed with every fiber of their being.
Now, 30 years later, this is where we’ve landed. The “land of peace” has never seemed to be further from harmony and reconciliation.
Today, as the Israeli Army masses on the border with Gaza, the world awaits what could potentially be a bloodbath of unimaginable proportions, with most of the potential casualties almost certainly being non-combatants.
That’s because non-combatants- particularly women and children- are merely things to Hamas, pieces on a game board valuable not for their lives but for their utility as political pawns and human shields.
Evil, thy name is Hamas.
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