Gaza, again

Surveying the Internet as the Gaza offensive goes on, I find myself increasingly apoplectic at the legions of uneducated moral-equivalence morons donning cloaks of legitimacy. Israel, we are told, is a "failed state with nuclear weapons." It's a "rogue, fascist, terrorist entity." 

All of this filth is neatly packaged on the CBC's comment threads, presumably because (unlike in Gaza) we have freedom of speech in this country. What scares me is that these sentiments are very widely accepted. I usually shy away from invoking Godwin's Law, but if ever there was a time to bring Hitler up, this is it.

(Two and a  half million noncombatants killed in the Sudan: barely an eyebrow batted in the West. Israel kills 900, many (not all) militants...and there's widespread uproar. Hmmm.)

There's no reasoning with these people. I'm learning as I age that there's no arguing with many people on many issues that for some reason seem to define their very existences. Gay marriage. Climate change. Abortion. The inherent superiority of all things Democrat (or Republican). Israel's right to exist as a nation.

Futility aside, let's try.

Let's first dispense with the notion that Israel is "ethnically cleansing" the Gaza Strip. Israel's military is orders of magnitude bigger and better than anyone's around it. Probably bigger and better than all of them combined, in fact. For now, I'll leave aside the reason it's so big and good and only note that if Israel wanted to "ethnically cleanse" the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, it would have done it decades ago.

Nobody likes to see innocents killed in any conflict. Hell, nobody likes to see conflict, period. But we do not live in a sane world and conflict is inevitable. This particular conflict has its present-day roots in one that began in 1948, the instant Israel was formalized. Let's remember that the Jews were granted a homeland in response to a ritualized, formalized, and devastatingly successful attempt at genocide. 

And that goes back literally thousands of years. There's something about Jewry that, for some indiscernable and indefensible reason, sets the world's teeth on edge. People don't want "them" around. This despite the Jewish faith being significantly less evangelistic and expansionist than some *cough* Islamics faith I could mention.

So the UN decided in 1947 to grant the Jews a homeland, dividing up the British Mandate of Palestine to do it. I can't say for sure, but I imagine it was either that or let the Jews back into all the cities they'd been forcibly expelled from. Out of sight, out of mind.

Palestine included a large number of Jews even before the partition. The influx of more Jews angered the non-Jewish residents, who have been pledging to wipe them out ever since. 

Israel's reaction speaks volumes. There are many Arabs living freely in Israel. They vote. They have their own media. They have all the rights of citizenship denied them in other Arab states (including, until recently, Iraq.) Have these Arabs been muzzled, tortured, killed? They have not.

Israel's beef is not with Palestinians but with Hamas and Hezbollah and other groups of their ilk--in other words, those Palestinians who want to see Israel eliminated.

 But Hamas was democratically elected, shouts the mob. Not to invoke Godwin again, but so was Hitler. There are times when democracy matters little to world realpolitik and this is one of those times. If the plebes elect a terrorist organization--and Hamas wears that label proudly--it is the duty of the world to do something about it.

Disproportionate response: Hamas' rickety rockets only kill a few. Israel's killed many more than just a few. There have been widely reported Israeli war crimes: the shelling of schools, for instance. These are deplorable, but inevitable when the Palestinians are so adept at using human shields. Again, Israel has warned of its attacks. Hamas doesn't bother to warn anyone when it's about to fire a rocket off, and they don't bother aiming. When they do kill a civilian, why isn't that a war crime?

While Israel has exercised a great deal of restraint in Gaza (carpet bombing would be so much cheaper and more effective), Hamas hasn't even bothered to disguise what it would do if it ever acquired bigger, better (nuclear?) weapons. They exist to exterminate what they call "the Zionist Entity". That is their goal, their reason for being, and no concessions from the Israeli state will ever change that. 

Stop the rocket fire, renounce Hamas and the more fundamentalist elements of Fatah, and Israel will talk of a lasting peace.  Repeal the Sharia law enacted just four days before this latest round of fighting (legalizing such things as crucifixion) and Israel might be more amenable to negotiation. Change your Constitution, which overtly calls for the destruction of Israel, and maybe--just maybe--you can co-exist. Until then, Palestine will be at war.

Besides, what would we have Israel do? Pick off a sole Palestinian for every Israeli killed? That way lies madness.

 

But then, I think the world's gone mad already. Again, I mean.