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I’m finding it very difficult to write this post. It feels like no matter how I present what I want to say it’s going to offend some folks.
I even ran this post through ChatGPT looking for loaded language, and made a few changes to tone down the rhetoric. See if you can spot them.
Please try to take this as me thinking out loud, trying to get a handle on how the world appears to work, or not work, these days. I bear no malice. I’m mostly confused and fearful that if things keep going the way they’ve been going we may be facing disaster.
In recent years, I've observed an increase in the intensity of social interactions. In the last few days I’ve heard about a knife attack in Dublin Ireland that led to a riot and a shooting of three male students in Vermont.
At this writing I haven’t heard what the motive was for either the knife attack or the shooting. The riot in Dublin seems to have been motivated by “Far right ideology”.
The Vermont shooting may have been motivated by anger against or hatred of Palestinians, all three students were from Palestinian families.
World-wide tensions are high because of the war in Ukraine and, more recently, the October 7th Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and the Israeli Defense Force response to that attack.
II want to be clear. I condemn the attack by Hamas that resulted in significant casualties and kidnappings.
I applaud the temporary cease-fire to allow hostages held by Hamas to be returned to their families in exchange for Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel who will rejoin thier families. During this pause humanitarian aid is flowing into southern Gaza from Egypt.
My fervent hope is that hostilities come to an end. I know it’s not likely, but I can dream.
Having said all that, responding to a terrorist act with serious violations of international law is not acceptable. Since the IDF initiated their operation in Gaza, a significant number of casualties, including a considerable number of children, have been reported.
In my view it is not OK to kill children, even if they are being used as human shields by terrorists and criminals. I fully support finding and holding the Hamas militants who supported and participated in the October 7th attack, but in my opinion Israel must find another way.
There was a very good Op Ed article on this in Sunday’s LA Times. I strongly recommend you read the whole article.
The author, Page Fortna of Columbia University, says:
Much of the heat — and none of the light — comes from a failure to distinguish tactics from goals, leaders and organizations from the people they aim to represent, and attempts to understand or explain from attempts to justify the actions of the other side.
Further on in the article she says:
Terrorism is a tactic used for political ends. In my own research, I define it as “deliberately indiscriminate targeting of civilians.” This definition can apply to states as well as nonstates, and to groups widely lauded as well as those deplored.
And:
It is possible to fight for a just cause by unjust means. Fighting for a just cause does not legitimize targeting civilians. Resisting occupation does not make terrorism permissible. By the same token, Israel’s imperative to defend against attacks by Hamas does not justify the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza nor the deprivation and collective punishment that comes with civilian besiegement. International humanitarian law is clear: The ends do not justify the means.
In my feeds I’m seeing a lot of posts that justify the Hamas attack as resistance to 75 years of occupation by Israel, and also posts that justify the destruction of Gaza because “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
I realize the anger and frustration felt by the Palestinian people. From what I’ve read, 75 years ago when Israel was created as a Jewish homeland, Palestinians were promised a homeland of their own. Seems like sometime in the last seven and a half decades (longer than I’ve been alive) it should have been possible to engineer a two-state solution.
By the same token, after centuries of discrimination I understand why Jews want to have a homeland of their own, and are motivated to do whatever they can to defend it.
But killing civilians, most of whom just want to live their lives in peace, is not the way to do it.
In my humble opinion the more of “the other side” you injure and kill the more likely they will be to hate you. Giving your opponents more reason to hate you seems counter-productive to me.
Damn. This is not at all what I started out to write, but it took on a life of its own. I really want to get into the tendency to demonize people who you don’t agree with. Which is what’s happening right now in Israel and Gaza.
A similar trend is occurring in the United States, and I may explore it in a future post.
No joke today. I’m not in the mood.
[Speaking of the conflict in Gaza]
Many of the words used to describe this conflict (terrorism, war crimes, apartheid, genocide) are deeply loaded. Some argue they should be avoided altogether. But the antidote to their weaponization is not to avoid them but to use them carefully, accurately and consistently. We need to call terrorism and war crimes out by name, whichever side uses them, and whatever we think of the legitimacy of the causes in whose name they are used. Our humanity depends on it. So does any hope for understanding this conflict and, perhaps, ending it.
- Page Fortna
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Thanks Gary, as always Like me you just seem to be trying to, ( as you say ) get a handle on things. This has been a hard one for me as well. To get Trekie, I think it has a Kobyahsi feel, at least for those of us not truly involved. The feeling that something bigger and more horrifying could come of this, has me up at night. Also the feeling of being ineffectual, sigh.