Food is at the heart of Palestinian culture — Laila El-Haddad, author of the award-winning cookbook ‘The Gaza Kitchen,’ shares how it helps maintain humanity while under Israeli occupation pic.twitter.com/I7LcXUPo1G
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) December 4, 2023
I am not articulate enough to explain what I feel about the horror of this war, because while what happened on 10/7 was certainly not an act of resistance, what has happened since has gone long past defense to retribution, to something atrocious. It's hard not to feel like journalists are being targeted and that outspoken parts of Palestinian culture are being forever silenced. Like the city of Gaza is being razed so that no one can live there. Just like the settlers of the West Bank try to erase the Palestinian past and present.
Fine, I say, if you want to counter that this is the fault of Hamas. Tell me why Hamas is the boss of what Israel's government does? How is the moral depravity of the terrorists specifically at cause for every murderous and foolish decision that the Israeli government makes? I don't want "explaining". We hear a lot of "because". I want a real vision for what the aftermath is. Every school, every hospital, every government building they destroy, they remove the possibility of anyone living there: how can we assume it isn't intentional? That they are purposefully making a place where these people cannot live? That so many of these people already are not able to live under the current dire situation of collapse of water and food supplies.
Or under the collapse of buildings.
I've talked about why the language of "from the river to the sea" was noxious to the state of Israel and its right to exist. Israeli propaganda mocks the dead of Gaza by claiming they will take that beach. They will remove all of the people in their way to owning all the land.
What the fuck is it worth?
The US has given every latitude to Israel, and I understand the geopolitical stuff. Mostly. Our ally in this area, the nearest to normal country. Not just the threat of Hamas, but Hezbollah. The way different countries can enter the fray (Syria, Yemen, Iran, Saudi Arabia) in different ways we don't quite understand yet. I even understand why we don't publicly support a ceasefire and don't call them out on this shit: because of the fear it shuts down communications and influence altogether. That things can get worse if we don't do what we can to keep a hand in.
I don't want worse but I already find worse incomprehensible. Israel's current government has done everything it can to prevent a two-state solution, and to make a one-state solution impossible. What is it they are left with regarding Palestinian Arabs: a final solution? And yes, words very deliberately and offensively chosen. Is nothing but the eradication of these people from the territory acceptable to hardliners?
I don't know what is to be done, and respect that my country doesn't want to dictate to another sovereign democracy exactly what should be done either--would we want the same leverage turned on us in similar circumstances? Didn't we get every latitude after 9/11 (and didn't we funk that up, quite a lot?)
But if nothing else is to be done, what is left but to be a voice for the people whose voices are being throttled? I cannot look away from these people without saying they don't deserve Hamas and they don't deserve being the sacrificial lambs sacrificed for or to Hamas either. Israel must find a more skillful means of targeting the real malefactors, because how can a whole people endure such suffering for the sake of a few? And how can the whole of Israel compensate for the damage done to these people in their name when I do not know this is even their will?
If a humane solution is to exist, we have to start speaking it into existence. I don't think this is easy. I just think it feels less like murder to be more clear in what we are standing for.
2 comments:
"Tell me why Hamas is the boss of what Israel's government does?" Why were the Nazis the bosses of what the allies did in Frankfurt or Hamburg? That far exceeded civilian deaths in Britain or the United States, so I guess those countries should have just forgotten about the atrocities perpetrated by Germany and acted "proportionally" rather than doing everything they could to end the war as quickly as possible.
Where has the world been for 70 years while Palestinian governments perpetrated endless atrocities in Israel, other than to declare that Israel building a wall, or Jerusalem building suburbs to house its growing population were some sort of racist monstrosity? Hamas is a genocidal criminal gang. They are the enemy of the whole world. This is what happens when the world refuses to condemn this abomination, and leaves it to Hamas' victims to deal with the matter themselves. Yes, Netanyahu has snapped, and is precipitating little more than a tantrum in Gaza. The world had decades to stop that, and did nothing but equivocate between victims and perpetrators. The nations of the world bear the responsibility for what is happening in Gaza, but of course, it will prove so much easier to just blame the Jews, and let Arabs prepare for their next atrocity.
Your point is heard: war is violent and civilian deaths in these conflicts are not entirely avoidable. When I hear people compare the death toll in Gaza in superlatives, I am reminded of Chechnya, Syria, Yemen, Congo, Sudan.
Not the same outcry anywhere. Like some special attention falls on Israel, dealing with a threat hidden within a populace that not long ago, sent teenagers laden with explosives into populated areas. For all I understand, the rapidity and brutality is the Israeli attempt to get the war over with great speed--but at the cost of the lives of so many civilians and the deaths of hostages, with so many government ministers making genocidal statements that they are poisoning the larger efforts to keep support for the goal of eradicating Hamas (which may not be achievable) alive. And they are poisoning the negotiations for the aftermath by speculating things about where they will disruptively move the remaining populace: to what country (Egypt?) that does not want them.
That said, the movement in the US and Europe in support of Palestine has some extremely noxious and anti-Semitic elements and is fueled by grifters, disinfo, and makes excessively poor choices. Protesting to shut down highways and paths to airports at the busiest travel season in the US? Protesting at the WTC? Threatening to protest at the Holocaust Museum? Possibly putting on their performative display at Times Square? The same people who increasingly target people/businesses that are Jewish-connected and deny obviously well-reported horrors from Hamas like the sexual violation of Israeli women?
Before this year, I tried to minimize my posting regarding Israel and Palestine because there is so much history to criticize, but it appears this will now be a political referendum in the US based on the opinions of people who have learned about everything yesterday and followed events for one minute. But I am not going to pretend that military-backed land expropriation since the Oslo accords is just "building suburbs" and that all this destruction of Gazan infrastructure now is specifically targeted at known Hamas spaces.
I have a visceral recoil when activists call Biden "Genocide Joe", but I think it precipitates a domestic reckoning with how we talk about our relationship with Israel. I think the Administration is being baited into a "redlines" situation about where support for Israel would drop. I don't know exactly what increased level of daylight is needed and don't want our foreign policy dictated to by cranks. But just as the administration managed to successfully counter Russian disinfo WRT Russia's Ukraine invasion, a coherent policy message that doesn't leave us not addressing the casualties in the room would surely help.
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