The Witness Chronicles, January 26, 2024
Pragmatic observations about US politics, global issues, and climate change
A quick note: whenever I write about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict I am aware of walking a thin line, one that feels precarious. Emotions here in the States are running so hot on both sides but there is nothing about this that is black and white, no side that is wholly good or totally evil, though there are certainly evil things taking place.
But nothing disturbs me more than politicians who will randomly cause death and destruction to further their own political stability and ambition. That appears to be exactly the situation in Israel right now. Judge for yourself, but please don’t accuse me of making excuses for one side or another. Nothing is ever as simple as we might want it to be.
Let God, and Netanyahu, Do The Accounting
A macho joke, but children die
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) this week told 400,000 Gazan Palestinians in a refugee camp where they had been directed to go earlier, that they have to move again. This repeats a pattern followed throughout the war. Order Gazans to a new area, bomb the area, then order them to move to another corner of an increasingly tiny area.
It’s hard to not see this as a tactic designed to increase the kill rate by concentrating the population in a smaller and smaller area. This is not a war on Hamas anymore, it is a war on the entire Palestinian population in the hope that a certain percentage of the dead will be Hamas fighters.
But a huge percentage of those killed and wounded are children. I have tried to see both sides of this conflict but this is wrong, horribly wrong. Yesterday, on the PBS Newshour we saw a video of four Palestinian men, hands raised and waving a white flag, approach an IDF checkpoint.
The men were interviewed by the journalist filming them and one said they were going to escort two family members to a safer location. After the interview, the journalist turned away, shots rang out, and the man who had been interviewed fell to the ground, mortally wounded.
Those with him were fired upon while trying to get his body out of the range of fire. It was not obvious where the firing came from. They eventually draped the white flag across the body and dragged it out of range while being fired upon.
The IDF later claimed the rate of fire on the video was not a match for the weapons they use. This would be believable if it were not so lame an excuse and so completely unverifiable. No other statement was made other than that the incident was being investigated.
A month ago IDF forces shot three Israeli hostages, again carrying a white flag and bare-chested to show they were not armed. The hostages had escaped and were trying to return to Israel. All died.
There has, as far as I can tell, been no explanation.
Put guns in the hands of angry and scared young people and these things will happen. But there appears to be a policy of shooting first and a general strategy of mass killing with the hope that some enemy will die.
That is the charitable description of what looks like vengeance killing. In WWII, when a German was killed by resistance fighters in a village or city they had occupied, the Germans would take the lives of ten to twenty villagers, chosen at random. It was an effective deterrent and it was what we think of as a war crime, by any definition.
That ratio of killing twenty civilians for each German’s death, 20-1, has now been surpassed in Gaza. 1200 Israelis were killed and 240 hostages taken by Hamas terrorists in their horrific attack on October seventh, and now an estimated 25000 Gazans have been killed in retribution. And no end is in sight. In fact, the war is spreading throughout the region.
To be clear, Hamas is a terrorist organization with little religious motivation. Their stated goal is to eliminate Jews, all Jews.
All of this falls upon the conscience of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s leader, if he has one. His war on Hamas is all tactics, no strategy and he has declared there is no end until Palestine ceases to exist as a state or a possible state. The tactic is to punish all the people for the crimes of a few of the people.
There is no end game, no plan to find a way to return the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas during that horrific terror attack on last October 7th. A pause or ceasefire, which worked months ago, is not on the table as long as Netanyahu is in charge. Nor is retrieving the hostages.
Bibi, as he is known, has a plan but it is not a plan to end the conflict, save lives, return the hostages, or anything else. His plan is to save his own political career and remain in power despite being widely unpopular among the Israeli population.
His gamble is that those who oppose him will not remove a leader during a war. So he will keep the war going and even escalate to protect himself. This is not speculation, he has made his decisions clear. Even the constant protests by hostage families begging for a ceasefire have not moved him or his far right cabinet members to change this strategy.
In the other Palestinian region, the West Bank, there is no law if you are Palestinian. Israeli settlers are on video shooting Palestinians while wearing IDF uniforms with the insignia removed. Locals are thrown out of their homes so more settlements can be built and offered no replacements or options.
The results of Netanyahu’s policies are not about eliminating Hamas, they are about destroying an entire culture. But all they can accomplish long term is to help Hamas and other terrorist groups recruit and grow, ensuring an endless war. A war of vengeance and retribution on both sides.
There has been a global call for an end game, a goal and justification for all this death and destruction. The call has been to create a Palestinian state and build a government of Palestinians to run it. I have no idea how this would be done but you cannot justify destroying an entire people or removing them to another place, as has been suggested by Netanyahu’s allies.
The two state solution has been firmly rejected by Netanyahu, though he offers no other option. There is an option and one that Israel could make happen. Remove Netanyahu and his war mongers from power, permanently, implement a ceasefire, and deal with this situation realistically once and for all.
Or just keep killing and being killed so one man can hold onto power.
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