The Witness Chronicles, June 15, 2024

I attempt the impossible

Photo by Florin Palamarciuc on Unsplash

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Netanyahu, Hamas, and the Neverending War

Neither party has any interest in peace in the Middle East

Before I express my opinion I need to clarify something important. It’s important because the protest movement here in the US is veering perilously close to supporting terror and encouraging anti-semitism, out of pure but willful ignorance.

When I talk about Netanyahu I am not speaking about Israel or the Jews. And when I talk about Hamas, I am not talking about all Palestinians. I am talking about the extreme right in Israel and the terrorists in Palestine, two branches of the same tree of hatred.

For months we have watched US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and President Biden, among many others, jetting around the Middle East trying to broker a deal to end the killing and bring the hostages home. And every time it hits the news, we roll our eyes because nothing ever happens. And that is intentional.

The two parties who can make it happen, Netanyahu’s far right war council and the Hamas terror group, have no interest in doing so. In fact, it is in their stated interest to keep the conflict going as long as possible.

So, they toss the deal back and forth, always coming back with impossible conditions that torpedo any possibility of a deal. Bibi wants to keep fighting until every member of Hamas is dead, an impossible goal. Hamas wants a complete end to the fighting, which they know would give them free rein to expand.

Netanyahu knows an unending state of war is the only thing that will keep him in power and the only thing that will ward off corruption charges he will face if removed from power.

Hamas has the clearly stated goal of killing all Jews and wiping Israel off the face of the earth. This week, their leadership stated outright, from their hiding holes in Gaza, that keeping the war going was to their benefit and civilian death and casualties were a price worth paying.

These two circumstances put this war in a place of almost incomprehensible evil for the purposes of personal gain by these men. And the cost is beyond horrible for both sides. It is a war waged by people who are no longer humans.

We’ve seen this before across the scope of human history, most recently in Nazi Germany and Cambodia under Pol Pot, but there are examples in every documented time period going back for thousands of years.

We consider our civilization to be advanced and we have made progress with technology, healthcare, and other advancements that can benefit all mankind. But we have also progressed in the making of weapons and our ability to wreak destruction on our perceived enemies, wiping out any claim that we are a more advanced society.

The situation in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran and their various satellites could be stopped. Saudi Arabia and Israel, sworn tribal enemies for millennia, were on the path to an alliance unlike any ever seen in the Middle East, a path to a partnership that could break the cycle of hatred.

It would have been the triumph of reason in a region not known for any logic other than the logic of unrelenting hate. But what we are seeing is that the forces of hate found a way to derail any agreement between the Saudis and the Israelis, because they know such a deal would stabilize the entire region and serve to highlight the crimes on both sides.

The only way to change this deadlock of death and unimaginable destruction is for the Israelis to dethrone Netanyahu and his cronies, and the Palestinians to expose Hamas, throw out their ancient leadership like the Palestine Liberation Organization and declare their identity as citizens of the world.

I always debate writing on topics like this because simply explaining things doesn’t typically make any difference. That’s why, in my opinion, mainstream media doesn’t simply explain what is going on, instead trying to be ‘fair and balanced’ in a world that is far from fair or balanced. What we are talking about here is the conflict between good and evil, plain and simple.

The haters win in the short run but hate cannot be conquered by hate, only by love. We know this but we still fight and that fight is always driven by greed and the desire for unlimited power for its own sake.

Until we find a way past this basic human flaw, we cannot call ourselves civilized on any basic level.

That’s the unfortunate lesson we are witnessing in Israel and Gaza and it is metastasizing into my country as innocents rightfully protest but don’t bother to understand the dynamics behind any conflict.

And now the far right in Congress have invited Netanyahu to speak to Congress against the wishes of a majority of members. He will come here next week with the sole purpose of destabilizing public opinion here in an already divided country.

This is how hatred spreads and it is happening before our eyes. And no one seems to really care except a handful of protestors who are themselves being manipulated.

~ I write The Grasshopper, an occasional letter on the creative life and it’s sister, mostly daily publication The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate. They share a free and paid subscription. I also write The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. I don’t paywall any content in these, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your support with a paid subscription helps make that happen.

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