Truth be told, I have mixed feelings about commenting on this latest flare up between the Israelis and Palestinians for dominion over the Promised Land. After all, commentators (like me) have been no more able to make sense of this conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians than envoys (like U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry) have been able to broker peace between them.
Thousands of Palestinian residents of the northern Gaza Strip fled their homes on Sunday and sought safety in U.N. shelters, heeding warnings from the Israeli military about impending plans to bomb the area in the sixth day of an offensive against Hamas that has killed more than 160 people.
The fighting showed no signs of slowing, despite international calls for a cease-fire and growing concerns about the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza.
(The Associated Press, July 13, 2014)
To wit, here is an excerpt from “Neverending Story: Territorial (Holy) War Between Israel and Palestinians,” January 3, 2009, which seems as relevant today, in every respect, as it was five years ago.
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[I]t hardly matters who or what triggered this latest round – especially considering that the root cause of this perennial conflict dates back to Biblical times, and each side claims divine provenance for its actions…
[T]his cycle of violence is such that not even the Almighty God could ever reconcile Hamas’ jihad to drive the Israelis from the Middle East with Israel’s categorical (and existential) imperative to defend itself…
The Israelis seem poised to follow up their weeklong aerial assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with a blitzkrieg-ground assault that would make the Nazis green with envy. But, as the cartoon above suggests, except for killing a bunch of people (on both sides), this assault will do nothing to change the overall dynamics of their ongoing conflict, which seems destined to last until kingdom come.
That said, I feel obliged to reiterate my solidarity with the longsuffering Palestinians…
Likewise, I feel obliged to reiterate my belief that the Israelis have an unconditional right to defend themselves. And the best way for me to illustrate this point is to pose the following:
It is arguable that the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians what the Americans have been doing to the Cubans for 50 years. But does anyone doubt that the Americans would completely obliterate Cuba if the Castros dared to launch a single rocket into the United States…? (And trust me, just as it is in Iraq, they would not bother keeping a body count of how many Cubans they kill ‘defending’ their American homeland.)
Therefore, just imagine what restraint the Israelis have shown over the years – given that the Palestinians have launched thousands of rockets into Israel, killing people indiscriminately….
God help them (Palestinians and Israelis alike)….
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Incidentally, in case you forgot, there was a similar flare up in 2012 too.
But, in light of the defense I presented in the excerpt above for the Israelis’ actions, I hasten to reiterate the following explanation I offered for the Palestinians’ – in what has clearly become their tragic chicken-and-egg conflict:
I feel obliged, yet again, to register my disgust at Israel-can-do-no-wrong enablers in the U.S. Congress. Because, instead of supporting the wholly informed warning Kerry issued to Israel on Monday about becoming an ‘apartheid’ state, everyone from Tea Party conservative Senator Ted Cruz to left-wing liberal Senator Barbara Boxer reacted as if he uttered words that were as anti-Semitic as Donald Sterling’s were racist.
But you don’t have to take my word for the wholly informed nature of Kerry’s admittedly provocative warning. Because here’s what universally acclaimed anti-Apartheid pioneer, South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, thinks about Israel looking more like old Apartheid South Africa every day:
‘I go and I visit the Holy Land and I see things that are a mirror image of the sort of things that I experienced under Apartheid.’
Nonetheless, in a gesture as Kafkaesque as a U.S. secretary of state apologizing for warning the Apartheid regime 25 years ago that its White-minority rule cannot last, Kerry apologized.
Mind you, he was only echoing the warning no less a person than former president Jimmy Carter sounded in his authoritative book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
(“Instead of Peace, Israel Settling for Apartheid…? The iPINIONS Journal, May 1, 2014)
Israelis insist they’re bombing the Palestinians because the Palestinians are launching rockets into Israel. Palestinians insist they’re launching rockets into Israel because the Israelis are lording over them the way Whites lorded over Blacks in Apartheid South Africa. And so it goes.
Enough said?
Except here’s a thought: Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, is known as much for its stealth surveillance as for its brazen assassinations. Therefore, wouldn’t it make far more sense for Israel to dispatch agents to surgically assassinate all of the men responsible for ordering these rocket launches, instead of continuing to bomb homes where so-called ‘Hamas militants” are supposed to be hiding out? Especially given that bombing those homes invariably results in killing 10 innocent women and children (and rendering twice as many homeless) for every militant who gets blown to smithereens.
In addition to sparing hundreds of lives and thousands of homes, just think of the goodwill, if not grudging respect, this would foster among the besieged Palestinians of Gaza. Not to mention how much they would surely welcome the opportunity to elect a clean slate of leaders who are more competent and less messianic.
Alas, too sensible for the Middle East I guess; so until the next cease-fire, and the next flare up, then….
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Neverending story…
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Monday, at 6:06 pm