Gaza/Israel one month
A few brief musings from Oct. 31.
One month ago today, October 7, 2023, the carnage occurred ‘outside the walls’ of Gaza in Israel. I wrote about it on October 8, here, and early on (in a note on Oct. 13) said I’d comment more on the one month anniversary, which is today. The latest news is of what sounds like a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
We are all needed, on the court, to resolve this.
I write as an individual, 7 time zones west of Gaza. I follow history. What follows is my own opinion.
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Background: In January, 1996, I was privileged to spend over a week in Israel. The program itinerary, music and readings included the below perspective map of Israel compared with Minnesota. Especially note Gaza.
Israel, including Gaza, 1995
In 1996, we did not get near Gaza, but you can see the tiny land area that is Gaza within the small country that is Israel.
I’ve had two extraordinarily rich learning opportunities about Israel and the Holocaust. The first was in January, 1996 (Israel); the second April and early May, 2000 (Holocaust places in Czech Republic and Poland). Both trips were preceded and followed by intense study and reflection crossing religious boundaries. The travelers in the first were Christians; in the second about half and half Jewish and Catholic.
2005-07 I was privileged to be President of a coalition, Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers, whose membership included a church based group, “Palestine-Israel Justice Project”, whose members were highly respected senior leaders, and advocates for Peace and Justice: a Methodist minister, a Lutheran Bishop and a Catholic Nun.. Another member group was Middle East Peace Now (MEPN).
My trip to Israel was at a time of relative peace, though two months before we arrived, Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated by a radical Israeli in Jerusalem. Yasser Arafat was soon to be elected PLO President. There was no separation wall, and travel seemed unimpeded. I recall no nervous moments.
Back home, a few years later, the suicide bombings began, They are a topic of their own which anyone can easily research. One incident particularly caught my attention. A young Palestinian woman blew herself up, killing an Israeli young woman. The story is here: Newsweek April 14, 2002. What is missing are the side by side photos included with the article of the two young women, who looked startlingly alike. They could have been sisters. Unfortunately the internet doesn’t include the photographs, and I didn’t keep the pages. But the photos were extraordinarily powerful. Of many memories I have, the photos of these two young women, Jewish and Palestinian, were the most striking.
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What is ahead for Israel and, for that matter, ourselves?
I decided to wait a month to see what the Israeli response would be to October 7, 2023. Everyone now knows the answer to that question. Essentially it seems a repeat of our ill-fated action in response to 9-11-01.
I don’t pretend to know any more than anyone else, except to say that I do watch things like this, which are not abstract random events.
In this first month, I’ve thought back, a lot, to post 9-11-01, and a directly related event, our attack on Afghanistan one month later, on October 7, 2001. The justification for that event was to rid the world of something called Al-qaida. We Americans were almost totally in support of this reprisal.
I won’t waste words arguing our 21 years mired in Iraq and Afghanistan…there is a great plenty of history of what happened next, and the present day. We can’t pretend that history didn’t happen, and what happened within the 21 years. We aren’t the only one with memory. I wonder, did we learn anything? Has the Israeli government…?
Personally, I think that October 7, 2023, was not a coincidental date for the attack on Israel.
Having said that, personal opinion: war is never the answer. The end of one war, simply begins preparations for the next. War doesn’t deliver us from evil. As I look at the map, it is as if the war erupted from within a prison (Gaza) from which escape was near impossible. Sometimes irrational acts like this are messages of desperation, regardless of the stated motivation.
A personal opinion came from a friend on October 9. He’s a long-time good friend, whose ancestors came from Syria many years ago, and he laid the problem at the feet of “the Balfour project and the and the British Mandate … executed resulting in the creation of Israel [in the wake of WWI]“. I haven’t asked, but my presumption from previous conversations with him are that he’s talking about this.
The history of October 7 , 2023, did not begin on October 6, and will not be weighed by the pounds of words for or against, and so far the future does not look bright. Regardless of the outcome of the war, the “Hamas” philosophy will not be eliminated, but simply be replicated and appear again in some other form.
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We seem resistant to learn a basic lesson: we’re all together on the same patch of real estate – the earth – and we best figure out how to live together.
I think there is some good news in the midst of the bad. I believe that a vast majority of us – all of us – Palestinians and Jews and everyone else, are people of good will and given the chance will figure out some way to work together. At least I can hope for that.
I’d like to know the opinions of three of my mentors, who were all advocates of peace and justice, but they’re no longer available. Florence, a Catholic Nun; Lyle, a Methodist Minister; and Lowell, a Lutheran Bishop, all would have valuable perspectives. So would my political hero, Jimmy Carter, who took this issue very seriously.
But they’re no longer available, and it’s left with us, now, as individuals, in dialogue with others who may see things differently than ourselves. Making a better world begins at the basic level: you and I.
Failing that the victims of failure to find an equitable resolution will be common folks like ourselves who control the outcome by who we elect to represent us.
There will always be evil among us. No amount of ‘thoughts and prayers’ or wishing away will suffice in times like this, and in the future. In a democracy we have a choice as to who will represent us, and it is incumbent on us to make a careful choice.
COMMENTS (more at the end of post):
from Gail: Thanks, Dick. I gather from your blog that there is some historical significance to the date of October 7? I like your map overlay, BTW – useful!
Response to Gail: October 7 is significant only in my own mind, at this point. It wouldn’t be the first time that an anniversary of something is used as a pretext for something else, sometime years later….
from Dick G: Thank you for this piece. I’ve always depended on you for reasonable thoughts on conditions in our world. I’m really concerned about this situation. I’ll look forward to your thoughts. I wonder what Jesus would have to say…maybe I’d better dig out my Bible and see.
from Carole: Thank you. I will be heading to Freedom Plaza this afternoon to plead for a cease fire (at the very least) until the people of Gaza can find safe refuge somewhere.
from anonymous, with permission: It’s unnerving to be Jewish in the United States right now.
from Brian: Love your post about Gaza! So right on.
2)
MIGHT MAKES RIGHT
October 20, 2023
Back in San Antonio when I was just in grade school, I was almost crying when my teachers told me about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and women and children being openly killed by our then President, Truman. I shared this with Momma. She said “Brian, calm down, might makes right”.
Well, I’ve been working a lot with Native Americans. We have somewhat peace because “might makes right”. No more scalpings, no more mass murder killing Native Americans with poisoned blankets.
My mother was so wise! Bless her soul. I love her so much.
from Curt: I suggest reading 1948 by Bennie Morris. Give great perspective to the current situation. As much as I hate to say this, I believe the only Middle East solution is regime change in Iran. Have a great weekend,
from John: Thoughtful and timely.
from Peter: Here’s something beautiful from Hedges, who I finally met in NYC last month at a luncheon for Julian Assange.
from Larry: Thanks, Dick…that’s an excellent idea showing the map with the size of Gaza vs. Minnesota. Puts it into geographic perspective.
from Jeff: Peace is sadly a long way away. Israel is sowing the dragons teeth.
from John: I appreciated your thoughts and perspectives on Gaza in your latest blog. With a brief burst of sanity in Iraq 1 [Jan. – Feb. 1991], where we just got in and got out after achieving stared objectives, Israel’s going down the same rabbit hole we did in Vietnam, Iraq, 2, and Afghanistan – when a greater power tries to go into a native population and try to figure out who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy. Add that to the countless other smaller scrimmages that don’t make the headlines – in general Africa, and Somalia comes to mind.
While I can certainly understand why Israel feels that it has to respond to the atrocities committed against its residents by Hamas, its military effort to eliminate Hamas will be a challenge and probably not successful. In fact, if civilians continue to be killed at a high rate regardless of whether the Hamas is using them as shields in various ways, sympathy for Hama will rise and support for Israel may diminish. Close quarters, narrow streets, many tunnels under hospitals and so on to protect the Hamas fighters will make it very hard for Israel to rid Gaza of Hamas no matter what they do or how hard they try..
I agree that we never learn and that war is not the answer. Question: what is? Hamas have skillfully infiltrated themselves amongst the Palestinian population (a popular and cowardly terrorist tactic), in the assumption that our better angels will be deterred from striking back. I loathe and despise Netanyahu. We have two very bad actors running the show here. But this is an ancient ill going back thousands of years and healing the original illness, especially from our distant high horses, is impossible. You cannot negotiate or reason with those who have no better angels. It seems as though nearly everything was done badly from the beginning in an attempt to give the Jews a place to call home after two thousand years of disconnect.
And as for whose home it is. One deep part of this rot is the very ancient and catastrophic tendency humans have to claim “mine!” I got here first, I’m a this, you’re a that. If you want to go really far back, no one is indigenous to anywhere but Africa. We’ve all been on the move since the beginning and every people came from elsewhere. But we continue to feel that we “own” bits and pieces of the planet. This has been the bedrock philosophy behind war since we picked up our first rock to hurl.
Instead of merging as a peaceful and sharing species on an ever-shrinking planet, who have learned from our bloody mistakes, we continue to categorize ourselves into warring tribes with increased passion. Social media only exacerbates this. And it’s coming to a head all over our overpopulated world.
What are the Israelis supposed to do? Ceasefire. Allow the Palestinians to leave, assuming any surrounding nation would absorb them. Big if. Assuming Hamas would not hide amongst them. Many civilian lives would be saved but what then? Stay unwelcome as refugees? Return to the same situation and wait for it to boil up again? We can try to save civilians and then go back to Gaza and knock on the Hamas headquarters door and blast them all to bits. Wait, that won’t work, they have no headquarters. Terrorism is a disease infecting every corner of a population. Rooting it out is miserably painful.
The Jews are accused of having “gone like sheep” to their fate in the Holocaust. They show signs of refusing to do that again and I’m glad. Hamas’ only stated mission is to eliminate Jews from the planet. Iran is happy to help. That goal very nearly succeeded last time. Since there are plenty of Nazis around, and with the added nuclear tools, it could very well do so this time if we don’t stand firm with them.
There are terrible crimes against humanity going on all over the earth. Why is the shriek particularly high for this one? Antisemitism is rising like a rocket. American Jews are afraid. Friends are afraid to say which “side” they’re on.
Civilians have always been the first victim of war. Did we call a ceasefire before we annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Did we learn from that lesson? No.
Until there is an actually powerful world council that decides these things, we are stuck with childish, jealous and evil tactics of war.
And until then, I stand with the Jews and their right to EXIST. And their right to have a home and defend themselves. Even as I weep for the Palestinians.
I have simple questions:
1. Why do we see UN resolutions with vote counts 190 vs 2 (US and Israel)? Many such resolutions over the years. As Dick says, we are not the only ones with memory.
2. Why do we teach smartest young people about international law? Why do we have world court and human rights commissions? Are some countries above the law?
3. Why do we have churches and peace advocates if they are not moved by death and abuse of thousands of civilians and children?
4. What is a rule-based world order if rules don’t bind the rule makers?
I’ve considered myself to be a peacemaker, influenced greatly by my Peace Corps Service, 1966-68, in the Dominican Republic. The country was in turmoil after then President Trujijo’s murder. My work in San Francisco de Macoris as an Extension Agent, was unimpeded, but going back to the Capitol, Santo Domingo, 143 K south, monthly to the Peace Corps office was eye-opening. Heavily armed officers were everywhere. We were cautioned to only go out in daylight, but most of us went out evenings, occasionally, in small groups, to enjoy DR foods (but sometimes American fare!) and music. During my service only one volunteer died, riding with Dominicans in an overloaded truck that went off the road, frequently our only distance transportation. The situation in Israel/Gaza is off the charts in comparison, but the availability and use of fire arms here in the US, particularly in rural areas like my own, is very disconcerting!
I have often said that the best chance for world peace was September 12,2011. The US failed big time.
Now Israel’s best chance for peace was October 8, 2023. They too have failed. They may eliminate Hamas but will unleash something far worse.