i don’t consider myself to be a “far left sympathiser” but someone who has personally experienced the feelings of fear, loathing and tension which exist in the Israel/Palestine region.
The tensions go back to before the creation of Israel by the winners of the Big One WWII when in order to assuage their own guilt over allowing Jews, Queers and Slavs/Gypsies to be systematically mass murdered in their millions by Hitler’s SS while the world (and in particular the Roman Catholic Church) watched on in silence and complicity not raising even an eyebrow to end the slaughter, created Israel out of what was then a British mandate with no attention paid to the people (the Palestinians) who were already living there and who had been living their for countless generations. They were displaced and not properly, if at all, compensated.
When the State of Israel was founded there was an immediate reaction by the neighbouring Arab States which did NOT want a (secular/democratic) Jewish state in their midst. There was an immediate war which the Arabs, in a pattern that was to become all too familiar, lost because they were a) poorly led, b) poorly organized, c) poorly motivated, d) largely ineffective and e) poorly coordinated fighting against a nascient IDF which was, ) a) very well led, b) very effectively organized, c) highly motivated (nothing like losing 6 million brothers and sisters to the gas chambers of Eastern Europe), d) very coordinated and e) exceptionally effective.
The Irgun, an (unofficial?) offshoot of the Israeli Defense Force led by none other than future Israeli PM Menachem Begin, set out on a series of highly purposeful and effective, essentially ‘terrorist’ acts to strike fear into the hearts of Palestinian farmers by entering Palestinian villages and laying waste to them, killing anyone and everyone in the villages. This caused Palestinians in Palestine to flee their farms for their lives. This time is known as The Nakba (the catastrophe). These lands were quickly taken over by the incoming holocaust surviving Jews.
Thus you have the establishment of the State of Israel on land either stolen or poorly compensated for.
The Hamas attack which started on Saturday (07/10/23), is just another of the many tit-for-tat exchanges by both sides in which they try to out brutalize each other. Launched exactly 50 years and one day after the start of the infamous October War of 1973 where it looked like Israel might finally get pushed into the sea. But again lack of coordination, motivation and proper leadership on the part of the Arab forces made sure that that would not happen, plus a massive airlift of weapons from the USA, which only supports Israel out of guilt and the pressure exerted by the Evangelical right wing of the GOP who all predict the End Times. They look forward to this as a completion of prophesy and a glorious return of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to bring us all up to Heavenly Glory! (oh my god i thing i’m gonna orgasm).
Meanwhile the number of Palestinian dead and wounded has already gone higher than the number of dead and wounded on the Israeli side. And today there are reports that the Egyptian secret service contacted their Israeli counterparts to warn them that something was up, but the warnings (like the 9/11 warnings) were not paid attention to or overlooked or ignored. (Netanyahu wants power just as much as anyone in the region and could easily have calculated that allowing Hamas to wage it’s little war would help him retain power; so far so good for him as that is exactly what’s happened. The fighting has distracted the Israeli public from his personal and professional screw-ups that were causing the nation to endure weekend after weekend of anti-Neti protests in Tel Aviv and Jerusalam.)
What i can’t understand why the initial Hamas attack was so effective, the body count so high and the Isreali response so pathetically slow. EVERY Israeli household has members of the IDF reserve in their homes. These reservists all have fully loaded automatic weapons with caches of replenishment ammo on hand to deal with such uprisings as Hamas launched on Saturday.
At the concert in the desert where, apparently, 250 Isreali (and at least 2 Americans and 3 Canadians) were killed there was no immediate armed response from the party goers that i’ve heard of. Surely there were some reservists in the crowd and surely they would have come with their fully loaded sub-machine guns secreted in their bags. Especially given the 50th anniversary date and, one would think, heightened awareness that shit was likely to hit the fan given the way both sides like to play the blame game and commemorate important dates.
i visited Israel exactly one year after the October ‘73 war. The heightened sense of security was palpable. i’m surprised that was not the case on the War’s 50th anniversary. i’ve written to my one Israeli colleague/friend and fellow TESOLer. In response to a question as to whether or not she’s out of harm’s way she replied, “I’d like to say that I am – but I’ve no idea what harm is on its way to me and my loved ones! Meantime, I am worrying about my grandkids who are – in the army, somewhere, in safe rooms in Tel Aviv and Rehovot, and in distress (various levels of traumatization)). And we wait – with trepidation – for news of the hostages.“
In the end the only real losers will be the Palestinians, several thousand more will die as the IDF and Jewish ‘settlers’ illegal or otherwise, continue to rain death on Gaza, a sliver of land with over 2 million inhabitants crammed into an urban wasteland. The killings of women, children and babies inflicted by the IDF are hidden behind the destruction of entire apartment blocks, school buildings and mosques orchestrated by remote control from the IDF HQ somewhere in the Negrev Desert.
If people want to label Hamas a terrorist organization they’d do well to put the other terrorist shoe on the IDF and Netanyahu and his right wing coalition who have allowed an unparalleled rush into Palestinian lands by illegal Israeli settlers.
What we see, playing out in real time, real life vignettes, is the death of the Two State Solution. Netanyahu and his right wing coalition would never go for it. This ensures it will never happen. NO PEACE THIS YEAR or anytime soon in the Middle East even if Saudi Arabia’s defacto leader, the murderous MBS, signs a peace deal with Neti when the smoke finally settles and the flames finally subside.
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