Gaza.
The safe haven of Hamas. Over two million people live on the Gaza strip, close to 800,000 packed together in an amalgamation of buildings known as the city of Gaza. Buildings upon buildings, the ghetto the Palestinians were offered. "The Gaza Strip fell to British forces during World War I, becoming a part of the British Mandate of Palestine (as prescribed by the League of Nations in 1920). Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt administered the newly formed Gaza Strip; Israel captured it in the Six-Day War in 1967. Under a series of agreements known as the Oslo Accords signed between 1993 and 1999, Israel transferred to the newly-created Palestinian Authority (PA) security and civilian responsibility for many Palestinian-populated areas of the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank." [1]
"The Gaza Strip has been under the de facto governing authority of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) since 2007, and has faced years of conflict, poverty, and humanitarian crises." [1] Hamas has, through elections, moved Fatah away from any meaningful governing capacity in Gaza, in fact becoming the Palestinian Authority, by nature and by force. So yes, unless something major is happening at the population level, one can say that since the election results are a marker, the majority of Palestinian civilians in Gaza support Hamas. But do they?
Can elections effectively controlled by a terrorist organization be considered a reliable marker? Would Hamas concede they lost an election to a moderate faction of the Palestinian political spectrum? I don't think so. Once again, walk with me while I organize my thoughts on this situation, keeping in mind that they are my thoughts alone, even if reference sources are sometimes quoted.
The Israelis withdrawal in 2005, unilaterally ending their presence in the strip, lead to the walling of the area. Israel controls most land access and all sea access to the strip. Only the southern border is controlled by Egypt, roughly six miles long. That's not a typo. The Gaza Strip is reduced to an area of roughly 140 square miles. Gaza city itself, to the North, is a large agglomeration of structures, piled up over the years, systematically worn down and torn down by Israel. Khan Yunis is the next largest location to the South, and between the two, the port town of Dayr al Balah, if we can call it a "town". Finally, there's the border location of Rafah, touching Egypt. That's it. A strip. A box. A kill box.
Because Hamas is in control, transforming the Palestinians sea gate to the world into a base of operations from which they launched many attacks against Israel since 2007, one can hardly call the Gaza Strip a part of Palestine, the way it was envisioned by a two state solution. It has been just a terrorist sandbox for many years now. And on October 7, 2023, that reality became suddenly and painfully apparent to the world, most of which in turn immediately entered the denial stage, having to deal with the fact that Gaza was nothing but a fucking mess created not by the Israelis alone, but by Hamas in particular. In the urge to defend Palestine, most of the world tried to justify the attack at the same time it condemned it as an act of terrorism. "It's a horrible thing, what happened but... the Jews were asking for it." After all, this is what you get after years of "colonization", talking as if Palestine was India, or Angola, in the 20th century, or... the America of the 18th century?
The main source of confusion about the region is it's designation. A quick look at History tells you the Jews lived in the area long before the Roman Empire conquered it. "The ancient Romans pinned the name on the Land of Israel. In 135 CE, after stamping out the province of Judea’s second insurrection, the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina—that is, “Palestinian Syria.” They did so resentfully, as a punishment, to obliterate the link between the Jews (in Hebrew, Y’hudim and in Latin Judaei) and the province (the Hebrew name of which was Y’hudah). “Palaestina” referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the Mediterranean coast." [2]
"The term was meaningful to Christians as synonymous with the Holy Land. It was meaningful to Jews as synonymous with Eretz Yisrael, which is Hebrew for the Land of Israel. As noted by the Palestinian scholar Muhammad Y. Muslih in The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, Arabic speakers sometimes used the Arabic words for “Holy Land,” but never coined a uniquely Arabic name for the territory; Filastin is the Arabic pronunciation of the Roman terminology. “Palestine was also referred to as Surya al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria), because it was part of geographical Syria,” wrote Muslih. In the pre-World War I era, scholars also sometimes said Palestine was the region just south of Syria." [2]
So yes, once and for all, Israel is "a thing", and Palestine is "a thing". Denying any of the two is denying History. Claiming Israel only exists since 1948 is the paragon of stupidity, as is professing that Palestine has existed "forever". Please, stop running your mouths and read some reliable sources like, oh, I don't know, History fucking books, maybe. During the independence struggle, between 1945 and 1948, Arabs and Jews were fighting the British out of the region, oftentimes helping each other. Palestinians actually gave shelter to Jewish fighters, considered "terrorists" by (then) Her Majesty's government. British submarines were given instructions to prevent more ships carrying European Jewish refugees from getting to their Palestine protectorate. It was an all out war for the end of a TRUE colonialist era, and the colonialists were not Jewish, they were British.
Today, again, we see the region on fire. We see the violence spread, the madness expand. Once again, a government is trying to fight fire with gasoline, treating a terrorist organization as if they are a regular army, with a central command, a geopolitical territory, with a centralized government and the support of the people they are fighting for. Just like the British did with the IRA, and like we did with Al-Qaeda. How did those work out? The IRA did not cease to exist because the British intensified their military campaign against them, but because they finally stopped it. And as for us, America, all we got after decades of War on Terror was more terror, and a new terrorist organization in lieu of Al-Qaeda. That's how well it worked out. Israel's reaction to Hamas is no different, and it will lead to the exact same result.
I said it before and I will say it here, again: terrorism is a law enforcement problem, that needs to be handled by law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, and due to the nature of the threat, at times the involvement of special operations teams, and military intelligence assets. Using the military to fight terrorism is throwing gasoline into the fire, and the result is not the extinction of terrorists, it's their exponential spawning. Congratulations, Israel. You got yourselves another endless war. And for what...?
As I write these words, the first day of December, 2023, almost two months after 10/7, a new set of facts has seen the light of day. Facts that are verified, and prove the terrible events of October 7, and the ones that followed, could have been avoided entirely. All the Jewish victims, and all the Palestinian victims, are now seen through a different lens. One that makes their loss much more wasteful and heartbreaking.
About these facts, on this day I wrote on my Good Morning post, on Threads:
"The NYT came out with a story that sheds a lot of light on what happened BEFORE 10/7. It has receipts, and it runs through MONTHS of previous Israeli intelligence gathering that specified Hamas was not only planning an attack like 10/7 over the Gaza borders, it actually had the fucking BLUEPRINTS for such an offensive. One intelligence female officer, in particular, sounded the alarm, again and again, including REAL intel about Hamas exercises preparing for 10/7. But no one listened." [3] (Link to full post here.)
Cultural Zionists... So much to be said about those Jews who defend Zionism like their life depends on it, while in fact, as most of them are reform Jews, Cultural Zionists don't give a shit about them.
"(...) So now you have cultural Zionists among us, claiming for the eradication of Palestinian presence in the regions of Gaza, and yes the West Bank. The need to push back, to once and for all finish what was started during the Nakba. One mind’s thoughts might bring back a hateful word that has little to do with Jewish affairs, but illustrates the mentality exhibited by such a strand of Zionism: Lebensraum. The territory a nation believes is needed for its natural development. (...) Israel is an inclusive state. For many cultures and many different people who share the desire for peace and a normal life. For all religions, all cultures, all tendencies. From the honest embrace of their LGBTQ+ community to the Bedouin tracker groups and the Desert Recon Battalion in the IDF. Not exactly a cultural Zionist setting, but nevertheless, the reality of today’s Israel. A society vastly different in the ways it sees itself than those embraced in 1948, which led to the Nakba. History waits for no one, but there are always those longing for the good old days… Make America great again, remember that? Well, for the cultural Zionists, making Israel great again is a REAL thing. And the threat is not just Hamas, or Hezbollah. It’s everyone who endangers the existence of their delusional ethnocentric religious state. And yes, in the long run, that means you too, the reform Jew. The Jew who, according to cultural Zionism, is not a Jew at all. Did you know that? (...)" [4] (Link to full post here.)
So where do we go from here...?
How do we balance our indignation for what Hamas is doing with the legitimate plight of the Palestinian people? How do we reconcile the right of the Jewish people to a tolerant, inclusive homeland, with the fascist Netanyahu regime? How do we deal with the fact that all those kids at the Nova festival, on October 7, could have been prevented from ever being there in the first place? How do we live with an Israeli response to 10/7 designed to save Bibi from political extinction rather than to save the Israeli hostages, and innocent Palestinian lives?
It's a shit show... An endless shit show... And I only pray to a God I stopped believing in long ago, that someone smarter than me finds a solution. Because I have none, I see none, and I can't imagine how to get out of this mess. I wish I had words of hope for you. That at least you deserve for putting up with me for this long blogpost. But I can't lie to you. And I just don't know...
This is the fork on the road. This is where you make up your mind about how to proceed, what to do next, where to go. That I do know, for myself alone, although you are free to follow me on this path. And it's not an easy one. It's full of traps, laid down by our own feelings, waiting for us to take the bait we so carelessly put down for ourselves to bite. Don't do it. Resist the urge to bite it, no matter how appealing it is, how satisfying (in the moment) it may seem. You will regret the easy way out. Don't take it.
Take the hardest path up. The one you look at and clearly see yourself falling off those slippery ledges. I take it, trusting someone will catch my hand if I slip, and slip I will, and so will you. If I am there, I will catch your hand. I promise. I don't care who you are, Jew or gentile, but I will catch you. Because we are in this together, and if there is a chance in hell we can reach the top, that is together.
So I will catch you, and hope one day you will do the same for me.
Stay strong. Remain true to yourself. Look for the good in everyone, be merciful when you find it, and merciless when you don't. And keep climbing. That's my answer to you. I know it's not easy, but has it ever been? So let's try it one more time, for ourselves, for those who one day will carry the torch we keep alive, and most of all, for those who will never know us but depend on us to do the right thing. Follow your heart, and you will. Peace be with you.
[finis]
Notes:
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (other blogposts/blog pages):
1. Haaretz Yisrael. (link here)
2. Achoti I . Ahavat Yisrael (link here)
3. Shalom Aleichem. (link here)
[1] source: Central Intelligence Agency.
[2] source: Douglas J. Feith, Mosaic Magazine.
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