The last thing a writer wants to say is “I have no words.” But in the case of the latest Hamas terrorism inside Israel, I’m close. Oh, I have words alright, but none that adequately describe the horror, the outrage. Truly, how do you voice a response to the deliberate murder of babies, the slaughter of unarmed civilians in their hundreds? Does “barbaric” do the job? What about “disgusting,” “horrific,” “repugnant,” “disgraceful?” No words I can think of convey the horrors of the deeds, the anguish of the victims and the anger in response.
Hmm. You say the piece is uninformed, but offer nothing to back up your assertion. I'm intrigued because there's not a word in my piece that's not either accurate or an informed opinion.
Let's start with the first 2 assertions in 1 sentence "Perhaps the murder of hundreds of Palestinian Arabs in the 1940s by Zionist terrorists and the violent displacement of thousands more? "
Without attacking your # for the murdered Arabs, (there were 117, not hundreds), that is a loss of innocent life and it is reprehensible. Many communities have lost civilians without using the injustice as a source for generations to follow. I would direct you to the increasingly large number of Jews in Germany and the good relations between Israel and Germany. Yes, Germany has done a great deal to own up to their Holocaust history, as Israel has for this murder spree.
You reference the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Again, leaving aside the issue of whether these are camps or filled with refugees ( these are towns with an economy and long-term residents who are not free to return to Jordan, Egypt nor Lebanon, all arab states), the Israelis were responding to massive and long term terror campaign emanating from those places. There were 6,000 foreign mercenaries, from Chad, Libya, Mozambique, Iraq, India, Sri Lanka hired by the Palestinian Arabs to terrorize the Israeli villages.
Please ask why the Palestinian Arabs have not conspired to eliminate by murder all of Syria due to a 1985 attack on the same camps by Muslim militiamen. According to UN officials, 635 were killed and 2,500 wounded. During a two-year battle between the Syrian-backed Shiite Amal militia and the PLO, more than 2,000 people, including many civilians, were reportedly killed.
You then write if Israel destroys the Hamas tunnels with bunker-buster missiles, "What will happen to 2 million Gazans then?". Please remember that the tunnels are in northern Gaza, where 1 million live. Not the 2 million, but a very large number of civilians. To date, Israel has dropped well over 6,000 bombs on that portion of Gaza, completely or partially destroying well over 17,000 homes and buildings. The death toll is claimed to be about 2,000. How is it possible for civilians to withstand a bombing of this magnitude and destruction without significantly(let's say 50 people live in half of those buildings, 400,000 should have been killed or seriously wounded)? I'll leave you to answer.
I'll skip to this sentence: "First, the Biden Administration has been, for months, trying to build on the success of the Trump Administration’s Abraham Accords that normalized diplomatic relations among Israel, Morocco, Bahrain, the UAE and possibly Sudan.".
Biden has NOT tried to build on anything Trump has done, let alone what may be one of his most lasting legacies for which anyone else would have been given the Peace Prize. On the contrary, Biden has fomented, exacerbated and enabled this conflict by enriching Hamas's benefactor, Iran. Iran has received well over 50 billion dollars in the last year from Biden's lack of enforcement of the sanctions on Iranian oil. Then there is the issue of releasing the $6 billion in frozen assets, none of which has gone out but is there to be relied on.
The slow pace of America coming to terms with Saudi Arabia motivates Iran to scuttle now or at least delay that agreement. Please watch this from a Saudi commentator.
Finally, there's this kumbaya sentence - "We’re a long way from that now, but maybe, just maybe, the Camp David Peace Accords, the Abraham Accords and a potential agreement with Saudi Arabia will help clear the way toward curbing anti-Israeli terrorism and a peaceful future.".
Where have you been for the last several decades? This fight is not about Arabs who want to "just go home and live in peace". For that small minority who have been expelled by all their homeland and brother Arab nations, they make a living as mercenary refugee victims funded mainly by Iran and to a lesser but still large amount by the Western countries, directly and indirectly through the UN.
You find a soft place for these refugee victims and take their revised history as given. Why won't you also take their written declarations at face value as well?
The Hamas Covenant - 'The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.' (Article 7).
Israel has already surrendered the entire Sinai desert and the entire Gaza strip. Not good, not even close to good. Robert, Hamas and their supporters will be peaceful when Article 7 above leaves no Jew on the face of the earth.
Thanks for your response, but I remain unconvinced. You claimed my piece is “uninformed” suggesting inaccurate facts, but when I asked for some backup for that claim, you provide only a litany of “whataboutism,” opinions that differ from mine (which of course is your right) and citations of facts that have little or nothing to do with what I wrote. You also seem to think that I’m in some way pro-Hamas which of course is utterly untrue as my very first paragraph made clear, or so I thought.
Sadly, public discourse on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is invariably burdened with whataboutism. We all know about Hamas/Hezbollah/PLO/etc. terrorism. We all understand that they want Israel wiped off the face of the map. We all understand that Iran and Qatar (with Netanyahu’s blessing, btw) fund their operations. And most of us understand that that is deeply wrong. I nowhere suggested otherwise. But absolutely none of that justifies a response by Israel that is not “measured” and would therefore kill and displace countless innocent people and make the future worse for Israel, which is my main point. We may well be witnessing the early stages of a humanitarian disaster of horrifying proportions and yes, Hamas is largely at fault for that. But Israel has an opportunity to ameliorate the situation while also trying to destroy or greatly diminish Hamas. It should do so. What Israel does or doesn’t do affects not only Hamas, but Israel as well and should be carefully calibrated to damage Hamas as much as possible and Israel as little as possible. The last couple of days seem to indicate that Israel may be pulling back from its most belligerent stance which I applaud.
As to specifics, the Sabra/Shatilla massacres were investigated by the UN and by the Israeli government, both of which found Israel to be responsible for failing to intervene despite having the power and the opportunity to do so. Ariel Sharon was forced to resign as Defense Minister because of it. Israel itself didn’t give Israel a pass on the massacre, but you seem to want to because, well, “what about all the wrongs done by Muslim terrorists?”
You somehow believe that the number of Gazans killed by Israeli bombing relates to my piece despite my not having addressed that issue. I don’t mind criticism, but kindly criticize what I write and not what I don’t. More importantly, no one, including you, knows how many people lie dead under all the rubble of destroyed buildings. We won’t know that for weeks or perhaps months, so your reason for bringing it up remains a mystery.
As to Biden trying to engineer a deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, that’s just objective fact. Hey, you can Google it. I hold no brief for Joe Biden, but facts are facts. And the fact that he released a large sum of Iran’s money back to Iran in no way suggests that he’s not promoting a deal with SA. It’s just more whataboutism on your part.
And yes, I understand that there never were 2 million inhabitants of Gaza City, but, if 1 million people flee south, that will roughly double the population of that part of Gaza with possibly the direst consequences. That of course was my point.
Thanks for reading my reply, thinking it through and taking the time and trouble to respond, Robert.
I did in fact, engage in some "Whataboutisms" along with direct responses to your piece. However, the whataboutisms were not in the likes of "I know you are, but what am I" as tainted in early public school. I intended to engage your moral arguments, which to me were of a "Moral people and soldiers engage in combat in this way and for these reasons.". Meaning, as I take you to have written because there is no evil in this combat, we can both explain a rationale for the barbarism and point to what are agreeable rules of engagement. Of course, you condemned Hamas, yet excused their barbarism through the back door of - had Israel not committed non-barbaras but illegal acts, like ...... then Hamas would have been able to live peacefully, and the events of Oct would certainly not have happened. Further, you seem to suggest, that now that Oct 7 has happened, let's move forward with the Geneva Convention rules of engagement and not look back at the barbarism pretending the enemy is a well-regarded signatory of the convention and will start abiding from today forward.
Yet if that's not what you intended and if I even misread it in print, I would point out that Hamas is just as culpable for following the rules. As you might imagine the rules prohibit things like beheading, mutilation, rape, denigrating, and murder. The rules are clear and short. you may want to read them while having Hamas in mind, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf .
Then, once you've read the rules. please write a compelling piece about how Hamas should engage in this war.
The portion of your piece which is most uninformed is to finger wag at Israel without pointing to Hamas's future rules of engagement, and then, as I pointed out earlier, demanding "a measured response", was itself contradictory to your piece, and seemingly uninformed about the measure that was inflicted by Hamas.
I'll end by quoting Golda Meir's 1967 premonition: "If the Palestinians lay down their weapons, there will be peace. If the Israelis lay down their weapons, there will be a massacre." Telling Israel to restraint, or completely laying down their weapons, any of them, would leave Israel to October 7 over, and over again.
I have never said this, Robert, but this piece is entirely uninformed. If not entirely uninformed, then entirely informed by the UNWRA revisionist history books the West so liberally funds.
As a bit of advice, you don't want a "Measured response" from Israel or world Jewry. It should not, nor will it be, as measured and unspeakable as Hamas, its supporters and enablers used on October 7, 2023, which was the Jewish day of celebration of the Torah (the basis for world ethical behaviour). It was a time when Jews worldwide sang, danced and feasted. For many families that day, while they sat at their tables, their uninvited guests tied their hands and their children's hands behind them, then removed the father's eye in front of his children, shot each child in the back of the head, shot each parent in the back of the head, then helped themselves to the prepared feast.
I expect that is not the measure you suggest Israel use to end the cycle of celebrations of Jewish terrorization.
I would ask, was the attack by Hamas, “measured”? No one in the West seems to be calling for ‘measured’ actions from them. It’s as if they don’t believe that is even possible. A tacit admission that genuine evil IS afoot and appeals to reason are meaningless for them. Few say say it, but the truth is Hamas simply wants every Jew dead and Israel off the map. No matter the cost, even to the Palestinian people. They are a self proclaimed death cult.
Then, on the left, if they aren’t actively celebrating the barbarism, they are justifying it as necessary ‘resistance’, as if what we witnessed could be explained in normal political terms. I don’t think so. I do of course like you fear the consequences of an eye for an eye response, but it is always Israel who is called upon to show restraint, which I think is another tacit admission. Unlike their enemies, they have and DO listen to reason, not always, but often. Yes, Hamas are human and not demons, but there is no moral equivalency here, and I think we have to finally accept that human beings are capable of being overtaken wholly by purely irrational, destructive drives, and that can go for groups as well as individuals. I don’t know what the best strategy would be, but I have no problem naming evil wherever it manifests, and that includes in my own heart.
Hmm. You say the piece is uninformed, but offer nothing to back up your assertion. I'm intrigued because there's not a word in my piece that's not either accurate or an informed opinion.
Well, I can give you a bit of a response.
Let's start with the first 2 assertions in 1 sentence "Perhaps the murder of hundreds of Palestinian Arabs in the 1940s by Zionist terrorists and the violent displacement of thousands more? "
Without attacking your # for the murdered Arabs, (there were 117, not hundreds), that is a loss of innocent life and it is reprehensible. Many communities have lost civilians without using the injustice as a source for generations to follow. I would direct you to the increasingly large number of Jews in Germany and the good relations between Israel and Germany. Yes, Germany has done a great deal to own up to their Holocaust history, as Israel has for this murder spree.
Check here for the Expulsion Myth https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/myths-and-facts-the-refugees#e
You reference the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Again, leaving aside the issue of whether these are camps or filled with refugees ( these are towns with an economy and long-term residents who are not free to return to Jordan, Egypt nor Lebanon, all arab states), the Israelis were responding to massive and long term terror campaign emanating from those places. There were 6,000 foreign mercenaries, from Chad, Libya, Mozambique, Iraq, India, Sri Lanka hired by the Palestinian Arabs to terrorize the Israeli villages.
Please ask why the Palestinian Arabs have not conspired to eliminate by murder all of Syria due to a 1985 attack on the same camps by Muslim militiamen. According to UN officials, 635 were killed and 2,500 wounded. During a two-year battle between the Syrian-backed Shiite Amal militia and the PLO, more than 2,000 people, including many civilians, were reportedly killed.
You then write if Israel destroys the Hamas tunnels with bunker-buster missiles, "What will happen to 2 million Gazans then?". Please remember that the tunnels are in northern Gaza, where 1 million live. Not the 2 million, but a very large number of civilians. To date, Israel has dropped well over 6,000 bombs on that portion of Gaza, completely or partially destroying well over 17,000 homes and buildings. The death toll is claimed to be about 2,000. How is it possible for civilians to withstand a bombing of this magnitude and destruction without significantly(let's say 50 people live in half of those buildings, 400,000 should have been killed or seriously wounded)? I'll leave you to answer.
I'll skip to this sentence: "First, the Biden Administration has been, for months, trying to build on the success of the Trump Administration’s Abraham Accords that normalized diplomatic relations among Israel, Morocco, Bahrain, the UAE and possibly Sudan.".
Biden has NOT tried to build on anything Trump has done, let alone what may be one of his most lasting legacies for which anyone else would have been given the Peace Prize. On the contrary, Biden has fomented, exacerbated and enabled this conflict by enriching Hamas's benefactor, Iran. Iran has received well over 50 billion dollars in the last year from Biden's lack of enforcement of the sanctions on Iranian oil. Then there is the issue of releasing the $6 billion in frozen assets, none of which has gone out but is there to be relied on.
The slow pace of America coming to terms with Saudi Arabia motivates Iran to scuttle now or at least delay that agreement. Please watch this from a Saudi commentator.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1713906312340295934
Finally, there's this kumbaya sentence - "We’re a long way from that now, but maybe, just maybe, the Camp David Peace Accords, the Abraham Accords and a potential agreement with Saudi Arabia will help clear the way toward curbing anti-Israeli terrorism and a peaceful future.".
Where have you been for the last several decades? This fight is not about Arabs who want to "just go home and live in peace". For that small minority who have been expelled by all their homeland and brother Arab nations, they make a living as mercenary refugee victims funded mainly by Iran and to a lesser but still large amount by the Western countries, directly and indirectly through the UN.
You find a soft place for these refugee victims and take their revised history as given. Why won't you also take their written declarations at face value as well?
The Hamas Covenant - 'The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.' (Article 7).
Israel has already surrendered the entire Sinai desert and the entire Gaza strip. Not good, not even close to good. Robert, Hamas and their supporters will be peaceful when Article 7 above leaves no Jew on the face of the earth.
Best
Thanks for your response, but I remain unconvinced. You claimed my piece is “uninformed” suggesting inaccurate facts, but when I asked for some backup for that claim, you provide only a litany of “whataboutism,” opinions that differ from mine (which of course is your right) and citations of facts that have little or nothing to do with what I wrote. You also seem to think that I’m in some way pro-Hamas which of course is utterly untrue as my very first paragraph made clear, or so I thought.
Sadly, public discourse on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is invariably burdened with whataboutism. We all know about Hamas/Hezbollah/PLO/etc. terrorism. We all understand that they want Israel wiped off the face of the map. We all understand that Iran and Qatar (with Netanyahu’s blessing, btw) fund their operations. And most of us understand that that is deeply wrong. I nowhere suggested otherwise. But absolutely none of that justifies a response by Israel that is not “measured” and would therefore kill and displace countless innocent people and make the future worse for Israel, which is my main point. We may well be witnessing the early stages of a humanitarian disaster of horrifying proportions and yes, Hamas is largely at fault for that. But Israel has an opportunity to ameliorate the situation while also trying to destroy or greatly diminish Hamas. It should do so. What Israel does or doesn’t do affects not only Hamas, but Israel as well and should be carefully calibrated to damage Hamas as much as possible and Israel as little as possible. The last couple of days seem to indicate that Israel may be pulling back from its most belligerent stance which I applaud.
As to specifics, the Sabra/Shatilla massacres were investigated by the UN and by the Israeli government, both of which found Israel to be responsible for failing to intervene despite having the power and the opportunity to do so. Ariel Sharon was forced to resign as Defense Minister because of it. Israel itself didn’t give Israel a pass on the massacre, but you seem to want to because, well, “what about all the wrongs done by Muslim terrorists?”
You somehow believe that the number of Gazans killed by Israeli bombing relates to my piece despite my not having addressed that issue. I don’t mind criticism, but kindly criticize what I write and not what I don’t. More importantly, no one, including you, knows how many people lie dead under all the rubble of destroyed buildings. We won’t know that for weeks or perhaps months, so your reason for bringing it up remains a mystery.
As to Biden trying to engineer a deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, that’s just objective fact. Hey, you can Google it. I hold no brief for Joe Biden, but facts are facts. And the fact that he released a large sum of Iran’s money back to Iran in no way suggests that he’s not promoting a deal with SA. It’s just more whataboutism on your part.
And yes, I understand that there never were 2 million inhabitants of Gaza City, but, if 1 million people flee south, that will roughly double the population of that part of Gaza with possibly the direst consequences. That of course was my point.
Thanks for your input.
Thanks for reading my reply, thinking it through and taking the time and trouble to respond, Robert.
I did in fact, engage in some "Whataboutisms" along with direct responses to your piece. However, the whataboutisms were not in the likes of "I know you are, but what am I" as tainted in early public school. I intended to engage your moral arguments, which to me were of a "Moral people and soldiers engage in combat in this way and for these reasons.". Meaning, as I take you to have written because there is no evil in this combat, we can both explain a rationale for the barbarism and point to what are agreeable rules of engagement. Of course, you condemned Hamas, yet excused their barbarism through the back door of - had Israel not committed non-barbaras but illegal acts, like ...... then Hamas would have been able to live peacefully, and the events of Oct would certainly not have happened. Further, you seem to suggest, that now that Oct 7 has happened, let's move forward with the Geneva Convention rules of engagement and not look back at the barbarism pretending the enemy is a well-regarded signatory of the convention and will start abiding from today forward.
Yet if that's not what you intended and if I even misread it in print, I would point out that Hamas is just as culpable for following the rules. As you might imagine the rules prohibit things like beheading, mutilation, rape, denigrating, and murder. The rules are clear and short. you may want to read them while having Hamas in mind, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf .
Then, once you've read the rules. please write a compelling piece about how Hamas should engage in this war.
The portion of your piece which is most uninformed is to finger wag at Israel without pointing to Hamas's future rules of engagement, and then, as I pointed out earlier, demanding "a measured response", was itself contradictory to your piece, and seemingly uninformed about the measure that was inflicted by Hamas.
I'll end by quoting Golda Meir's 1967 premonition: "If the Palestinians lay down their weapons, there will be peace. If the Israelis lay down their weapons, there will be a massacre." Telling Israel to restraint, or completely laying down their weapons, any of them, would leave Israel to October 7 over, and over again.
I have never said this, Robert, but this piece is entirely uninformed. If not entirely uninformed, then entirely informed by the UNWRA revisionist history books the West so liberally funds.
As a bit of advice, you don't want a "Measured response" from Israel or world Jewry. It should not, nor will it be, as measured and unspeakable as Hamas, its supporters and enablers used on October 7, 2023, which was the Jewish day of celebration of the Torah (the basis for world ethical behaviour). It was a time when Jews worldwide sang, danced and feasted. For many families that day, while they sat at their tables, their uninvited guests tied their hands and their children's hands behind them, then removed the father's eye in front of his children, shot each child in the back of the head, shot each parent in the back of the head, then helped themselves to the prepared feast.
I expect that is not the measure you suggest Israel use to end the cycle of celebrations of Jewish terrorization.
I would ask, was the attack by Hamas, “measured”? No one in the West seems to be calling for ‘measured’ actions from them. It’s as if they don’t believe that is even possible. A tacit admission that genuine evil IS afoot and appeals to reason are meaningless for them. Few say say it, but the truth is Hamas simply wants every Jew dead and Israel off the map. No matter the cost, even to the Palestinian people. They are a self proclaimed death cult.
Then, on the left, if they aren’t actively celebrating the barbarism, they are justifying it as necessary ‘resistance’, as if what we witnessed could be explained in normal political terms. I don’t think so. I do of course like you fear the consequences of an eye for an eye response, but it is always Israel who is called upon to show restraint, which I think is another tacit admission. Unlike their enemies, they have and DO listen to reason, not always, but often. Yes, Hamas are human and not demons, but there is no moral equivalency here, and I think we have to finally accept that human beings are capable of being overtaken wholly by purely irrational, destructive drives, and that can go for groups as well as individuals. I don’t know what the best strategy would be, but I have no problem naming evil wherever it manifests, and that includes in my own heart.