I’m Jewish. I’ve seen a lot of antisemitism in my life. I’m now watching Israel destroy what took it and its allies years to build in the Middle East. If anyone is stoking antisemitism it is Israel and its supporters. It’s hard to love a country that has killed 35,000 plus Palestinian civilians in retaliation for the admittedly horrible …
I’m Jewish. I’ve seen a lot of antisemitism in my life. I’m now watching Israel destroy what took it and its allies years to build in the Middle East. If anyone is stoking antisemitism it is Israel and its supporters. It’s hard to love a country that has killed 35,000 plus Palestinian civilians in retaliation for the admittedly horrible Hamas attack that killed 1,200 plus Israelis. That’s 70,000+ Palestinian eyes for 2,400+ Israeli eyes. Hardly fair by biblical standards. The well funded repression of protest against Israeli Zionism in the name of fighting antisemitism has to stop. There will be no peace in the world until all hypocritical self interest, whether from the left, right or middle, ends. Based on my 82 years living in a cesspool of hypocrisy I don’t expect I’ll see peace in my time. I do, however, wish all younger than me good luck in taming the forces of naïveté and evil that seem to rule, especially in times of chaotic trauma like these.
thank you. well said. One can be anti the horrific war in Gaza without being antisemitic. And simultaneously be horrified by what Hamas did on Oct. 7th. The right's portrayal of this as binary - If you're anti-the-war you must also be antisemitic / if you are pro-Israel you must be in favor of killing Palestinians - is ridiculous and shallow and clouds the deeper, more complicated history and makes it easier for people to yell at each other and feel self-righteous.
It's just plain lazy to take an either/or position, ie. either you're antisemitic if you oppose Israel's over the top response to Hama's attack or you're anti-Palestinian if you support Israel's right to defend itself. When we take sides on this issue, we're just mirroring what the combatants are doing, that is demonizing one side or the other. Would that the world would pressure both sides to stop killing each other. I wonder if there will ever be a time when people stop using their religion (my god is better than your god) to justify slaughtering those who don't share their beliefs.
Thank you! "Lazy politics" is a perfect description.
The complexity of the situation in the Middle East is lost on many of the students and certainly those who cluelessly blame Biden for the Gaza conflagration.
Can we agree that Israel deserves to exist without threat?
That Israel's founding, while appropriate, displaced others indigenous to the region.
That October 7th was a vicious slaughter of innocents.
That the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Gazans is an over reaction.
That Hamas is using their own children as shields.
That Israel has blocked humanitarian aid and killed aid providers.
That Hamas is pledged to the elimination of Jews.
That the Nakba in 1948 has never been properly addressed.
That Israel is threatened daily by the proxies of Iran who lob missiles at Israeli citizens with regularity.
That Iran is aligned with Putin who has been a constant pot stirrer in the region to keep our attention away from his atrocities in Ukraine.
My hope is that Israel calls for early elections and Netanyahu finds himself in prison. That he is charged with war crimes.
But for Biden and America to withhold military support for the defense of Israel from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis is to sacrifice the greater peace and security of the region. It would be a gift to the religious extremist terrorists that rule Iran and want Israel destroyed. Repeat after me. Iran wants Israel gone.
And zoom out further, please. Gaza was once administered by Egypt. Why do you think Egypt has not opened the border to Gaza enough to allow Palestinians to rush to safety? Because Egypt considers Hamas to be a terrorist group. Egypt doesn't want the Palestinians because they are a threat.
We (including the students) should draw back from our armchair criticism of a president who is doing the very best he can to thread the needle of a very complex dynamic.
And please! While we are considering the "big picture", what is the alternative to the careful diplomacy that this administration has been working at 24/7? Does anyone think that "Mr. Muslim Ban" who doesn't want immigration from "shit hole countries" is a good alternative?
Here is the big picture. The choice is binary. Biden or a madman/dictator who will launch Project 2025 and ensure that women are treated as they were 150 years ago - or worse.
Where are the campus protests for women's reproductive rights? Where are the protests for the slowest road to justice we've ever seen - The Insurrection happened in 2021! Top secret documents were stolen and there is no trial date yet! Why aren't students upset about that?
And where are the protests to restore voting rights and get big dark money out of politics? Our democracy is crumbling.
The few who are super wealthy are accumulating trillions and trillions and students have loans that will last for decades. Where are the demonstrations about that? Women can't fully participate in the workforce because child care is so outrageously expensive - if available. I hear crickets.
The list of injustices perpetrated on Americans is long. And President Joseph Biden has been attempting (with some success) to address it. And yet, he can't get the support of many because of the deeds of a leader of a country halfway around the world?
Bill: Yes, but. Israel’s founding led to the displacement of Palestinians because extremists among the Palestinians began violence against Jews in the 1920s. Jews who came to their ancestral homeland after the founding of modern Zionism in 1896 bought land from its owners, often absentee Turkish landlords. How else were they to get land? There may well have been some displacement of Palestinian tenants, but there was a great influx of Muslims into the area at the same time—drawn by development and opportunities largely spurred by the Jewish settlers. In 1947, the UN proposed a partion of the land into what became Israel and Palestine. Jewish leaders accepted that, although geographically it would have been very difficult to survive. The Arabs rejected partition and six (I think) Arab nations tried to eliminate the nascent Jewish state. Not for the last time, they paid for their mistake. I hold no brief for the present Israeli regime, and I hope it is replaced by a much better one at the first instance, but the whole situation is unimaginably complex, and judgments are all going to be flawed.
Thanks for adding this history. I wonder what percentage of the angry ones are interested. I certainly am.
I have often wondered what would have happened if "Israel" had been created as a nonsectarian, not religious based sanctuary for all who desired to live there. A place where democracy and tolerance could thrive.
My wife has family in Israel. Her cousin has made a career of finding common ground for Jewish and Arab kids. Teaching about each others cultures.
Israel is a place of religious tolerance. It is a Jewish state (the UK, France and Italy, among others, are explicitly Christian states), because Jews never found a place where they were truly at home. I used to say that the United States is a homeland for Jews, but in the past few months I have been a lot less sure of that. In any event, as you probably know, 20 percent of Israel's population is Arab (Muslim or Christian, also Druse) and they serve in Parliament and, in some instances, in the IDF. Ironically, given that we lawyers are said to be Jews who can't stand the sight of blood, a very large proportion of the doctors in Israeli hospitals are Arabs.
Your long main comment is wonderful, Bill. And Jon Margolis is spot on. Please remember that Israel is a secular democracy. Its enemies are theocratic religious extremists. The fact that Israel is a "Jewish state" is not simply a function of religion; many many Jews past and present are atheists or non-believers whose highest values include tolerance, peaceful co-existence, and democracy (although tolerance cannot be open-ended; tolerance of religious extremism is self-defeating). The "Jewish state" is a result of centuries of murderous scapegoating of Jews the world over, most famously from Spain to Russia. We must not lose sight of the fact that Israel stands almost alone surrounded by mortal enemies. In the 'big picture' that is the problem that is being ignored by ignorant leftist extremists who bow to Chomskian false equivalences.
Bill & Jon, are you able to address women's rights in Palestine? I ask because to me it is something that perhaps many female students protesting in the streets are unaware of. My understanding is women do not have many rights like they do in the U.S. - rights at least granted by our various laws.
Had Israel been created in 1947 as you suggest--a "nonsectarian, not religious based sanctuary for all who desired to live there" --it would have been unique in that area of the world, as most Arab nations had been discriminating against Jewish residents for decades, in some cases violently and reminiscent of the pogroms of Europe, and forcing them out. Unfortunately, Netanyahu in his effort to make Gaza Hamas-free has imitated his enemies by slaughtering innocent non-Hamas residents of Gaza.
I'm reading a very interesting book, Dear Palestine, by Shay Hazkani (an Israeli historian). According to him -- he cites chapter and verse -- the acquisition of the land that became Israel was not quite as benign as the comments here picture it. There was much more than "some displacement" of the locals, amid much violence and destruction of villages by the Israelis. It's true they were fighting 5 Arab countries. The Arab militaries were much weaker in training and materiel than the Israelis. Much of this has been made clear in the writing of historians, both Arab and Israeli. In many ways it's very similar to the takeover of the American lands from the American Indians. I was taught a rather heroic version of the establishment of Israel, and in many ways it was heroic, but it also has a dark side; and the behavior of Israel over the years, settlements, repression of the Palestinians, coddling of Hamas by Netanyahu to prevent a Palestinian state, all of that has been a disgrace. It has been very disappointing to me to learn the fuller picture. Still, Israel exists; it's not going away. People should stop killing each other and work out a livable arrangement. The present one is not livable.
Thanks. My references were to the early part of Zionist settlement. When I was growing up, in the '50s, I was told that Palestinians cleared out to leave a way for Arab armies to sweep in and kill the Jews. Some left out of fear, but you are right that many were displaced forcibly. To my mind, the attacks on the new state made such expulsions understandable and even necessary in a least some cases.
Have you in the online press the massive protests by ISRAELIS against far right Netanyahu. Have you watched and heard Israelis say they want Democracy.. The students have seen that. I'm not a student, but I've seen the protests. The journalists who work for reputable publications, saw those protests.
Really well done Bill, and very much not lazy. It's almost as though you learned something about how to think critically that some of the protestors and most of their media promoters either don't know or are avoiding because it would obviate their actions.
Thank you! This captures well my own conflicted sentiments on this. I would just add (for myself) - it has been puzzling to me why this issue has seemed to galvanize (a segment of) college students, like nothing else, to protest. My conclusion has been that malign antisemitic (and/or anti-Biden) forces are amplifying and using good faith protesters' legitimate concerns to their own advantage, as HCR's comments also suggest.
Because it's on TV (which doomed the war in Vietnam, thank god), and because Biden's embrace of Netanyahu is so problematic. There's the problem of his wanting to stay in power to avoid jail, of trying to achieve a wildly unpopular court "reform", and of his party's own version of "from the river to the sea" in opposition to longstanding US policy of a two state solution. Sound familiar?
I don't see that Biden has "embraced Netanyahu." He has embraced the democratic state of Israel. Sorta like Biden would never deny aid to red states because they are Trump/MAGA states.
As previously stated in Heather's letter, the United States' monetary contributions to Israel have enabled them to fend off relentless missile strikes from Iran, not necessarily used to bomb Gaza.
And the complexity of the issue of Israel and the Palestinians is demonstrated by this: if the US does not help the nation of Israel - NOT netanyahu and his orcs, but the populace of Israel, regardless of whether they are Jewish or Muslim or Christian or no religion - to defend itself and themselves from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, etc. - we will be helping Iran. Iran which, thanks to trampler's historic pullout from Obama's 2015 JCPOA, is in the process of "advancing slowly but confidently, accumulating the means for a future [nuclear] weapon while making no overt move to build one." https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/10/iran-nuclear-bomb-iaea-fordow/. Does ANYONE want that?
My Southern brother called me in NYC to express his concern that I might be in danger living near the Columbia campus. "I had no idea there was so much anti-Semitism," he said. He watches a lot of Foxx, and I try to be patient, but I did feel the need to tell him that the situation is complex, and many of the protestors were Jewish, and that I was far more concerned about the police presence and the constant noise of helicopters and the drones tethered to unmarked vehicles on the public street beside my apartment. I am extremely grateful that President Biden has rejected calling in the National Guard. Maybe if Columbia's president had not called in the NYC police so quickly, things could have been resolved soon, but Congress is determined to blow this (not the war but demonstrations against it) up into a political cudgel. Can anyone remember another occasion where the Speaker of the House of Representatives visited the campus of a private university to assert himself?
Bill, this is a brilliant list, thank you for sharing it with us. It's not lazy politics as much as it is cynical politics. Those who exploit the situation do so assuming we're all dim bulbs who don't know the history of the region or the peoples involved.
Shane, unfortunately, many here are "dim bulbs." They are too lazy or ill-informed to try to learn the history of today's dilemmas, and now history is repeating itself.
Excellent nuanced reply to a very complicated situation. The exploitation by the RW community and the accelerants (agitators) on the campuses feed the emotive quality to hate the actions perpetrated on the less fortunate.
It is taught in public policy that if you're hungry and starving and someone puts a gun in your hand - it won't matter the cause if they promise you (even empty promises) of a better future. The "religion of hating others" is exploitive.
Bill I agree with many of the points that you make in your excellent historical overview. However, as someone who wrote a book on Egypt (that Nasser banned), I do not believe that Egypt seeks to prevent Gazans from settling in Egypt because of fear of Hamas.
I visited a large Palestinian refugee camp in Egyptian Gaza in 1953. The refugees were housed in temporary tents. Egypt, with a population of 22 million strongly opposed accepting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Now that Egypt has 100,000,000 citizens in a poor country, its opposition to the intrusion of a million Palestinians is even greater. I do not envisage that sending Palestinians into Egypt will ever be an ‘amelioration’ of the current situation.
Oh yes. So well articulated. Would that more people could actually comprehend the extent of the complexity in this situation rather than the either/or simplicity that seems to reign.
The way someone worships God should not be dictated by how someone else worships God. ie You cannot tell me your way is the only one way to worship God. Nor can I tell you.
Then what's the point in "my God is better than your God." I know, but it's so "human," to want to one-up the other guy's God. It's a battle without an actual God winner so it can go on forever. What's not to like.
J. Nol, it may be lazy for most people who are mostly also ignorant of the history of this and won't bother to inform themselves. However, the Rs are making as much hay as they can while being total hypocrites. I was surprised by some of the responses of students at Portland State, who were all for what the protesters were doing. They were both frosh and sounded totally naive. Of the first 12 protesters arrested by Portland police in clearing the library, only 4 were students. Also saw the anarchist symbol as part of the graffiti and the mess the protesters had created inside. I support peaceful protest, but not violence, intimidation, and destruction. Yes, religion is often used to vilify the other, but it is also often used to hide other priorities like conquest, exploitation, etc.
First you have to dehumanize the other, then you can exploit and conquer. Any training of soldiers has to include stamping out empathy, especially for the "other" or the enemy, otherwise those soldiers would have difficulty killing them.
This was a problem in the Civil War when the country was more religious. Soldiers did not want to kill and one case cited in a book about death in the Civil War (title escapes me at the moment)one soldier refused even when threatened with death himself, a southerner.
J Nol, I , too, wonder if people will ever stop cudgeling others of another (or no) religion. I don’t hold out a lot of hope since it seems that our brains are preprogrammed to fear anyone who is different (not of our tribe).
It’s Chinese propaganda on TikTok. That social platform is nothing more than Asymmetric warfare using propaganda to prejudice our children against rational thought and to undermine being pro-America.
Yes, how has this war become Biden’s doing? I have seen reporting that nearly half of the protesters arrested at Columbia were not students or otherwise affiliated with the school. Are they conscientious citizens? Opportunists? Provocateurs? I would like to know.
First. - This conflict in NOT complicated. That’s absurd. The Israelis want to live in peace. The Palestinians want the land now ruled by Israel. It’s that simple. It’s a war and the Palestinians will not agree to peace while they believe there is an ability to take all of Israel. The world is trying to create a solution the Palestinians do not want, and then is blaming Israel for failing to make it happen. The “2 state solution” is a post 1967 invention offered by the west.
Second - The Nakba as a concept of unfair colonialist invasion is 100% propaganda revisionist one sided history. The British had ownership of the land from the Turks. Both were invading colonialists. They split it with the Jews and “indigenous Arabs”. Palestinians at that time were British subjects and included both Arabs & Jews. The coin of the area had both Hebrew & Arabic on it. There was a war between Jews and ALL the surrounding Arab countries. The Jews won what is now called Israel. Period. Gaza was taken by Egypt. The West Bank taken by Jordan. From 1948 to 1967 the 700,000 indigenous Arabs / now called Palestinians who were displaced by the war were “refugees” living in Egypt and Jordan. At the same time 900,000 Jews were expelled from ever Arab country. Centuries of Jewish life were extinguished in days. Those Semitic Jew refugees (ie brown people) ended up in Israel - a 60% majority of Israel’s are the same brownness as the Palestinians. Let’s drop the white colonialist lie already.
Now the Palestinians are hateful to every conceivable cultural similarity as the west. Egalitarianism or gay rights or freedom of speech or assemble or religion as anathema to Palestinian life. Why did Bethlehem go from 80% Christians living safely under Jewish control to 20% living scared under the Palestinians?
Third, it is impossible to be pro-Palestinian without being anti-Israel or anti-Jew - unless you are a Palestinian who is fighting for land you think is yours. Theres no rationale basis beyond ignorance, prejudice, or religious triumphalism (you want the world to convert to Islam even if the conversion comes by the sword) for any westerner to support Palestinians.
If you are a Palestinian I’d ask: over the past 75 years how has the fight been going? I see the propaganda map you use showing Israel slowly taking land. Why should they stop? It’s not your land unless you can secure your borders. That’s just the truth of human history. How’s the terrorist fight going? I know; you think it’s splendid cuz you slaughtered 1200 Jews in October. But Israel is about to make peace with the Saudis. They have good ties to Egypt., UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Jordan just let the Israel Air Force use Jordanian airspace to knock out Iranian missiles. Plus as a.reward for your brutal terrorism, the land Israel unilaterally gifted to you in 2005, Gaza, is now a literal wasteland 100% because of Palestinian stupidity and brutality in attacking the Jews.
Isn’t it time to try peace and negotiations. Why don’t you give back the hostages and ask for a peaceful resolution. Israel left Gaza without getting any assurances. But tried in good faith to give Gaza the ability to self rule. You guys blew it. If you wanna re-do on that concept you must give up violence as your method of gaining statehood. Otherwise I think the tea leaves will see a lot of pain in your future.
May 14 will be the 76th anniversary of the founding of Israel. Marking the beginning of this conflict. Israel will have to learn the lesson we did in Viet Nam: bombing innocent people does not eliminate any threat, nor bring peace. It only provides another generation of enemies.
In the fifty years since the end of the US war in Vietnam, relations have been somewhat normalized, to the point that there are no travel restrictions for US citizens to Vietnam. Will there be normal relations between Israel and other nations fifty years hence?
Putting aside the fact that you are comparing apples and oranges, it is fair to say that Arab interests in the middle east would have long ago benefited from creating their own secular democracies and living in peace with Israel. The problem is not a "Jewish state", which happens to be a secular democracy; the problem is the theocratic dictatorships bent on destroying it, none of whom will open their doors to Palestinians. (Once Netanyahu and Donald Trump go to jail, things might improve).
Had I been Virginia Gay testifying at Stefanik’s committee, I would have responded, “Congresswoman Stefanik, who the hell do you think you are acting like Joe McCarthy badgering witnesses?” Had she done this she would still have her job.
I wonder if all those protesters yelling at one another understand the implications of the US ceasing to provide military support for Israel? In the aftermath of this humanitarian mess I believe and implosion would occur. Huge black hole in the Middle East.
This view seems so self-evident to me. I guess that means I'm still very naive. And the republican party's hypocritical words and deeds for political gain probably should't surprise me either. But the fact that they get away with such transparent power grabbing and destruction of vital American institutions nearly makes my head explode. I hate injustice and that seems to be increasingly what the gop is all about.
Barry. Thank you for your comments. I have always wondered why the Israeli people are committing atrocities against the Palestinians, doing exactly what was done to them in Europe. I am pleased to learn not all Jewish people approve of these actions. While I am only 75, I’m pretty sure , too, tgatvI will not see a peaceful world in my lifetime. I pray for America ever day, that people will wake up and stop the evil doers, mostly republicans, who are trying to take over our country. Sad!
Sharon, to state that Netanyahu's coalition is doing the same to residents of Gaza as the Hitler regime did to European Jews in is World War 2 is simply wrong.
1) European Jews never threatened anyone while Hamas has vowed to destroy Israel and kill all Jews, and acted on that vow on Oct 7.
2) jews in Europe did not have weapons, did not throw grenades into Christian neighborhoods, and did not invite any retaliation that would hurt their neighbors. On the other hand, Hamas has appropriated billions in donations to build tunnels and to build an arsenal, which they lobbed into Israeli cities, weekly, since 2006. Further, Hamas lobbed those rockets from the grounds of apartments, schools and mosques, and fought from spots within crowded neighborhoods. The deaths of their fellow Arabs was the goal, not just the consequence.
3) Hitler's approach to Jews was to enslave them to support Germany's war effort, keeping them under conditions that would allow them to live for 3-4 months under starvation, accidents, or torture took their lives. That's for the ones that weren't first sent to the gas chambers. Israel has not enslaved Arabs from Gaza. Instead, they employed over 18,000 for daily work in Isrseli territory, who were paid fair wages for their work. Hamas's actions caused that source of income to end, killing some of them on Oct 7.
4) German goals included extermination of all Jews. Hamas's goal is the same. Isrsel's goal is to defang Hamas so it stops being a threat to its citizens, not to kill all Arabs.
Has Israel gone too far? As a Jewish Israeli American, I say yes. But I also know that the war in Gaza is just that, a war. Israel might have gone too far, but it is justified in going after Hamas. Or would you recommend that they allow Hamas to restock and continue the near-weekly attacks on civilian areas in Israel like it has since 2006?
If I was your neighbor and kept shooting into your property, would you let me keep doing it? Sure, you could call the police, but who could Israel call?
Barry, I’m hugging you in my heart for speaking truth. Netanyahu and his cronies as well as leaders of Hamas are responsible for this horrific situation, but the general Jewish and Palestinian population are the ones who are suffering. Praying for peace, for reason, for compassion, and decency in the Holy Land.
Barry, I am 100% with you--as are a lot of other fellow Jews who have looked at the mendacity of Israeli politics, especially the government's response to any attacks on or protest against the ultra rightwing and nationalist settlements they keep on planting in areas that were "supposed" to be autonomous Palestinian territories. The typical Israeli government response of a kid throwing stones at a soldier (for every injury 10 Palestinians at minimum must be arrested/die/have their homes destroyed--in an ironic reflection of the ancient Roman practice of "decimation") has escalated to 100 Palestinians must be punished for every injury to an Israeli. This is totally unacceptable.
As I have said before on this platform, the policy of the Israeli government CREATES supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. And it provides fodder for the christofascists here in the USA to further their ultimately totally antisemitic goals of "forcing" the "Rapture": their real unstated purpose behind their support of Israel. Because they "need" Jews in Jerusalem for their fantasy of the antichrist to come who will ultimately wipe all the Jews off the face of the earth. The cooperation between the christofascists here and the Israeli government is about as cynical and manipulative as it gets.
That said, this is also a golden opportunity for Russia, China, and Iran to make hay with US politics--and I have questioned the timeline of the Hamas attack and the Israeli response to it before because it is pretty clear the Israeli government had a good idea what was about to happen and turned their eyes away. Opportunism on all sides, as well as mendacity. There are NO "good" sides to this. And Hamas perpetuating the war by refusing to negotiate and return the people they captured is equally heinous. But interestingly, the Israeli government seems far less worried about that 100 or so still surviving group than about turning Gaza (and eventually, I suspect, the West Bank) to rubble.
"And it provides fodder for the christofascists here in the USA to further their ultimately totally antisemitic goals of "forcing" the "Rapture": their real unstated purpose behind their support of Israel. Because they "need" Jews in Jerusalem for their fantasy of the antichrist to come who will ultimately wipe all the Jews off the face of the earth. The cooperation between the christofascists here and the Israeli government is about as cynical and manipulative as it gets." THIS!!
I share Barry’s opinion. Especially his comment “If anyone is stoking antisemitism it is Israel and its supporters.” After the gun massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue, I wrote the same comment begging Americans to recognize how Jews around the world were likely to be affected with antisemitism due to the violence that Netanyahu & his extreme government were committing. That Israel did not appear to be concerned about those outside of its state political interests.
I encourage everyone to read more broadly about the modern history of Palestine and the development of Israel through to the present and that effect on the indigenous people of former Palestine. Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace or Apartheid” is a good start though not comprehensive. Carter was criticized for his use of “Apartheid”. But, he has been more engaged and supportive of Israel than probably any other U.S. president. Castigated by both Republicans and Democrats, and characterized as a weak president, he is without doubt in my mind the most religious, moral, thoughtful and equitable president we have had since FDR. He was Israel’s best friend over his active life. If Israel had listened to him, they would likely be living in peace today. Palestine would likely have had a state by now. It’s said that the indigenous Jews & Arabs of Palestine are genetically identical, and they had lived essentially in peace during the Ottoman Empire. That violence did not occur until Europeans started immigrating to Palestine in large enough numbers & wealth to worry the great majority Arab population. Real problems developed during the British Mandate occupation after WWI. There is history that has been obscured by politics & politicians as in all history.
Interesting to me is my recently learning other Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Eqypt did not want the Palestinians to move into their countries.
True. Arabs are not a homogenous group. They have not wanted Palestinian influence anymore than Palestinians wanted growing European Jewish influence, nor Israel wanted a Palestinian majority in their new state, or expanding state.
Arabs have given Palestinians nominal support since the Jewish militias drove 750,000 Palestinians out in the 1947-48 war to establish Israel. Arabs have had varying attitudes of acceptance or rejection of Israel based on their concerns for their own situation. Jordan though most friendly to Israel, deals with Palestinian refugees being the majority of their population. Lebanon has dealt with large numbers of Palestinian refugees in refugee camps, with small numbers of Palestinian leaders and freedom fighters fighting Israel, drawing responding & preemptive strikes from Israel similar to the strikes on Gaza, making Lebanon dysfunctional.
Egypt (1956 from Britain), Jordan (1946 from Britain) & Lebanon (1943-46 from France) were given their independence around the time of Israel’s establishment. Saudi Arabia was recognized as independent by Britain in 1927.
The interpretation of this history to favor Israel and disfavor Palestinians is similar to our interpretation of Vietnam history. We did not talk about Vietnam as a U.S. ally in WWII with Ho Chi Minh after 1945. We then saw them as an enemy as we supported France’s colonial interests. We then called Ho Chi Minh’s freedom fighters “communists” as we supported puppet governments left by the French. We lost much and gained nothing for these distortions.
To compare US support of French colonial interests in Vietnam to US support of Israel is absurd. The Vietnam war was our folly, a war of immense hubris and greed. It was also falsely contrived. There is no parallel to European and Middle East history, immersed as it is in the persecution and murder of Jews for centuries, no matter whether the Jew being persecuted was a accused of being a communist or a capitalist. (Hitler accused them of both).
Only Jordan, in 1948 and 1967, permitted the Palestinians entry in any significant numbers By September, 1970, the Hashemite Kingdom, for its own survival, had to force out the PLO, PFLP, and other such bands.
Barry, I’m an American of Irish, English and Scots descent with one set of Catholic grandparents and another set of Protestant grandparents. I witnessed, first hand, the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland as a student in 1977.
As you so aptly note, it is hard to love any country that engages in the wholesale slaughter and repression of a people, let alone the evil acts of terrorism such as Hamas conducted. In Ireland, the PLO-trained terrorists created unbearable fear, loss and on-going anger and resentment that continues.
The Irish did manage to create an uneasy peace. It’s far from perfect and doesn’t work for everyone but it has allowed for more people to raise their families and pursue their dreams in relative peace. That matters.
That is my prayer for all the people in Israel and Gaza. My lifetime? One can only hope….
I fully support Israel's right to eliminate the threat of Iranian sponsored terror. Indiscriminate killing of Israelis is a well paid career in Gaza and the West Bank. The leaders and teachers of the 10/7 atrocities must be eliminated, and their populations re-educated to live with Jewish settlers, under the nurturing wing of Allah, with full rights and privileges of Palestinian citizens, as Arab-Israelis live in their Jewish State. I think it's relevant to understand that Arab leaders conspired with Hitler to eliminate Jews last century and still hold their death cult fantasies.
Here is is again, the use of "my god is better than your god" to address issues. Would that we would finally free ourselves from the prison of religion and actually encourage people to think for themselves.
Ethnic nationalism, social remaking can produce as much fervent devotion as religion. Traditionally however religion has been tied to states and peoples that often adds to the fervor. I don't think you can just lay it on "religion" as such. "Mores" have deep roots in human nature.
Those "mores" as you call them, are just plain superstition dressed up as a socially sanctioned belief system. We are capable of much more than that, if only we are allowed to develop the capacity to think. I have nothing against tradition, origin legends and ritual, but so often they are held up as truths rather than the way a particular society organizes itself. Religion, too often is used to justify brutality and serves mostly to separate us from each other. Anyone who accepts religion gives up their right to think for themselves.
"mores" are essential rules and guidelines of social regulation, the "Ten Commandments" are mainly about social regulation; i sometimes think "religion" as an overarching authority was built just to enforce social/tribal/clan/ethnic/imperial/national cohesions, often with their attendant enemies, given humanity's long history of conflicts at all these levels. Not sure I get "so often as they are held up as truths rather than the way a particular society organizes itself" . The 10C is exactly a sanctioning/enforcing document, along with the multitude of other rules you'll find Exodus etc richly adorned with, with or without Yahwah's explicit command. For example, have fun reading the litany of rules about slavery and details for reimbursements for damage done to the many categories thereof. You might also remember that in the process of suppressing Russian Orthodoxy etc in the fledging Soviet Union, the Soviets committed mass atrocities in their efforts to remake society, and religion wasn't the best killing example. Best example I'd say was the deliberate mass starvation of Ukrainian peasant farmers in the early 1930s, we're talking millions here. Of course, that doesn't even get us to the Nazis, who simply wanted to annihilate whole populations so they could colonize most of eastern Europe well into Ukraine with Germans - the Master Race. I will certainly agree that the long persecution of Jews as "killers of Christ" is likely the best example of religious persecution for no other reason. I recommend reading Snyder's Bloodlands, or Plokhy's The Gates of Europe, a history of the Ukrainian region. You will blanch at the sheer level and detail of atrocity and mayhem, at not exactly in the name of "religion", allowing for the Jewish holocaust in the middle of it all.
I prefer "perfect sky parent" since a belief in any god emerges from the human longing to have a perfect parent watching over them, rather than the imperfect parents they actually had.
Business leaders and the press also supported Hitler's rise and have yet to be held accountable. They wield economic security like a blunt object to keep people oppressed, especially in America where consumers are treated like labs rats.
What do Israelis have to do in the West Bank and in Gaza? It's not part of their country. The Israeli settlers are their illegally and should be leaving.
Israelis haven't lived in Gaza in decades. Israel made Gaza "Judenrein"--Jew-free--by pulling every Jewish resident, business, and military base out of Gaza and giving the keys to Palestinians to run Gaza themselves. Palestinians said they wanted independence to govern as they saw fit, and Israel provided that. The result was Gazans elected Hamas as their legal, official government, and last October's massacre was the natural consequence of that.
West Bank and Gaza are part of Israel, which won both territories in the 1967 war. Israel has not declared formal sovereignty over either in hopes of making a deal for an independent Palestinian state, which the Gaza handover was designed to trial. And the largest part of West Bank IS open to Jewish settlement, per the Clinton accords, until such time a final peace treaty is negotiated.
Oh well, you're so right - whatever option do the poor Israelis have but to commit genocide on the Palestinians? Only because they created Hamas because Israel wanted to fight the PLO with them, who could have known they turn out to be so ungrateful? Just because the Palestinians are treated like concentration camp prisoners in their own country - who could hold it against the most moral army in the world in the most horribly victimised 😢 country in the world?
You just have to listen to Israeli tv, to the speeches in the Knesset or watch some IDF Instas to get a pretty good idea what sort of people Israelis in their majority are.
I fully accept that Israel is a nation that was horribly traumatised in its history, and - in my opinion - it just like a person would, has a mental defect due to that trauma. But that doesn't entitle it to commit war crime after war crime after war crime (listen to ICJ presentations regarding the occupation of the Palestinian territories), behave in the most brutal, colonising way towards a country that it has taken all the land from. The West put after WWII all its ugly, stinking guilt into a huge bucket, flung it over the Middle East and said "your problem now"
Just like Jon Stewart said "Listen, Middle East, we didn't want to be drawn in all that drama that OUR actions caused - we just want your delicious oil!"
If the West lets get Israel away again and again and again, Putin and Xi Jinping have won. The world will not forget this and the first signs are there. One should not forget, that the West is in the minority on this issue.
Can't wait for the next episode of this show "Who is the US gonna elect - the criminal in Putin's pocket or the palliative care candidate candidate in Israel's pocket?"
The writers of our reality must to coked up to the eyeballs.
All those words to avoid answering a simple question. I'll restate it so you can try again:
Since you consider this genocide, what war plan would you have enacted to ensure Israel destroyed Hamas without injuring non-combatants in Gaza and therefore avoid the "genocide" you claim is happening?
ensuring the safety and security of Jews is a fundamental mission for Israel, both within its borders and globally. Any Palestinian state that does not ensure its Jewish citizens would be counter to the mission of Israel. Jews living freely in Palestine is part of the Hamas charter.
Barry, you and I are similarly aged, and although I am not Jewish, I vividly recall being horrified while very young by the Nazis' extermination of millions of Jews.
More recently, watching the thousands of Israelis demonstrating against Netanyahu because of his using right wing tactics to destroy Israel's courts in order to avoid prosecution for his numerous indictments, I saw the protests being diluted by the October Hamas attack. I immediately realized that Israel's military intelligence failures and uncharacteristic inattention to anticipating an imminent attack would give Bibi exactly what he needed to stay in power.
Clearly, Hamas' atrocities deserved retaliation, but killing thousands of civilians to "destroy Hamas" can't be justified. Even if Netanyahu destroys every Hamas fighter, which he won't, there will be thousands of Palestinian young people who will remember the horror wrought upon them and they will become the new Hamas fighters. The seeds were already planted by the lack of having a vote in their own destiny. They will take up the Hamas pledge to eradicate Israel, and all hope will be lost for a peaceful Jewish state.
Here and in other parts of the world, right wingers are wailing because of the threat to Jews. My question is, where were they when white supremacists were marching with tiki torches in Charlottesville, shouting "Jews will not replace us" and our resident white supremacist leader characterized the situation by insisting that there were "fine people on both sides"?
Our lives began with witnessing unthinkable evil being justified against powerless scapegoats, and we are still witnessing this evil. I fervently hope that we will begin to see the world awaking to the continued destruction before we die.
Barry, we can pray that the right's reign of terror on all of us - worldwide - will soon be over. If only Bibi and the Orange Menace could get Elon Musk construct a manned rocket to Mars and be its first occupants . . . .
@Barry. If they and you want a cease fire, protest that culpable Hamas leaders live in sanctuary in Qatar and other countries and could have agreed to it. Where are the protests about Arab money in schools? At the Qatar embassy in DC and the UN mission?
Thank you Barry. I'm sorry that you have had to endure antisemitism. No one should be the target of hate or bullying for any reason.
Hamas is the mouse that roared but the Palestinians have been the victims (pawns) of both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Netanyahu and the Israeli war council are like many US politicians. They will do anything to stay in power including delaying the end of this conflict at the expense of the hostages, the Palestinians and the Israelis.
I am a Christian....I too would love to see peace among all who have or do not have a faith. We make it difficult when certain humans want to dominate using "faith" which is precious to those of us who hold a faith. We should respect the honesty and freedom of those who choose "no religion."
We are misusing our faith when we allow it to justify killing our fellow humans which actually goes against the religions or faiths with which I am familiar.
No human being can look upon the starving and devastation in Palestine and be at peace. These are innocent human beings.
We do not fully understand what happened on October 7 nor why it happened. We do not understand why the protective shield over that specific area was not working at the very occasion of the attack. We do not fully understand Netanyahu's relationship
with Hamas.
We do know that Netanyahu would be tried for his criminal accusations if he were not holding his current leadership role in Israel. We do know that Netanyahu wants to take over Gaza.
There is good and evil battling, as has always been true. We must not turn our hearts and eyes and will away from this earth which is OUR home. We are responsible to do what we can to build peace...to serve those in need. We must assist in healing where we are able. To NOT put our heads in the sand and make light of the hellish existence of our fellow members of humanity is required.
Violence on our college campuses...or anywhere.... only helps our enemies.
Thank you President Joe Biden...thank you Jill Biden...thanks to those serving in our Congress who choose peace...who choose making our country great...who choose "Building Back Better".
Thank to those working tirelessly throughout the world for peace and reconciliation. It is an endless challenge. I am so thankful for those we know and see and for those who are unseen but have chosen to give their lives and talents for the preservation of building relationships throughout our entire world. We truly are dependent on one another.
The radicals on both sides have taken over and drown out reasonable voices. Hamas lit the match and created the explosion that was waiting to happen. Who started this is almost impossible to determine. The majority of people want coexistence. Our efforts need to focus on stopping the bullies who use violence and hate speech to further their cause. It’s upsetting to see people caught in the whirlpool of violence and polarized reactivity. There can be no peace unless we talk, and we have to heal across divides.
Yes. We really failed to understand what was going on and overreacted much to our peril and that of the world. 20 years of wasted warfare, death destruction, and diversion from more important goals. I worry about what is unfolding now. Biden warned Netanyahu not to do it we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. He ignored Biden and now look. I worry how Netanyahu in his radicals have really damaged Israel and contributed to reactive antisemitism. These people should never have been in government. Just like George W. Bush should not have been president. It’s interesting to note that administrations that squeak in because of anomalies in the democratic system create destruction.
I’m Jewish. I’ve seen a lot of antisemitism in my life. I’m now watching Israel destroy what took it and its allies years to build in the Middle East. If anyone is stoking antisemitism it is Israel and its supporters. It’s hard to love a country that has killed 35,000 plus Palestinian civilians in retaliation for the admittedly horrible Hamas attack that killed 1,200 plus Israelis. That’s 70,000+ Palestinian eyes for 2,400+ Israeli eyes. Hardly fair by biblical standards. The well funded repression of protest against Israeli Zionism in the name of fighting antisemitism has to stop. There will be no peace in the world until all hypocritical self interest, whether from the left, right or middle, ends. Based on my 82 years living in a cesspool of hypocrisy I don’t expect I’ll see peace in my time. I do, however, wish all younger than me good luck in taming the forces of naïveté and evil that seem to rule, especially in times of chaotic trauma like these.
thank you. well said. One can be anti the horrific war in Gaza without being antisemitic. And simultaneously be horrified by what Hamas did on Oct. 7th. The right's portrayal of this as binary - If you're anti-the-war you must also be antisemitic / if you are pro-Israel you must be in favor of killing Palestinians - is ridiculous and shallow and clouds the deeper, more complicated history and makes it easier for people to yell at each other and feel self-righteous.
It's just plain lazy to take an either/or position, ie. either you're antisemitic if you oppose Israel's over the top response to Hama's attack or you're anti-Palestinian if you support Israel's right to defend itself. When we take sides on this issue, we're just mirroring what the combatants are doing, that is demonizing one side or the other. Would that the world would pressure both sides to stop killing each other. I wonder if there will ever be a time when people stop using their religion (my god is better than your god) to justify slaughtering those who don't share their beliefs.
Thank you! "Lazy politics" is a perfect description.
The complexity of the situation in the Middle East is lost on many of the students and certainly those who cluelessly blame Biden for the Gaza conflagration.
Can we agree that Israel deserves to exist without threat?
That Israel's founding, while appropriate, displaced others indigenous to the region.
That October 7th was a vicious slaughter of innocents.
That the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Gazans is an over reaction.
That Hamas is using their own children as shields.
That Israel has blocked humanitarian aid and killed aid providers.
That Hamas is pledged to the elimination of Jews.
That the Nakba in 1948 has never been properly addressed.
That Israel is threatened daily by the proxies of Iran who lob missiles at Israeli citizens with regularity.
That Iran is aligned with Putin who has been a constant pot stirrer in the region to keep our attention away from his atrocities in Ukraine.
My hope is that Israel calls for early elections and Netanyahu finds himself in prison. That he is charged with war crimes.
But for Biden and America to withhold military support for the defense of Israel from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis is to sacrifice the greater peace and security of the region. It would be a gift to the religious extremist terrorists that rule Iran and want Israel destroyed. Repeat after me. Iran wants Israel gone.
And zoom out further, please. Gaza was once administered by Egypt. Why do you think Egypt has not opened the border to Gaza enough to allow Palestinians to rush to safety? Because Egypt considers Hamas to be a terrorist group. Egypt doesn't want the Palestinians because they are a threat.
We (including the students) should draw back from our armchair criticism of a president who is doing the very best he can to thread the needle of a very complex dynamic.
And please! While we are considering the "big picture", what is the alternative to the careful diplomacy that this administration has been working at 24/7? Does anyone think that "Mr. Muslim Ban" who doesn't want immigration from "shit hole countries" is a good alternative?
Here is the big picture. The choice is binary. Biden or a madman/dictator who will launch Project 2025 and ensure that women are treated as they were 150 years ago - or worse.
Where are the campus protests for women's reproductive rights? Where are the protests for the slowest road to justice we've ever seen - The Insurrection happened in 2021! Top secret documents were stolen and there is no trial date yet! Why aren't students upset about that?
And where are the protests to restore voting rights and get big dark money out of politics? Our democracy is crumbling.
The few who are super wealthy are accumulating trillions and trillions and students have loans that will last for decades. Where are the demonstrations about that? Women can't fully participate in the workforce because child care is so outrageously expensive - if available. I hear crickets.
The list of injustices perpetrated on Americans is long. And President Joseph Biden has been attempting (with some success) to address it. And yet, he can't get the support of many because of the deeds of a leader of a country halfway around the world?
This is indeed lazy. This is lunacy.
Excellent post, Bill. I wish I could "like" it a thousand times.
Can you put your post in the form of a letter to the editor of one of the major newspapers? It deserves to be widely read and shared.
Bill: Yes, but. Israel’s founding led to the displacement of Palestinians because extremists among the Palestinians began violence against Jews in the 1920s. Jews who came to their ancestral homeland after the founding of modern Zionism in 1896 bought land from its owners, often absentee Turkish landlords. How else were they to get land? There may well have been some displacement of Palestinian tenants, but there was a great influx of Muslims into the area at the same time—drawn by development and opportunities largely spurred by the Jewish settlers. In 1947, the UN proposed a partion of the land into what became Israel and Palestine. Jewish leaders accepted that, although geographically it would have been very difficult to survive. The Arabs rejected partition and six (I think) Arab nations tried to eliminate the nascent Jewish state. Not for the last time, they paid for their mistake. I hold no brief for the present Israeli regime, and I hope it is replaced by a much better one at the first instance, but the whole situation is unimaginably complex, and judgments are all going to be flawed.
Thanks for adding this history. I wonder what percentage of the angry ones are interested. I certainly am.
I have often wondered what would have happened if "Israel" had been created as a nonsectarian, not religious based sanctuary for all who desired to live there. A place where democracy and tolerance could thrive.
My wife has family in Israel. Her cousin has made a career of finding common ground for Jewish and Arab kids. Teaching about each others cultures.
Israel is a place of religious tolerance. It is a Jewish state (the UK, France and Italy, among others, are explicitly Christian states), because Jews never found a place where they were truly at home. I used to say that the United States is a homeland for Jews, but in the past few months I have been a lot less sure of that. In any event, as you probably know, 20 percent of Israel's population is Arab (Muslim or Christian, also Druse) and they serve in Parliament and, in some instances, in the IDF. Ironically, given that we lawyers are said to be Jews who can't stand the sight of blood, a very large proportion of the doctors in Israeli hospitals are Arabs.
Your long main comment is wonderful, Bill. And Jon Margolis is spot on. Please remember that Israel is a secular democracy. Its enemies are theocratic religious extremists. The fact that Israel is a "Jewish state" is not simply a function of religion; many many Jews past and present are atheists or non-believers whose highest values include tolerance, peaceful co-existence, and democracy (although tolerance cannot be open-ended; tolerance of religious extremism is self-defeating). The "Jewish state" is a result of centuries of murderous scapegoating of Jews the world over, most famously from Spain to Russia. We must not lose sight of the fact that Israel stands almost alone surrounded by mortal enemies. In the 'big picture' that is the problem that is being ignored by ignorant leftist extremists who bow to Chomskian false equivalences.
Bill & Jon, are you able to address women's rights in Palestine? I ask because to me it is something that perhaps many female students protesting in the streets are unaware of. My understanding is women do not have many rights like they do in the U.S. - rights at least granted by our various laws.
Had Israel been created in 1947 as you suggest--a "nonsectarian, not religious based sanctuary for all who desired to live there" --it would have been unique in that area of the world, as most Arab nations had been discriminating against Jewish residents for decades, in some cases violently and reminiscent of the pogroms of Europe, and forcing them out. Unfortunately, Netanyahu in his effort to make Gaza Hamas-free has imitated his enemies by slaughtering innocent non-Hamas residents of Gaza.
I'm reading a very interesting book, Dear Palestine, by Shay Hazkani (an Israeli historian). According to him -- he cites chapter and verse -- the acquisition of the land that became Israel was not quite as benign as the comments here picture it. There was much more than "some displacement" of the locals, amid much violence and destruction of villages by the Israelis. It's true they were fighting 5 Arab countries. The Arab militaries were much weaker in training and materiel than the Israelis. Much of this has been made clear in the writing of historians, both Arab and Israeli. In many ways it's very similar to the takeover of the American lands from the American Indians. I was taught a rather heroic version of the establishment of Israel, and in many ways it was heroic, but it also has a dark side; and the behavior of Israel over the years, settlements, repression of the Palestinians, coddling of Hamas by Netanyahu to prevent a Palestinian state, all of that has been a disgrace. It has been very disappointing to me to learn the fuller picture. Still, Israel exists; it's not going away. People should stop killing each other and work out a livable arrangement. The present one is not livable.
Thanks. My references were to the early part of Zionist settlement. When I was growing up, in the '50s, I was told that Palestinians cleared out to leave a way for Arab armies to sweep in and kill the Jews. Some left out of fear, but you are right that many were displaced forcibly. To my mind, the attacks on the new state made such expulsions understandable and even necessary in a least some cases.
Have you in the online press the massive protests by ISRAELIS against far right Netanyahu. Have you watched and heard Israelis say they want Democracy.. The students have seen that. I'm not a student, but I've seen the protests. The journalists who work for reputable publications, saw those protests.
Brilliant- captures the complexity that seems to be missed by the narratives on both the left and the right.
Really well done Bill, and very much not lazy. It's almost as though you learned something about how to think critically that some of the protestors and most of their media promoters either don't know or are avoiding because it would obviate their actions.
As someone once said to me: "There are three sides to every story. My side, your side and the truth."
The Truth.......I find it hard to believe that Israel did not know anything about this suprise attack. Did I miss something here?
Amen. People rather feel than think. Not helpful!
Bill Even more confusing, I have been known to change my mind.
Thank you! This captures well my own conflicted sentiments on this. I would just add (for myself) - it has been puzzling to me why this issue has seemed to galvanize (a segment of) college students, like nothing else, to protest. My conclusion has been that malign antisemitic (and/or anti-Biden) forces are amplifying and using good faith protesters' legitimate concerns to their own advantage, as HCR's comments also suggest.
Because it's on TV (which doomed the war in Vietnam, thank god), and because Biden's embrace of Netanyahu is so problematic. There's the problem of his wanting to stay in power to avoid jail, of trying to achieve a wildly unpopular court "reform", and of his party's own version of "from the river to the sea" in opposition to longstanding US policy of a two state solution. Sound familiar?
I don't see that Biden has "embraced Netanyahu." He has embraced the democratic state of Israel. Sorta like Biden would never deny aid to red states because they are Trump/MAGA states.
As previously stated in Heather's letter, the United States' monetary contributions to Israel have enabled them to fend off relentless missile strikes from Iran, not necessarily used to bomb Gaza.
YES!!!!!! to all of what you write! Thank you, Bill
And the complexity of the issue of Israel and the Palestinians is demonstrated by this: if the US does not help the nation of Israel - NOT netanyahu and his orcs, but the populace of Israel, regardless of whether they are Jewish or Muslim or Christian or no religion - to defend itself and themselves from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, etc. - we will be helping Iran. Iran which, thanks to trampler's historic pullout from Obama's 2015 JCPOA, is in the process of "advancing slowly but confidently, accumulating the means for a future [nuclear] weapon while making no overt move to build one." https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/10/iran-nuclear-bomb-iaea-fordow/. Does ANYONE want that?
Bill, thank you so much for your clarity.
To say protesters calling out Israel’s brutality is antisemitism is not only lazy, it is woodenheaded and deliberately misleading.
Palestinians are Semitic. No one in these protests is antisemitic, they are anti-genocide, and anti-Israel.
For the Christian nationalists like Johnson to categorize these protests as antisemitic assumes the USA’s electorate is mighty stupid.
My Southern brother called me in NYC to express his concern that I might be in danger living near the Columbia campus. "I had no idea there was so much anti-Semitism," he said. He watches a lot of Foxx, and I try to be patient, but I did feel the need to tell him that the situation is complex, and many of the protestors were Jewish, and that I was far more concerned about the police presence and the constant noise of helicopters and the drones tethered to unmarked vehicles on the public street beside my apartment. I am extremely grateful that President Biden has rejected calling in the National Guard. Maybe if Columbia's president had not called in the NYC police so quickly, things could have been resolved soon, but Congress is determined to blow this (not the war but demonstrations against it) up into a political cudgel. Can anyone remember another occasion where the Speaker of the House of Representatives visited the campus of a private university to assert himself?
Can we please top line this:
"Can anyone remember another occasion where the Speaker of the House of Representatives visited the campus of a private university to assert himself?"
Political cudgel is accurate and the current gop method.
Bill, this is a brilliant list, thank you for sharing it with us. It's not lazy politics as much as it is cynical politics. Those who exploit the situation do so assuming we're all dim bulbs who don't know the history of the region or the peoples involved.
Shane, unfortunately, many here are "dim bulbs." They are too lazy or ill-informed to try to learn the history of today's dilemmas, and now history is repeating itself.
Excellent nuanced reply to a very complicated situation. The exploitation by the RW community and the accelerants (agitators) on the campuses feed the emotive quality to hate the actions perpetrated on the less fortunate.
It is taught in public policy that if you're hungry and starving and someone puts a gun in your hand - it won't matter the cause if they promise you (even empty promises) of a better future. The "religion of hating others" is exploitive.
Bill I agree with many of the points that you make in your excellent historical overview. However, as someone who wrote a book on Egypt (that Nasser banned), I do not believe that Egypt seeks to prevent Gazans from settling in Egypt because of fear of Hamas.
I visited a large Palestinian refugee camp in Egyptian Gaza in 1953. The refugees were housed in temporary tents. Egypt, with a population of 22 million strongly opposed accepting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Now that Egypt has 100,000,000 citizens in a poor country, its opposition to the intrusion of a million Palestinians is even greater. I do not envisage that sending Palestinians into Egypt will ever be an ‘amelioration’ of the current situation.
Beautifully and succinctly stated. I so appreciate your analysis. Thank you, Bill.
This comment is worth sharing
Oh yes. So well articulated. Would that more people could actually comprehend the extent of the complexity in this situation rather than the either/or simplicity that seems to reign.
Bill Alstrom -- !!!
The way someone worships God should not be dictated by how someone else worships God. ie You cannot tell me your way is the only one way to worship God. Nor can I tell you.
That is, or course, one perspective. Another is, that human beings created god(s) not the other way around.
But “God” is impressed. Hahahaha
Which one?
They are all the same. God manifests in many forms.
Then what's the point in "my God is better than your God." I know, but it's so "human," to want to one-up the other guy's God. It's a battle without an actual God winner so it can go on forever. What's not to like.
J. Nol, it may be lazy for most people who are mostly also ignorant of the history of this and won't bother to inform themselves. However, the Rs are making as much hay as they can while being total hypocrites. I was surprised by some of the responses of students at Portland State, who were all for what the protesters were doing. They were both frosh and sounded totally naive. Of the first 12 protesters arrested by Portland police in clearing the library, only 4 were students. Also saw the anarchist symbol as part of the graffiti and the mess the protesters had created inside. I support peaceful protest, but not violence, intimidation, and destruction. Yes, religion is often used to vilify the other, but it is also often used to hide other priorities like conquest, exploitation, etc.
First you have to dehumanize the other, then you can exploit and conquer. Any training of soldiers has to include stamping out empathy, especially for the "other" or the enemy, otherwise those soldiers would have difficulty killing them.
This was a problem in the Civil War when the country was more religious. Soldiers did not want to kill and one case cited in a book about death in the Civil War (title escapes me at the moment)one soldier refused even when threatened with death himself, a southerner.
To answer your "I wonder..." I say not ever, unless there is a drastic change in the "god gene" of people.
J Nol, I , too, wonder if people will ever stop cudgeling others of another (or no) religion. I don’t hold out a lot of hope since it seems that our brains are preprogrammed to fear anyone who is different (not of our tribe).
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5933521/&sa=U&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiHi-yW8PGFAxXMJNAFHdC1CBIQFnoECBMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw24AMTtwjaEW6ua2tvUEr4e
Also well said. I appreciate your use of the word binary. War is often not simple and this conflict is especially complicated.
How this war has become Biden’s doing and fault is clearly Republican propaganda.
This - perfectly stated.
And Russian propaganda on TikTok that has fueled the protests in the first place
The fuel comes from academic Chomskian far-left false equivalences. The kids should have been out there protesting MAGA the past eight or nine years.
It’s Chinese propaganda on TikTok. That social platform is nothing more than Asymmetric warfare using propaganda to prejudice our children against rational thought and to undermine being pro-America.
Yes, how has this war become Biden’s doing? I have seen reporting that nearly half of the protesters arrested at Columbia were not students or otherwise affiliated with the school. Are they conscientious citizens? Opportunists? Provocateurs? I would like to know.
First. - This conflict in NOT complicated. That’s absurd. The Israelis want to live in peace. The Palestinians want the land now ruled by Israel. It’s that simple. It’s a war and the Palestinians will not agree to peace while they believe there is an ability to take all of Israel. The world is trying to create a solution the Palestinians do not want, and then is blaming Israel for failing to make it happen. The “2 state solution” is a post 1967 invention offered by the west.
Second - The Nakba as a concept of unfair colonialist invasion is 100% propaganda revisionist one sided history. The British had ownership of the land from the Turks. Both were invading colonialists. They split it with the Jews and “indigenous Arabs”. Palestinians at that time were British subjects and included both Arabs & Jews. The coin of the area had both Hebrew & Arabic on it. There was a war between Jews and ALL the surrounding Arab countries. The Jews won what is now called Israel. Period. Gaza was taken by Egypt. The West Bank taken by Jordan. From 1948 to 1967 the 700,000 indigenous Arabs / now called Palestinians who were displaced by the war were “refugees” living in Egypt and Jordan. At the same time 900,000 Jews were expelled from ever Arab country. Centuries of Jewish life were extinguished in days. Those Semitic Jew refugees (ie brown people) ended up in Israel - a 60% majority of Israel’s are the same brownness as the Palestinians. Let’s drop the white colonialist lie already.
Now the Palestinians are hateful to every conceivable cultural similarity as the west. Egalitarianism or gay rights or freedom of speech or assemble or religion as anathema to Palestinian life. Why did Bethlehem go from 80% Christians living safely under Jewish control to 20% living scared under the Palestinians?
Third, it is impossible to be pro-Palestinian without being anti-Israel or anti-Jew - unless you are a Palestinian who is fighting for land you think is yours. Theres no rationale basis beyond ignorance, prejudice, or religious triumphalism (you want the world to convert to Islam even if the conversion comes by the sword) for any westerner to support Palestinians.
If you are a Palestinian I’d ask: over the past 75 years how has the fight been going? I see the propaganda map you use showing Israel slowly taking land. Why should they stop? It’s not your land unless you can secure your borders. That’s just the truth of human history. How’s the terrorist fight going? I know; you think it’s splendid cuz you slaughtered 1200 Jews in October. But Israel is about to make peace with the Saudis. They have good ties to Egypt., UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Jordan just let the Israel Air Force use Jordanian airspace to knock out Iranian missiles. Plus as a.reward for your brutal terrorism, the land Israel unilaterally gifted to you in 2005, Gaza, is now a literal wasteland 100% because of Palestinian stupidity and brutality in attacking the Jews.
Isn’t it time to try peace and negotiations. Why don’t you give back the hostages and ask for a peaceful resolution. Israel left Gaza without getting any assurances. But tried in good faith to give Gaza the ability to self rule. You guys blew it. If you wanna re-do on that concept you must give up violence as your method of gaining statehood. Otherwise I think the tea leaves will see a lot of pain in your future.
What about The Intercept's discovery of US administration opposition to the two-state solution? https://theintercept.com/2024/04/17/united-nations-biden-palestine-statehood/
Absolutely. And what does violence do but incite further violence. When does that stop?
May 14 will be the 76th anniversary of the founding of Israel. Marking the beginning of this conflict. Israel will have to learn the lesson we did in Viet Nam: bombing innocent people does not eliminate any threat, nor bring peace. It only provides another generation of enemies.
There is NO parallel between the Vietnam war and Israel defending itself, day after day, year after year, for 76 years.
In the fifty years since the end of the US war in Vietnam, relations have been somewhat normalized, to the point that there are no travel restrictions for US citizens to Vietnam. Will there be normal relations between Israel and other nations fifty years hence?
Putting aside the fact that you are comparing apples and oranges, it is fair to say that Arab interests in the middle east would have long ago benefited from creating their own secular democracies and living in peace with Israel. The problem is not a "Jewish state", which happens to be a secular democracy; the problem is the theocratic dictatorships bent on destroying it, none of whom will open their doors to Palestinians. (Once Netanyahu and Donald Trump go to jail, things might improve).
Had I been Virginia Gay testifying at Stefanik’s committee, I would have responded, “Congresswoman Stefanik, who the hell do you think you are acting like Joe McCarthy badgering witnesses?” Had she done this she would still have her job.
To oppose how Israel responded to October 7 is not "hostility or prejudice against Jewish people" (Oxford Languages definition of antisemitism).
Kneejerk, or blind support of all things Israel does is, however "mandated" in Zechariah 2:8-10 and Genesis Genesis 13:14-15.
I wonder if all those protesters yelling at one another understand the implications of the US ceasing to provide military support for Israel? In the aftermath of this humanitarian mess I believe and implosion would occur. Huge black hole in the Middle East.
This view seems so self-evident to me. I guess that means I'm still very naive. And the republican party's hypocritical words and deeds for political gain probably should't surprise me either. But the fact that they get away with such transparent power grabbing and destruction of vital American institutions nearly makes my head explode. I hate injustice and that seems to be increasingly what the gop is all about.
Barry. Thank you for your comments. I have always wondered why the Israeli people are committing atrocities against the Palestinians, doing exactly what was done to them in Europe. I am pleased to learn not all Jewish people approve of these actions. While I am only 75, I’m pretty sure , too, tgatvI will not see a peaceful world in my lifetime. I pray for America ever day, that people will wake up and stop the evil doers, mostly republicans, who are trying to take over our country. Sad!
Sharon, to state that Netanyahu's coalition is doing the same to residents of Gaza as the Hitler regime did to European Jews in is World War 2 is simply wrong.
1) European Jews never threatened anyone while Hamas has vowed to destroy Israel and kill all Jews, and acted on that vow on Oct 7.
2) jews in Europe did not have weapons, did not throw grenades into Christian neighborhoods, and did not invite any retaliation that would hurt their neighbors. On the other hand, Hamas has appropriated billions in donations to build tunnels and to build an arsenal, which they lobbed into Israeli cities, weekly, since 2006. Further, Hamas lobbed those rockets from the grounds of apartments, schools and mosques, and fought from spots within crowded neighborhoods. The deaths of their fellow Arabs was the goal, not just the consequence.
3) Hitler's approach to Jews was to enslave them to support Germany's war effort, keeping them under conditions that would allow them to live for 3-4 months under starvation, accidents, or torture took their lives. That's for the ones that weren't first sent to the gas chambers. Israel has not enslaved Arabs from Gaza. Instead, they employed over 18,000 for daily work in Isrseli territory, who were paid fair wages for their work. Hamas's actions caused that source of income to end, killing some of them on Oct 7.
4) German goals included extermination of all Jews. Hamas's goal is the same. Isrsel's goal is to defang Hamas so it stops being a threat to its citizens, not to kill all Arabs.
Has Israel gone too far? As a Jewish Israeli American, I say yes. But I also know that the war in Gaza is just that, a war. Israel might have gone too far, but it is justified in going after Hamas. Or would you recommend that they allow Hamas to restock and continue the near-weekly attacks on civilian areas in Israel like it has since 2006?
If I was your neighbor and kept shooting into your property, would you let me keep doing it? Sure, you could call the police, but who could Israel call?
Barry, I’m hugging you in my heart for speaking truth. Netanyahu and his cronies as well as leaders of Hamas are responsible for this horrific situation, but the general Jewish and Palestinian population are the ones who are suffering. Praying for peace, for reason, for compassion, and decency in the Holy Land.
The leaders support this ongoing war, not the people.
Thanks, Barry.
Barry, I am 100% with you--as are a lot of other fellow Jews who have looked at the mendacity of Israeli politics, especially the government's response to any attacks on or protest against the ultra rightwing and nationalist settlements they keep on planting in areas that were "supposed" to be autonomous Palestinian territories. The typical Israeli government response of a kid throwing stones at a soldier (for every injury 10 Palestinians at minimum must be arrested/die/have their homes destroyed--in an ironic reflection of the ancient Roman practice of "decimation") has escalated to 100 Palestinians must be punished for every injury to an Israeli. This is totally unacceptable.
As I have said before on this platform, the policy of the Israeli government CREATES supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. And it provides fodder for the christofascists here in the USA to further their ultimately totally antisemitic goals of "forcing" the "Rapture": their real unstated purpose behind their support of Israel. Because they "need" Jews in Jerusalem for their fantasy of the antichrist to come who will ultimately wipe all the Jews off the face of the earth. The cooperation between the christofascists here and the Israeli government is about as cynical and manipulative as it gets.
That said, this is also a golden opportunity for Russia, China, and Iran to make hay with US politics--and I have questioned the timeline of the Hamas attack and the Israeli response to it before because it is pretty clear the Israeli government had a good idea what was about to happen and turned their eyes away. Opportunism on all sides, as well as mendacity. There are NO "good" sides to this. And Hamas perpetuating the war by refusing to negotiate and return the people they captured is equally heinous. But interestingly, the Israeli government seems far less worried about that 100 or so still surviving group than about turning Gaza (and eventually, I suspect, the West Bank) to rubble.
Well said, Linda.
"And it provides fodder for the christofascists here in the USA to further their ultimately totally antisemitic goals of "forcing" the "Rapture": their real unstated purpose behind their support of Israel. Because they "need" Jews in Jerusalem for their fantasy of the antichrist to come who will ultimately wipe all the Jews off the face of the earth. The cooperation between the christofascists here and the Israeli government is about as cynical and manipulative as it gets." THIS!!
I share Barry’s opinion. Especially his comment “If anyone is stoking antisemitism it is Israel and its supporters.” After the gun massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue, I wrote the same comment begging Americans to recognize how Jews around the world were likely to be affected with antisemitism due to the violence that Netanyahu & his extreme government were committing. That Israel did not appear to be concerned about those outside of its state political interests.
I encourage everyone to read more broadly about the modern history of Palestine and the development of Israel through to the present and that effect on the indigenous people of former Palestine. Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace or Apartheid” is a good start though not comprehensive. Carter was criticized for his use of “Apartheid”. But, he has been more engaged and supportive of Israel than probably any other U.S. president. Castigated by both Republicans and Democrats, and characterized as a weak president, he is without doubt in my mind the most religious, moral, thoughtful and equitable president we have had since FDR. He was Israel’s best friend over his active life. If Israel had listened to him, they would likely be living in peace today. Palestine would likely have had a state by now. It’s said that the indigenous Jews & Arabs of Palestine are genetically identical, and they had lived essentially in peace during the Ottoman Empire. That violence did not occur until Europeans started immigrating to Palestine in large enough numbers & wealth to worry the great majority Arab population. Real problems developed during the British Mandate occupation after WWI. There is history that has been obscured by politics & politicians as in all history.
Interesting to me is my recently learning other Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Eqypt did not want the Palestinians to move into their countries.
True. Arabs are not a homogenous group. They have not wanted Palestinian influence anymore than Palestinians wanted growing European Jewish influence, nor Israel wanted a Palestinian majority in their new state, or expanding state.
Arabs have given Palestinians nominal support since the Jewish militias drove 750,000 Palestinians out in the 1947-48 war to establish Israel. Arabs have had varying attitudes of acceptance or rejection of Israel based on their concerns for their own situation. Jordan though most friendly to Israel, deals with Palestinian refugees being the majority of their population. Lebanon has dealt with large numbers of Palestinian refugees in refugee camps, with small numbers of Palestinian leaders and freedom fighters fighting Israel, drawing responding & preemptive strikes from Israel similar to the strikes on Gaza, making Lebanon dysfunctional.
Egypt (1956 from Britain), Jordan (1946 from Britain) & Lebanon (1943-46 from France) were given their independence around the time of Israel’s establishment. Saudi Arabia was recognized as independent by Britain in 1927.
The interpretation of this history to favor Israel and disfavor Palestinians is similar to our interpretation of Vietnam history. We did not talk about Vietnam as a U.S. ally in WWII with Ho Chi Minh after 1945. We then saw them as an enemy as we supported France’s colonial interests. We then called Ho Chi Minh’s freedom fighters “communists” as we supported puppet governments left by the French. We lost much and gained nothing for these distortions.
To compare US support of French colonial interests in Vietnam to US support of Israel is absurd. The Vietnam war was our folly, a war of immense hubris and greed. It was also falsely contrived. There is no parallel to European and Middle East history, immersed as it is in the persecution and murder of Jews for centuries, no matter whether the Jew being persecuted was a accused of being a communist or a capitalist. (Hitler accused them of both).
Only Jordan, in 1948 and 1967, permitted the Palestinians entry in any significant numbers By September, 1970, the Hashemite Kingdom, for its own survival, had to force out the PLO, PFLP, and other such bands.
Barry, I’m an American of Irish, English and Scots descent with one set of Catholic grandparents and another set of Protestant grandparents. I witnessed, first hand, the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland as a student in 1977.
As you so aptly note, it is hard to love any country that engages in the wholesale slaughter and repression of a people, let alone the evil acts of terrorism such as Hamas conducted. In Ireland, the PLO-trained terrorists created unbearable fear, loss and on-going anger and resentment that continues.
The Irish did manage to create an uneasy peace. It’s far from perfect and doesn’t work for everyone but it has allowed for more people to raise their families and pursue their dreams in relative peace. That matters.
That is my prayer for all the people in Israel and Gaza. My lifetime? One can only hope….
We are kin, minus the Catholic part. The parallels between "The Troubles" and the situation in Gaza are very, very close.
I fully support Israel's right to eliminate the threat of Iranian sponsored terror. Indiscriminate killing of Israelis is a well paid career in Gaza and the West Bank. The leaders and teachers of the 10/7 atrocities must be eliminated, and their populations re-educated to live with Jewish settlers, under the nurturing wing of Allah, with full rights and privileges of Palestinian citizens, as Arab-Israelis live in their Jewish State. I think it's relevant to understand that Arab leaders conspired with Hitler to eliminate Jews last century and still hold their death cult fantasies.
Here is is again, the use of "my god is better than your god" to address issues. Would that we would finally free ourselves from the prison of religion and actually encourage people to think for themselves.
Ethnic nationalism, social remaking can produce as much fervent devotion as religion. Traditionally however religion has been tied to states and peoples that often adds to the fervor. I don't think you can just lay it on "religion" as such. "Mores" have deep roots in human nature.
Those "mores" as you call them, are just plain superstition dressed up as a socially sanctioned belief system. We are capable of much more than that, if only we are allowed to develop the capacity to think. I have nothing against tradition, origin legends and ritual, but so often they are held up as truths rather than the way a particular society organizes itself. Religion, too often is used to justify brutality and serves mostly to separate us from each other. Anyone who accepts religion gives up their right to think for themselves.
"mores" are essential rules and guidelines of social regulation, the "Ten Commandments" are mainly about social regulation; i sometimes think "religion" as an overarching authority was built just to enforce social/tribal/clan/ethnic/imperial/national cohesions, often with their attendant enemies, given humanity's long history of conflicts at all these levels. Not sure I get "so often as they are held up as truths rather than the way a particular society organizes itself" . The 10C is exactly a sanctioning/enforcing document, along with the multitude of other rules you'll find Exodus etc richly adorned with, with or without Yahwah's explicit command. For example, have fun reading the litany of rules about slavery and details for reimbursements for damage done to the many categories thereof. You might also remember that in the process of suppressing Russian Orthodoxy etc in the fledging Soviet Union, the Soviets committed mass atrocities in their efforts to remake society, and religion wasn't the best killing example. Best example I'd say was the deliberate mass starvation of Ukrainian peasant farmers in the early 1930s, we're talking millions here. Of course, that doesn't even get us to the Nazis, who simply wanted to annihilate whole populations so they could colonize most of eastern Europe well into Ukraine with Germans - the Master Race. I will certainly agree that the long persecution of Jews as "killers of Christ" is likely the best example of religious persecution for no other reason. I recommend reading Snyder's Bloodlands, or Plokhy's The Gates of Europe, a history of the Ukrainian region. You will blanch at the sheer level and detail of atrocity and mayhem, at not exactly in the name of "religion", allowing for the Jewish holocaust in the middle of it all.
“ Religion, too often is used to justify brutality and serves mostly to separate us from each other.”
I agree but that is man’s interpretation of “religion” not a truth about religion itself.
But religions are both created and interpreted by human beings.
Yes! Follow the invisible leader!
I prefer "perfect sky parent" since a belief in any god emerges from the human longing to have a perfect parent watching over them, rather than the imperfect parents they actually had.
My go to: Imaginary Sky Pilot.
Business leaders and the press also supported Hitler's rise and have yet to be held accountable. They wield economic security like a blunt object to keep people oppressed, especially in America where consumers are treated like labs rats.
Truth there
What do Israelis have to do in the West Bank and in Gaza? It's not part of their country. The Israeli settlers are their illegally and should be leaving.
Israelis haven't lived in Gaza in decades. Israel made Gaza "Judenrein"--Jew-free--by pulling every Jewish resident, business, and military base out of Gaza and giving the keys to Palestinians to run Gaza themselves. Palestinians said they wanted independence to govern as they saw fit, and Israel provided that. The result was Gazans elected Hamas as their legal, official government, and last October's massacre was the natural consequence of that.
West Bank and Gaza are part of Israel, which won both territories in the 1967 war. Israel has not declared formal sovereignty over either in hopes of making a deal for an independent Palestinian state, which the Gaza handover was designed to trial. And the largest part of West Bank IS open to Jewish settlement, per the Clinton accords, until such time a final peace treaty is negotiated.
It's more complicated than you think.
Oh well, you're so right - whatever option do the poor Israelis have but to commit genocide on the Palestinians? Only because they created Hamas because Israel wanted to fight the PLO with them, who could have known they turn out to be so ungrateful? Just because the Palestinians are treated like concentration camp prisoners in their own country - who could hold it against the most moral army in the world in the most horribly victimised 😢 country in the world?
You just have to listen to Israeli tv, to the speeches in the Knesset or watch some IDF Instas to get a pretty good idea what sort of people Israelis in their majority are.
I fully accept that Israel is a nation that was horribly traumatised in its history, and - in my opinion - it just like a person would, has a mental defect due to that trauma. But that doesn't entitle it to commit war crime after war crime after war crime (listen to ICJ presentations regarding the occupation of the Palestinian territories), behave in the most brutal, colonising way towards a country that it has taken all the land from. The West put after WWII all its ugly, stinking guilt into a huge bucket, flung it over the Middle East and said "your problem now"
Just like Jon Stewart said "Listen, Middle East, we didn't want to be drawn in all that drama that OUR actions caused - we just want your delicious oil!"
If the West lets get Israel away again and again and again, Putin and Xi Jinping have won. The world will not forget this and the first signs are there. One should not forget, that the West is in the minority on this issue.
Can't wait for the next episode of this show "Who is the US gonna elect - the criminal in Putin's pocket or the palliative care candidate candidate in Israel's pocket?"
The writers of our reality must to coked up to the eyeballs.
All those words to avoid answering a simple question. I'll restate it so you can try again:
Since you consider this genocide, what war plan would you have enacted to ensure Israel destroyed Hamas without injuring non-combatants in Gaza and therefore avoid the "genocide" you claim is happening?
It should be easy for you to answer, so go ahead.
Thanks for calling out the word "genocide", used so freely here.
Or do you believe Israelis should have just shut up and accepted the mass murders?
Once again radicals are calling the shots, to the detriment of all.
ensuring the safety and security of Jews is a fundamental mission for Israel, both within its borders and globally. Any Palestinian state that does not ensure its Jewish citizens would be counter to the mission of Israel. Jews living freely in Palestine is part of the Hamas charter.
"Reducate" is an interesting term for kill.
Barry, you and I are similarly aged, and although I am not Jewish, I vividly recall being horrified while very young by the Nazis' extermination of millions of Jews.
More recently, watching the thousands of Israelis demonstrating against Netanyahu because of his using right wing tactics to destroy Israel's courts in order to avoid prosecution for his numerous indictments, I saw the protests being diluted by the October Hamas attack. I immediately realized that Israel's military intelligence failures and uncharacteristic inattention to anticipating an imminent attack would give Bibi exactly what he needed to stay in power.
Clearly, Hamas' atrocities deserved retaliation, but killing thousands of civilians to "destroy Hamas" can't be justified. Even if Netanyahu destroys every Hamas fighter, which he won't, there will be thousands of Palestinian young people who will remember the horror wrought upon them and they will become the new Hamas fighters. The seeds were already planted by the lack of having a vote in their own destiny. They will take up the Hamas pledge to eradicate Israel, and all hope will be lost for a peaceful Jewish state.
Here and in other parts of the world, right wingers are wailing because of the threat to Jews. My question is, where were they when white supremacists were marching with tiki torches in Charlottesville, shouting "Jews will not replace us" and our resident white supremacist leader characterized the situation by insisting that there were "fine people on both sides"?
Our lives began with witnessing unthinkable evil being justified against powerless scapegoats, and we are still witnessing this evil. I fervently hope that we will begin to see the world awaking to the continued destruction before we die.
Thank you Nancy for beautifully extending my thoughts. Barry
Barry, we can pray that the right's reign of terror on all of us - worldwide - will soon be over. If only Bibi and the Orange Menace could get Elon Musk construct a manned rocket to Mars and be its first occupants . . . .
@Barry. If they and you want a cease fire, protest that culpable Hamas leaders live in sanctuary in Qatar and other countries and could have agreed to it. Where are the protests about Arab money in schools? At the Qatar embassy in DC and the UN mission?
Thank you Barry. I'm sorry that you have had to endure antisemitism. No one should be the target of hate or bullying for any reason.
Hamas is the mouse that roared but the Palestinians have been the victims (pawns) of both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Netanyahu and the Israeli war council are like many US politicians. They will do anything to stay in power including delaying the end of this conflict at the expense of the hostages, the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Barry Gerber,
I am a Christian....I too would love to see peace among all who have or do not have a faith. We make it difficult when certain humans want to dominate using "faith" which is precious to those of us who hold a faith. We should respect the honesty and freedom of those who choose "no religion."
We are misusing our faith when we allow it to justify killing our fellow humans which actually goes against the religions or faiths with which I am familiar.
No human being can look upon the starving and devastation in Palestine and be at peace. These are innocent human beings.
We do not fully understand what happened on October 7 nor why it happened. We do not understand why the protective shield over that specific area was not working at the very occasion of the attack. We do not fully understand Netanyahu's relationship
with Hamas.
We do know that Netanyahu would be tried for his criminal accusations if he were not holding his current leadership role in Israel. We do know that Netanyahu wants to take over Gaza.
There is good and evil battling, as has always been true. We must not turn our hearts and eyes and will away from this earth which is OUR home. We are responsible to do what we can to build peace...to serve those in need. We must assist in healing where we are able. To NOT put our heads in the sand and make light of the hellish existence of our fellow members of humanity is required.
Violence on our college campuses...or anywhere.... only helps our enemies.
Thank you President Joe Biden...thank you Jill Biden...thanks to those serving in our Congress who choose peace...who choose making our country great...who choose "Building Back Better".
Thank to those working tirelessly throughout the world for peace and reconciliation. It is an endless challenge. I am so thankful for those we know and see and for those who are unseen but have chosen to give their lives and talents for the preservation of building relationships throughout our entire world. We truly are dependent on one another.
and...GOD SAVE UKRAINE!!!!
Spot on and I would at that "Bibi" is a Trumpian and a war criminal.
Thank you.
So well said.
The radicals on both sides have taken over and drown out reasonable voices. Hamas lit the match and created the explosion that was waiting to happen. Who started this is almost impossible to determine. The majority of people want coexistence. Our efforts need to focus on stopping the bullies who use violence and hate speech to further their cause. It’s upsetting to see people caught in the whirlpool of violence and polarized reactivity. There can be no peace unless we talk, and we have to heal across divides.
It reminds me of the huge changes we imposed on ourselves because of Bin Laden. We reacted with a sledge hammer instead of reason and a scalpel.
Yes. We really failed to understand what was going on and overreacted much to our peril and that of the world. 20 years of wasted warfare, death destruction, and diversion from more important goals. I worry about what is unfolding now. Biden warned Netanyahu not to do it we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. He ignored Biden and now look. I worry how Netanyahu in his radicals have really damaged Israel and contributed to reactive antisemitism. These people should never have been in government. Just like George W. Bush should not have been president. It’s interesting to note that administrations that squeak in because of anomalies in the democratic system create destruction.