GAZA- Part 1
The war and suffering going on in Gaza right now is truly
tragic. It has been going on for several months and the free world is starting
to form judgments about the behavior they are witnessing. Unfortunately, much
of the free world does not understand what it is seeing and is getting it all
wrong.
Bad behavior is a social construct.[1] It is not about morality,
or what is right or wrong. It is about how a particular group of people expect
members of their group to behave. Therefore, you can’t really judge behavior
without understanding the context in which it occurs; and the people who are
judging what is happening in Gaza right now either don’t understand the context in
which what they are seeing is happening or they are just ignoring it. So, let
me provide that context.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas soldiers crossed the border
into Israel and brutally tortured, raped and murdered over 1000 innocent men, women
and children who were attending a concert or lived nearby. Then they took a
couple of hundred hostages, fled back to Gaza and hid in the tunnels they had
built beneath hospitals, schools and residential neighborhoods. Why did they do that? What did they expect
would happen? Did they think all the Jews in Israel would pack up and leave
Israel out of fear? Of course, not. They knew exactly what would happen. It was
the only thing that could happen. Israel would retaliate with a vengeance and
they would unwillingly, but necessarily, injure and kill thousands of Gazan citizens
in order to get at the Hamas soldiers who were hiding in the tunnels beneath those
citizens and using them as a shield. It’s called collateral damage and is a
consequence of war... always has been and always will be.
But, why would Hamas do such a thing, use its citizens as
a shield knowing it would maximize the collateral damage? They are doing it because
they hope and believe that the more Gazan citizens who suffer, are injured and die,
the easier it will be for Hamas to convince the free world, especially the idealistic,
younger generations in liberal leaning democracies, most of whom are Israel’s
allies, that Israel’s determined retaliation is actually genocide and that the
Gazan citizens are the victims. In fact, THAT WAS HAMAS’ PLAN from the very
beginning. Hamas willfully and intentionally chose to start this war and
sacrifice the safety and the lives of the people who elected them to govern Gaza
in order to discredit Israel in the eyes of Israel’s allies. And that plan is
working exactly as Hamas designed it, which makes Hamas, not Israel, totally
and exclusively responsible for every single Gazan who has suffered, been
injured or died since Hamas’ ruthless attack on Israel last October.
If you are still not convinced that Hamas wants to
maximize the collateral damage caused by Israel, consider this. On November 20,
2023, Hamas agreed to an exchange where they released several Israeli hostages
in return for Israel releasing several Palestinian political prisoners. Among
the hostages released was one very brave young woman who had been tortured and repeatedly
raped by her Hamas captors. Keep in mind that this is the only time Hamas has released
hostages since this conflict began and it was within the first sixty days of
the conflict. Why would Hamas do that? Think about that for a moment. There is
only one possible answer to that question because there is only one possible
response to hearing that young woman’s story. The Israelis would become even
further enraged and would intensify their assault on Hamas in Gaza, which would
result in increased collateral damage because Hamas was using the citizens of
Gaza as a shield. .And that is exactly what happened because that is exactly what Hamas
planned and deliberately chose to make happen.
Speaking of the Gazan citizens, while they are clearly
non-combatants and were not a party to this plan, they did elect Hamas to
govern them knowing that Hamas’ reason for existing was to, and I’m
paraphrasing here, eliminate the Jews from
Israel and return all the land from the river to the sea to the Palestinians.
And the citizens of Gaza have continued
to support Hamas as Hamas relentlessly fired rockets at Israel, sent suicide
bombers to kill innocent Israeli citizens and rejected every proposal for a
two-state solution because they believe there can only be one state and it must
be an Islamic state. While I am not suggesting the citizens of Gaza deserve or are
to blame for what is happening to them, what is happening to them is the
consequence of their having made a bad decision to begin with by electing Hamas
to govern them and not doing anything to correct that mistake once it became
apparent that Hamas was much more interested in destroying Israel than
governing Gaza.
As to the Hama’s claim that the land occupied by Israel
belongs to Islam and the former Palestinians, all you have to do is remember
the story of Moses to know that claim is nonsense. Moses led the Jews out of Egypt and into what
is now called Israel almost 2000 years before Christianity became a religion
and 2600 years before Islam became a religion. The Jews kept getting kicked out
of Israel because theirs has never been a warrior culture, but Israel was
always their “promised land.” It was given back to the Jews after World War II
by the victors of that war and one of the things the Jewish people learned from
that war, and the Nazi Holocaust that brutally murdered 6 million Jews, was that
if Jews were to survive as a tribe and a religion they needed to become a
warrior culture.
Given this context, it should be clear who is behaving
badly in Gaza. It is unquestionably Hamas. Even if you accept this conclusion,
I can understand if you still have concerns about how Israel is responding to the
urging by its allies and the United Nations to declare a cease fire and allow
humanitarian aid to reach the suffering citizens of Gaza. It is as if their
friends are telling them, “We support you but you must show more compassion for
the innocent people of Gaza who are suffering and dying without water, food and
medical care” and Israel appears to be insensitive to their appeals and determined
to keep pushing their attack on Hamas forward.
Again, you need context to understand Israel’s behavior
and that is what I will provide in the Part 2 of this post.
posted by Jose de Olivares @ 2:36 PM
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