I Loathe Hamas and Netanyahu -- Did 80+year-old Decisions Set their Course?

Hamas’s slaughter of 2,000 Israeli civilians is appalling, indefensible, and likely counterproductive.

I sympathize with the victims – and with the Palestinians suffering the Israeli retaliation. Palestinians lost their homes when stronger forces gave Israel half their land. Since then, Israel, and would-be Palestinian freedom-fighters have used and abused the Palestinian people.

Any sane person must sympathize with the Jews as things stood in 1945; The Jews needed a homeland; but Palestine wasn’t empty. Yet I have beloved friends whose lives would be what, without Israel?

Could partition have worked? What if both sides hadn’t been so fervent about their respective superstitious spiritual systems, and so intolerant? Some Zionists sought a socialist nation in which anyone could live free. Not Netanyahu.

Criticizing Israel isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic. Many Jews don’t approve Israel’s actions. Much of Israel’s conduct can be justified by security concerns. Much probably cannot, including letting folks “settle” in areas Israel doesn’t own, then allowing settlers to do as they like, and backing them militarily, further eliminating Palestinian homes.

Internally, Netanyahu’s return to leadership, despite corruption, has been disastrous. Cementing the “settlement” process helped provoke Hamas’s attack. His war on the Israeli Supreme Court was so repugnant that citizens and army officers protested in unprecedented numbers. Some say the internal conflict over Netanhahu’s dictatorial conduct helped undermine Israel’s ability to foresee and blunt the Hamas attack.

Hamas has no mandate from the Palestinians: since 2007, Hamas has ruled without elections, and apparently with little concern for the welfare of the average Palestinians who will suffer for its madness. Hamas knew its spree of violence would make Gazans’ bleak lives more miserable. Israel says “Leave!” – but they can’t.

A Republican recently noted how much Donald Trump and Joe Biden need each other. He thinks Trump’s criminal trials will eliminate Trump in 2024, bringing down both Trump and Biden. Politically, voters’ dislike/distrust for each has kept the other from sinking further. A new Republican face might force the Democrats to urge Biden to retire.

Do Netanyahu and Hamas need each other? Threats from Hamas and Hezbollah generate enough fear for Israelis to let Netanyahu into office; and Israel’s heavy hand grants Hamas some respectability among its subjects. Meanwhile, what was Palestine in 1946, with some small areas of mainly Jewish settlement, shrank to less and half its size in 1947, shrank further in 1967, and has since diminished to almost nothing.

Interestingly, Netanyahu apparently has approved extensive funding of Hamas by Qatar, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. I’m no expert, but that doesn’t currently look like a great move for Israel. It may be good for Netanyahu.

I think our government too often lets Israel lead it around by the nose. I loathe Netanyahu’s extremism, and don’t excuse Israel’s apparent excesses; but the Hamas attack is appalling, in size and style.

One other odd thought: I think often of the 1890s Ghost Shirt Dances, magic-based effort at rebellion by some tribes against the U.S., long after the U.S. had vanquished the tribes. It had no chance – but folks got convinced that if they did the dances and wore the ghost shirts, bullets couldn’t kill them.

I wonder if Hamas’s vile attack, obviously motivated by anger that Israel and Saudi Arabia are finding a rapprochement that’s more important to the Saudis than the Palestinians are, is all the more violent because Hamas is closer to oblivion than we realize.

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[The above column appeared Sunday, 15 October, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on the KRWG website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[ I feel awkward writing about this, because I know so much less than so many people do. Yet I couldn’t not, because I felt such sorrow for everyone. And, I suppose anger – but directed in so many directions and aimed even at decisions made and actions taken almost a century ago. While so many other public issues have seemed so clear – the War in Viet Nam was both unjustified and unwise, segregation was both stupid and unconstitutional, individuals should be allowed to marry someone whose color differs or whose gender is the same, pursuing the kind of love and companionship we all deserve – and we could see how to take our best shot at others, notably the balance between hardcore capitalism with all its manifest evils, and pure socialism, which not only can be inefficient but seems too often to lead to some supposedly well-intentioned dictatorship.

I have never felt the Middle East could be “solved.” It seemed clear that a “two-state solution” was the best option, but was being sabotaged by both sides; and that both sides’ judgment was badly clouded, and their capacity empathy limited, by fervent belief in their only slightly different superstitions. That is, religion prevented rational conduct on both sides, while religious extremists too often held sway. And each side could legitimately point to a long list of bad things that had been done to it.

Was there ever a chance? Jews deserved a homeland, and the world had treated them terribly; but Palestine was occupied, mostly by non-Jews, despite a few Jewish settlements. (When fellow WWII pilots asked my father, a Jewish atheist, if he was thinking of flying in the possible war between Jews and Palestinians, he replied, “On which side?” acknowledging the fact that some people would be treated unfairly to help more powerful folks try to make amends for the unfair and horrible treatment of another set of people.

Hamas’s conduct is wrong. Whichever “side” you favor, vicious attacks on civilians are not approved conduct in a war; and the way it was done was especially vicious; but who can say that Israel has not (and will not, now, in response) treated civilians horribly. Most of the European world, just as it once gave Jews the short end of any available stick, now considers Palestinian civilians less significant than Israeli civilians. And Israel now owns or controls most of the land that once was Palestine.

Meanwhile, I care very much about some Israelis.

So my column may have been more of a long, sustained, cry of distress than “analysis.” ]

[Having said that, I do know that Netanyahu is bad news for Israel, Hamas is bad news for Palestinians, and extremists have probably made a two-state solution absolutely unworkable.]