Today, the media are flooded with catch-cries, prejudices and fake news.
Many facets of our lives are not made public or are cast in a limited light.
Some questions don’t get asked, while others don’t get answered. Nuances get lost.
Let’s take a peek at some of these nuances.
When Did The War Known as Iron Swords begin - and why?
Much of what is happening today results from differing views about when this war began, and who are the Palestinians.
Israel supporters say the current war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas - the elected government of Gaza - crossed the border into Israel and carried out a massacre. This, even though Hamas has in fact been attacking Israel with rockets almost continuously since it was elected to govern Gaza, 17 years ago.
I posted about such attacks in 2009 and 2014.
https://alanmeerkin.blogspot.com/2009/01/
Arab 'Pro-Palestine' supporters say the war began in 1948, when the Jewish State of Israel was established.
For them, the current conflict is a continuation of the 1948 war between them and the Jewish Palestinians. That is why they always complain about 75 years of Israeli occupation - despite the fact that Gaza was only under Israeli control for 39 years (from 1967 to 2006).
Woke Westerners who join the Arab protests seem to believe that the latter want to live in an Arab Palestinian state in what they see as 'occupied Gaza and the West Bank'. For these Westerners, the details are not important.
As can be seen, this lack of nuance has significant implications.
To my thinking, the current crisis began on June 25, 2006, when Hamas, as the newly elected government of Gaza, committed its first major attack on Israel (as a government) by kidnapping Gilad Shalit. This was followed by the firing of rockets on Israeli towns. Close to two decades later, the rocket attacks have not stopped.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-israel-history-confrontation-2021-05-14/
A Battle Against Innocents
Today, after 4 months of fighting to disable Hamas, Israeli soldiers are still dying in battles raging against well-armed Hamas fighters. To a logical mind, this should debunk the image presented in the world media of a regional superpower steam-rolling a defenceless, innocent population.
Many here feel that each Israeli soldier is his/her own child. I know I do, and almost everyone I speak to expresses the same feeling.
https://aish.com/an-open-letter-to-an-israeli-soldier/
“What a tragedy,” is a sentence that is sadly oft repeated here, when a young Israeli man dies in battle. Last week, a father of two young children, serving on reserve duty, came home after being released. Then he was requested to return to Gaza to serve for one more week. The morning of his final release was his last morning on this earth.
Soldiers’ funerals are sometimes attended by thousands of grieving people, most of whom never personally met the deceased.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hGxY2QHLgs
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/society/1688727288-israel-lays-first-sergeant-shilo-yossef-amir-to-rest-thousands-attend-the-funeral
I was recently at a family celebration. Also attending were a number of young men who had just been discharged after 3 months of service in Gaza. The family matriarch sat in a corner quietly crying, grateful that they had returned home safely.
A small number of Gazan Palestinians, seeking shelter in the humanitarian corridor set up by Israel, have been protesting against Hamas, and the devastation it has wrought on Gaza.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1706106277-palestinian-civilians-protest-against-hamas-in-gaza
https://jewishinsider.com/2023/12/hamas-gaza-israel-war-october-7-palestinians/
Such protests are not reported on the BBC of course.
Gazans’ discontent with Hamas was also expressed before the current war, but was subdued by Hamas with an iron fist.
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-hamas-demonstration-israel-blockade-palestinians-306b19228f9dd21f1036386ce3709672\\
What About the Bodies?
About 1500 Hamas terrorists were killed on Israeli soil while being repelled on October 7.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-fighters-bodies-israel-toll-gaza-ground-invasion-rcna119640
What happened to their bodies? How were they treated? Were they buried?
A friend told me that the Israeli authorities carefully collect the bodies, clean them and treat them with religious respect, before burying them together.
That’s certainly a contrast from the dismemberment and mutilation of Israelis (often while still alive) by Hamas operatives, who were instructed to deface, dishonour and defile non-Muslim corpses.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-770086
Many Israeli victims could only be identified by DNA, dental records and other forensic means.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/17/1206601854/israel-turns-to-dna-and-dental-imprints-to-identify-unrecognizable-bodies
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/31/israel-attack-victims-forensic-identification/
After a few weeks, it was even necessary to bring in Israeli archaeologists to detect human remains.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-30/ty-article/.premium/israeli-archaeologists-help-identify-human-remains-in-gaza-communities/0000018b-80c6-d4a8-a3cf-bcef30330000
Judaism is so strict about respectful treatment of corpses, that even the smallest parts of a deceased person are honoured. This explains why the burnt-out cars incinerated by Hamas terrorists while young Israelis attempted to flee, were not later towed for scrap. After scouring the vehicles, Zaka (the Israeli Disaster Victims Identification Unit) found it was impossible to identify residual body parts, so the cars themselves were buried.
By early January, 2024, an estimated 9000 Hamas fighters had reportedly died fighting the IDF in Gaza.
The image in my mind, of Israeli soldiers scanning the war zone in Gaza for black figures wearing green Hamas bandannas, popping out of tunnels with rifles and rocket propelled grenades, reminds me of a game of whack-a-mole.
I assume that, in Gaza, the bodies of Hamas fighters are given last rights by the Palestinian authorities. Either way, Hamas reports them as civilian casualties. With the disdain for Israel held by the indoctrinated civilian population of Gaza, it may be more accurate to count the civilian casualties as being hostile Hamas operatives.
I am sad even making such a statement and wonder to whom I am doing a disservice by making it.
More About the Tunnels
The Gaza tunnel network is now estimated to be between 500 and 700 km long.
It is locally known as ‘The Metro’.
It is larger in scale than the London Underground and the NYC subway, but in a much smaller area.
These tunnels were professionally built over a 15-year period, paid for by international aid.
This aid had been donated to build better lives for the residents of Gaza; not to build a war machine to destroy the lives of Israelis.
Consider this:
Construction of the tunnels was not a secret. They have been reported on for decades (see the Wikipedia entry for the Gaza tunnels). I wonder if this makes the donor countries, who knew that their aid to Gaza was being exploited by Hamas, criminally liable for complicity in the support of terror, in contravention of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (1999).
https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/ctc/sites/www.un.org.securitycouncil.ctc/files/ctc_cted_factsheet_cft_oct_2021.pdf
Also consider this:
Israel focuses its efforts on defence. It provides bomb shelters in almost every building or neighbourhood in the country. It has also spent billions in developing the Iron Dome missile deflection system, to protect all Israeli (Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze and other) citizens.
By contrast, Hamas built a whole underground city dedicated to a clandestine economy and warfare, to which regular Gazans have no access. Which is ironic, because when Israel attacks Gaza to disable Hamas rocket launchers, Hamas complains that Gazan civilians have no bomb shelters to retreat to. In reality, however, they have a whole underground city to go to, but Hamas won’t let them in.
It’s such a pity. With almost 6000 access shafts - many in hospitals, mosques, schools and children’s bedrooms - these safe spaces are perfectly placed and are more than large enough to provide refuge for all the citizens of Gaza, for whose welfare the Hamas government is responsible.
Daily Changes
Just like the nooks and crannies, and twists and turns, in the narrow streets of Khan Younis, there are so many nuances, intricacies and variables that affect our understanding of the current war. And the situation changes daily.
There is so much more I would like to share, but so little time for me to write and for you to read.
We are all getting a little war-weary. But we trudge on for the greater good.
That is all we can do: trudge on for the greater good.
Posts
6 comments:
October 7th 2024 has yet to arrive
Thank you for this fulsome overview. So needed!
Thank you for your thoughtful, credible, and heartfelt blogging. I am hopeful that it reaches the eyes of those our heritage describes as those "who do not know what to ask."
One of the nuances -- censored by the government -- is how was it possible that the IDF, with one of the most comprehensive sophisticated surveillance systems on the planet, DID NOT REACT to the October 7 catastrophe for 7-8 HOURS while genocidal murderers casually (see their own videos) slaughtered us.
As more and more of us demand answers, this criminal censorship increases in strength.
Thank you Alan for this very thoughtful post.
Thank you Alan. Thoughtful, humane, update. Keep trudging for the greater good.
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