Even if you accept Israel’s stated goal for the war, that they are trying to eliminate all of Hamas, once you read accounts like this it becomes very hard to see how they could possibly succeed at that. Please read this entire article before continuing:
A Palestinian Poet’s Perilous Journey Out of Gaza
(if you can’t access it I will provide a copy, just ask)
How could Hamas shrink after this? How much larger will they grow from all the people who have been treated this way, who have been tortured and left alive after their families have been killed, their homes destroyed?
Israel was created so Jews could have a safe place to go after the Holocaust. As an Armenian, I can understand that. They did need their own country, somewhere at least (you can argue about where). But the IDF has now become the oppressors, the torturers, the mass murderers. I don’t completely agree with the use of “genocide” to describe this war*; “ethnic cleansing” probably, “brutal war crimes” certainly. Still, read that article, and think of those IDF soldiers laughing, kicking helpless civilians in the face, shooting their guns near 90-year-old women. Now imagine those Israeli soldiers as if they were at Dachau. They wouldn’t be prisoners, laughing like that and torturing people crying for their mothers; they would be the SS guards.
If you haven’t been keeping track, as of April 23, 2024, 34,000 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF since last October, with no end in sight. 1,200 Israelis were killed in the initial attack. That’s a ratio of 28:1. Hamas’ attack was horrible enough, but the IDF’s retaliation has now made the situation much worse. This isn’t self-defense. It’s clearly revenge. If someone murders your loved one, you don’t get to kill their entire neighborhood in “self defense” just in case they might be there.
The 1.7 million people who have been displaced, half of whose houses are destroyed: were all of them sheltering Hamas? The Palestinian children now literally starving to death (13,000 children killed so far), what do they have to do with Hamas? The claim that Israel is only after Hamas does not stand up to elementary school-level critical thinking. It’s revenge, and the IDF is making Hamas’ point better than they ever could, essentially making recruiting videos for them. They won’t destroy Hamas unless they destroy all the Palestinians, and then it really would be a genocide.
*(To be clear, I am very worried it could come to this in Gaza. If the current conditions continue, there is a real possibility that hundreds of thousands or even millions of people could die of hunger, thirst, and disease. Most hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed. Israel is preventing the delivery of food and other necessities. 94% of the Israeli public supports this. Even if it is not quite yet at the level of a complete annihilation of the people of Gaza, it is not far from becoming that, and the government and citizens of Israel do not seem to care if it does)
This writer, Mosab Abu Toha, will probably not join Hamas. He just wants to go home to rebuild his house and live quietly with his parents and children. But I’m afraid we can’t say the same for everyone else subjected to what he describes. This will continue, and repeat, until the party that has the upper hand 28 times over stops and learns some humanity. Descendents of Holocaust survivors, of all people, shouldn’t have to learn that lesson.
Oh, and by the way, Americans, you’re paying for this, to the tune of $4 billion in military aid to Israel every year. Being anti-cruelty or anti-genocide is not anti-Semitic. The brutality of the Israeli government should not represent all Jews. Tell your member of Congress to stop funding this senseless aggression.
