Endless War

I worked this weekend and so could not follow the news of the Hamas attack on Israel. I only knew there would be hysterical and biased reporting because nobody can discuss Palestinians without controversy. Daily Kos often has flamewars on the subject. Now I've had a chance to read on the details of what makes this attack different than previous attacks. What makes this a "war" rather than the ongoing perpetual battles that have been happening in the background for decades? Because apparently Hamas has broken through Israel's security and is now on Israeli land killing hundreds of people, wounding them, and taking hostages. I certainly sympathize with the civilians being kidnapped and killed, but I will never side with Netanyahu nor root for him to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians in revenge. Two wrongs don't make a right.

I always find it distasteful that the US always says that Israel is our friend and ally, that our support is rock-solid. Stop speaking for me. I support the Israeli people who are not rightwing racists trying to genocide Palestinians. I do not support their evil rightwing government. That's the thing that is so hard to articulate; that people can be innocent, but that their country can do wrong in their name. Many Israeli citizens were protesting their government, and could not counteract its evil apartheid. It's much like how Democrats feel in Texas, hating the fucking awful laws and GOP leaders but unable to overcome the gerrymandered elections. Of course I don't blame the civilians. I blame the government.

Let's get some terms straight on this formally declared "war". Hamas is a terrorist organization, but it is not all Palestinians. They have plenty of civilians too who are just trying to live peacefully. The West Bank and Gaza are not a separate country. They are parts of Israel that have been cordoned off into ghettos and "open air prisons" to contain the people they are oppressing. Israel has been occupying them and punishing them for decades, and we in the US have let them. That is one the evil things the US government has done in our name. So Israel declaring war on Hamas is not like Israel declaring war on another country, like Iran or Egypt. Israel is declaring war on a militant terrorist organization inside their own country, and they probably will destroy countless homes and kill a lot of Palestinian civilians who have nothing to do with Hamas. (In fact if Israel just allowed the two-state solution, letting Palestinians actually have their own separate nation, that would actually help improve chances of peace.) Just the fact that Netanyahu tells people to "get out of Gaza" while he knows that they actually can't get out, is fucking evil. What kind of warning is that? If you want to live, go, but I won't actually let you go anywhere, so you're going to fucking die.

If you must have an analogy for Israel, imagine that there was a more military focused version of AIM, the American Indian Movement which advocated for native rights and led occupations at Alcatraz and Wounded Knee in the 1970s. They were protesting unjust treatment of their community and were put down violently by the FBI at Wounded Knee. AIM is a peaceful organization, but imagine if the US government decided to treat Natives on reservations just as horribly as Israel treats the West Bank and Gaza. What if a much more militant organization arose on that land, focused on taking military actions to attack the US and get revenge for their people? If that terrorist organization launched rockets and killed civilians, then the US government would have a right to stop the killing and attacks, but would they then have the moral right to rain down destruction on all Natives on all reservations to punish them? No. Because those people are not guilty too, and their grievances are still grievances, no matter what the terrorists have done. The US government also would have vastly more resources and weapons than whatever mouse of a terrorist organization was attacking it. A full scale war would be overkill, because it is NOT a separate country attacking the US. The same goes for Israel. They are not being attacked by a separate country who has a military, government, etc. They are being attacked by a militant faction of their own people who are not treated as citizens with basic rights.

Israel has a right to defend itself from those attacks, but I will not be surprised if they go for overkill. They will probably far exceed any sense of justice as they always do. They already threaten to make "ruins" of where Hamas is. But Hamas is in Gaza, embedded among civilians, so Israel is threatening to kill everybody there, essentially. I will not support that. I won't root for Hamas or for Israel. I will root only for the civilians, forever caught between them in this horrible endless war.